Week 35: TTFN 💯

What's Gucci FAM

We got transfer calls this past Saturday, and there are some changes going on in my life.Drum roll please........ I'm going to a place called Elche!!! It's about 2 1/2 hours north east of Almería and my new companion is Elder Lowry! He's from Canada so I'm pretty stoked. From what I've heard, he's a cool kid. He served here in Almería and everyone has said he's their favorite (behind me of course) so I'm pretty excited. I leave on Wednesday morning to catch a bus over there!! Here's a s'cute little update on my week other than that -

We'll start on Tuesday - had our last district meeting together. We didn't know for sure if it would be our last, but the sister missionary who is staying here is training, so she left today to go pick up her newbie. Then that night we went and did our weekly correlation and ward counsel sessions.

Wednesday - we had a pretty good lesson that morning with an investigator named Ramon. He's straight up from Spain, pretty quiet dude, but that makes it pretty easy to feel the Spirit in the lessons with him which is good. We taught him lesson 3 and talked about the 5 things we need to do to get back and live with our Padre Celestial. :) We told him all about how our ultimate goal should be eternal life with our families and with Heavenly Father. He seemed a little confused but hopefully he'll be able to progress. After that we went to a member’s house and ate with them. Jose Miguel and Janeth. They taught us how to make paella which is a way good Spanish dish. ;) You’re gonna love me when I'm making all these Spanish foods.  😏😉

Thursday - we had a way awesome lesson with a new investigator named Alejandro! His girlfriend is a member, but less active. They have a kid together and Alejandro straight up told me that once they get married (which they are in the process of doing) he wants to be baptized. We talked about families being together forever, and how God gave us this plan so that we can be with our families and be happy throughout our entire lives and in the life to come. We talked about how big of a blessing it is that we can be in love with one person forever and have kids sealed to us and be sealed as a family so that together we can have this happiness in our homes. :) That night after the lesson, we went and ate with Pablo and his family. It was their way of saying thanks to us for helping them move. It was really fun. :)

Friday - our weekly family home evening at the church. I was on babysitting duty hahahahaha. Our ward mission leader Franci has two kids. An 8 year old kid named Pablo and the cutest little freakin 2 year old girl named Inoa. They love me and when the thing started, they were both sitting with me while everyone was singing and listening to the hermanas teach the lesson. So I was just playing with them and keeping them entertained. We are eating with Franci and Lucia tomorrow so I'll be sure to get a pic with the whole fam. :)

Saturday - busy day. Like I said, that morning we got transfer calls. We were playing soccer. I was kinda bummed cuz not a lot of people came but there was 10 so we played 5 on 5 the whole entire time it was kinda fun. We played one long game. The final score was 53-39 for us. It was a good time. Later that day we went to Silvia's house and I said bye to her, another lady in our ward named Nidia and our friend Charlie. Nidia made these empanada things and they were freaking incredible. Oh my gads! They were phenomenal! 😫 Ecuadorians can cook people. So good. That night, we met with Angel and Mayra for the last time, which was more sad than I thought it would be. They took us to get some Kebab. I was still so full from the empanadas, but it was fun to be with them. They say they're still gonna be mad if I don't come to Ecuador after my mission with my future family. :)

Sunday - lots and lots of goodbyes, and pictures. At church is where I said most of my goodbyes. It was mostly to all of the little kids who love me and I love them, and a couple of families who I have gotten really close with. After church, the hermanas made some food and we all ate as a district for our last hoorah together and then we played some games in the church. We then went to the Corrados house to say bye. They're the people who we spent Christmas Eve with, they are the nicest family ever I love them. The daughter’s name is Sofia and she is engaged to Hyrum who is from England and they served their missions together and got together after he came home about a year ago and now they are waiting to get their papers so they can get married.  He lives with them and they're way fun so we just hung out with all of them. After that, we went and I said my last goodbyes to Emme, Lina and Joseba. I'm gonna miss them so much. I've really come to love those three like family. Joseba almost started crying when I was saying bye, but he said he's not a little girl and he's a man and won't cry haha. I love that kid he's so funny. We ate there and said our goodbyes to each other, bittersweet moment. 😐

