Week 62: Happy Halloween, Doofus. 👻

Hello my family and friends throughout the world :)

Hopefully a couple of you will be able to get my movie line on the subject.. such an underrated movie! Like it says, Happy Halloween to all! We aren't really doing anything special here in Cartagena to celebrate. But it's all good considering I'll be home to celebrate next year. 😋 My week was pretty odd to be honest.. if you keep reading you'll know why. :)

Tuesday we had a bomb district meeting even though I'm still learning how to organize them. I don't mean to boast or anything but it was probably one of the best meetings ever on my mish. We talked a lot about Christ's life and the Atonement. We focused on how during every situation, we should let people know about Jesus Christ, what He did when He was on the earth and obviously when He atoned for us. It was good stuff. :) Later that day we had straight up the best day ever. We didn't have any set plans so we were just passing by a bunch of people. First one we pass by - Jose. He lets us in and we read the Book of Mormon with him. Second person - Our new investigator Gloria. Lets us in and we talked to her about the Atonement and how important it is in our every day lives. Third  - included some other new investigators Mari and Joey. We talked to them about how God gives us trials so we can become stronger and better through them. We set a return cita for tomorrow and it's Mari's birthday so we're gonna have a party. 😜 After we got done there we went home, changed clothes and went and played soccer with a bunch of members. Well, not a bunch, there was only 10 of us and it's a huge field.

Wednesday morning. Ugh. I woke up feeling like a semi-truck ran over me 746 times so that was dumb. I spent the whole day in bed for the first time on my mission. Sick as a dog. Headache, sore throat, cough. It sucked. I was sick of being in bed so around like 9:00 I was like okay well I wanna try and at least go get one lesson in and so we went to our investigator Noemi and she told us to come in so we had a way good lesson with her about trials as well. After that we came back home and I passed out again. I felt like crap during the whole lesson.

Thursday I woke up feeling a little better, not much. Nye guy and I planned way quick. It was literally the fastest ever and then made some DANK burgers. Holy! Incredible! Nothing compared to my boy Elder Llavinas, but they were freakin' good people. After that we hit up the bus station and Elder Nye went to Malaga for residency and then I went to Mazarrón with Elder Childers and Maldonado. It was way fun! :) I love them! Hahaha! Childers is new. This is his first transfer and he's so funny. He's good at wake boarding. That was fun. We made crepes and it felt like I was back home eating Dad's norgies. 😩 We also had English classes that night as well so that was fun.

Friday I was with them all day again and we had to come back to Cartagena because they had their interviews with President. After they did that we came back to our piso with Elders Bushman and Fumero. We went and got some kebab and brought it back to our piso and watched The Work and the Glory. 😊 Great stuff lemme tell ya. Thennnn after that we made our way over to the bus station to catch a bus to Roche for JARED'S WEDDING! It was so awesome!  I got to see some friends from Elche so that was good too! After the ceremony, we went and they started bringing around all these like appetizers and one of them looked like popcorn chicken. It was absolutely not. It was like lemony fishy nastiness. Oh my gosh! We all tried them and I about threw up. I spit it out into a bush and then like 10 seconds after I did this old guy comes and does the same thing. It was so nasty ugh. All in all it was a way fun night. I wish my comp could have been there though. :(

This weekend was Stake Conference and we got a new Stake President. Not a whole lot happened. I got to see Chad (a teammate from Woods Cross that just got out of the MTC) so that was cool. 😊 Oh yeah, and also I had my interview with President. It went well, and as usual he says hello to you all. :) My comp got back on Saturday morning and the Elders from Mazarrón just stayed with us all weekend it was a fun four days with them. :)

Anyways. Para terminar I was reading the other day in 3 Nephi 18 it's a scripture I love - Therefore, hold up your light that it may shine unto the world. Behold I am the light which ye shall hold up--that which ye have seen me do. To me it just means that we should never be ashamed or afraid to like share the Gospel with those around us. The worst that could happen is that they say no. But God will see that we are trying and He'll bless us. :) I could be way off but to me that's what it means. 😊

I love you all and I hope you have a SCARY good week.. hehe get it, Halloween 👻 I'll talk to you all in a weeeeek :)

Much love.
Lord Pretty Flacko Jodye,
Mr. E. T Ham 💸

Selfie with my boiz @ the wedding.

