Elder Dana Sorensen -- Valencia, Spain

Hello friends and family!

Thanks for all your emails and pictures, I really enjoy reading them.

Conference was amazing! It seemed almost like Christmas Day because I got to listen to the prophets for 8 hours!

We watched Saturday morning session live at 6pm Saturday night. Then on Sunday morning we watched the priesthood session, on Sunday afternoon we watched the Saturday afternoon session, and at 6pm on Sunday we watched theSunday morning session live. We don´t get a chance to watch the last session, but I´m going to download it so that we can watch it in piso.

I loved all the talks, but especially Elder Bednar´s about tithing, President Uchtdorf´s about what the church requires of the members, Elder Holland´s about depression, Elder Oak´s about our biggest priority... OK, I just liked them all.

This has been a busy week. We changed our area a little bit, so most of it is new. (still in Valencia, same ward, just changed boundaries with other missionaries in our ward). So, we´ve spent a lot of time getting to know the new area. We have almost 0 investigators, so we´re going to spend a lot of time this week contacting. We are going to have a baptism on the 19th, an amazing investigator we gained from the Hermanas when we changed areas.

Peter watched three of the conference sessions with us. You should have seen him. When the first one finished (on Saturday night) I went over to ask how he liked it. He was literally bouncing up and down talking about how amazing it was and how he was so happy there were more sessions. This week we got him a Triple (Book of Mormon, DC, and Pearl of Great Price). He was so excited to finally have all the scriptures. I think he´s almost done reading the gospel doctrine book, and he has at least one notebook filled to the brim with notes, scriptures, thoughts, etc. that he records while studying. Really, I feel like he´s teaching me more than I´m teaching him.

I thought I´d tell you about a little thing we do in the Barcelona mission each time we leave the piso. It´s a little routine. First we pray that we will be able to find people and teach with the spirit. Then we each share a short testimony about something in the gospel. Then, we recite the baptismal invitation and accept it. After we get out the door, we always contact the first person we come across. This way we focus on prayer, sharing testimonies, and talking to people right at the start.

I´m almost out of time. I´m very grateful to be here in Spain serving the Lord. It´s so great to be able to focus my life on just doing that for two years. I´ve learned so much already. My perspective has changed and I feel happier and more prepared to take on life. I can´t wait to see what I learn in the coming years!

Thank you all for your support,

-Élder Sorensen