Today - Hermana Portas left to go get her new companion and Hermana Herrera left to go to her new area. So we said bye to them this morning and then we went and ate with some other people in our ward who wanted to say bye.. Tonight we are going to my boy Barbosa’s house to say bye to him, that could potentially be the hardest goodbye here in Almería. I love him so much so I'll have to let you all know how that goes.

I hope you all have a great week. I hope you all know how much I pray for you all and how much love I have for each of you. Thank you for all you do and thank you for "reading" my emails. 😜 Have a great week and you'll be hearing from me next week when I'm in ELCHE!!!!

Lots of Love,
Elder Tanner Brady Hammond

Saying goodbye to John Carlos

Last Ward Selfie in Almeria

Photoshoot with my gorro

The Corrado Family

Emme, Lina and Joseba

Dominica, Hector, Eliana and Juan saying goodbye

Jose (black sweater), Juan (shorts), Hector, Eliana

I promise I’m not using my middle finger, my other two fingers are cut out of the picture. Throwin’ up a three for the three amigos.  Jose and Hector.

Elio and his family.  They are the best and I’m going to miss them so much.

My mains. Barbosa and Charlie

Gian (John) Carlos!!!!  This guy rides around on a little Vespa and looks like Pedro from Napoleon Dynamite. It’s so funny.  He’s hilarious. He’s the best! 

 Pablo and his family minus his wife and two kids. The daughter looooves me! 

Naysha and Kiara

More goodbyes. Franci and his family with a couple of other people. Franci is the guy on the far right down below. I love this man. We are eating with them tomorrow to say our final goodbye before I leave.

Final goodbye to my awesome English class!

 Pablo and his whole family. ;)

Last district selfie.  I'm going to miss this group!

This is Jesus Del Pino!!!! Said goodbye to him last night, he cried when we said goodbye. He told me I’m like his son, it was so sad.

Week 34: 🤗🤗🤗

Well well well,

Guess who?! Yep, me. Again. :) This week coming up is more than likely my last full week here in Almería. Which I'm pretty sad about, but at the same time I'm ready for change! If I stay it will be for another 5 weeks, but I'll get a new comp. I'm expecting to leave, but I won't know until this Saturday! So I'll keep you guys posted for sure. :) Here's my week for ya. :)

Tuesday: Sad day. Remember our investigator Juan? The homie from the Church of Philly? We went to his house that night to see if he was home to have a lesson with him, but when we got there he told us that his pastor said he couldn't meet with us anymore. :( He didn’t really know why, but I'm pretty sure it was because in our last lesson with him we told Juan that his church, including his pastor, doesn't have the priesthood or authority to act in God’s name. He was pretty bummed about it. So we shared a scripture with him and invited him to know whether or not the things we have taught him are true. We told him we are always here if he needs us, and to let us know if we can help him with anything.

Wednesday: Not a whole lot happened on Wednesday. If it did, I can’t remember at all haha. I know that we had English classes and we talked about jinxing someone when you say the same word at the same time. And how
you yell “jinx" and count to 10 and if the person you jinx doesn't say stop they have to get you a soda or something.  I guess if they talk before they get your soda, you can punch them. So they did it and one of our students started counting and then the one who wasn't counting just started punching him! Hahahahaha! I was laughing so hard. He's like “I just have to need to punch him?! When can I hit him??" It was funny haha!

