Week 23: Goodness is A'comin' If It's Not Already Here :)

This week was a good and busy week.! Always nice to have busy weeks. :)

Soooo Tuesday, I bet you weekly readers can probably guess what I did. Yep, meeting day! Started off with a nice meeting as a district and then later we had correlation and ward council. We got introduced to the Area Plan. Not sure if the whole world is doing it or what, but it's the "invite a friend to church initiative" and it ties in with the family history and all that fun stuff. Hopefully you guys know what I'm talking about..

Wednesday night, we had a Worldwide Broadcast for all the missionaries!! It was so awesome. It was titled "Teach Repentance, Baptize Converts”. A couple of things that stuck out to me that Elder Andersen said was that true conversion takes time and the best way to convert is through the scriptures. The scriptures have brought so much happiness to my life and I know that if people give them a chance and come to know that the Book of Mormon is true. It will make them so much more happy than they can even imagine! READ THE SCRIPTURES!!! Later that night, we had our English class. One of the guys who comes has a pet sugar glider and he brought it to the class to show everyone what it was. For those of you that don't know, it's basically a really creepy looking tiny flying squirrel that just crawls all over you and will jump from person to person to anything with soft clothing/landing. It was pretty cool but like I said, pretty creepy lookin.

Thursday was a really busy day which was nice. :) That morning, we went to a pueblo outside of Almería called Aguadulce. It's right on the coastline and there are some members that invited us over for chili! The whole week the other three elders were talking about it nonstop because of how good it is, so I was pretty stoked to try it. They weren't kidding! It was really good! She said she didn't put spicy stuff in it, but I was still so spicy! I can't imagine what it’s like with spice! On our way back to the bus station, we walked past the beach and took some pictures. When we got back, we stopped by Danny's tea store to see if he was working. He's so funny. His tea shop looks like a 70's diner all western style and it honestly reminds me of Utah so I love it. I'll try and take some pictures of it and with him for next week. No promises tho :) so we taught him a lesson because nobody else was in the store and he gave us some tea type stuff obviously without tea. It was weird, I'm not a huge fan of hot drinks like that. But he let me try this thing that he invented and it's brownie cheesecake. Brownie on top, and cheesecake on bottom. IT WAS SO FREAKING GOOD YOU GUYS YOU HAVE NO IDEA. I'm definitely getting some every time we go back. Next time, I'll take a picture (to make Mommy happy :) ) so then after we were there for a while, we had a cita scheduled with Jesus Del Pino (less active member) at his casa. He's a cool guy. Really nice, but I guess doesn't have time to come to church. The lesson we had went really well though. We told him about the Plan de Area and he was stoked about it and wanted to help. He said he gave a Book of Mormon to one of his friends but doesn’t know if he's been reading it. He also said he was gonna bring a friend to church on Sunday, but he didn't even show up himself! He's a painter, so his house is FULL of paintings that he's done. He’s got some talent! There's this one picture of a larger lady in a bikini and she's riding away on her bike so I said "I like this one" and he said "mi suegra" hahahahaha which means "mother-in-law" hahahaha so I got a good laugh outta that! :)

Friday was a very cool experience. :) That night, Juan (the hermanas' investigator) got baptized! His wife has been a member for a long time and when they moved from Peru, they didn't think there was a church here in Almería. When they found out there was, Juan started taking the lessons. He's probably 60-65 and has cancer. He knew he was going to die soon so he wanted to be baptized. The whole family is so nice and it was SO AWESOME to see how happy his whole family was when he went under the water and came back up. His wife started crying so hard and it was such a cool thing to see and made me really happy. :)

Saturday we played soccer with our members and investigators. It was an abnormally hot day so I got some color to my missionary body. The church court had volleyball nets up, so we had to play at a court that was down the street a ways. It was a lot bigger and apparently I play better on bigger field. Guys... I had NINE goals. NINE. That's unheard of from an American who never played soccer before his mission. Get this tho… 2 of them were headers that were easily ESPN TOP 10 SportCenter worthy. I think I played so good because I was chosen to say the prayer before we played. I guess I'll say it every time from now on if I'm gonna play that good. After I balled out, we had our eating cita with Silvia! It's always fun to go over hungry and then just stuff our face with food she feeds us and leave wishing we didn't eat so much. Her son "the rapper" was there so he spit a few verses for us. There's a guy in our ward named Barbosa. He's from Africa and he served in this mission, learned English to the point where he's fluent now, lives in Almería with his family and is literally such a stud. It was his birthday, so he invited the missionaries and some of his friends to come to dominos to celebrate. :) His cousin came too and was cracking jokes making everyone laugh all night. He taught me some of the language he speaks and I taught him some English. He's one of those guys who enjoys life, so we got along great.

Sunday we got invited to go to the Bishop’s house for lunch afterwards.His wife made the same chicken stuff she did last time and of course it was just as good. This time it wasn't as eventful, but it was funny cuz there's a guy in our ward named Antonio, and his wife (can't remember her name) but she reminds me exactly of Lisa Adamson (one of my good friend's mom practically my other mom) and Antonio reminds me exactly of Shawn Adamson!! (the same friend's dad minus the beard). So obviously I like them a lot. While we were eating, Antonio and the Bishop were trying to speak English and the Pepsi was all gone so Antonio said "Houston have problem" and he waved the bottle around and the Bishop picks up the Coke and says “you drink....(didn't know how to say bottle so I told him) bottle” and Antonio says "okay yes yes okay" but the whole time it was like it was a conversation between cavemen. They're all so funny and I love going with them to eat! :)

To end, I just wanted to share a quote that my grandma sent to me last week cuz I love it so much: “Sometimes good things fall apart so better things can fall together”. This gives me hope that when things don't go the way we anticipated it to or the way we wanted them to, it's because better things are going to come. Elder Holland said.. “Don’t give up … Don’t you quit. You keep walking. You keep trying. There is help and happiness ahead. … It will be all right in the end. Trust God and believe in good things to come.” I meshed 2 things together here, but honestly I love these two things so much and it makes me so happy knowing that no matter how hard times may be, goodness is acomin’. When good is with you but you lose it, better will find its way to you. :)

Well folks, there ya have my week. :) Thanks for all the love and continual support... I love you all and am so grateful for all that you guys do for me. Have a good week for me alright? Love you guys :)

Love,
Elder T Ham