11/30/2010

Family! How´s everyone doing? Things are going great here, except for the fact that Elder Jacinto left... He went to Zaragoza to be a zone leader in the new zone that just got created, the Lleida Zone. I´m staying out here for at least one more transfer and my new companion is Elder Hunsaker. I don´t know him very well yet, we came straight from the airport to do internet, so yeah. He seems nice though and he´s from Wyoming I believe. He has the same amount of time in the mission as Elder Jacinto did. He´ll be going home the first part of April.

Alright, so I´m going to attach a few pictures. Okay, the first one is all of us with David and Vanessa and their kids Marta, Jorge, and Carla, the next one is of me in a big chair that was in the street in front of a chair, and we couldn´t help but hurry and jump up there to take a picture. Next is of Aura, Mario, Elder Jacinto, and I, next is of all of us with Carolina and Pancho, and their kids Panchito and Carolita, and the last picture is one of Elder Jacinto and I that I copied from his camera of us when we were at Aura´s with the ocean in the background. Well, enjoy.

Okay, so the big news is that we now have 2 investigators with a baptismal date. First off we have Paula. It was super hard with her. She´s the 14 year old girl that´s Lais´s sister (Lais is a recent convert). She set a date for the 18th of December. Next is with a lady named Mabel, from Nigeria. Her husband, Robert, is a member, but he´s been less-active for a bit, but I think just because of work. Anyways, we had one cita with her and she accepted right away. It was super good. So we´ve made conversion plans for both of them and they´re doing really well. Mabel came to church for the first time this past week even. We also have an investigator named Jefferson who teaches Capoera, it´s like a martial art thing, but like a dance thing too. It´s pretty cool. He´s from Brasil. It´s a place kind of close to Sao Paolo, but not super close. He came to church this past week for the first time as well and loved it.

Oh, this past week we also went out to visit this lady that the branch assigned us to visit because they thought she was less-active. We got out there and found out she isn´t. She´s just been traveling a lot. She´s from England. Do you want to hear the crazy part. So we got talking and she told us that she works for NuSkin, and I told her that my best friend´s dad also worked for Nuskin. She said, what´s his name, I said Brent Goddard, Jon Goddard´s dad, and she´s like, Brent, I know Brent. Apparently when Jon and his family went to Africa a few years ago for the Nourish the Children program, she was there too. She said they work together a lot, so that´s crazy. That´s cool though. She said she was going to tell him that she knows me.

Okay, so with transfers, Elder Jacinto left. Also, Elder Cannell´s leaving to go be a zone leader in Barcelona. Elder Bowers, from Inca also left. So my new companion is Elder Hunsaker. Elder Bennington, the first person Elder Jacinto and I trained, who still lives in the same piso as me, is training too! That´ll be fun for him. He told me he´s going to be asking me a lot of questions. He´s still fairly new himself. He´ll do great though. THe other nice thing is that this past week we had 2 baptisms in our zone. One in Menorca and the other one here in Palma, in the Levante branch. I did the interview for her. Her name´s Lidia. The baptism went really well. Her mom´s been a member for like 17 years now, and her daughter, who´s 22, finally decided to get baptized too. So that was fun to see. For the past 8 weeks we´ve averaged a baptism every week in our zone, and that´s with only 4 companionships. So on average each companionship has been baptizing every other week. THat´s pretty good.

THis past week was Thanksgiving. We ate 3 Thanksgiving meals. It was super good. Although I dídn´t get any chocolate cream pie... That´s okay though.

Alright, the other big news is that Barcelona beat Madrid last night 5-0!!!! That´s crazy. That´s a complete blow out. Well, I can´t think of much more to say, and so I´m going to end this so I can write the individuals. Have great weeks though. ¡Chao!



-Elder Ryan Sommerfeldt