Thursday: On Thursday we had an FHE with the Falcones family!! You guys probs don't remember them, but they're the less active family who we wanted to meet with forever and then finally we had a lesson with them about a month ago. This was our second time meeting with them and we had a really good lesson with them about the Plan of Salvation. We have this puzzle that we use to explain it. We undid the puzzle, and basically had them teach us about it! It was really good. We started youngest to oldest and whatever piece of the puzzle you put in, you had to explain it to everyone else. :) We only made it half way thru because that family looooves to talk. But it was way good talk about everything and so it was really successful!

Friday: That morning, we had district meeting, but only with 2/3 of our district. The other elders still haven't left their piso since like general conference (Saturday session). 😳 So we had district meeting, without our district leader. :) That night we had our weekly noche de hogar (FHE) with our ward in the church!!! We found out we get a LOT more people to come if we do them on Friday nights. Elder Berry and I taught a little lesson about the Atonement. How neat is the Atonement? Pretty freakin neat. We had about a 30 minute lesson/discussion with everyone about that and it went really well.  After, we played the game "never have I ever" but instead of counting on
your fingers, we played it like musical chairs. So if you haven't done what they say, you have to stand up and run to a different seat. It was pretty funny. There's a kid named Pablo who is our ward mission leader’s son (picture attached below with him) but every time he went up, he would say something way bizarre like "never have I ever ridden a shark" or my personal favorite "never have I ever been fat and eaten fat food to get fatter!" It was a good time! :)

Saturday: Saturday morning, there was a kid in our ward who got baptized! His name is Derek, his parents are less active and have been for a while. Here in Almería, literally everyone is somehow related. Like not kidding at all. Some how, some way, everyone has a relation to everyone. Whether it's brother in laws, or 2nd cousins twice removed due to a divorce between mom and dad who had a dog who's kids had kids and then the owner of them had a friend who has the same cousin as the ward clerk. I still don't understand lol. But anyway, Derek's 2nd uncle is the bishop so the bishop baptized him :) it was cool cuz about a month or two ago I got to teach him a lesson and he's only 8 years old, but he's got a bright future. He comes to church every week with his grandma and he told me he goes to bed every night listening to the scriptures. :) He reminds me of Reece so I obviously love the kid. We went to some farm that they (everyone) owns and ate there after. That night we played volleyball with the ward and Enofre, Rafa and Enofre’s brother Francisco. After that, we were walking home, and we walked past this gu.. I'm not a big street contacter, because in Almería it doesn't work, but I felt impressed to talk to this guy. I talked to him and he was way interested! His name is Cecilio, we gave him a Book of Mormon, got his address and set something up for this week when we can pass by! So weird how that works cuz honestly we never contact people in the streets here and I don't know why I felt the need to talk to him.

Sunday: There is a lady who hasn’t been attending church very much lately that lives in the hermanas area, and she asked if we could come give her a blessing yesterday so we did. I’ve never met her before yesterday, but I've heard stories about her and from what I had heard, I was so scared. Elder Rex gave her a blessing once and she got mad cuz she said it was too short. Yikes! I was terrified to give her one, but luckily a member came with us so he gave it. She was pretty weird, and the whole time we were there it was kinda awkward. She thinks the whole ward here isn't friendly and that's why she doesn't come to church. Besides that the church is way far so that doesn't help, hopefully she starts coming again!

Hopefully all of you enjoyed your week, and have another fantastic week this upcoming week. I miss and love you all. My tip of the week for all of you this week is to avoid sticking air fresheners in fans. It doesn't do much :) Paz afuera!!!

Love,
T Ham :)

Zone Conference.  Why is no one else making a face?

Pablo ;)

Hermanas and Amigos and Jesus changin' lives everyday

Noche de Hogar (FHE)

Zone Conference in Granada

Baptismo de Derek

Week 33: Love God ;)

Hello all :)

Welp, here I am again... and here you are again. Me typing, and you reading. Another week down in the mission here in Spain. We're running out of weeks 😁😜 What a week it was. Here's a little summary of what happened here in Almería.