The man Jared, and his wife Gissela in the background :) 

Week 61: A Week of Funnies

Dear people of my life, 

How the freaking heck are all you on this fine ___________ (insert day reading this)???? I hope everyone is just doing amazing and smiling and having a great life. :) Wanna hear about my week? Okay here it is! :) 

On Tuesday we had our first district meeting as a new district and so that was dope. I'm in charge of the whole thing too and it's so much more stressful. I don't want to keep everyone too long but I don't want the meeting to be like 10 minutes. I'm trying to find a happy medium for the whole thing. I'll keep you updated. :) We had a cita with our  Catholic investigator who loves the Book of Mormon. He's about to start reading in Alma. 😂 He's like 65 and doesn't have teeth so he's a way homie for sure. After that pretty sure we went down to a pueblo that is close and we knocked on SO MANY DOORS HOLY WOW. We found about 12 futures who wanted to listen to us so that was way good! Funniest thing ever happened. Well, not ever but very funny. So we knock on this door and this like 90+ year old lady starts waddling to the door and my comp sees her and goes "Yikes! We're gonna have to do baptisms for the dead for this one!" Hahahahahahaha! But that's not even the funniest part. After the 2 minute walk from the couch to the door that's about 10 feet away, this lady opens the blinds and looks at us thru her door and we say "Hola!" And she stares at us for like 5 seconds and then just shakes her finger at us and gives us the dirtiest look. 😂 It was so funny! Wow! 

Wednesday night we met with our Ecuadorian family named Veronica and Klever and their son and daughter Jarel and Alyson. We are teaching Jarel the lessons and we talked about the Restoration and at the end I looked at him and I said Jarel we want to invite you to be baptized. He perked up and his eyes got all big and he said REALLY?? Haha it was so funny. He accepted for the 12th of November so we are going to do what we can to get him baptized on that day. :) 

Thursday we found a new investigator from Ecuador named Gloria. It was kinda funny. We knocked on her door and she answers and we're like, "Hey! Are you Gloria?" and she said "Uuuuhhhhh...No. She's not home." And then I said, "Oh. Well, we're missionaries from God and we want to share a message with you." And then she said, "Okay. Wait!" She slams the door and goes and turns off the kitchen light and then she comes back and she's like, "Guys! I'm sorry. Yeah, I'm Gloria.  I lied. I was scared. Please come in." Hahaha! So we went in and she starts asking all these questions about missionaries and what not. She said she's Catholic but doesn't go to church and she wants to know the truth. We showed her a video about missionaries and we talked about the Book of Mormon and kind of like a brief summary of why we want to meet with her and that was to help her find the truth. :) We set up a cita for this Wednesday and we are stoked to go because she's so good. :) 

This weekend was the groundbreaking for the new stake center that's going to be built sometime soon. Saturday morning we were there and it was so hot. Everyone was sweating and complaining. 😂 It was pretty funny to be honest. After that we went to eat with our homie Edgar. :) He's so funny. He speaks English perfectly and is from Mexico. I love him. After that we went to the other Elders' piso and went on splits with them. I was with a new missionary named Elder Bushman. He went to Viewmont and is a great kid. Then after that we (the zone leaders and some other Elders and my companion and I) went and played soccer with a bunch of people from our wards. It was so much fun. There were like 4 teams of 8 and we played on turf. It's the best playing on big fields because then I can just throw the ball as far as I want. :) We killed it. 

Anyways that's a little bit about my week. My companion gave a bomb talk yesterday in sacrament meeting about the Plan of Salvation. This week that's coming up should be a good one again. :) I hope all of you have a great week and you'll be hearing from me in a quick one! I love you all :) 

Much love.

