Buenos Días, familia!

Things are starting to pick up this week in our area.

This week was stake conference. My companion served in Gandía (south of Valencia) a year ago and so he was very excited to see people that he had worked with at the conference.

Elder Buttcane and I in piso

We also had interviews this week. Presidente and Hermana Pace came down and interviewed everyone on Friday, then participated in the Stake Conference Saturday and Sunday. It was great to get to know them better, and they both gave amazing talks about missionary work on both Saturday and Sunday.

We've been trying to work with the members this week. You'd think that the first thing you do when you don´t have any investigators is go out contacting, but that´s not how missionary work is anymore, especially after the Work of Salvation Broadcast this summer. Contacting has it´s place, but working with the members is much more effective. (1/1000 doors knocked = baptism; 1/3 member referrals = baptism). My companion is great about that. He has a vision for the ward that will really accelerate missionary work. This is the plan:

Basically we want the ward to be self-autonomous in its missionary work. The Ward Mission Leader has a lot of responsibility in this. With (ideally) 3-5 "companionships" of ward missionaries, the Ward Mission Leader organizes everything and assigns families to the ward missionaries. They go out and visit around 5 families a week, sharing with them the ward mission plan and helping the members find out how they can help, and who they know that could start taking missionary lessons. Everyone reports once a week in a Correlation meeting. The members are the missionaries. The full time missionaries are there to help and encourage the members, and to help teach the lessons.

Alejandro and his Dad from the baptism last week.

My companion basically blew my mind when he shared this with me. It makes so much sense. If everything worked smoothly like that, we´d be having upwards of 6+ baptisms a month in the ward.

So, this week we've been visiting with members, getting lots of referrals, talking to the ward mission leader and the bishop, trying to set this all up. I'm super excited to see it start to take off.

I'm very grateful for this opportunity to dedicate myself to the gospel for 2 years. I've been learning a lot. Often when we visit members and they are reluctant to share referrals, to participate in missionary work, to do home teaching, etc. I think, "What are you doing!? This isn´t a one-day a week church! Why isn´t everyone focused on the church every day?". I'd get frustrated, but then I realized that we do (or don't do) the same things in back in Utah. I keep thinking about what you told me a couple weeks ago that President Packer said, "You people in Alpine are so good, I can't understand why you aren't better". That confused me at first, but now I understand it better. We as members need to actively participate in the work, not sit passively and just do what we´re told to do. Anyway, that´s what´s been on my mind lately.

This week I read a scripture I really liked in Alma 37:38-46. Alma is teaching his son, and compares the Liahona and the physical course of Lehi and his family through the desert to the spiritual course we travel through this life. I swear I've never seen those verses before in the Book of Mormon, but they really impacted this time I read it.

Thank you for all your support, prayers, etc. I'm really enjoying my mission and the days are flying by faster and faster. Keep strong in the faith and have fun!

-Élder Sorensen

Questions answering time ...

1. My companion is from Tehachapi California. He´s been here for a year and a half. He´s served 6 months in every area so far, so he expects to end his mission here.

2. I'm glad that Elder Buttcane likes cleaning, because my last companion didn't =D. Just before Elder Buttcane arrived I cleaned most of the piso (living room, kitchen, bathroom, bedroom) because they were filthy. With Elder Buttcane we've been doing the fridge, laundry room, shelves, etc. as well as sorting all the records from the last 6 years. I'll send pictures next week.

3. Spanish is coming. I can speak pretty well, and I'm getting used to conjugating quickly. I need to learn more vocab though. It´s still hard for me to understand sometimes. People from Spain mumble and talk very fast, but I can understand south-americans much better. If I concentrate hard enough I can generally understand what anyone´s saying (the general meaning, at least). Sometimes I understand every word, sometimes not a single one. It's very different than how I thought learning a new language would be.

4. Many Nigerians speak only English (And Pidgin, and a little Spanish they pick up while living here). Last week we started a separate Sunday school class for English speakers.

5. We're in piso for up to 8 hours a day (eating, studying, exercising, making calls, etc.), and sometimes we go to eating visits together, so we interact a lot with the other elders.

Now I'm out of time.

Thanks for all the pictures!