Week 15: Roosters

Hi again :) Another week has come and gone! I seriously can't believe how fast time is going by! I hope everyone had a wonderful, safe, love-felt, thankful, and of course fattening Thanksgiving!

Tuesday was a good day! I bet you guys will never guess what we did in the morning. Yep, we went to Sevilla! We ate at that Bolivian place again and I got the Machu-Pichu! When we got home, we had a lesson with Lucky like we usually do on Tuesday nights. In Nigeria, there is this food called Foo Foo and it's like the weirdest thing ever. Here's how it works: There's a plate with a giant ball of dough, a container of water, and another plate of the spiciest soup stuff ever. You get your hands wet so the dough is easier to eat, grab some dough, then dip your finger full of dough in the soup and eat it! It was seriously so spicy oh my goodness. It was so hard to eat cuz it was just dough! It was good, but extremely weird haha. There were pieces of meat in the soup as well, and we didn't know if we were supposed to eat them or what, but Lucky's wife told us to eat it, so I grabbed one and took a little bite out of it, and my comp throws the whole thing in his mouth. Five seconds later I look over at him and he's gagging on the meat because it was nothing but fat! He was trying not to let them notice. Luckily, Lucky turned on the TV right then so they didn't see him reach in his mouth and grab it! It was pretty neat experience!

After that, we went to teach Fernando (the guy with the 92 year old crazy mom). He is such a nice guy! His English is so good and he gets so pumped when he answers the door and sees us! I don't think I told everyone this yet, if I did, sorry :) but when I first called him on the phone, he answers and says "Hola" and so I start telling him that we are the missionaries here and that we wanted to meet him. The first thing he asks me is if we are Americans or Spaniards.. I took the phone away from my ear and asked my comp what the correct answer was and he said, “good luck”! So hesitantly, I said Americanos and in English, he says, "Oh goody! Come to my house right now and I'll let you in!" Hahaha it was so funny! He loves talking about America and how he wants to go back over for a while. He's been to NYC and Boston so he's a huge Red Sox fan. We had a good lesson with him. I think he is really interested, I'm excited to see what happens with him!

On Wednesday we had to go to Sevilla again because Elder Shields had to go to a district leader training. While he was in the meeting, I just went into the gym and played basketball by myself and patiently waited. :)

Thankfully I have the greatest family! They sent me a bunch of Thanksgiving essentials in a package. On Thursday, we started making our Thanksgiving feast! It consisted of mashed potatoes, stuffing, gravy, Lion House rolls, corn, cranberries, and little adorable looking pumpkin pies! Ever since I got the package, I was looking forward to the rolls, and we did EVERYTHING possible to make sure they were perfect…except for letting them rise. Hahahahaha whoops! I'm pretty sure the yeast here in Spain is not very good. We let them sit for like 4 hours and they didn't move at all. So when we pulled them out of the oven, they weighed about 5 pounds each. They still tasted pretty good though. I realized that I'm extremely thankful for those in my life who have always prepared my Thanksgiving dinners for me and my family… Cuuuuuuzzz, cooking all that stuff for 2 of us wasn't fun. At all.. Hahahaha. So, Mom, grandmas, aunts, cousins, my future wife, and anyone else who has (and will) cook Thanksgiving meals. THANK YOU & I LOVE YOU! ;)

Friday, we were getting ready to leave our piso after medio dia and our phone to get the door rang. We figured it was just someone who needed to get in to deliver the mail or something like that, and we were on our way out so we didn't answer it. When we left and walked outside, there was a note with my name on it for a package! I was so mad! I kept the paper with me and figured I'd call them the next day. We were walking to the bus and I saw a DHL truck that was stopped in traffic, so I ran up to it and showed him the paper saying that I had a package. I didn't think he was going to stop in the middle of everyone, but he did! He put his hazards on and ran to the back of the truck, grabbed my box, threw it to me and drove off! It was a miracle! One of the nicest Spaniards I’ve met so far!

Saturday morning we went to Sketchville.. Every time I go there, I learn something new. This time, I learned about cock-fights! There's always a bunch of roosters just running around or in cages. We were teaching them about how to pray, while they were all smoking weed. I look over at the roosters and one of them is chasing another one, and one of the guys runs over and catches the one that was getting chased. I was expecting him to help it, or put it in a cage or something, but I was completely wrong. He picked it up and just let the one that was chasing it absolutely demolish it until it was dead! It was the weirdest and saddest thing I've ever seen! I asked them why he was doing it and they told me that they only have them for fighting, and since that one didn't want to fight, they killed it. Apparently they bet on roosters and they can make some decent money on them.

Later that night, we did a service project with our branch mission leader and his son Samuel! We went to a store called Lidl and we gathered food that people would donate. So many people donated stuff and we had like 5 GINORMOUS boxes full of food and milk! It's all going to a charity fund that's here. It was fun and a really good way to practice my Spanish.

In the 2nd hour of church yesterday, the lady who taught our class shared a scripture with us and I really liked it. It was 1 Nephi 7:12: "Yea, and how is it that ye have forgotten that the Lord is able to do all things according to his will, for the children of men, if it so be that they exercise faith in him? Wherefore, let us be faithful to him.” I like how it says "according to his will" it reminds me of something that my great grandma Grits would always say, "if it's to be it will be”. No, I don't think I ever heard her say that, but my Grandma told me that she said it in one of her emails to me recently. Heavenly Father knows us all personally and He knows what is going to make us happy. He knows how everything in all of our lives is going to turn out. It's all according to His will, but He wants us to exercise our faith in Him.

Our baptism for Jorge is scheduled for this coming Saturday. He wasn’t able to meet with us this past week so we will have to meet with him a lot this week and conduct his interview. He asked me to baptize him. He loves me and always asked me what I think of him.

Thank you all for your constant prayers and love you send my way. I feel them every single day and I'm so blessed to have people like you in my life. I'm grateful for each and everyone one of you and the examples you have been and continue to be in my life! Have a good week!!

Love,
Elder Hammond :)