💯 Tanner 😎

At the groundbreaking on Saturday :) 

Week 60: New Old Friends in Malaga (Lots of Pictures this Week)

Good day to you all :) Well, this week was definitely not your normal week... if anything it was the complete opposite of a normal week. I traveled to and from Malaga from Thursday to Saturday. 😩 The bus ride was bad news. It was 8 hours. I wanted to die. But yeah so anyways here's ma week. 💯

Alrighty sooo Tuesday I don't really remember a single thing so let's jump on down to Wednesday because Wednesday was a gooooood day. :) Well, first of all it was a holiday that pretty much only Mormons celebrate. It was basically a day where you celebrate your country. That morning we had a good lesson with our investigator Erika and we talked about the Plan on Salvation with her. She's really good and interested but the only problem is is that she's moving NYC in a couple weeks to live with her husband. (Good excuse to call Beau since his Spanish seems to be improving more than his Creole 😜). So we can't really do anything with her other than teach her. I feel that will totally be baptized but it's just bad timing right now. After that we were planning on going to our pueblo Fuente Álamo to have a cita with our boy Juan but the bus decided not to freakin' come so that was stupid. So instead we went and passed by a ton of people. That night, all three wards had an activity for the holiday and everyone had to bring like a typical plate from your country and it was like a buffet. It it was cool. We didn't bring anything because of our missionary budget and nothing is American here other than me so that's cool. I wore my Utes shirt. Everyone loved it and I also wore my American flag socks 🇺🇸. We hung out there and I showed everyone my dance moves then after that we went and had a lesson with another investigator named Cristian! He's from Columbia. I may or may not have talked about him before. We had a bomb lesson with him. We read in 2 Nephi 31 about Christ's example and then after we invited him to be baptized and he accepted for the 12th of November. :) He was like, "Wow! I wasn't expecting that at all!" I said, "Hey dude! I'm just here to help you find salvation and whether you want that or not is up to you!" 😜 All in all it was a good day and a lot of different foods. 😋

Thursday morning we had a really, really good zone meeting. Our new ZL is Elder Padilla and he's literally known in the mission for being a stud. He baptizes everything that breathes. He's been here for two weeks and they baptized someone last Saturday. He's freaking insane but he gave a good workshop to the zone about setting personal goals every day and it was way good. As the meeting was coming to a close, one of the sisters and I had to leave becuase we had to catch our bus to Malaga. It was so weird because it was just me and her. I basically had to do splits with an hermana it was so weird. But we caught our bus, then around 10 @ night we got to Malaga and we stayed with the Elders there and it was fun. The next day we went down Fuengirola and did our residency. We have a senior couple and the man is obsessed with shaving so I asked him to teach me "the true order of the shave" and so he did that and my face was softer than Downy Soft and a baby's butt combined. 😛 Incredible! He put this after shave on and hoooollllyyyyyyy wowzers felt like I jumped off of Mount Everest and landed straight on the Eiffel Tower face first. It hurt so bad. But hey, I got a nice clean "real" shave haha. After that we just did our residency and that was that. 

We came back to Murcia on Friday night and stayed the night there with some other Elders then Saturday morning I came back to Cartagena. :) 

Saturday morning we had a ward activity where basically we all get together in different parts of the city and we contact people. I went to Fuente Alamo with our 1st Counselor and oh my gosh we racked up like 30 future investigators and set up three return citas for this week! This guy's a contacting machine. It was so dope! It's so much easier to talk to people when you're just normal and older than 22! And you actually speak the language that helps too haha. It was a great morning! After we all met back at the church and had some quality paella. :) That night we had a lesson with some less actives in our ward and talked about God's will and how he has a plan for everyone and sometimes we don't understand why things happen in our life but at the end of the day we just gotta trust that he knows what's best and go with the flow. :) Sunday was a good day we ate with Pepe and Trini as usual and as usual ate a ton of food. Then we went to church and did numbers after with the ZLs. :) Sooooo yeppers there's my week for you all. :) 

I hope you all have yourselves a wonderful week and you'll be hearing from me in 7 more. 😘 I love you all and if you need anything hit me up because I'm always here to serve. :) 

Much love.
Like a sprained ankle,
T Ham 
😎😈🇺🇸💯

PS - This week Tanner got to meet a family that Garet was very close with on his mission. The first area Tanner served in was Malaga and he met a family and a family friend named Maria and Rosalia. Through the recent wonders of Facebook and other social media, Garet has been able to reconnect with this family that he loved so much and a family that took such good care of him on his mission. Well, Tanner was able to actually go to Malaga this week and we contacted Maria on Facebook and she was able to meet him while he was at the bus station on Malaga. It was a wonderful reunion and such a tender mercy for us to see him with people that loved Garet and took such good care of him. She posted 16 photos of him talked with them and posing with them. She said that he is so happy and that he looks just like Garet and acts just like him. She said that he had great stories of success on his mission. She sent him home with 2 bags of homemade food. She took her whole day and served him as well as us by spending a few minutes with him. We are very grateful for her friendship and love. Some of the photos look like duplicates, but the comments from Maria are different.

