4/6/2011

Hello everyone! Things are going great here in Barcelona. It´s a little weird though because we just got back from the airport from taking 9 missionaries home... So the mission is very different now. Among those 9 missionaries is Elder Jacinto and Elder Hunsaker, my two companions from out in Palma. They were both great missionaries, and it was sad to see them leave. I´ll see them in a few months at BYU though since they´ll both be going there. We lost 9 missionaries though and only gained one hermana. So we went down a total of 8 missionaries this transfer. We had to close a few areas, but next transfer we only send home two and we get like 10 new missionaries or something like that, so we´ll be able to get back to where we were. The hermana that came in is named Hermana Soderquist, she knows two of the elders in our mission and was in Jen´s singles ward at BYU, so that´s fun. When we saw her at the train station I said I´m Elder Sommerfeldt, and she said, oh, you´re Jen´s friend, right? So that´s fun how many connections she has with everyone. Anyways, she´s going to be a really good missionary. She´s being trained by a native up in Pamplona, which is 5 hours away or so by train. Okay, next off General Conference was great this past week. I loved it. I don´t know if I´ve told you, but every time we have a conference or something we write down questions we have, and there´s a promise that if we have the question written down and we´re looking for the answer, that we´ll find it. So I had 4 questions written down and I got answers to all of them. So it was a beneficial conference. In Spain we watch the Saturday sessions and the Sunday morning session, but we don´t get to see the Sunday afternoon session because it starts at 10:00 on Sunday night. Maybe I´ll be able to see it or parts of it though since we´re in the office a substantial amount now. We´ll see. This past week with transfers we also had a lot to do. One of the most time consuming project was making the Viejos video. It´s not on the Mission Blog yet, but it should be within a week. It took us so long to make. We filmed all of them Sunday and Monday and made it all on Monday. We finished with it super late and didn´t get much sleep that night, then this morning we had to wake up early again to drive people down to the airport, so I´m really tired. Yesterday I was feeling a bit sick actually, like a really bad headache/dizzy, etc., but I´m feeling a lot better today, so that´s good. With our investigators things continue giong well. Rocio came to conference and liked it. She´s still going well for the 16th-April, except we were going to have a visit with her yesterday, but she wasn´t there, so we need to figure out what´s going on there. Next, Julio wasn´t able to come to conference because his wife made them do something, so we had to move his date to the 23rd, but we saw him last night, and he´s doing well. Next we have Angela and her family. I don´t know if I told you about them. Actually, I know I didn´t, we just set the date on Saturday. It´s a family from Ecuador. There´s a mom (Angela), a dad (Cesar) and two kids (Javier-27 yrs old and Jimmy-18 yrs old). The only one right now that´s official with the date is Angela. Cesar has to work Sundays, and the kids weren´t home when we had the visit where we set the baptismal dates. But Angela really wants them to be baptized too, and they´ve both read in the Book of Mormon quite a bit too, so I think for sure Angela and the 2 kids will be baptized the 30th of April, and if Cesar can get his work changed then hopefully he can too. They´re a really good family though. The biggest problem is that they´re always super busy, and there´s only one time each week when they´re all home, unless it´s at 11:00 at night, which is too late for us. But we´re going to start visiting the whole family on Saturdays and then visit with people individually once or twice during the week so they can all be ready by the 30th. They´re a really good family though. I´m excited for them. we also have several other investigators that are doing really well, and I think they´ll be baptized this month as well, but we haven´t been able to set baptismal dates with them yet. We will soon here though. We also finally got a hold of Nancy again. We´re going to visit her tomorrow. Then we´re going to talk about a time we can just meet her husband, not to teach or convince him or anything, mainly just to become friends and hopefuly gain his trust. We´ll see how it all goes. This Friday is Concilio, which is when all of the zone leaders fly in to Barcelona and we have a meeting. Elder Keller and I are in charge of an hour long meeting on Thursday night, and then on Friday we´re up in the mission home with the Hinckleys. It´ll be good. Overall, things are going great here. I can´t think of what else to say. Here´s a question though, when´s Easter? I was just curious. Oh, some other big news is that Ana María finally came to church this past week, to General Conference. The only funny part is that she came to the Priesthood Session... Oh well. In Spain some people are weird and there was like 10 girls there anyways, so it turned out okay. We´re going to talk with them this week and see how it went. She´s Alberto´s mom (Alberto´s the recent convert that Elder Keller and I baptized). Also, Iveris (Alberto´s sister) promised to come to church this next Sunday, so we´ll see what we can get going there. Basically, right now we´re just overwhelmed with a ton of things we need to do in the office, and we still have a ton of things going on in our area where we need to work a lot. It´s going though. It´s good to be busy. Well, I can´t think of much else new to say, so I think I´ll go ahead and wrap this up. I hope you all have great weeks though. I´ll talk to you later. ¡Chao! -Elder Ryan Sommerfeldt