Week 40: GOODBYE CANADA :/

Que pasa familia mio :)

Well... Pretty sure I mentioned transfer calls were this week. CHANGES IN ELCHE! I'm getting another new companion hahaha. Elder Llavina! From what I've heard he's way cool. His dad is Argentinian, but he’s from Utah. That's pretty much all I know about him for now. I guess more details to come in next weeks letter! He gets in on Wednesday. My current companion is going to Málaga to be a zone leader!! I’m stoked for him and he's way ready to be a ZL. He's a great missionary and even tho our time was short, he's taught me a ton and I'm so glad I had the opportunity to work with him. We travelled a ton this weekend, but I'll get to that later :)

Tuesday - Leg day... we helped a member family move because their kitchen caught on fire a while ago. They lived on the 5th floor, which is actually the 6th. But there wasn't an elevator. 😩 Up, then down. Up, then down. Up, then down. Up... Then down. Then we would go back up and then when we got up, we'd turn around and go back down. Holy my legs felt like they wanted to fall off after hahaha. Elder Lowry’s legs literally just gave out while we were walking out. It was kinda funny.

Wednesday - We met with a new investigator that we found on the street!! Her name is Carolina. She's 20 years old and is from Columbia (like everyone else in Elche) and my comp is 100% convinced he's going to marry her hahahaha!. He said all I have to do is baptize her so they can temple. 😂 She wants to learn English, so the first hour consisted of us teaching her that then the last little while we just talked about the Book of Mormon and why we are here in Spain. She said she believes in God and everything and is looking for the truth so we told her to read the BOM and she'll find it. We were supposed to have a return cita this Wednesday but that's the day of transfers so we have to reschedule. After that, we went and taught Mercedez again. We had another pretty solid lesson on the BOM with her as well. It's so incredible how much truth that book has. I really wish I wouldn't have taken It for granted like I did before my mission. I wish I had the knowledge that I do now and would have read it like I do now. My days are always better when I read even a little bit in the mornings for personal study! I'm workin my way through Alma right now but in Spanish and it’s so weird that I understand a different language! 😳 Alma was a freakin dope missionary 💯. Then we ate with the Garcia fam como siempre!

Thursday - Planning... Another sweet and short one!! It's so awesome having good, powerful & short planning sessions. It's so hard to have long ones cuz as you all probably know, I cannot focus for more than like maybe 45 minutes hahaha and even that is an improvement from before I came on the mish. 😂 We have a new investigator who showed up to church a week ago named Benjamin... (Not Benji. Totally different people haha). He's from Columbia as well and there's a member named Jose Gonzalez who is his friend and Jose is awesome! He gave Benjamin a Book of Mormon and invited him to church, now he's taking the lessons from us and is so awesome! He's got a lot of potential so I’m excited for him and to see where that goes. We are going to focus on him a lot this week which will be helpful for our area! After planning - we ate with the Rivera Family, a really nice Argentinean family. They've been gone for like a month cuz they were in England, so it was my first time meeting them, but he is the branch president in Benidorm, which is a city a little bit more north east of Elche (I think...) but that was really good. Then that night we went to the church and played soccer with our amigos!!! Freakin there's a group of people that come that smoke weed there and the other members just yell at them to get out of here it's funny, but it smells like freakin the worst. I'm almost used to the smell of it by now tho. I smell it so much just walking in the streets. 😷

Friday -We went to Murcia for trizone!! It was awesome and I got to see a couple people who I hadn't seen in a while. My homie Elder Garcia!! It was the first time since the MTC!!!! We knew each other in like 5th grade hahaha and then he moved up north so we stopped hanging
out but got called to the same mission and everything. We sat by each other on the flight to London and then we're in the same district in the MTC so it was really good to see him. Also saw elder Goates who went to Olympus high school and is a cool guy. Kinda knew each other before the mission as well but not too much tho. Now we are way good friends tho :) The meeting was... well, long. Hahahaha holy crap it was ridiculous! 😩 We have these new things called the "APShes” which are like President’s Assistants, but sister missionaries. So the APShes and both the APs gave like 30 minute workshops. Good heck. So long people. Helpful. But just so freakin long. Usually they go from like 11-2 then we eat at 2:30 or 3 and are out by 4. Well on Friday it went from 11-4, we ate at 5, and left by like 7. 😂

Saturday - We had splits with the zone leaders. I was with Elder Adcock! He's a really good missionary and taught me a ton. He's from California, but his fam just moved to Alpine and he is gonna go to BYU when he gets home. Elder Lowry and I went to Alicante that morning and worked for a little in the morning. We ate black paella for lunch and it was so gross wow. Like black rice, squid, octopus, shrimp and it was black cuz of the octopus ink. It looked like I was eating a plate of gravel hahahaha. I ate a whole plate of it tho so I was proud if myself! That evening, Adcock and I had a lesson with one of their investigators named Yonka. Kinda like Willie Wonka but minus the chocolate factory. :/ He's from Cuba. Way cool guy. But we had probably the most spiritual lesson I've ever taught on my mission so far. It was incredible. It was so evident that he felt the spirit that was in the room. The thing that brings the Spirit the most is when we say the first vision. When we said it, Yonka started tearing up and it was so powerful! Towards the end of the lesson, I got a strong feeling that I should invite him to be baptized, so I asked him if that when he receives an answer to his questions about Joseph Smith if he will be baptized and he said yes!! Then we set a date with him and he will be working towards that date! Even tho it wasn't in my area, I was still way happy to have been able to be part of that lesson with Adcock! It was so awesome. :)

Sunday - Nothing much happened. There is a husband and wife in a city outside of Elche who are getting baptized next Sunday so Elder Lowry had to interview them, so we were at the church for a while he did that and then we went and he said his last goodbyes to the Garcia family. It was a really good Sunday night and there were some really good conversations that went on!

Today... Well nothing special... Lowry said bye to the love of his life this morning 😂and I set a return cita later this week with her, and then we just kinda hung out after that! He wanted to print off some pics and we did that, went to the store and tonight will just be filled with more goodbyes.

I'm really excited for Lowry to be going Zone Leader... He's going to be awesome! I have only been here for 5 weeks so I feel like I still don't know the area very well at all, but from what I hear about Elder Llavina, we should get along perfectly and work well together. I’m excited to see what happens and I'll be sure to let you guys know next Monday!! Hope you all have a great week and know I love you all :)

Love,
Elder Hammond