We are all so excited waiting for our nephew to arrive.

Rosalia asked how we would recognize him.  I told him that I have seen him in pictures and I will recognize him and he looks just like his Dad. 

Look at that smile, we're gonna gobble him up with kisses!
(of course we didn't though)

Our American nephew is so handsome and likeable.

Garet we need you over here!

Don't let these pictures fool ya, the truth is, in person we are all much skinnier, younger and handsome.

The time was too short. Thankfully he gets to come back next month.

As quickly as we got to know him, we had to say goodbye.
I believe the other missionary ahead of him served here but we were gave all our attention to the missionary who hadn't served here.

His Malagueña grandma couldn't believe what she was looking at, it was like looking at his dad!

We wanted to kidnap him keep him in Malaga for ever!

Telling us all about his mission.

We were finally able to take a photo of all of us together.

Move a little left...move a little right...

A friend of Chase Cappellucci.

Maria Angeles, Elder Hammond, Maria Jesus, Noelia, Rosalia

Castle exploring my first week with my new companion.

Castles.

Selfie at the amphitheater.

Saying goodbye.

How handsome! I'd expect nothing less coming from his parents!

He was on the bus and we asked the driver if Noelia could jump on there and take a photo.

Today was as if we had a little bit of you Garet.

Week 59: Ned Shneebly 💯

HEYOOOO!

Hello my people! :) Well, to sum up this past week in few words, I'd have to say "slow" haha. But I expected that due to it being transfers and all. My new companion is Elder Nye and he's a stud muffin. He graduated from Davis High School, played on the soccer team up there and is the transfer behind me in the mission. We're gonna have a good and productive time together I already know it. I love transfers because they always bring new investigators and new sights to see. Soooo yeah, here's my week!

I mentioned last week that we ran into a dude named Jose a couple weeks ago. Well on Monday night last week we had a way good lesson with him and his family about the Restoration of the Church! They're from Ecuador and they have a family of 5. Husband, wife, 10 year old daughter, then two little sons around 1-2 years old. :) We got talking about Joseph Smith and when we said the First Vision the Spirit got so strong. They are very deep Bible lovers so it was difficult for them to understand the Book of Mormon, but at the end of the lesson, we invited them to read it and he told us that he would! We haven't been able to meet with them again but hopefully this week we can! Every lesson with them is going to be at least an hour and a half.  I'll be sure to keep you guys informed on that.

Tuesday morning we had a really good lesson with Juan about the Word of Wisdom. When we got talking about the things we shouldn't consume, he told us that sometimes he will drink a little bit of tea, but it's not like he has to drink it in order to function. We invited him to live it, he accepted it in a heart beat and said he wanted to feel the blessings of living it. :) After that, we went and got some kebab with him and the other Elders for Blasi's last time!

Wednesday was transfer day so we were at the bus station in the morning and we said bye to all the people who were leaving. Had to say bye to my home boy Elder Dunham that sucked. And it was really weird saying bye to a companion who is going home. I felt weird when he was leaving like wow you're going back to the states and real life. I'm still trying to wrap my head around it. 😂 After that I spent the day with my Scandinavian brethren Elderes Kärn and Ylimaula. Kärn is from Sweden and Ylimaula is from Finland! They told me about this dope young single adult party that's every end of July over where they're from. They said it's the sickest thing ever so they were telling me they'll be very sad if I don't come  and visit them. It sounded like literally the greatest week ever. 😎 So, if you wanna make the trip to Scandinavia with me one time, let's go! 😜 Around 5:30 we went and picked my new companion up from the train station, then we had to walk to the bus station to go pick up Elder Kärn's new companion, Elder Adcock. He was my zone leader when I was in Elche for 1 transfer. Good guy. We just hung out at the train station for a while because we had to wait for 2 other missionaries and then when that was all said and done, I took advantage of letting Elder Nye meet Herman. Hahahaha!
It was good stuff. Herman turned on this disco light in his house and was dancing. He's such a freaking weird human.

