Family and friends! HOw´s everyone doing? I hope mom, dad, and John are having fun in Baltimore. THat sounds like it would be fun. Well, this past week here has been great. You´ll remember last week I was excited that we reached 21 lessons, well this past week we had 24 lessons, along with 10 member presents, 5 new investigators, 6 investigators in church, and we have 3 investigators with baptismal dates. So that´s cool. I´m excited about that. Last night the ayudante called us telling us we had a great week and that we met the standards of excellence in every category. So that was cool. Well, I´m going to attach a few photos today. First off is of me and Juan in front of his house. He´s from Romania and he lives in a field in an abondoned house that he´s furnished from the trash basically. He´s pretty poor, but always so happy, it´s great. He´s thinking about baptism right now. THe next picture is of me and Elder Hancock in front of a bull statue that they have here in Castellón. The next one is of a picture I´m drawing. I´m not sure if I told you, but a recent convert in our ward is an artist, and she didn´t want me to lose my art ability, so she gave me some pastels, pencils, notebooks, etc. to be able to keep drawing. So I´ve just been drawing some in the evenings and on preparation days. I´m further along with the picture than this photo shows, but you can see a bit of what it´ll be like. I´ll probably finish it this next week or so. I hope you like it. THe next one is of a bunch of people in our zone playing football a couple weeks ago, or rather, right after playing football. And the last picture is of Julian, who we thought was going to Brasil this past week. So about that story of Julian. Julian was going to have to go back to Brasil this past Wednesday. There´s a company that´s sending him out there, it´s because he has to get a divorce or something from his wife there or something like that, kind of a sad situation it sounds like, but he hasn´t told us all the details. Anyways, so he was going to leave, but then this past Saturday we saw him in a store and figured out that his plane wasn´t able to leave because of the volcano that erupted in iceland or something like that. So we ended up visiting with him yesterday and we set a baptismal date for this Saturday. There´s a chance that the company calls him and says he has to leave on Wednesday, or Thursday, or something like that, and if that happens then he´s gone and we´ll pass him information to missionaries over there and he can get baptized over there, but if they don´t have him leave until next week, then he´ll be baptized here this Saturday. So yeah, it´s pretty cool. He´s super ready though. He told us how he came to know the Book of Mormon is true one day, and it´s a super powerful experience. So yeah, he´s good. We also still have Guillermo with a baptismal date in June, then we also put a baptismal date with Jairo. Jairo´s from Colombia. We´ve been teaching him for a couple weeks, and this past week we were finally able to put a date on him. So hopefully we can help him be able to progress and be ready by the 8th of May. We´ll see how all that goes. So let´s see, what else is new this past week. We did intercambios twice this past week. ONe time I went to Valencia and worked there, and the other time one of the elders from Valencia came out here to Castellón and worked with me out here. SO that was good. We started teaching this family this past week. Edith, then her daughter Geraldine, then her son Paul. Paul is 19, so I´ve kind of become his friend a bit. Edith and Paul came to church this past week. It was Paul´s first time, and Edith´s second time. So that´s good. Edith is contemplating baptism now, so we´ll have to see what she says when we visit with them tomorrow. We´ll also see them tonight too because they´re going to go with us to a family home evening. SO that should be fun. Also this past week we visited a young women in our ward who´s in the hospital with tuberculosis. She´s a little desanimada, like depressed a little bit. She´s been there for a week now, and it could be another month or so that she´s there. She´s all alone, and when people visit her they have to wear a mask. She can´t watch TV, she´s in pain, etc. I hope I didn´t catch it when we visited her and gave her a blessing. I had a mask on, so it should be good, but that would be really bad if I caught it. I think I´m good though. So tomorrow we´ll be having a conference with Elder Richard Hinckley. That should be really good. I´m excited about it. I´ll let you know next week how it went, etc. So tonight we´re going to visit Julian, who has the baptismal date for this Saturday, in Valeria´s (a recent convert) house. We´re oging to have a Family HOme Evening and teach Obedience, Study the Scriptures, Pray Frequently, Tithing, Fasting, and Offerings. It should be pretty good. We have a teach a lot at once becuase we only have this week to teach him all of the commandments. It´ll be good htough. Oh, here´s some other good news. So there´s this 15 year old girl named Francheska from the Dominican Republic. She´s the only member in her family. Her mom wasn´t letting her come to church, but we figured out this past week that now she can come. She´s so good too. She asked us this past week if she can go with us to visit people and stuff, so now we´re going to be taking her with us a couple times a week now. We took her with us to visit Edith and Paul and it went really well. So yeah, that´s good. Oh, also, I had to speak in church yesterday. It went pretty well. The assignment they gave me was a talk from the January Liahona 1988 from a talk by Dallin H. Oaks called The LIght and The LIfe of the World. I wanted to talk about missionary work though, so I talked about that talk, then most of the time I talked about how we can reflect that light. I think it went pretty good. Well, that´s basically my week. It´s been a really good week. I need to be going now though, but have a great week and I´ll write again next week.
-Elder Sommerfeldt
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