9/28/09

Family! How is everything there back home? Things are going well here for me. This keyboard is really bad by the way. It´s all written on the keys like an english keyboard, but it´s programmed for a Spanish one. So if I mess up at all, just blame the keyboard... Anyways, things are going good here. Things are going pretty good with Isabel, except there´s one big problem. She´s the one living with her boyfriend. We had intercambios this past week, I was with Elder Chávez, a native who doesn´t speak any English, and we taught her and her boyfriend Pedro the law of chastity. They committed to live it, and it was way good. The spirit was there and everything. Anyways, we set a baptismal date for this next Friday, October 2nd. She said yes. The only problem now is that he won´t move out. So we´re doing everything we can to help it happen and go through. We´ll see how it goes though. We were going to meet with them yesterday before church but the boyfriend, Pedro, was "sick." So he didn´t come, but she came. We talked to her and she really wants to get baptized, she started crying saying some people are just stubborn, meaning Pedro. So yeah, you can pray for Isabel to be able to find a way to get this to work. We´re still hoping for this Friday, but if he doesn´t move out really fast then it will be delayed. HOpefully it works out though. We´ll see. So that´s the news there. The boyfriend that we´re talking to we haven´t been able to meet with since Tuesday. We´ll be meeting with him again tomorrow though, with the girlfriend and rest of the family. So that should hopefully go good. We´ll see. We briefly talked about the Book of Mormon last time and gave him one. I believe we´re planning on teaching the Plan of Salvation to him, because he and his girlfriend recently had a child. So yeah. We´ll see how that goes. I´ll keep you updated. We almost had a cita with the 9 year old, but we weren´t able to because the mom works 4 jobs and can hardly ever have time for us. I think with her it´ll be like once every week or two we´ll teach her, and then in a couple months or so she´ll get baptized. So yeah. That´s that update. Let´s see, the list of things I´ve been writing down to tell you guys. Oh, so people here have a really hard time pronouncing my name. So one day Elder Tonge, one of the Elders in my Piso told the member it´s just like "Soy muy feo," which means "I´m very ugly." So now everyone remembers my name, it´s funny. A lot of them are actually not that bad. I told some of the members to just call me "Soy muy guapo" instead of "Soy muy feo." We´ll see how that goes though. Next thing, last week in church I made a mistake. Elder Tonge was teaching the lesson trying to use an example of someone not liking things, so he asked me what´s something I don´t like. I told him I don´t like eating tomatoes. Anyways, long story short, one of the hermanas in our ward that feeds us every week (and has apparently given us tomatoes a lot) was like, oh no! So she apologized after and I tried to just say, oh no, I was meaning when I was younger I didn´t, they´re fine now. I don´t know if it worked or not though. It´s kind of a funny story. And she´s the type of person that wouldn´t really be mad either, she´d just joke about it a lot. So yeah. I can´t think of anything else. Um, when I was with Elder Chávez it was really nice at the end of the day to switch back to Elder Johnson. I´d been talking in Spanish all day, and if I didn´t understand something he said, sometimes there wasn´t anything we could do about it. So it was nice being able to go back to english a bit. Spanish isn´t bad though. My spanish is improving, each week I notice a bit of a difference. Not really much day by day, but week by week yes. Oh, the other thing, like 4 times we´ve given blessings. So far everytime I´ve done the annointing, because I don´t know if I can do the blessing in Spanish and all, but I think the next time I might be doing it, so we´ll see. Who knows when that will be. We´ve been continuing to teach the menos activos we´re teaching. Things are going well with them. We´re hoping to get some references from them soon. We´ll see what ends up happening with that though. I can´t think of anything else to say right now, I´m sure there´s more, my mind´s just blank. Sorry. I´ll just go ahead and end this now then I guess. Overall, things are going well here, Isabel will hopefully be baptized this Friday, and I don´t have any complaints. Have a fantastic week and I´ll talk to you next week.
-Elder Sommerfeldt