To be honest, Thursday, Friday and Saturday were bad. We passed by a ton of people and not too many people were home. We had this one cita with a less active who has some problems. On Friday and we showed him the Mountains to Climb video and we were both sharing our testimonies afterwards and there was a little pause of silence and this guy named Monolo literally just erupts in laughter hahahaha. It was the weirdest thing but once he lost it, hearing his weird laugh just made me and Elder Nye start cracking up and oh my gosh it was so funny. We still don't know why he started laughing but it was so funny. After like 3 minutes of him nearly dying, he stopped laughing and acted like nothing happened. I think that's what was the funniest part 😂 just jumped back into the conversation we were having before as if we never stopped laughing.

Sunday morning rolled around and we had a lesson with this Spanish lady name Juana. She's.... interesting haha. It was the first time we had met her, and so we didn't really know what to expect. She answered the door and she starts telling us how she never has time and so we were like oh it's cool like we will only be like 10-15 mins and then we get talking and she just goes off about how guys are disrespectful to girls and how guys just want her daughter and everything like that. It was so weird! 😂 After about 20 minutes with that, we told her how we were raised and how our parents have always taught us to respect girls and all that good stuff and she's like well tell your parents thank you for me. So Mom and Dad, thanks from Juana.  😉 The next topic that got brought up was how she thought that we could approach people when we want to contact them. She told us to tell people and use our experiences from our past life to talk with people. Then she went off on how life in today's world you don't see young "guapos" (attractive) kids like us giving up two years of their lives to go preach the good word and so she said we were two miracles and praised us for that so that was cool. :) Then, finally, we got talking about Jesus! We showed her a little video about the Atonement and she really liked it. After the video, she went off for the 5th time on how she'd been reading these books about like human souls and I'll be honest I didn't catch a word she said. It was so funny. Elder Nye and I were just like "Oh, okay,  uh huh,  yeah,  totally!" We didn't even get what she was saying Long story short, she loved the video and we got our ears talked off. And we set up another cita for next Sunday morning. After that we went and got stuffed by Trini like we do every Sunday and it was buenisimo tio. 😋

I also got made the new district leader in our district. Still not sure how I feel about it but I guess we will see how that goes haha. Not to mention that I have the biggest district in the entire mission. 🙄 Now I guess I'm the one wearin' the pants around these parts of town. 💩

Anywaysssss, that was my week and I'm excited for the week to come! Should be interesting to see what happens. :) I'll keep you guys updated on everything and you guys continue to be happy. :) Oh, and don't forget to write me. ;) Have a great week and I love you all!!!

Much love.
Predicarin,
E. Tanner B. Hammond 💠
Sorry no pics this week I'm the worst /:::::

Week 58: I'm Getting a New Companion

Well hello there my dear friends!


If I do say so myself if has been quite a week. We've been able to make the most out of our last week together and it seems as if this past transfer has gone by faster than the rest. Elder Blasi flies back to the good old USA this Thursday and I will be receiving my new companion this Wednesday! The thing that sucks is that I still don't know who my new companion is! I'll find out later today. Our President changed transfer call days from Saturday to Sunday and to be completely honest with ya, I'm not too happy about it! It's two more days I have to stress because TRANSFERS STRESS ME OUT SO MUCH. All I know is that I'm staying here in Cartagena and next week you guys will find out who my new companion is! Unless by chance before I send this, I find out who it is. If that happens I will just tell you guys at the end of the letter. :) ANYWAY, HERE'S A WEE BIT ABOUT MY WEEK.


