1/11/10

Family and Friends! HOw´s everyone doing? So right now I´m not in Vilafranca. I´m here in Barcelona! Elder Nelson has to go to Alicante, about 5-6 hours away in train, and we leave this afternoon, so we came out to Barcelona for our Preparation Day. We won´t be back in Vilafranca until Tuesday evening, just in time to be able to teach English Class at 8:30. SO this morning we went to the Sagrada Familia. It was pretty cool. I took a whole bunch of pictures and such, so when I send home pictures you guys can see them. It was pretty cool. I also saw the giant bullet building. I don´t know what it´s actually called, but that´s what it looks like, and at night it lights up and all. So yeah, that was fun.
Last week, I also got to go McDonalds for lunch, we walked about 20 minutes to get there, but it was well worth it. Okay, now for the most important news of the week, this past week Ibraham (you pronounce it Abraham, but it´s spelled with an I for some reason) was baptized! It was really good. He´s from Ghana and is friends with another recent convert that was baptized last March. So that all went well. You can see pictures of that too when I send home a CD. THis past week we also did really good with lessons. We had 23 lessons in total with 12 member presents. We were in the office this morning to drop off some paper work from the baptism and the ayudantes told us we led the mission this week in citas, so that was pretty cool. Belkis is still doing well, so hopefully she will be able to be baptized the 23rd of January as scheduled. She just needs to stop smoking, but we taught it this past week and went really well, so now we just need to help her all we can.
Also this past week we went out to Vilanova twice, it´s a pueblo or neighboring town to vilafranca. I´d never been there but we have a menos activo family out there. Anyways, on Sunday we met a guy there whose name we got from missionaries in Bilbao, they taught him and he was going to be baptized out there, but he had to move, so we´ll probably baptize him the end of this month too. Also, this past week while we were out there we were passing by some names we had and at one we just talked a bit but he wasn´t too interested. We left him with a folleto (pamphlet) though and this morning he called and wants us to go out there this WEdnesday to meet with him about it. THat rarely happens, so that´s really cool. We´re really blessed by the Lord as missionaries. People get prepared, then we help them continue following the Lord. So, what else new happened.
Oh, this past week we had a Zone Conference and it was really good. They talked about asking references from everyone, the Book of Mormon, etc. With the Book of Mormon we learned that 99% of the Book of Mormon was written by 4 people, Nephi, Jacob, Mormon, and Moroni. Anyways, all four of them saw Christ. So at least 99% of The Book of Mormon is written by peole who saw Christ. As a gift for los magos (it´s what they do for Christmas here jkind of) they gave us all new Book of Mormons in our native language and told us to read through marking wherever it says Christ or a pronoun (the Lord, the Lamb, Him, etc.), wherever it gives an attribute of Christ in a different color, and wherever Christ is talking in a different color. It´s going really well right now and it´s crazy just how much The BOok of MOrmon really does talk about Christ. Afterall, it´s Another Testament of Jesus Christ. So everything´s going well here. Also this past week I got a ton of packages!!!!!! I finally got Grandma and Grandpa´s package and it was super good, and I also got the packages from Kevin and Bruce, and the one from Michelle. So that was a lot of fun. Well, I can´t htink of much else now, so I´m going to start writing the individuals. Have a great week. ¡Chao!

-Elder Sommerfeldt