10/19/09

Family! How is everyone doing? So here´s the big news. I´m in Vilafranca right now, not Cornellá. I think I told you last week about how there was an elder that went home after only being in the mission for a week, and how since the other companionship in our Piso was a trio I thought one of them would leave. Anyways, Monday evening they called me and told me to pack and be ready to leave the next morning. They took someone from the trio and put them with Elder Johnson, my old companion, and now I´m with Elder Morales, a Spaniard. I was way sad when I heard, and even for a few days after, and I still am a bit. I didn´t even get to say goodbye to any of our investigators or anything. I hope they´re all still progressing though and can still be baptized the 30th of October. We´ll see how that goes. So yeah. I´m now in a city called Vilafranca del Penedés. It´s about an hour away from Cornellá, and like an hour and half to two hours away from Barcelona. Just so you know, my address now is C/ Amalia Soler 18,4,1 08720-Vilafranca del Penedés (Barcelona) Spain (España). So yeah, if you can get that forwarded to Jen so she can get it on facebook for everyone, that would be great. And anyone who wants to write me can send it to that address now. I´ll still get everything that was sent to Cornellá, I´ll just have to wait a little bit. So yeah, that´s that. I´m now here in Vilafranca. I´m still getting used to the area and all, but it seems good. It´s a branch, with around 70 people or so I think attending church each week. Our goal is to get it to a ward. We´ll see what we can do about that. This past week we started teaching a girl named Claus who is progressing very well. She´s from Bolivia, but one of her parents is Spaniard, and she´s lived here for a couple years now. She´s living with her mom Rosemary. We´re teaching both of them, but Claus is progressing the most. She even came to church yesterday. We´re going to try to set a baptismal date for her the 7th of November. So we´ll see how that goes. There´s also a kid named Roberto that´s doing well. He has friends that are members and comes to Seminary almost every night and church almost every week. So hopefully we can get him baptized the 7th of November too. I´ll keep you updated on that though. Okay, so funny story. Here in Spain they do besos, where you kiss each other´s cheeks (kind of weird I think, but I hear it gets more normal the longer you´re here). Anyways, so normall when we´re with a group of people everyone gives besos to everyone then shakes the hands of the missionaries. When we first met Claus though she was doing the besos with everyone then got to me and started to go in to do the besos thing, and I was just like, uh... And she realized and stopped and apologized and said she didn´t realize we couldn´t and all. It was just a funny story, and a little awkward for me... haha. So that´s the funny story. I can´t thinik of what else has happened. Oh, we met the Stake Patriarch, because he lives in our ward, and he´s a way good guy. He also drove us out to a Pueblo on Saturday to go teach a girl named Carola. He´s very dedicated to the gospel though, so that´s good. My spanish is coming along pretty good, and it should come along even better now that I´m with Elder Morales, a native. He helps me with my spanish, and I help him with his english. So far we get along very well, so that´s good. It´s weird because we´re the only two people in our Piso. So I went from having 5 elders in a piso to only having 2. Crazy. It´s quieter, but still good. So things are going well with that. Well, I can´t think of much else to say now, so I think I´ll go ahead and start the individuals. Have a great week!
Elder Sommerfeldt