Tuesday - We had the opportunity to watch the Sunday afternoon session of conference. Oh my heck. Holland. There wasn't a second during his talk when I didn't have the chills. THIS CHURCH IS SO FREAKING TRUE!!!! I loved how he said "Keep loving. Keep trying. Keep trusting. Keep believing. Keep growing. Heaven is cheering you on today, tomorrow, and forever." He also mentioned how the Lord blesses those who want to improve. If we are striving to be better every day, the Lord will see it and help us do it. :)

Wednesday - We had a lesson with Juan, and we taught him about the Priesthood. He's still a little confused about why his church doesn’t have this authority that we have so this was another helpful lesson. That night we had our weekly English class, but only to one guy. Everyone else called us before and said that they couldn't come, so it was just me, Berry and Francisco.

Thursday - We had a lesson with a less active member in our ward, Antonio. We taught him about service and how it's a lot easier to feel good about ourselves when we are helping others. He and his family are pretty lazy, so it was cool to see him get excited to help people and want to serve! That night we played basketball with Rafa and Enofre. We played full court with 4 people. What a great way to stay in shape. Wow! It was a freakin work out. Nothing but fast breaks. I was felt like Sammy Adams, goin "Coast to Coast”. 😏 (that's a song for those of you that don't know)

Friday - We went to Granada on Friday morning because we had zone conference! It was the first time our new zone had gotten together since transfer calls last March! Something kinda funny/sad. So at the beginning of 2016, every area that's in the mission set a goal for their area for how many baptisms they want to get in the year 2016. As a mission, we added up all the area numbers and set that as our goal for the entire mission for 2016. It ended up being 832, so far we have about 70. During 2015, there was like 350 ish. I’m hoping we can at least get to 400 this year. 😁 It was cool tho cuz after the conference, the zone leaders went to mercadona (a store) and bought a bunch of food and came back to the church and we ate as a zone! It was pretty good and I'm surprised at how successful it turned out due to how last minute it was. That night when we got home we had our weekly noche de hogar. Last week if you remember we had a total of 7 people come. This week we had another good turn out and there was 47 people there!!! There was so much food and all the members were so helpful. We watched Meet the Mormons, it was a really fun night. Almost 8 months into my mission and I still can't watch the part where the missionary leaves on his mission and says bye to his mom and family. I get so sad. 😫 So I left the room during that whole part lol.

Saturday - Played soccer during the morning, it was fun :) There is this dude who is from Scotland who was in Almería visiting a ward member. They met like last month at some singles conference thing, anyway his name is Jim! He's a 67 year old dude, (member) we met him at the noche de hogar. He doesn't speak very much Spanish  but when he does, it's so funny. He played soccer with us! He's insane people. Like this guy has more energy than a freakin 5 year old kid. 😂 He's so hyper and giddy and jittery he’s always moving and talking and oh my gosh I just don't know how to describe him. His soccer skills are poor, but defensively he's a machine. The best is while he plays, he yells at all the Spaniards in English.  I lost it when I heard him yelling "GO GET IT!!” and they literally just looked at him and laughed. He gave everyone a good laugh. :) We ate with Silvia during medio dia and then that night for dinner we ate with Angel and Myra again!  Angel always compliments my watches whenever he sees me, so he asked if he could buy one so last night I showed him the Rockwell page and he's gonna buy one off of there next week when we go over to eat again! We had a really cool lesson with them and talked about serving others around us because they are so nice and are always so loving to me and Elder Berry. It's so hard to not be smiling and laughing whenever we are with them, I love them. :)

