1/11/2011

Family! How´s everyone doing? Things are going great here in Barcelona. I guess that´s the big news. I left Palma on Sunday afternoon to come out here to Barcelona as the ayudante to President Hinckley. I was in Damaris´s house on Saturday eating for medio día when he called and asked me to come out as the ayudante. I was completely shocked. I thought there was a good chance I was leaving, but I didn´t think I´d be the ayudante. When I told Damaris I was leaving she started to cry. I miss her and Dana already. They´re like my family. She invited us to go back on Sunday for medio día right before I left to eat with them again. They bought me a new shirt too. She´s probably spent hundreds of euros on me during the time I was there on food and gifts... They´re really nice. Well, I´m going to see if I can´t attach some pictures onto this e-mail. Okay, I have like 25 I´d like to send, but I just picked five of them. The first is of Jaime and me. Jaime is the friend of the king. Next is one of Lais, Paula, me, and Sergio. Next is one of me and Leticia. Next is one of Damaris, me, and Dana. Last is of Yaira, Luzmila, me, Luzmila´s sister, her daughter, and in the front Mihaela. That´s it. I hope you enjoy them. Actually, they all say "Attachment failed." They said it´s impossible to attach pictures here in the office right now. Sorry, maybe I´ll make a DVD in a bit.
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> Okay, so just some quick news on how everything was in Palma. They now have 4 investigators working towards baptism: Junior, Juan, Marinela, and Godwin. So that´s really good. I´m excited for them. The whole island is doing really well. I actually get to see all the numbers for everyone now and as far as teaching and baptizing per companionship, etc., the islands is the best zone now. It used to be the worse zone. So that´s good. Anyways, I also talked to Elder Hunsaker today and he told me they have a visit with Dayana set, so hopefully they can help her accept another baptismal date and she´ll be able to get baptized here soon.
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> Okay, so as ayudante I figured out I´m going to be even more tired than before. We´re doing stuff until late so we get to bed late, and we have to wake up early to do stuff. Today we had to wake up to go with Elder Corbitt, the Hinckleys, and the missionaries that just finished to the airport. It was fun, but we had to leave at 6:45. We usually sleep until 7:30. So that was hard. It wouldn´t be bad just once, but I think it happens a lot. Next, at the airport almost all of them had problems with their flights because they were going to fly through New York, but it´s closed or something, so they re-routed all of them through Atlanta. Also, Hermana Bustamante had problems and wasn´t able to leave, so they´re still working on her ticket. She probably won´t get to leave until hopefully tomorrow, if not the next day. It´s a lot of things going on at once, but it´s fun. I get to use a computer a lot more too. Actually, one of the things we´re doing is making a video for all of the new missionaries. It´s a video of an interview that we had with all of the missionaries that went home and we filmed it and what not. Hermana Hinckley is letting us use her Mac, so we´re making that video. I have a head ache right now and I´m tired, so if anything´s jumbled, I´m sorry.
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> Here in Barcelona we have a lady named Isabel that got baptized last month and she has a son named Jean Pierre who wasn´t baptized. We talked with them and he´ll probably get baptized the 29th of this month. He`s 11 years old, which is the same age as Dana in Palma.
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> Well, there´s some things I should say. My new address can be the office. The address for the office is C/ Calatrava 10-12 Bajos, 08017- Barcelona, Spain/España. Also, my preparation day here is not on Monday, but it´ll change every week probably. Apparently we usually try and do it on Wednesday, but it depends on the week. So it might be Tuesday, might be Thursday, Friday, etc. You could just keep writing on sunday and then I´ll reply when I can. That´s about it though. Thanks for being the best family ever. Well, I need to be going, sorry this is so short. Have a fantastic week though.

-Elder Ryan Sommerfeldt