Week 57: Castle Climbin 🏔

Hello hello hello to all :)

This week has definitely been one of the least normal weeks I've had on the mish. I spent more time (almost)not in my area with out my comp than I did in my area and with my comp! If you keep reading you'll find out. 😊 Gotta give a shout out to my boy B Childs (aka my eyeblack & outfield partner) for getting his call to Brazil! We will for sure be able to speak our different languages and be able to understand each other. :) Also one more to Brock for killing his farewell yesterday. :) Listen to the promptings of the Spirit my friends, it helps you. Oh yeah, and one more shout out to the UTES! We rollin! Ooookay here we go!

So like I said, I spent more time this week out of my area. Tuesday morning we had district meeting and it was a really good one. We talked a lot about the Holy Ghost and the role He has with each of us.  This is why I liked Brock's talk so much. After district meeting, I went with Elder Maldonado to his area which is called Mazarron (I called it Mazdaron because Mazda is life). It's a good area. We were driving there and we passed through a beach area and it was so nice.  I'm definitely coming back and staying there. 😍 We got there and I dropped off all my stuff and then we went right below their piso and I taught English classes to the people that came! There was a WAY funny thing that happened - I was teaching them a ton of verbs and stuff and I put Jump. Well, in Spanish the letter J makes a H noise. One of the guys was reading it and he goes "so is it jump, or is it hump?" Then he says, "Well, what does hump mean?" I tried explaining it as a camel hump.  He then reminded me that I was only teaching verbs and wanted to know if it was a verb. So then I had to get out of that explanation 😂. We also taught a really good lesson to their investigator who is about to be baptized this Sunday. :)

Wednesday was kinda what got all the craziness started. In the morning Elder Maldonado wasn't feeling too good so we stayed in his piso which sucked but around 12:30 we left because he started feeling a little better. We ate with some members there from Ecuador and we had this wayyy good fried chicken. Later that day we went over to some of their recent converts house and had a good lesson with them. Then Elder Maldonado looks at his watch and is like, "Oh crap! We have to go! You're going to miss your bus!" So we go to where the bus stop is but the bus had just left. Elder Harvey (my boy from Almería) who is Maldonado's companion took the bus from Cartagena and the bus he got off on was the bus I was supposed to be on. So needless to say, I missed my bus so I had to stay an extra day with Harvey and Maldonado and Blasi had to stay with the other Elders in Cartagena. I was good though because Harvey and Maldonado are fun. After that we went to the church because President was coming to interview the investigator. All of us went to Antonio's (the investigator) house to eat pizza! It was the first time I have ever been with President and Sister Anderson in a cita like this. It was pretty weird. But it was fun so that's good.

Thursday rolled around and it was weekly planning for them so I just hung out in their piso while they planned and they had the fasted planning session in the history so after they got done Harvey made us pancakes. I love him so much he just loves to be in the kitchen. 😂 We hung out all morning and medio dia and then we caught our bus back to Cartagena and Maldonado had to do a baptismal interview for the sisters' investigator.

Alrighty, soo you guys might be wondering why I'm not talking about Juan at all. Well, it's because on Monday night, we met with him to play basketball and he told us that he wanted to take a break (haha sounds like a classic break up line from 8th grade) from talking about missionary/gospel stuff for a week or so. He didn't drop us or say anything bad like that, he just said there was a ton of stuff to process and he wanted to think about it. The good part is that he came to church yesterday! It was such a relief to see him walk in the door.  😩 Hopefully this week we will be able to meet once or twice and just help him with any other questions he has. 

As for other investigators.... Hmm, Yeah.. Um.. Well...We don't really have any hahaha. We have a lady named Franchesca who's alright. She hasn't come to church yet and is pretty active in her own church but I we teach her English so that's good. Remember how I was telling you guys about the huge festival they have here right now? Freakin Friday, Saturday, & Sunday there was this giant parade and everyone was dressed up in costumes from the mid-evil days and every group dressed up as a different movie! (Not really but that's what I say) Braveheart, Troy, 300, Robin Hood, man you name it. It was dope. On Friday night they all fought against each other!!! They LARPED! It was the gnarliest thing ever but I was stupid and didn't take any pictures. My bad for that I messed up! I'll do better next time. But man it was the most outrageous larp session I've witnessed in my life.

