4/15/2011

Family and friends! How´s everyone doing? Things are going great here. We just got done with a three-day leadership training conference that we had. We pulled in all of the zone leaders, district leaders, trainers and new missionaries, into Barcelona for Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. We reviewed all of the eight lessons that are newer with Preach My Gospel. The Fundamentals of Preach My Gospel, is what they´re called. Starting in May they´ll be teaching these lessons to everyone in the MTC´s all around the world. Elder Keller and I didn´t have to do too much, except for assign everyone that traveled in a place to work in the afternoons. The conference only went from 9:30 until 4:00 each day, so in the afternoons we had to assign other missionaries to go work in other missionaries´ areas. It worked out well. We also had to translate again for the conference. We have a microphone, and then all of the natives have head-sets that they use and they hear us as we translate. I actually like translating, it´s fun to see that the Spanish words come to me so fast, usually at least. It was a really good conference though. We talked a lot about having the faith that we can baptize every month in every area of the mission. So speaking of that, guess who´s getting baptized this week... Rocio! She´s so good. It was close though, because last week she was still a little bit shaky on Joseph Smith, so on Tuesday we watched "Joseph Smith: The Prophet of the Restoration." Then we talked about it. Then on Wednesday we talked about The Book of Mormon and how it´s evidence of Joseph Smith, and she was praying about it, and we don´t know how, but she has no doubts about Joseph Smith now, so that´s good. She´s super good. I feel bad for her though. She has a sickness. We think it´s cancer, but she hasn´t told us all of the details, but we know that she has to go to the hospital three times a week for 3-4 hours a time. She´s a really good lady though. She´s from Columbia. I´ll send pictures next week. She´s doing great now though. We also have a ton of other people that are doing great. We have Jean Pierre, Isabel´s son, who finally set a baptismal date. He´ll be baptized the 14-May. It´s pretty far out there, but it´s the day he came to Spain, and we couldn´t get them to move it up. Then we have Mila Sabogal who will be baptized the 7-May, but we´re probably going to move it up to the 30-April because she´s so prepared. Then we have a bunch of other people that are so close. We had a lady named Angela that we were working with who was going to be baptized the 30-april, but she´s fired on all of her visits, so I don´t know what will end up happening with her. I´m trying to think of what else has happened this week, but I can´t think of what else to write. It´s been a super busy week, but I can´t remember everything we did. Oh, last Friday we had Concilio. Concilio went really well. On Thursday night Elder Keller and I taught an hour session, then the rest was on Friday. I didn´t have to do anything on Friday except translate. It was a good Concilio though. We have 4 new zone leaders, so we have a lot of new missionaries. In the group on 9 missionaries that went home we lost 4 zone leaders and 5 district leaders, so we have a lot of new leaders this transfer. We´re working on making sure they´ll all trained in their duties so that we can continue progressing as a mission. We also were able to visit with Nancy. She´s going to come to church this Sunday. So hopefully we can get her into the habit of doing that again, and then hopefully her husband will let her be baptized here soon. Things are also going well with Alberto´s family. Iveris, his 17-year old sister, finally came to church this past Sunday, and it looks like she´ll come again this next Sunday. She´s praying every day to know if she should be baptized. So that´s the news on things here. Everything´s going great. I love being a missionary. Also, I was going to say, congratulations to Rachel! That´s super neat. I´ll be there this time. Well, I hope everyone has a great week and I´ll talk to you next week. I think my preparation day will be on Wednesday next week. Anyways, ¡Chao! -Elder Ryan Sommerfeldt