Week 66: December, December, December... Almost!

Dear Family :) 

Hey all! It's me again.. comin to ya again from Spain. Holy freakin crap this past week flew by. Not a ton happened but I'll be sure to tell you about the highlights.  

Ooookay soo hmm... let's see what shall I contarles hoy.. pues, last PDay we celebrated Thanksgiving with the zone. Our zone isn't much of a zone.  It's more like a really, really large district. There's 16 soon to be 15 of us and most of the time we are together 4 people are missing. So that's dumb. But hey! At least we got to play football! We played a mini turkey bowl so that was pretty dope. My team made the gnarliest come back of all time. We played with two South American Elders who didn't understand anything about football. I can't tell you how many times we tried telling them "once you throw the ball forward, you can only throw it back, not forward again!" Good heck! It was ridiculous. I was about to lose my marbles. By the end of the day it was all good.  They eventually semi-understood. :) 

Wednesday: We have been trying to pass by and meet a guy named Raul who is an investigator, but he's been out of town for the past couple months. We finally passed by on Wednesday and boom, he's home. He invites us right in asks if we want anything to drink, to eat, makes us a huge plate of fruit. Gives us a tour of his house  He has a BBQ on his deck. He's got apple TV set up, and to top it off, he's got a freaking theater screen in his living room. The first thing that pops into my head is that this guy is straight golden.  He's getting dunked ASAP. So we have a really good lesson with him, talk about Jesus and how he loves all of us. We invite him to church, he says of course. So, we end with a prayer, set up another appointment, and leave. We get home and we are looking through our area book to write down the appointment and fill in his teaching record but we can't find it. We look through all the papers and finally at the end, IN THE MEMBERS' SECTION, we find Raul. Turns out he's a freakin' member and just hasn't been to church in ages! 😂 I didn't know how to react!  It was so funny and I  had to laugh of course. 

We had a really fun thanksgiving day as well! We got invited to go to the mission home (finally... it was my first time) and eat with President Anderson, his wife, a couple other senior missionaries and a couple other elders as well. It was soooo trunky Hahahaha the food was so American! We had a turkey that one of the senior couples bought from the American army base that's here.. good heck it was so good. We all ate so much food haha and then for dessert, Sister Anderson made pumpkin cinnamon rolls 😛😛😛😛 I've never consumed something so great tasting in my entire mission. It was a phenomenal way to spend my last thanksgiving in Spain :):):):) 

Friday rolled around and we didn't have a whole lot to do. The church released a new video for Christmas! It's a good one for sure. So our goal was to share the video with as many people as we could! We went and knocked doors in a huge building. 64 doors.. 3 people answered. One was an angry Englishman who slammed the door in our faces. One was a girl who wasn't wearing a shirt. The other was a member who is from Hungary hahaha. So yeah, we showed it to a member. That's cool. After that, we went and had a really good lesson with Leonor! She's the best! :) We went in and she started asking questions right away about what she had read in the BOM. We answered her questions and then we started to talk about the Plan of Salvation. SHE LOVED IT! So many questions and so much relief that she's going to be able to live with her parents and grandparents again! It was so cool to see her happy that she could do work in the temple so that the people in her family that have passed away aren't lost and can still be saved. :) I just love this Gospel so much! 😊 She's still progressing towards the 17th, but still the only thing that will stop her is living with her boyfriend. 😬 Prayers, prayers, prayers, please people! 🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻

And Saturday... Wow! SO MUCH FREAKING RAIN IT WAS ABSOLUTELY RIDICULOUS. It started raining at 10 AM and didn't finish until 10 PM. We barely even got to leave the piso because we had to wait for my shoes to dry. Nobody was in the streets and we didn't have anything set and it was just awful... but funny hahaha. Complete downpour all day. I was so wet. 

That pretty much sums up my week. I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving and ate lots of food.  😜 Have a fantastic week and you can count on hearing from me next Monday!! Happy December! 🤑

Much love.

Rubik's Cubin'

Elder T Ham

Cool pic I took by the beach.

View from the Mission Home

Giving thanks with all these people one last time in Spain :)

No caption needed

Week 65: Thankful for you wonderful people :)

Heyyyy all 😊

Well, well, well. Here I am again, here we are again. :) My week went by pretty fast, right? Lol no idea. But I'm in Fuengirola Spain and it's pretty dope I guess. :) Here's some of my weeeeek. 🤑

So the beginning of the week was way different. Nye left to go pick up his new comp from Malaga, so I was with Elder Bushman who is still in his training. He went to Viewmont, he's an interesting kid and very  funny homie. We went and I said bye to a couple of the people I'm gonna miss over there in Cartagena. I didn't get to say bye to everyone but the major ones I did. :) 

Wednesday I left for Cartagena and was traveling most of the day. I got here and we went to the mission office (which is here in Fuen) and I met my new companion there. I also got to see all of the missionaries who went home. Two of my ex-companionss were there. My stepdad Elder Rex and also Elder Lowry. It's so weird to think both of them are going home, I remember celebrating Elder Rex's one year Mark with him like it was yesterday and saying, "When you go home I'll have seven months left!" NOW IT'S HERE! WHAT THE HECK? I'm not gonna lie. I was tripping pretty hard that day. We had English classes that night and they were not good at all so hopefully we have some improvement there. 😂 I was very homesick the first couple days. I'm not sure why though to be honest. We're all gravy now because I'm getting to know everyone a little more and the area.  

