Week 17: I Can't Think Of A Subject So This Is My Subject :)

Hello loved ones :)

Wow, what a week! I can't believe it's already Monday again and I’m sending this home! I feel like I say that every week. But it's just weird how fast times going by!! Here's my week! :)

Tuesday, I was still in Córdoba and it was filled with a lot of goodbyes. We went and had our last lesson/meal with Sheyla and her family. We finally got her husband (non-member) Aldo to join us for the lesson. He doesn't come to church with them, but he knows all about it and how things work around this neck of the woods. :) After that I finished up my packing and got ready to head out the next morning!

Wednesday was a crazyyyyy day!! We woke up and I got ready to go, my bus left at 8:30. It was kinda scary being alone in a place you’ve never been before and doing something you've never done! The bus took about 2 and a half hours to get to Granada. When I got there I walked into the station expecting to see a bunch of missionaries, but there were none. I went and walked around looking for people, but after about 2 minutes gave up. Eventually a girl named Hermana Estes came up to me and we waited for our buses together. After waiting for about 30 minutes, I headed to Almería! That was another two and a half hour bus ride. There was this lady behind me that was snoring uncontrollably. Holy shnikes. When we would hit a bump and she would stop for a good 4 seconds then right back at it again. I was livid! But I finally got here. When I arrived, the other Elders weren't there so I had to wait for about 20 minutes until they finally showed up.

It's so weird getting to a new area. You get so used to knowing everything about a place, then you get to a new one and you know absolutely nothing..it's so weird. Anyway, we got to our piso and IT WAS A DISASTER. The first thing we did was clean it. Now it smells and looks like a brand new house! :) WE HAVE A DISHWASHER! It's so helpful and saves so much time. #blessed! After that we taught our weekly English class. There are four people that show up regularly, 3 of them are basically fluent, and one of them is just barely starting to learn. Elder Layton and I taught the ones who are fluent while Elders Rex and Harvey taught the one who doesn't know anything. We talked about highways and freeways and how bad people are at driving here in Spain. :) They kept trying to say “truck" but we couldn't understand them and we were like, “Yeah that's a bad word! Don't say that!” and then they drew a picture of a truck so we both started laughing. It was pretty funny.

Thursday we had our planning session. Let's just say that we are going to be contacting a lot of people this week and the upcoming weeks. We need more investigators! We are going to set contacting goals every night for the next day. :) That night there was a wedding for one of the members here in Almería! I'm pretty sure it was the first wedding I've been to since I was probably 7 or 8? Spanish weddings are so much different than ours. A lot the members came and so it was nice to meet most of them. :)

On Friday, we tried to contacting people in the morning, but nobody wanted anything to do with us. :( Apparently of all 3 areas in Almería, Elder Rex and I have the hardest. There's a guy here that's in our area who has literally been investigating the church for the past 20-25 years. He comes to church every Sunday and is actively engaged in the classes, but he just won't get baptized! Nobody knows why. Maybe we'll be the ones to connect with him. I told him about my dad serving here, and he said his wife might remember, so when we went and talked to her she kept saying it sounds familiar and when I showed her a picture she said he looked familiar. The picture was of our family pics, but now that I have pics of him on the mish, maybe she'll remember him!!

The funniest part of this week was that night. Friday nights we sleep over with the other Elders in our piso because we play soccer every Saturday morning with a bunch of investigators right next to it. Elder Harvey fell asleep super fast, so we all decided we would set an alarm for 1:30 in the morning and act like it was time to go play soccer. So we all set our clocks forward so that when the alarm went off, the clock said 8:30. When the alarm went of we all were like hmm... Is this really worth it? And we all looked at each other and kinda grinned. We got up and told Harvey get up we're gonna be late. It was 1:30 in the morning and Elder Rex poured himself a bowl of cereal and started reading a book while Elder Harvey was getting out of bed. It was one of the funniest things I've ever seen. We were all trying so hard not to laugh. So Elder Harvey gets up and starts getting ready, so we decided we were just gonna go along with it until he realized it was the middle of the night. We got ready to go, got out the door and on our way down. Elder Rex had his camera and was filming the whole thing and Harvey kept asking why he was filming and why we were all laughing but he was too tired to realize what the heck was going on. When we got to the floor level and started walking outside, it was pitch black! We were all wondering how long it was gonna take for him to realize it so we get outside and literally after two minutes he looks up at the sky and says "What the heck is going on right now?” Hahahahahahaha! Ohhhhh my gosh! All 3 of us just lost it. It was so hard to hold in our laughs the whole time so when he said that we fell to the ground laughing. It was so funny.

Like I said, every Saturday we play soccer. I hope by playing it often I'll finally be able to get semi-decent at it. I had a couple goals but I'm nothing compared to Messi... not yet anyway. There were about 30 people there so we just divided up into teams and would rotate in and out. After soccer, there's a member named Silvia who invites all four of us over to eat every Saturday. So we went to her house and had lunch with her, her son and her friend who is also a member. She’s from Ecuador, so obviously we had rice. ;) The lunch was really good and we were so hungry so we ate so much. We shared the video “A Life Without a Savior" that I told you guys about last week or the week before. When we show it to someone, the Spirit Is so strong. It’s really helpful, especially during the month with Christmas just right around the corner ☃(can't find Christmas tree emoji :/) Anyway after that, we went back home showered and what not, got ready, then had another eating cita with an investigator named Emme. She's so nice, she has a daughter who's 18 and a son who is 12. Her daughter isn’t very interested, but she listens anyway. She's been an investigator for about a month now, but she won't get baptized. She knows the Book of Mormon is true, but I don't think she wants the responsibility of "this whole Mormon thing”. I told her that “this whole Mormon thing" might not be easy all the time, but it's so worth it. I told her it's just like a mission. It has it's ups and downs, and it's not easy. But in the end of it all, it's so worth it to be able to see your family and friends again and the fact that we have the opportunity to be with them for eternity and how her being baptized and accepting this gospel can do nothing but bless her life.

It really is crazy to see how much this gospel can change people’s lives for the better. Something I've learned these past 4 months is how God works in the weirdest, most mysterious ways (just like people fall in love... that's a song by Ed Sheeran for those of you that are confused) but He works. I wish I knew how, but I feel like I can only learn to trust. I'll never know everything, He's the only one that will. He knows what’s good for us, and He knows how to help us through rough times. He knows when people truly want to change their lives. He sees how much effort they're putting in to really know if the Book of Mormon is true and if Joseph Smith was a prophet. He needs to see them want an answer before he gives them the answer. They have to trust him that they'll receive one as well. When we put our trust in the Lord and do our part, He takes care of the rest and makes us happy.

Thank you all for reading this far.. Maybe one day my emails won't be extremely long! I love you and miss you all. Thank you for everything you've done and continue to do for me!! Have a great week!!

Love,
Elder Hammond :)