Rebeka's Story

The other day I heard a story that was completely beyond the norm. It threw my monotonous life stories and the life stories of people I've talked to recently out the window.

My roommate texted me the other day : "Would you like a ride home from work? There's a girl from hungry that I'm giving a ride to and it would be great to have you come with me."

I didn't understand most of the text. For instance: why my roommate had driven to work (she usually walks), and what hungry could translate into... some sort of club?... was it a typo?... I didn't know. She said it was a long story and she would tell me later.

I met her and the girl she was with. She introduced her as her friend Rebeka... which she had never talked about having a friend named Rebeka... ever. So I was really confused, especially when I noticed that Rebeka had an accent.

So I asked Rebeka where she was from. Hungary was her answer ( the association between "hungry" and "Hungary" didn't click in my head until the next day).

"Wow. Why are you in Utah?" I asked innocently.

I wasn't really prepared for her answer.

You see Rebeka lives in England. She came here to Utah because of a boy. They met in England and things were good so they went to Hungary to meet her family and things were still good there. So they decided to come to Utah to meet his family and probably finalize things. Things were going alright at first. She was introduced as just a friend then at dinner they decided to announce that they were getting married.

And it didn't go well.

The dad is super controlling to the point that he was telling her all of her flaws and that she'll have to lose weight and they'll put her on a diet and she needs to do all sorts of other things because she isn't perfect ... etc. Everyone was yelling at her, threatening to throw her stuff out and call the police. Her fiance did nothing. So obviously things were over in a very sudden way.

Somehow she found somebody who took her to a hotel and she used up all of her emergency money there.

She had to have had the worst night of her life.

The next day she had the feeling that she needed to go to the temple and she did so. I'm really grateful that the temple is a pretty central part of Logan and easy to see and easy to get to. She arrived there and was looking for the baptistry. One of my roommates student workers, Miss ST, was at the temple to get her endowments, saw Rebeka and had the thought to help her find the baptistry. She did so and learned all about the background story and decided to help in any way she could.

Thankfully the family was still willing to help in some way. Miss ST took her to the bank where the family gave her $1500. They also bought her a plane ticket so she could get home. Since Miss ST was going to be at the temple all day she took her to the admissions office on campus so that she could have something to do and somewhere to go during the day. That's where my roommate came into the puzzle and then me.

As a back story I found out that Rebeka and her ex met online. But apparently it was really the dad posing as his son, so that his son of 35 and living at home could get married. The son has a job but apparently his dad takes all of his money because he is so controlling.

It's such an awful situation and so sad that it could happen to someone. I'm just glad that she was a part of the church and that she followed the promptings of the spirit so that she could be led to us and become a friend. She had a mission companion in a town close by who she gets to stay with for a while.