Searching

As of late our lives have been thrown into a little bit of chaos.  It felt like it hit us out of nowhere.  It all kind of started several weeks ago when Justin and I decided to go to the open house for the new Payson temple.

As always she loves being outside, and loves Dad's days off.

On our way home we decided to stop in at Winco for a few items out of their bulk section, since we don't have one near us.  We made our selections and were getting ready to leave when we noticed Meredith in a neighboring aisle with Jill.  While talking to Meredith the subject of the missing Provo woman came up, and we were lamenting to one another how badly we felt about the situation when Sarah strolled around the corner with Fox.  I don't know that other people meet up with their sisters in the bulk section of Winco, but we do.  Sarah joined the conversation and mentioned that she had heard of an event in Salt Lake the next day to post flyers for the missing woman.  We talked a little about things and then we all left to attend to the rest of our respective schedules.  Still though, the story of Elizabeth Elena Laguna Salgado hung in the back of my head for the rest of the day.  (For the benefit of anyone who reads this that hasn't heard, she is a Mexican citizen who came to Provo, UT on a scholarship to learn English.  She was only here a couple of weeks when she disappeared, seemingly without a trace.  Her family is here in Utah from Mexico frantically trying to find her before they will need to return to Mexico, and the three other children that are still at home.  Like Elizabeth, they don't speak any English.)  The idea of having your child go missing in a foreign country is unsettling to put it mildly.

The next morning I woke up, called Sarah for the details of the Salt Lake event, and called Brianna to tell her that I had a different idea for how we could spend our afternoon, since she was scheduled to come visit.  Brianna and I spent the better part of our day tromping around a crappy part of Salt Lake posting missing person flyers.  It wasn't super fun, but I was grateful for a chance to feel like I was doing something, anything to help.  We were both however, somewhat disheartened by what seemed like a pretty weak turnout for the event.

A few days later I heard of another event in Provo.  This time it was to search for a body.  I talked Justin into coming with me.  The organizer was very nervous, and made mention that he was stepping far outside of his comfort zone, but that he had a strong desire to help in some way.  Again, the turnout was disappointingly weak.

The next day Justin and I figured out who to contact to pick up some of the missing person flyers, and on our own, after work we spent the evening posting flyers.  While we were posting we looked around in Provo, only blocks where this woman disappeared and were dismayed at really how few flyers we were seeing.  While driving home late that night we talked about the man from the previous day's event and determined that maybe it was time that we too stepped outside of our comfort zone.  We called Brianna and the three of us decided to organize our own event.  Justin started calling local printers, and before too long had an impressive number of flyers donated.  Brianna contacted the local press, and issued invitations to anyone she could think of (she has thousands of friends).  Sarah and I planned out routes and put together packets for our prospective volunteers.  We feel that our event was pretty successful.  We had lots of volunteers, we covered all of our routes, we had tons of press coverage, and at the end of the day felt that Provo was pretty well covered with copies of this flyer:

Justin managed to get copies of this in color, black and white, and on neon cardstock to attract attention, etc.

After that we have tried every way we can think of to keep her face out there.  Sarah has organized events, we organized a second sort of failed event that found Justin standing on the corner of Main St. and University Parkway holding a poster, and me rushing into the street to hand out flyers to cars stopping at the red light.  Still...no sign of Elizabeth, so we continue to plaster them all over our apartment complex, and distribute them to anyone who is willing to post them in their area, and then wait and pray that she will be found.  Sarah has worked tirelessly to help this cause as well.  She created a website findelizabeth.org and is also constantly trying to figure out ways to distribute flyers and keep her face in the news.  People say to us all the time that she's probably dead, and statistically...and of course we all know the statistics, but her family prays for a miracle, and I can't help but think, if she were mine...would I give up and go home to my country because statistics tell me that she's probably gone?  No chance.  

Still, in the midst of all of this Justin and I decided we needed to take a little break and use some of our free time to do something for our family.  We feel good about our efforts to help them, but we need to have some balance in there too, so we made reservations at the crack of dawn for Timpanogos Cave.  I've lived in Utah most of my life, but never been to the caves, and Justin hasn't ever been either, so we figured it was a good time to check it out.  

We heard the hike up was brutal.  It was steep, but only a little over a mile, so really not too bad.  We picked the earliest reservation they offered, at 7am, and we were glad that we did.  Initially we were feeling kind of chilly, but by the time we got to the top we were both kind of sweaty, it would have been very hot doing that hike mid-day.

She actually fell asleep right after this picture and slept through most of the cave.

  

Too chilly to take her hands out of the blanket, but she wanted to chew on my zipper pull.

When I first made the reservations we were the only party going at 7am.  Another group that consisted of two retired Canadian brothers and their wives joined us, and I confided in Justin that I was very disappointed.  I had hoped that no one else would be on the tour because I wanted to ask the tour guide to cut all the geology crap out about how the caves were formed billions of years ago, by powerful forces of nature that blah, blah, blah... I naturally couldn't make any such request with another group joining us on the tour.  Our tour guide was a very hippy looking guy that admitted he had just recently moved here from Portland, pronounced the last part of Timpanogos like "no goes," which I thought was very amusing, and during his introduction of himself announced that he had majored in Geology, and that he was very passionate about the topic.  I was bracing myself for the worst, but he was actually a great guide, shared just enough to be interesting, never lectured me about some environmentalist issue, and never spent too long rambling on about mineral deposits and ancient volcanic activity.  

We were super glad that we took the time out to do this together.  We still continue to try and do what we can to help find Elizabeth, post flyers, and pray for her safe return.  There have been many moments when I think that we have both considered being done with this project, but there is always that lingering thought, "but if she were mine..." All in all we have been grateful for this experience.  It has created quite a bit of chaos and inconvenience in our lives, but at the end of the day it has also given us a rare opportunity to step outside of our world, our worries, and away from our own selfish and petty cares, and do what little we can to help someone else with bigger worries, and heartbreak.  There have been many, valuable lessons we have been taught along the way, both temporal and spiritual.  Justin and I have had several conversations over the last few weeks, and hope that in the future, should such opportunities again arise, we will not be the people that simply hear the news of misfortune, express sadness and remorse that we live in a sometimes harsh world, and then forget, but that we will always try to rise to the occasion.  We have sometimes surprised even ourselves with how much we can do when we make the choice to be helpful.