11/9/09

¡Familia! ¿Cómo va tots? The word "tots" is Catalá for "todos," para que sepa. Things are going good here for me. This past week we had another slightly slower week. We had to fix up the Piso a whole bunch, including painting one bedroom, and our main living room area. We also had to replace a lot of doors, putting hinges on etc. It´s basically been a huge pain balancing all the work in the Piso with everything else. At the same time we had to finalize things with our new piso. Just so you know, the new address for my new piso is:

Avinguda Tarragona 16,3,
108720-Vilafranca del Penedés(Barcelona)
Spain/España

So yeah, hopefully I can start getting mail soon. This past week we had a district meeting out in Tarragona again. I don´t think I told you last week, but it´s right next to the beach. Man, I love the ocean. There´s several parts of the city where you´re up on a hill, and the beach is just right below you, then the ocean just goes on and on forever. It´s awesome. After my mission when I come back I´ll for sure go to the beach. Also, this week our heater, for the piso and the water broke. We´ve had about 5 days without heat and with only cold water. It´s been miserable. I´m excited to move and not have to take any more cold showers. Now for the good news, in spite of all of the hardships of moving etc., we set 4 baptismal dates this past week. Roberto is going to be baptized this Saturday, the 14 of the November, the following Saturday, November 21, Karlita´s going to be baptized, and the following Saturday, the 28th, Montse and Susana are going to be baptized. This past week was Stake Conference, an hour to an hour and a half away. We invited Karlita and she came! So that was good. She had to come to that, and then she has to come this next Sunday to still be baptized and all. And this past week we brought a girl named Fabiola with us to teach her, and then she rode home with her from conference, so she has a friend now. Things are going well there. This past week we had some bad news with Roberto. He told us he wasn´t going to be baptized anymore. We ended up having an activity that night, the seminary, then I gave him a blessing, and now he´s still going to be baptized. So that´s good. The baptismal font here in Vilafranca is just a swimming pool. It´s similar to our pool at our house, but the surface area isn´t as big, and it´s a square shape. But yeah, we set it up last night during correlation meeting, so that´s good. Oh, with Montse and Susana, I´ll tell their story. So my companion got this guy´s name, Emmanuel, a while ago on a bus, and his phone number. He hasn´t been able to visit with us for a while, but we got a hold of him this past week and went to teach him. We went in there and he was there, as well as two girls from Cataluña. Their names are Montse (mom) and Susana (daughter). They now have baptismal fechas. The only problem that´s come up is that just a bit ago we learned that Montse and Emmanuel are boyfriend/girlfriend and living together. We´ll see what we can do about that though. But Susana, I think all is well with her. We assigned her with 2 Nephi 31 a while ago to read, and told her to read to the end of the chapter. She was confused I guess and read to the end of 2 Nephi, so like 4 chapters or so. That was cool. Karlita´s also been doing her reading and all, and yesterday when we went to Stake Conference I think we became pretty good friends with her, so all is well with that. Lets see, what else. Mainly that´s what we´ve done, fix the piso and teach those people. Oh, this past week we also made no-bake cookies one night. We make no-bake cookies a lot and give about half away, then eat the other half. Anyways, this time my companion accidentally doubled about half the ingredients, so we had to double the whole thing. Anyways, we ended up with 44 cookies and... we ate them all in one day... All I can say is that I don´t think I´ve had such a bad stomach ache for a long time, and I won´t be eating that many cookies that fast again. They were really good though. Also, as I said this past week was Stake Conference so I was able to talk to Elder Johnson, my old companion. The news is that Isabel (the lady from Cornellá that moved out of her own Piso and let her boyfriend stay there so she could live the law of chastity) got baptized the 30th of October! I was super excited to hear. Apparently it was a huge pain because she wasn´t able to come to church the next day because she works at a hospital and had to work, so they had to make an exception so that she could get the Holy Ghost on Saturday, but luckily it all worked out. Well, I can´t think of much else to say, and I´m a bit short on time, so I´m going to go now. Have a fantastic week!
-Elder Ryan Sommerfeldt