Week 7: First Week in Cordoba and First General Conference!

Hola from Córdoba!

Week one has come and gone now that I'm out in the real world! Leaving the MTC was really hard because of leaving the people I’d met there. Mostly Jake and Brady. The goodbye was put off until literally the last second. It was so hard and we cried but seeing Brady’s big smile out the window as we drove away helped me and Beckstrom a lot. I was lucky that I had Beckstrom too so that helped me. Can’t wait to see Braids again. That last night was the best when we were together. But, I was so ready to get out of that place and get to the mission field!

The first couple days in Cordoba were slow and weird because there were 2 elders who were getting transferred the next day but now that they're gone and it's just me and my companion things are going a lot smoother! Elder Shields is from Washington and he went to USU for a year last year before he came! He's 21 next month. He was born in 1994... he's so much older than me. We are the only two missionaries in all of Cordoba!

Wednesday night we tried to find this lady named Josefa who is a recent convert and was baptized in January but we didn't have any luck. After that we tried looking for this guy named Lucky who is from Nigeria. Once again no luck. We did end up talking to this guy named Antonio who seemed cool and pretty interested. We gave him our number and a Book of Mormon and he said he would read it. On Thursday we taught our first lesson to an investigator named Aide. She's a 40 year old lady. We went to the park where we were supposed to meet her and we couldn't find her so we left after waiting for over 30 minutes and then once we left she called and asked if we could come back so we went back and taught her all about baptism, repentance, faith, gift of the Holy Ghost and enduring until the end. She's super interested but she is going to be hard to get baptized because, along with everyone else in Spain, she's Catholic! Later that night we got a call from Josefa and she wanted us to come to her house again so we did. We were there for about an hour and she literally talked for an hour and a half. Old crazy people like her loooove to talk. She's like 76 and has a dog so she says she gets lonely. We had her watch a video and we talked about conference this weekend and invited her to watch it. We also have another investigator named Marcos who is set to be baptized on the 24th of this month. We are going to make sure that happens and we are gonna get as many lessons as possible!

About 95% of the time we are out proselyting. We go to people's addresses and they're either not home or they gave the other missionaries the wrong address. On Friday morning we spent about 3 hours walking around looking for houses. On the bus that day we talked to this guy from Kenya and he wants to meet with us soon so we are going to call him sometime this week! Saturday we got our first lesson at a member’s house! We talked to them about conference and we invited them to have 2 questions on their mind while they watch conference. They fed us too so that's always a good thing!

Conference was great. We went to the church to watch it, just the two of us in the whole church! We watched 10 hours of conference total. I can’t believe we now have two apostles in our ward! I really liked in President Uchtdorf’s talk during priesthood session, he said: “Be not afraid.. Choose to believe.” It's true! If we put all our trust in the Lord, he will take care of us and everything will turn out the right way :) Gosh I miss you guys so much and I love you all! I think it was Saturday afternoon during conference, Holland was talking about how the only love that comes close to the love that Christ has for us is a mother’s love for her child. In my life, I know for a fact that that is true and I just wanted to say thank you Mom for never giving up on me and for never not helping me with stuff I needed help with. I wouldn't be here without you. I wouldn't have graduated high school without you. ;) And I know we both know I wouldn't have gotten my Eagle without you hahaha :) So thank you for being the best mother a boy like me could ask for. Only 2 more little me's to go! :) I'll help you out with what I can though once I get home.

Our typical schedule is: Wake up at 7:30, work out (pull ups, push ups, anything I can think of using the one dumbbell we have. Two times a week we do P90X ab ripper hahaha. I hate that thing. Then we shower and get ready. We have personal study til 10 and then comp study til 11:30 then we go proselyte until 2 and have siesta-eat and do language study and just hang out in the piso until like 5 or 5:30 then we usually have a couple of lessons and then we do lessons and proselyte until 10:15 or 10:45, in bed and asleep at 11:30.:) We have those animated scripture movies that we used to watch all the time here on like a USB so we watch those all the time and I love it! :) (Yes, they are in Spanish haha).

We walk. A lot. We have bus passes but we still have to walk to get to and from people's houses and to bus stops and everything. I've learned to appreciate everything more though. Like everyone back home. I miss you guys so much. When you're on a mission you gain a love stronger than anything for your family and obviously for me, my girlfriend haha. You gain a love for your Savior as well. I want to be able to let other people feel this love and I know the gospel can do that. It just sucks because the people don't know that. If they gave it a chance they would be SO MUCH HAPPIER!! I'm always staying strong though.

My cooking skills are ok. We’ve made eggs, rice, chicken, cereal, hamburgers, tacos, there's this stuff called Kebab and they're super good they're cheap too like 1.50 so we get those sometimes. :) Wash is good. Easy. Nothing special but we don't have a dryer so we just have to hang them up to dry on a little rack we have here.

In our piso we each have a bedroom but I don’t sleep in mine. The beds here are too risky for me and I hang off the end. So I sleep on the couch. And yes, mom, I will wash the sheets every week :) I'm pretty sure I had bed bugs in the MTC but I used the bug spray and all the bites went away :).

We are hoping to get to know more of the members here. So far none of them have invited us to come over. The only one we have met is branch mission leader so we were at their house on Saturday and they fed us us this good soup.

I attached pictures of the Cathedral from a couple nights ago! We went back to the Cathedral today but the weather sucked today. It was all rainy and Shields didn't bring his own money and it was like 20 Euros to get in so we walked around the outside for a little then came back and went to lunch and stuff! We are going to try and go back a little more prepared than we were this week.

That's all I got for this week! I will talk to you guys soon I love you all so much! I love you all have a great week!

Elder Hammond

Last Day at the MTC! We were going crazy to get out in the real world of missionary life!

Saying goodbye to Elder Wahlster.

I'll miss our Sunday Selfies! See the little note on Brady's notepad in his pocket from Tanner. ;(

Keeping with the Watson tradition of Sunday Selfies from the bathroom at the CCM.

Last temple session with this "this guy right here!"

Out and about with my new companion, Elder Shields, from Washington.

Our piso. "Mom, I'm doing my wash and washing my sheets!"

Kitchen: I think Tanner's kitchen is nicer than ours at home. Pretty lucky!

Kitchen

Living room and Tanner's sleeping quarters.

Most important room in the house! He never mentioned a bidet, but this sure looks like one. Garet said that was the best part of Spain was the use of a bidet after a long day of missionary work!