That's pretty much it for now. Everything I can remember is what you've read just now, sorry if it wasn't much but  sometimes the missionary life is just a little boring. ;) I hope you all have a fandabidosy week and I hope you all know how much I love you! :) You'll hear from me in October! 😈👻

Much love.
Larp or Die,
E. Tanner 💎💰💸

The Castle 😛

Los Elderes de Cartegena 😈

Pano

Dani from Almeria got baptized!  He was one of my investigators that I was teaching when I left the area. I'm so happy for him!

Week 56: Farewell Talk for the Win 🔥🙌🏻 (just like Utah #six&ZERO)

Oye que pasa familiares :)

What a week it's been, that's for sure. Well, to be honest with you, this week flew the freak by. We killed it this week. Like, straight up demolished it. We hit the 20+ lessons mark for the first time in 2016 in our area. 😩 We had a whopping 23! It was gnarly man. My favorite one was on Friday and If you keep reading, you'll find out why. Gotta shout out the Utes since I didn't last week on the W against the team down south. I too know what it's like to never lose to your rival opponent !😛 Another shot out to the GRANNY for way hitting that 99 years old last week. 😊😊 Someone tell her I love her and can't wait to get turnt with her for her century mark!! And lastly, one last shoutout to my good friends the Jenkins for the package they sent me 💯💯! Thank you guys so much! Anyways, here's a little part of my week =~]

So I gotta start off by telling you guys that we (Elders) played paddle last PDay. And oh my gosh, I loved it. It was so fun. It got me so excited to get back on the pickleball courts with the fam in St George. 😍 I played with Elder Kärn (pronounced sharn) from Switzerland and we didn't lose a single set. We killed it. Great way to start a great week. 👍🏻

Alright, now onto Juan... He's the man. We met with him on Wednesday and he invited us to eat with him, his sister and his mom at his house. We went to his little city just outside of Cartagena and we met with him and had a way good lesson on the plan of salvation. Lessons with him are always wayyy spiritual, but they take forever to get thru because he asks so many questions which is a good thing, but it just takes so long! It makes me glad though because he said that the reason he asks so many questions is becayse he said if he gets baptized he's not going to waste his time. Then we ate with him, his mom and sister and it was a lot of seafood and, well, I don't like seafood. But it's cool because I ate it. It was honestly kinda good. 

Remember earlier when I was talking about Friday? Well, it was dope because we had another cita with Juan and this is where my subject line (part 1) comes in to play. :) We went there planning on going in to just answer some of his questions and playing it by ear. And it turned into one of the greatest lessons I've ever been a part of! We got talking about how we can know if we're really receiving an answer from God or if it's from our own thoughts or someone else or whatever. When Juan asked us about this my thoughts instantly went to the video "The Hope of God's Light" which is the story that I told during my farewell. Juan understands English so he wanted to watch it in English and I'm like 95% sure that's why the spirit was so strong. But after the video Juan was saying how he was just speechless and didn't know what to say. He was like "maybe this is my problem. Maybe I need to humble myself and listen more intently to what my feelings are rather than what I've learned in the past. I need to go out and look for my answer rather than just sit in darkness waiting for it to come"! It was incredible!! We testified about how if he truly wants to know if he is wasting our time, that he just needs to ask God if he is and he'll receive an answer. I love Juan :)

Other than that, the week was full of kinda just the same old same old, ya know? We had some lessons planned for Saturday but literally all the plans we put from 5-10 failed us and it was only 6:30. 😂 Luckily, some members from Molina (Blasi's old area) came to visit him and so we got to hang out with them for a little. We went to the port and this huge like castle type thing, it was dope! I attached pics. Then later we were just walking around and everyone and their dog was out because this week and last week is a holiday here in Cartagena and everyone dresses like freakin old fashion war Roman people so it's pretty weird but the sunset was freakin dope. 😍😍

Something way random but cool this week that happened - so for those of you that don't know already, I take a selfie every single day on my camera. Last Friday I was looking at it and I was like oh I wanna see what I looked like a year ago from today. So I looked and I was wearing the exact same tie that I wore that day. Oh my gosh, cool, right? I'm probably the only one that thinks this is cool but I mean, I have a lot of ties and it just so happened that I wore the exact same tie on Sept 17th 2015 as I did on Sept 17th 2016! Small world. Also another cool thing, there's a girl in our ward who is going to BYU right now and she was here yesterday with her family but she goes back to Provo tomorrow and we were talking and it turns out that her mission president was Ralph and Teresa from my ward! She was so stoked it was funny. :) Oh, and we also went to Murcia on Tuesday because Elder Zwick from the 70's came and visited us! We had a really good (and long) talk about how when we teach we need to make it simple so that they understand it. He also talked a lot about how if we want to change, we need to choose today to do it. It was awesome and I got to see a lot of familiar faces. :) Also, Elder and Sister Zwick are Emma Eyring's grandparents.  Really small world!

