3/30/2011

Family and friends! How´s everyone doing out there! Things are going great here in Barcelona. So the good news is that yesterday we did the preliminary transfers with President Hinckley and Elder Keller and I will be together for one more transfer. We´re both really excited about that. He basically let us choose. Well, he let Elder Keller decide if he wanted to leave this transfer or wait one more. He also asked who I want to have as my companion for the next transfer. So I have six weeks or so to pick who will be my companion for my last transfer. I´ve got some ideas, but we´ll see what´s best over the next six weeks. Anyways, things are giong great in our area too. We have some bad news with Nancy. We haven´t been able to talk to her for 4-5 days. We´re not sure what´s wrong. We´ve called her, but she doesn´t answer anymore, and everyone time we´ve passed by her house she hasn´t been there. We think it´s one of two things. Either she got a job and really has zero time, or else she talked to her husband and her husband told her not to even visit with us anymore. We´re not sure, but we´ll keep on trying. She´s too good to just drop. With Juana, we re-set her date for the 30-April to be baptized. She´s actually moving today though to the Hermana´s area in Hospitalet. She lives right on the border of our area, and she´s moving over just two metro stops, but it puts her into their area. We´ve already warned the hermanas, so she´ll be fine. The other big news is that we have two new people who are both working towards the 16th of April to be baptized and are doing great. One of them is named Julio Vargas, and the other is Rocio Popo. Julio Vargas is a guy that was visited by missionaries about six months ago and he was preparing to be baptized. Then he had to go to Peru and never got baptized. He came back to Spain on Wednesday, and on Thursday bought a phone and found the card he´d saved from the missionaries six months ago, Elder Raban and Elder Southwick, and called us. So we visited with him on Sunday and he´s now going great for the 16th of April. He´s even going to help an older lady with cancer move today with the Elder´s Chorum,s o that´ll be good for him. Also, we have Rocio. She´s a room mate of Christian. I don´t know if I´ve said this, but in Spain, people rent out rooms, so there´s always multiple people /families living in the pisos. So we got fired on on Saturday and decided to pass by Christian, one of our investigators, and she was there. We´d invited her to listen in the past, but she´d always been busy. Anyways, this time she came in. Elder Keller and I taught better than I think we ever have, and the spirit was there super strong, and she accepted to be baptized on the 16th of April. She´s an active member of another church as well, and goes every Sunday and every Wednesday, but our visit was on Saturday, and the next day she didn´t go her church, and she came to our church instead. Christian, our investigator that´ll be baptized in Columbia, also told us that she got called to work Sunday morning, which here with the crisis people take work whenever they can, but she turned it down because she was coming to church. So she´s doing really well. We left her with 3 Nephi 11-26 to read, which is a lot, but she wanted to know all about when Christ visited the americas, so I´m really excited for her. She´s doing great. I never said with Julio either. The first day missionaries contacted him 7-8 months ago he had prayed that morning because he was having problems, and he said to God that he would go to the first church that God showed him. He´d gone throughout the day and had nothing, then Elder Raban and Elder Southwick were walking and they were with a member. The member had asked them how they know who they need to contact and in the middle of explaining it to the member they saw Julio and stopped him. He told them about his prayer and started right from there to prepare himself to be baptized. Miracles happen. I love this work. It´s clearly directed by God. So that´s the big update on our investigators for this week. Things are going great here in Barcelona. I love it. I´m so happy that Elder Keller and I get to stay together for another transfer as well. The other day we had an investigator that we ran into invite us to go to a Kebab place and get kebabs, so we did. While we were eating he was telling us that we were really good missionaries, and that you could just tell that we worked really well together and that we were really unified and worked for the same purpose. This was from Christian, the investigator that´s been investigating for 15 years and knows hundreds of missionaries. He´s going to be baptized in 2-3 weeks. Right after he goes back to Columbia. I don´t know if I ever told you, but we were pushing him to be baptized here, and then we just randomly read a chapter from the Book of Mormon with him one day, and it happened to be the only chapter where it talked about the people postponing the day of their baptism, so he´s going to wait now. It was a direct answer from God. It´s neat to see God answer prayers. I love it. I´m sorry BYU lost. That´s too bad. In Jimmer going to be playing for us again next year, or does he graduate? Well, I can´t think of much else I should say, so I´m going to go ahead and finish this up. Thanks for all of the e-mails and all of the prayers and support. I´ll write more next week. ¡Chao! -Elder Ryan Sommerfeldt