To start off, Tuesday night was really fun because we got all of the missionaries (Elders) together and we rented out a soccer field like we usually do on Tuesday nights and played some nice 8v8 with investigators and members. :) We planned to all wear blue so we'd look cool but I guess the other team also got the blue memo because pretty much everyone wore blue too. I've mentioned this before, but it's extremely rare that a team of all missionaries beats a team of people from Spain in soccer. Well, I'm happy to report that the eight of us (missionaries) represented the Lord on the soccer field and kicked some Spaniard butt. I played goalie. We have four other Americans on the team. My companion is literally so good at soccer. Two other Elders play defense (my boy Elder Dunham and Elder Wagner). They are a great help to me in keeping the other team from not scoring. Then we have another American Elder Bailey. Then with my comp on the offensive side of things and studly Elder Ylimaula from Finland who is wayyyy freakin good. I would just catch the ball and launch it way far because we played on a big turf field and he'd run to it and score. :) Then we have Elder Kärn who's from Sweden. The Scandinavian duo is AWESOME. So yeah, we totally killed it and it was way fun! :) I love how surprised people get when eight Mormon missionaries show them what's up! 😊


We had a really good week. We found this new investigator named Jose from Ecuador who we are planning on meeting with tonight. We passed by a member's house. His name is David. He's inactive I guess I should say. His wife is an Atheist. We showed him the video from last conference that President Tommy Monson (as his mom calls him) shared about decisions and how we should always choose the hard right instead of the easy wrong! I love that talk to much because it's so short but so powerful. He said he loved it and hopefully we are going to be able to share another video with his wife called, yes, my personal favorite, The Hope of God's Light. :)


On Friday, we went out to Fuente Alamo to visit my homie Juan! It was so good to see him. I'll be honest with ya, the conversation we wanted to have with him didn't go exactly how we wanted it to go. He literally just went like Buddhist on us. 😩 He was telling us how out of all the Christian churches he knows about, that ours is the one that was like "the most truthful" but he just doesn't like how people try and "define God". I'm not gonna lie, I was lost because he just decided to get deep into something and make it so complicated. I was like aaaaallrighty then. I just sat there and tried to figure out what I could say, when something came to my mind that is also in the same talk that I talked about earlier by President Monson. He tells the story about Alice in Wonderland and how she's walking and she comes to a fork in the road and she asks the cheshire cat dude which one she should take. He replies and tells her how it doesn't matter which one she takes if she doesn't have a destination in mind. I told Juan that and related it to the Plan of Salvation and told him how in our religion, our goal should be the Celestial Kingdom which means we can live with God and our families again. Our life here on earth doesn't really matter or have significance if we don't have a goal or final destination in mind. He kinda looked at me as if I was like naked or something but then I asked if he understood and he said, "Yeah! I understand perfectly. I just can't believe how true that is!" He was blown away. It was such a cool experience. After we got talking about faith and how we always need to act in our faith. It was a good lesson with him. We will have a lot of work to do with him. We have a lot of talking to do with him. He thinks about every little thing way too much and he's going insane over stupid stuff instead of having faith. But then when we talk to him about it and he's like, "Oh! That's way simple!" Poco a poco people. We'll get there. :)


Conference of course was raaaaaad! :) It's hard to believe I only have one more conference in the mission field. 😳😳😳 That is literally insane to think about. I really liked President Nelson's talk about joy. That was a good one. I liked the talk by the Elder Yamashita about that missionary with the prosthetic leg and not being able to ride a bike was a good one. It makes me really appreciate everything I have and makes me not want to complain about some of the things I could complain about! Good guy :) I also saw President Uchtdorf's talk from the Women's session last week about faith. I just love faith. :) I loved the story about the Fourth Floor, Last Door (name of the talk) (if you haven't read it, go read it or watch it) (please) (thanks) (k I'm done lol) but i loved it because when we was talking about this story he emphasized how these two missionaries could have given up after the first couple of doors, but he said "these two missionaries had FAITH" and of course, the last floor, last door in the building, received their message of the restored gospel and thanks to those two missionaries with faith, he now has a wife! Good guy. :)


Anyways, there ya guys have it. Another week gone in the mission for Mr. T Hammond. When I find out who my new comp is, I'll tell my mom and when she sends this out to everyone she can tell you who he is! I love you all and hope you have a graaaand week! Keep it real! :)


Ps... Tanner got his new companion. He is from Davis High School and is one transfer behind Tanner so Tanner will be a senior companion finally ;). He said he'll definitely ask Elder Nye if he has any relation to Bill Nye, the science guy 😛. You know that was going to be Garet's first question. Does he know his dad or what?!

Much love.
Boostin'
T Ham 🔋

The Crew playin soccer. From top to bottom left to right: Kärn, Blasi, Bailey, Dunham, Wagner, Hammond, Ylimaula, Prescott.

Gettin' serious!