3/23/2010

Family and Friends! How´s everyone doing? Things are good here. It´s my last day here though... I´ll talk about that later though. Anyways, first off, Toni got baptized this past week. It went really well. I´m attaching a picture of his baptism, so enjoy that. I baptized him and it went really well. This last week was actually crazy. There were a ton of things going on. For one, Friday morning Elder Baugh had to leave to Menorca to do a baptismal interview, so I had to move around a lot with other elders for a couple days, living out of a briefcase. So we missed a day of work in our area due to that, and we had the baptism scheduled for Saturday. At first, I was thinking we wouldn´t be able to get 20 lessons, which is the goal. We´ve been shooting for it the whole transfer, but only gotten 18 or 19. Then this past week, even though we were super busy, we had 20, I thought... Then when I did the weekly numbers I realized I´d actually counted one day wrong and we only got 19. It was okay though, because we were super busy, and we still had one of our most productive weeks. So Toni got baptized. He came out of the water smiling. He´s super good. He was way prepared. Then on Sunday Elder Baugh did the confirmation. It´s really cool how good he´s been. Also, we found out, that the person he met over facebook, lives in the homeward of President Hinckley, what are the chances? And now he´s a member because of that. So yeah. Okay, a lot of other things have happened, but the next important is that I´m not going to have another day here in Barcelona. Sunday night President Hinckley called Elder Baugh asking him to go to Palma Mallorca (the islands) to be a zone leader out there. I was waiting for later that night when they say transfers to see who my new companion would be, but the result is that they are closing our area, or better said, combining it with the hermanas area. In our ward we have 2 elders and 2 hermanas. They had to close one area, so they closed ours. The hermanas will be working the whole ward now. I´m leaving to Castellon right after I do internet. Just so you know, Castellon is spelled with an accent on the o, but my keyboard doesn´t work well now, so i can´t do the accents. So yeah. I´ll definitely miss it here though. We said bye to a lot of people yesterday and it was pretty hard. Lusmila started crying thanking us for all we did to help her, and it really helped me see just how important missionary work is. We really have a huge influence on people´s lives. I´ll miss everyone here, but I´ll see them all again someday. I also have a little journal thing where a bunch of people wrote contact info. etc. So yeah. Oh, before I forget, my new address in Castell´´on is going to be: Elder Ryan SommerfeldtAvda. Casalduch 16, 1, B12005 - Castell´´on (spell Castell´´on with an accent over the o)Spain/España So yeah, sent everything there now. Okay, so with the photos I´m sending, the first one is of Toni with Elder Baugh and I at his baptism, the next one is of Tom´´as Flores, our ward mission leader, the third one is of me with Jessica and her family. Quick update on her, she´s working on getting married, but in Spain it takes at least 3 months to do all the paper work for marriage, it´s not like the U.S., so she won´t be able to get baptized until the summer. She told Elder Baugh and I that she wants us at her baptism if we can. We told her if we can we will, and if not she at least needs to send us some pictures of it. So yeah. The fourth one is with Arturo and Angela. They helped us a lot too. They´re great people. Okay, With my address, everything you send can be sent there now. It´´s crazy that I´´m leaving so fast. I´m going into my sixth transfer and I´m already in my fourth area. 5 areas is normal for a regular missionary. It´s crazy. I feel at home here, and now I have to go again. That seems to happen a lot here on the mission. I get really close to people, then I leave, then the same thing happens again and again. It´ll be fun coming back though. The bishop told me yesterday I´m welcome there with my family whenever I want, so we´ll maybe spend a day there when we come back. So earlier we were emailing and the office called telling Elder Baugh his plane left 2 1/2 hours earlier than planned, so we quit and left, but then right when we got back to piso they called saying they accidentally said it wrong. So we´re back here to finish our email. I really can´t think of much more to say though. I will miss it here, but I´m excited to see what it´s like in Castellón. Just so you know, my new companion´s name is Elder Hancock. He´s from Plain City, Utah (near Ogden). He was in my district for my first two transfers in Vilafranca, so I know him a bit already. Well, I can´t think of much else to say, so I´m going to go, but have a great week and don´t send me letters to my address here in Barcelona anymore, send it to Castellón. have a great week. ¡Chao! -Elder Sommerfeldt