Elder Dana Sorensen
August 22, 2013

¡Hola Familia!

It´s so great to hear from you! The days are just blurring by like nobody´s business. I can´t believe it´s P-day again already.

I´ll give you a quick run-down of my week (all the days are pretty much the same, so I´ll just include highlights).

Last Thursday for P-day we went to Prado, the second largest art museum in Europe. It was fun, but probably would have been more exciting if I was really into art and knew the significance of it all. That night we had a devotional where we watched Elder Scott´s Provo MTC devotional from two days earlier. In our room at night, Elder Hendricks (who used to live in our ward) played on his iPod Bruce R. McConkie´s final talk that he gave just before he died. It is an amazing talk and I highly recommend you listen to it if you haven´t heard it in a while.

This week I´ve been trying to learn Spanish subjunctives. I´ve concluded that the world should unanimously sign a treatise removing subjunctive forms from every language. All it does is complicate every language, and you can say anything you want without it. Unfortunately, Spanish uses subjunctive much more than English, so it´ll take a long while to learn.

We didn´t have much success at the park on Saturday, but a lot of other people had some miraculous experiences. It was so nice to hear their stories and testimonies about what had happened on Saturday night.

Sunday night we gathered for singing practice. Hermana Sitterud, the President´s wife, fell and broke her arm. We´ve been praying for her to recover quickly. Since the President was at the hospital with his wife, and the Sullivans (who sang in MoTab for 18 years, and usually conducts us) were in Barcelona, we just sang hymns from the Spanish hymnbook. It actually ended up sounding very good.

Monday and Tuesday were pretty average days, though on Tuesday night we committed one of our "investigators" to baptism! Our other investigator is very close as well. We´ll probably commit him tomorrow. When we started teaching investigators it was hard to teach for more than five minutes before running out of things to day. Now, we can hardly teach half a lesson in the half-hour we have. We´ve learned so much, and I´m so grateful for the opportunity to practice teaching here before we head out into the field. I can hardly imagine trying to teach a real investigator with what I knew 4 weeks ago.

Yesterday we got 17 new native (fluent) Elders. Two of them are in our room at night, and it was really great to be able to hear (and try to understand) them speaking. I still have a lot to learn. Yesterday I also set a goal to be able to roll my R´s before I leave in two weeks. That means I spent an hour saying Tarra, tarra, tarra over and over. Hopefully it will come.

I´ve been memorizing scriptures in Spanish to help me learn. So far I have about thirty verses memorized from various missionary scriptures. It´s fun to challenge myself and it really helps me to learn and speak Spanish (especially while teaching). I heard somewhere that if you memorize a scripture a day on your mission then you´ll come home with a photographic memory. Hopefully that´s true, but I´m going to try anyway.

Today we´re going to the mall to pick up some much-needed supplies. Tonight we get to watch Elder Bednar´s talk about the Character of Christ. Apparently it´s THE number one MTC talk. I´m very excited to watch it.

Now to answer a few of your questions:

I´m very glad that you set up a blog for my emails. I don´t think I´ll be able to access it while in the CCM, but in the field I should be able to.

It´s great that Tyler and Brad are in the MTC. I wish I could have heard Brad´s talk. It sounds like he´s going to be a great missionary.

I´m super excited to get out into the field. One of the things I dislike most is being associated with large groups of teenagers. Unfortunately, that´s the CCM here. I know it will be very hard (at first) to get used to real mission life, but I´m very excited to start teaching people for real. I´ve heard that you learn more in your first two days in the MTC than the few years of preparation, and it´s true. I´ve also heard that you learn more in the first two days in the field than you do in your whole MTC stay. Lets hope that´s true, because I have a lot to learn. I know that it will be discouraging to be rejected (I´ve learned that much from the park each Saturday), but it´s worth it to "fish" out those few that have been prepared by the Lord.

I thought I´d include a few fun facts about living in Spain. First of all, it´s all metric system here, so if you say feet or miles nobody knows what you´re talking about (same with Fahrenheit, they all say that it´s so hot when it gets to 40 C, which sounds a lot colder than it is). One thing that´s hard to get used is that they switch commas and periods, so to write one thousand three hundred forty two point three, they would write 1.342,3. Here in Madrid there is five times as much public transportation on the streets as there are cars. You can get anywhere in the city with a metro pass.

There´s a siesta here where everything closes down from about 2-5. It makes it hard to buy stuff on P-day. They also use military time here (at least on all the clocks), but when you talk you don´t use military time (I don´t understand why). The time change is also wierd. It´s hard for me to comprehend that when I wake up in the morning then you are all going to bed.

I just remembered, you asked if I bought scriptures. When we got here they gave us 50 euros. I used that to buy a nice set of Spanish scriptures with a case for them (they cost a lot).

Thank you for sending me the notes from the setting apart. I´m excited to be able to read through it. Also, thank you thank you thank you for the package. An iPod and speak will be very useful. (One thing that Elder Hendricks did on his is look up and download the top 100 LDS general authority talks on his iPod) If it´s not inconvenient, I´d like if you could do something similar.

Before I go I just want to bear my testimony on the reality of the Gift of Tongues. It´s amazing that I can teach a thirty minute lesson about the gospel without worrying about the language after only a month living in Spain. I´ve been able to learn and memorize so quickly and easily, and I feel closer to my Savior every day. I know that without His help I would not be anywhere near where I am today. I am so grateful for His personal attention and for His love.
None of this would be possible without Him.

Only 13 days left until I get to Barcelona! (But who´s counting?)

-Élder Sorensen