3/15/2010

Family and Friends! How´s everyone doing? Things are going great here for me in Barcelona. So an update on Tony and Jessica. Tony decided that this past Saturday he wasn´t ready, but he´s all set for the next Satruday, the 20th of March. So that should all go well. Next with Jessica. She lost her meta. She´s super ready, and wants to get baptized, but she has to get married. It´s going to take about 3 months probably for her to get married. It´s crazy here, they´re completely legal and everything, and it´ll still take 3 months to get married. We´ll keep visiting them though, and hopefully she can get baptized before I get transferred from this area. Speaking of transfers, just so you know this next week is transfers. So I´ll be writing on Tuesday not Monday next week. Elder Baugh thinks he´s going to go, but I don´t know we´ll see. I´ll let you know next week. Anyways, mom, you asked how I liked doing intercambios with Elder Morales, just so you know, we don´t do intercambios that often. However, this past week we did have intercambios and I was with Elder Morales. It was a lot of fun. It was great. We taught really well together in Vilafranca, and the one day we had together it all came back and we taught well with unity etc. So yeah, it was a good day with him. I was nervous too that we wouldn´t have enough stuff to do, because I stayed in my area, which means that I´m in charge, but it all went well and we were kept busy. This next week I´ll be doing intercambios with Elder Bodily (my companion from the CCM in Madrid, he was also Jen´s friend at BYU before the mission), so that´ll be fun. So about last week. It snowed a ton for here in Barcelona. It came down for a few hours and it stuck. All of the busses just ended up pulling off to the side of the road, people that were on them had to get off, and they were shut down all day. Also, here they have the Metro, which is like a subway, then they have another thing that´s like a metro, but it´s called Ferrocarrils. Anyways, Ferrocarrils was shut down, and Metro was shut down partially as well. It was a bit difficult getting around too. We also helped a few cars throughout the night get unstuck. No one here knows how to drive in the snow. Word on the street is it hasn´t snowed as much as it did last Monday for 20-30 years. So I was here in Barcelona in the historic snow storm of 2010. That´s pretty cool to think about. We also had interviews this past week. That went well. To answer mom´s question, in interviews we talk about whatever we want to, and he´ll help us/teach us if we need. For example, I don´t think I´ve told you, but this past week we taught Tony and he heard for the first time that we believe that Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ are two different people. It boggled his mind you could say. So in my interview we spent most of the time talking about how we could help him to still be baptized and help him understand that concept. It´s obvious to me, but to him it´s not because he was raised thinking they were all the same person. It´s good though. He´s doing better now, and everything looks good for the baptism this Saturday. So I´m sending some pictures again to Mom and Dad, if anyone wants them they can ask them to forward them on to you. The first one is me standing by the office when it was snowing. The second one is a picture from our window of our street while it was snowing. The last one is of me and Elder Morales when we were on intercambios. Let´s see, what else is new. We had a BBQ with a member from Ward 3 this past week. It was fun. It was just during medio día. He invited us and ward 3 over to eat. He had a huge house though. It was crazy. Most people in Spain live in apartments and such. His house was basically an apartment building. He made a bunch of meat and such, and it was pretty good. I still prefer having a steak or something from Outback or something, but it was still good. I can´t think of much else new that has happened, but it´s been a great week. Oh, I´m getting close to finishing The Book of Mormon marking everywhere it says Christ, an attribute of Christ, or where Christ is actually talking. It´s going really well and it´s neat to see how much The Book of Mormon really testifies and talks about Christ. Oh, also, I just figured out today that Richard Hinckley, President Hinckley´s brother, is going to be here on a mission tour in April. So that should be pretty fun. Well, that´s about all that´s new here. I hope BYU does well in the NCAA tournament, and have a great week. -Elder Sommerfeldt