Well, now you know how my week went :) it was a good one, and my comp's time left as a missionary is getting smaller and smaller every day. I'll keep you guys updated on everything during this week and letcha know next Monday. Have a splendid week my friends, I love you all ❤️

Much love.
Reachin' Out,
Elder Hammond 🙋🏽

Old comp Llavina. Miss him :)

Elder and Sister Zwick at our conference.  They are the grandparents of the Eyring Family.

Down by the Port

Week 55: The Week I Was Speechless

Hey What's Up? Hello Everyone! 😊

One more week has come and gone and I guess that means it's time for me to write about what happened. :) This week flew by again and it was also a really good week with our investigators! Well, a couple of them at least, haha. Here's a little bit about my week. :)

Alright, so you guys remember the home boy Juan, correct? Well, we had a bomb lesson with him on Wednesday morning. We brought our ward mission leader with us aaand to be completely honest it'll probably be the last time we take him to a cita with us hahaha. He's a good guy but I don't think he knows what's going on half the time. We got talking about prophets and he starts saying to Juan, "Yeah, so maybe you could come with us when we get the whole ward together to go pass by less actives and what not." And Juan was like, "Well, I guess so! Me and Blasi were dying. But other than that it was a really good lesson. His girlfriend Cristina was there as well and when we talked about the first vision she started crying and the Spirit was so strong. Juan listened so intently and had the greatest questions about everything! He told us he likes to know exactly what's going on so he asks so many questions to make sure he understands it and he does perfectly! At the end of the lesson he was like, "Man! I really wanna know if all this stuff you guys are telling me is true!" So I told him to pray about it. And then I committed him to be baptized! He said of course and was telling us how when he's a member he's going to be way active because he said he wants to help people like we have helped him in just these past couple of weeks. :) So Juan's date for baptism is General Conference weekend; October 1st! Feel free to throw in a couple prayers or extra help for Juan in your  prayers. 😘

We met with our Nicaraguan friends again this week. It was the worst lesson I've ever had in my life. It started out perfectly fine and everything was going just as planned and then when we started talking about life after death, Mabel just lost her nuts and all heck broke loose. She was saying how like she wanted us to use the Bible more. My companion and I do a really good job of using the Bible and the Book of Mormon together so we were like, "Um.. we are." She started  like freaking out saying how the people who didn't repent and do good things on earth will just be damned straight to hell and rot in their sins and burn and she literally is just screaming at us. I was so scared. Her friend Gretel on the other hand was telling her to calm down and she was like, "I've listened to the Jehovah's Witnesses and the Catholics and the Evangelical people and their theories on all this life after death stuff, and I gotta say, this one makes a lot more sense than all the other people's crap!" So that was good. But yeah, we got screamed at and all that stuff but it was still pretty entertaining. I think I said like 15 words in the hour and a half we were there lol.

The rest of the week was filled with us trying to find people at home. It didn't work out too well. We found a new investigator named Franchesca. She's about 45-50, really religious and we had a cita with her and we brought Romeo and she just went off on Romeo for about 15 minutes about how he has to pray with faith if he wants to get answers and blessing. Romeo doesn't speak Spanish very well and so after she went off on him he just goes "Amen!" Hahaha! I lost it! It was so funny. 

We also balled out with Juan on Saturday and a couple of his friends. I was sweating SO BAD WOW. Juan also came to church and literally in our Gospel Doctrine class he participated more than anyone. He's so golden! I'm pumped to see what happens with him!

To end my email I wanna share a little bit about what we talked about yesterday in Elder's Quorum. Marriage. We were reading in the Howard W. Hunter book and he was saying how the most important decision of your life, is gonna be who you marry. Wow! If that was a tweet I'd retweet it. Also he talked about the importance of having God in your marriage. Gotta keep Satan out of it and having God with us will help us do that. :) I'm so glad I have parents who give me a good example with having God in their relationship and in our family! 

Well boys and girls! I hope you know how much I love you all and I'm grateful for everything you guys do for me! Por favor! Have a great week and you'll be hearing from me in a short 7! Peace out. You guys are the best. ❤️

Much love.
Hangin' tough,

Elder Hammond, B. Tanner :)

Ballin' with Juan & his friend who wanted us to call him Pau Gasol

Selfie I captured with Romeo. He's a champ!

