Week 16: Next Stop! Almeria!

Hello all!

Almería here I come!!!! Can't believe I'm already moving on to my second area.. That's crazy! Córdoba has been a blast with Elder Shields. He's taught me so much. The best part is my new companion is Elder Rex and him and Elder Shields are good friends! I've talked to Elder Rex before and he's so cool! I'm excited to see what's in store :) I leave Wednesday morning!

Here's my week in a not so small nut shell. (Sorry)

Since it's the first of the month, we didn't have to go to Sevilla for district meeting on Tuesday morning cuz we had Zone Conference on Friday which was so awesome mostly because I got to see one of my best friends Elder Beckstrom!!!! :) So instead, we had our weekly meeting with our branch mission leader Hermano Heberson. He had to get Amarillo (Drake and Josh grandpa) to his house, so we did it in his car! It was awkward. It was so worth it though cuz while we were talking about our investigators and the less actives and whatnot, I was in the back seat and had a wonderful conversation with Amarillo! It was my job to keep him in the car, and that wasn't easy. He kept trying to get out of the car and go to his house! I told him to tell me a story of when he was younger and he said, "Tio I still am young!" (he's 83). He ended up telling me a story of when he was young and these kids were messing with him and so he had to beat the "tar" out of them. Hahaha! Ah man, it was a phenomenal story! :)

Wednesday night we taught an English lesson to a guy named Juan. We have been teaching him for a couple of weeks now. He's the only one that comes to our classes so we just teach him whatever he wants. He told us to draw the states and that he wanted to learn all 50 of them. When we got to the east coast, since all the states are so small up towards New York, my comp said that we had to use a magnifying glass but on the board he spelled it 'magnifine' glass. Juan was like,
"Shouldn't it be magnifying?" I started laughing so hard and told Juan that he needed to teach Shields English instead. ;) He has really good Spanish so it's easy to have a conversation with him and teach him. He's lived in Córdoba for like 40-50 years now and he doesn’t talk like the other Andalusians. THANK GOODNESS! They're SO hard to understand cuz they just slur all their words together. It doesn’t help when all of them have cigarettes in their mouth either. We try and teach him about the gospel after our English class, but he doesn't always have time. He said he was reading a little bit of the Book of Mormon and he was interested in it so we will see where that goes. :)

All of our plans fell through on Thursday night. We were supposed to meet with Jorge, but he had work. If we got that lesson with him, he would have been on track and we could have done the interview with him before Saturday and he could have gotten baptized. But since he had work, obviously we couldn't make that happen. :( I know he will get baptized. I'm just not sure when. Hopefully this week. We’ve seriously been focusing on him more than anything and just trying to figure out what we need to do to help him and what he needs to hear. Satan works harder when things go better for us.(as people and missionaries). When he sees that we are having success, he does everything he can to do whatever he can to mess it up. Anyway, since we got bailed on by everyone, we went to an area we have never been to before and knocked about 50 doors. Some people here in Spain are mean. It's sad cuz we have to introduce ourselves NOT as Jehovah’s Witnesses! When we do that, they start to listen, and then we get talking to them and saying we are Mormons and tell them what we believe in, then they say they're Catholic. I promise I've heard “Soy Católico" more in the past 3 months than I've heard my name in my life.

Friday was my first Zone Conference! It was so cool and fun. I got to meet a ton of other missionaries and see a bunch of people from the MTC!! We are the only two people who have to take a train to Sevilla, because we are the only area that's in the Sevilla zone, that isn't in Sevilla. So when we got off our train, another train pulled up and it was the 3rd zone that was coming to the conference! I knew it was Elder Beckstrom’s zone, so when I saw missionaries I started looking for him immediately. There were so many people on the platform, and out of nowhere I just see him drop his bag and jump on me! It was so funny! Everyone who was there just looked at us so weird while we hugged! We got to the church and the two AP’s each gave a workshop. There's a new video on the Christmas Mormon.org website that is called something like “A life Sithout a Savior" or similar to that. We watched it and it was so good! After that, we had a guy from the Area 70's come and talk to us. His name is Elder Lhymeir (not sure how to spell it). He's from Germany, but he moved to Colorado and is a covert to the church. We talked a lot about what the difference between testimony and conversion is. I learned a lot of cool things!

The next 2 days are going to be mostly saying bye to everyone and then on Wednesday I'll be in Almería!

It's been really hard lately trying be able to meet with Jorge. We finally met with him yesterday and had a solid Chastity lesson. It’s been frustrating that we haven't been having the success that we’d like. I see all my friends saying how much success they're having and I get kinda jealous to be honest. But during the meeting on Friday, a good friend of mine said something that stuck out to me and I love it. He brought up the movie Forever Strong. When Rick starts playing for Highland and Coach Gelwix puts him at a different position than what he's used to he says, "I play wing. I score. It's what I do." And Coach Gelwix says, "Well Rick, it doesn't matter if you score. It matters if the team scores.” God’s Team is scoring quite a bit. It’s getting bigger and bigger each and every day. Wherever we are in the world, we are all on the same team. Our purpose as missionaries isn’t to baptize. Sure, that's what we want, but our purpose is to Invite others to come unto Christ. Heavenly Father is proud of all of his missionaries. I know he's proud of me, because I'm inviting others to come unto Christ. Needless to say, the little Forever Strong quote is just what I needed to hear! :)

Once again, sorry for my incredibly long email! There's a lot of stuff I like to share with the people who care about me enough to want my emails! I hope all of you have an incredible week! Love you all and thanks for everything you do!!! :)

Love,
Elder Hammond :)