Sunday - Fast Sunday. I was so hungry during church holy shnikes. We had a new record for amount of people that were in church yesterday! At least, since I've been here. There was so many people (for Spain) 146!! It was awesome there was so many new people and visitors there. Even a family from Orem came! I think they have family or something here, but still it was good to talk to some neighbors. :) Last night, we tried to see if a lady who was contacted a couple years ago by other missionaries, her name is Maria. So, we knocked on her door, and this guy comes out and we say "hey is Maria here?" And he says... "No. Listen to me." Then he starts yelling… (In Spanish) "YOU'VE KNOCKED ON MY DOOR 50 TIMES ASKING FOR A MARIA AND 50 TIMES HAVE WE TOLD YOU SHE DOESN'T LIVE HERE!!!! NEXT TIME YOU COME HERE, IT WILL HE A LOT WORSE THAN ME JUST YELLING AT YOU EFFERS” It was funny cuz literally neither of us saw it coming. I told him thank you so much, and to have a great night. ❤️

And today, we finally had a fun PDay. We went to this place called Mini Hollywood and it was way cool! I will attach a bunch of pics. It's a western town and there was this way big zoo. It was fun to actually do something fun on a PDay finally.

There ya have it people. The week of THam in a not so short email, once again, sorry hahaha but I mean I gotta give the folks what the want.  Like I told the guy who yelled at us to have a good night, I hope you all have a great week. ;) 

I love you and thank you all for everything you do for me!!

Love,
Elder T Ham

I'm in this photo... I promise.  This is the MiniHollywood place where they shoot American western movies in Spain.

Getting eaten alive! 

Always in trouble... 

Wanted even in Spain.  

Hold 'em up!

This nice ladies' finger is in the photo.  PDay with the Hermanas and Elder Berry.

A real western shoot out.

Me at the zoo ;)

FREAKING HUGE SNAKE!  OH MY! I hate snakes!

Last time getting to see Elder Shields before he goes home.  

Week 32: Conference!

Dear peeps,

Before I starts things off I have 3 quick shout outs: quick shoutout to my aunt and uncle Beedub and Lisa for having their 3rd kid and first baby girl this past week!! Welcome to the fam Kinzlee :) another one to our new PUPPY STORMIE!!! 😍 frickin adorable and I can't wait to meet her thru skype next month!! Also, last one to my BEST FRIEND BEAU KING FOR GETTING HIS CALL YESTERDAY TO THE NEW YORK SOUTH MISSION SPEAKIN HAITIAN CREOLE.

Wow, talk about a TRUNKY conference huh?? It was almost as trunk as last conference when Elder Holland talked about moms and how the love they have for their kids is the closest thing to the love the Lord has for us!! Talking about marriage, and fathers, and loving your spouses, making sure they're the right one for you. It was actually a really good conference, but then again what isn't? My week was pretty normal other than this weekend... Here it is :)

Tuesday: I can't even remember the last time we had a regular Tuesday hahaha. During the morning we had our district meeting, I gave a workshop on former investigators and how it is always helpful to look through our area book and find people who were taught a while back and just lost contact with the missionaries or something else happened. Most of the investigators we have we found while looking through our area book and finding their names, passing by and now we are teaching them again! All night on Tuesday was spent helping Pablo and his family move again.

Wednesday: FREAKIN HECK MY COMPANION!!! Okay so during media dia I had a giant headache so I asked him for some ibuprofen so he gave me some. But it wasn't ibuprofen. It was some sort of sleeping pill!!! He didn't know it either until Thursday morning he was like oh yeah by the way, I accidentally gave you a sleeping pill instead of ibuprofen yesterday. that's when it all made all made sense. We had a lesson with Juan and literally the entire time I was doing ALL I COULD to stay awake!!!!!  I was sooo tired! I literally just hit a wall. It was funny when he was like sooo I found out why you were so tired yesterday. And that's when he told me that he gave me a sleeping pill.