PDay Paddlin' 

Paddlin' is kind of like Pickleball. 

The rules are like Pickleball except you can use the walls.  Pretty fun! Made me miss Pickleball. 

Champ!

Week 54: Wiggle Wiggle Wiggle

Hey Gang :)

Freakin holy crap this week went by so fast but so slow. I feel like it was just yesterday that I was writing my weekly but at the same time I feel like it's been years. Ugh! Gotta love the mish time/life.

It's been a pretty eventful week. We had the highest amount lessons in our District since Nam. So that's pretty dope :). Ummm, yeah so football season started so I'm having trouble not being trunk 🙃.  My prediction for this weekend: Utes - 24 ; BYU - 10 . I literally have no idea about anything this year so I'm kinda just pulling random numbers. Utah wins si o si tho :). Anyways, here's a little bit about my weeeeek! :)

First off, you guys remember Aaron from Elche? Well, I told you guys he was going to come to Utah with his family, and he did :). The feeling I got when I saw the picture of his family with my family was literally the greatest thing ever!! I was telling him before he left that he had to call my mom or dad when he got there and he did and I was so happy that he got to meet them and that my fam got to meet them!! I was sooo happy when I saw the pics :)!

Wednesday we went out to this place called Fuente Alimo which is a pueblo that we have in our area. We didn't really have any work there, so we went just kinda hoping we could find a couple of people. The morning passed and we had absolutely no success. But we were on our way to the bus stop and the one and only member that lives there calls us and he's like, “Hey my daughter just passed you guys, do you want to come eat?" So we're like well duh.. So we went and his daughter had her boyfriend (we think) over too! His name is Juan and he's like 24 years old. First impression was that he's kinda different but once you get to know him he's a total home boy :). We talked and Juan was super interested in our whole missionary thing. We shared a video about missionaries and he was like dang respect homies. So to say the least, we picked up a new investigator after all and Juan is dope :).  

We met with this mom and her daughter on Friday as well. The mom’s name is Marisol and the daughter’s name is Mariela. They're from Ecuador and just the coolest. We contacted Marisol on the street about a week ago and when we met with them, they both cared a ton about everything that we are doing as missionaries! They're active in some Evangelical church right now but they really like our message and so we are going to keep talking to them about it :). Elder Blasi thinks that the mom is mostly trying to get her daughter to listen because we're two guapo American boys, but I think they're genuinely wanting to listen to the gospel ;).  We've also been meeting with this girl named Mabel. She’s from Nicaragua, about 35 years old and takes care of an older lady who is 105! Holy crap! While we are on the topic of age, Happy Birthday shoutout to the Great Granny Goose coming up here soon. She turns 99 so someone tell her I love her and happy birthday and she better be alive when I get home this summer! But yeah so Mabel is pretty cool. We talked to her about the Book of Mormon and the story about it and also about Joseph Smith and she said wanted to read it to find out if it's really true so she said she'd read it and pray about it :).

Some other people we've been teaching are some recent converts named Herman and Romeo. I don't even know where to start with those guys hahaha. Herman is about 65 ish and was baptized last January. He's got some problems. He says some funny things.. The other day we were at his house and his house is just wayyy dirty and smells bad because his dog just goes to the bathroom where ever it wants 😩. Romeo is from Cameroon, Africa and doesn't speak Spanish fluently yet but he gets by pretty good. He's 29 and he was baptized about 5 months ago and he comes with us to some of the citas. He's a good guy and is living with Herman because he doesn't have money and Herman isn't making him pay. 

Saturday we played soccer in the morning with a couple other missionaries here and then that night we played basketball at the church with our homie Juan and bunch of his buddies! Juan doesn't miss a shot. I missed playing basketball a lot, it had been awhile since I had played but now we will be playing once a week cuz Juan wants to play with us! So hopefully we will get his friendship 💯😏.

There's a little bit about my week I hope all of you guys have a FANTASTIC WEEK and like I say every week - You'll hear from me next week 😘 I love you all and as my boy t beck says, stay classy 😏.

Quote of the week is from last October’s General Conference in Spanish :) - Ningún otro amor en la vida mortal llega a aproximarse más al amor puro de Cristo que el amor abnegado que una madre siente por un hijo. - Elder Holland (S/O to Mom and Moms ❤️)

Lord Servin'
Elder T Ham

A random expedition in Spain

The ground... Oh, and our zone ;)