 
Thursday: We had an attempt of another noche de hogar at the church, but this time it was a complete fail. Not a complete fail, but pretty dang close haha. If you remember, last week we had about 40+ people show up to it. This past week we had 13 people show up, 6 of them being us missionaries. That's 7 people, people. 7. In our defense, the week before was Semana Santa and nobody had work, while this week, everyone had work again. We decided to talk a little bit about prophets due to conference this week. We played a game with all 13 of us and it's that telephone game. The one where one person starts and says something and everyone passes it along to their neighbor and the last person says whatever is said to him or her. It was pretty funny, but I mean with only 13 of us it's hard to mess up hahaha. But we related it to how God relays things through the prophet and how he guides us along with his 12 apostles and that's how we can know and keep the commandments! We also decided to move the noche de hogar to Friday nights at 8:30 so people can actually come.

Friday: Pretty successful day! We had 2 lessons in the morning, one with Ramon and one with Luis. Ramon is a 45 ish year old guy who was a former investigator and now is taking the lessons with us again! His wife was a member, but she passed away and also his daughter who is like 20 is a member but a less active. We taught him the Plan of Salvation and reassured him that he will be able to see his wife again after this life. I love the Plan of Salvation because when we tell people the things that we tell them, their eyes light up and you can just see the hope that they have :) we also had a lesson with Luis. Luis is a 70-75 year old geezer who we found in the streets. He's got the craziest right eye I've ever seen. It pops out about 2 inches more than it should hahaha and I'm pretty sure he can't see out of it all. He's a good guy.  But we had a good lesson with our boy Luis outside in the sun and we taught him about the Book of Mormon. Gosh, I love that book. It's so cool. Has the power to change lives. We told Luis to read it, but we forgot he can't see, so we told him we could come over and read it with him every once in a while. Good guy. That night we met with a less active who we have wanted to meet with since I got here! His name is Felix and he's 24 from Argentina. He's a convert to the church as of about 4 years I think. Way cool guy. We are hoping to meet with him more and hopefully get him to church soon :) Later we played basketball with Enofre and Rafa. They're still horrible.

Saturday: Wow. What a day. It went from being a really weird and bad day (personally) to a pretty freakin good day (personally) The morning was the same, we got to the church and met our home boys there to play soccer. I wasn't feelin it on Saturday so I decided to play goalie the whole time. I took a couple shots for the team. "I took a punch from Hall of Famer Mike Ditka and I did not go down... Sure I wobbled a bit, but I did not go down" that was kinda my motto for the day. it worked out pretty good as my team was only off the court for like 20 mins total! That night, we watched the Saturday morning conference session at the church! I really liked Elder Stevenson’s talk about how he got locked out of his car, and how he related it to without this restoration, we would be locked out of the vehicle to our journey back to our heavenly parents!

Sunday: I love conference. If you asked me if I loved conference 8 months ago I probably would have said yes, but I woulda been lying to you haha. I don't know why but there's just something about seeing people up at that pulpit and knowing that they're called of God to be there, ya feel? Tommy Monson came through with 2 solid short talks that could possibly be in my top 5 talks of his. I'm pretty sure it was Sunday morning when he said this, but he said something to the fact of how there is two paths, one correct and one wrong. The correct one is the harder one and the easier one is the wrong one. In the world today, it's so much easier to do wrong and to take the road into darkness rather than light. If we take the harder road, the correct road, Heavenly Father will see that we are trying to do what is right, and he's going to help us get through our tough times and he's going to bless us with things that he wouldn't have if we took the wrong road or the easier path.

This gospel is the only way to true and everlasting happiness. I’m 100% sure of it. I'm serving a mission because I want other people the feel the same peace and joy that comes with the gospel of Jesus Christ, that I do every day. I want to help people put the Atonement into play in their lives daily, so that they can know and feel of the mercy, and forgiveness that comes with it. I know I may not know a whole lot of things about a lot of things, but I know for a fact that this church is true and that if we put our faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, everything will work out how it is supposed to be :)

I love you all, and thank you so much for all the prayers and everything else you guys do for me. I hope you feel mine daily!! Have a great week and you'll be hearing from me next Monday!

Eagle and jibberish 

Flyin this plane wayyyyy up I feel blessed.