Facts about Fuen:

Our number one investigator is named Leanor and she is soooo awesome. :) She has two kids named Sara and the other is Christopher. Sara was baptized about a year ago and now we are working on her Mom. Chris is two years old and a total riot. He's freakin' insane and such a hoot. We had a really good lesson with them on Friday and it was about the Restoration and we focused on the Book of Mormon and Joseph Smith. Leanor has been reading a ton and she's almost done with Ether!!! She has so many awesome questions and we set a baptismal goal as the 17th of December for her. :) The only problem is that she's living with her boyfriend and they're not married. So in order to get baptized, she's gotta kick him out or the other way around. That's a tough situation but I know the Lord will do what needs to be done on his own time and everything will work out in the end. :) They also came to church and for the first time stayed for all three hours! I'm so stoked to see what happens with Leanor. :) 

There is a ton of tourists here... so I'm going to try and take advantage and relearn how to speak/teach/pray in English. Because I have no idea how to do it. There are lots of Finnish drunk guys here that are way funny. There are lots of English people. In our ward there's multiple people who don't even speak Spanish. A member gave a talk in English and someone had to translate for him so it was like a double talk. 😂

I gave my testimony yesterday and told everyone my name was Elder Jamón, people still love that joke. :) I love seeing everyone get a good kick out of it hahaha. I also mentioned that Pops served here and a couple people came up to me and said my name was familiar and it turns out one of the members remembers him! Hopefully I get to know her and her family more and they feed us a lot. :) 

We played soccer the other day and one of our investigators came has a ton of friends that are members hopefully we can get him goin to church with us.

As of now, you guys know about as much as me.  I'll keep trying to learn these streets and you guys continue to have great weeks and HAPPY LAST THANKSGIVING WITHOUT T HAM. I hope you all get fat and have fun! :) 

Much love. 

Thanks Givin'

Elder T Ham 🦃

Our Thanksgiving Dinner!

Week 64: I'm in love with the COKO 💎💯💸

Hello everyone :) 

Wowzers, well got quite a bit of stuff to mention. Starting off with I'M LEAVING CARTAGENA!!! I'll be going to Fuengirola which is about 45 minutes away from Malaga! My new comp's name is Elder Pearce. I saw pics of him he looks like he's about 14 years old. I feel so old. He only has like 3 months in the mission. :) I think he's from Utah so it should be good to see what happens in Fuen! Here's some of the stuuuuff about my week though.

We had intercambios with the some of the Elders in our district on Tuesday. I worked with Elder Kärn pronounces Shaaan, from Sweden! Freakin homie. I love him. He's hilarious. We had a grand time together and Elders Nye and Adcock did as well. In total for Tuesday we taught about 9 lessons! Hahaha! Way dope. :) 

On Monday we had a way cool thing that happened. Monday night all our plans failed us so we decided to pass by some members/investigators we hadn't ever passed by before because ya know, why not? So we go there and it turns out it's a member who we knew fairly well! It also turns out that her husband isn't a member. :) So... we had a WAY BOMB lesson with them. When we got there he goes, "Yeah, I don't know if I really believe in God." So I showed him a video about faith, we bore our testimonies like never before, (literally I was straight up with this guy and told him (kind of yelling but not really) I was like Edward, I swear to you if you kneel down in prayer and humble yourself, asking if God is there, He will answer you and by the end of the lesson he was like, "Yeah. Ya know! There's totally gotta be something." God is real. The Spirit was so strong. :) We were talking about how he said God wasn't real and I pulled up the lyrics to the children's hymn called Child's Prayer and his daughter who's 13 was reading it and the mom and her started crying and oh man, it was just the best lesson I've ever been part of in my life. :) 

Right after we got done with that amazing experience I called our homie Juan and I said, "Dude! Let's meet tomorrow." He said ok but you guys can't talk to me about God or the gospel or anything. He was like your missionary days with me are over. Then he's like "BUT, when I get baptized, you guys have taught me everything!" I is very confusing. But like I've said before, Juan just needs to have faith and not over think. 😩 Hopefully his time will come soon because he needs it so bad!! Either way, we are his friend and will be there for him.

Friday we had a good zone meeting. It was good and I learned a lot. It was a freakin' long ways away thought. I didn't think I was gonna make it. It was worth it though because after we had good burritos. Holy wow! They were straight from Mexico man. Rrrrico papi. 

We had a really funny/good lesson with a less active named Veronica. She can't come to church because she works always. She's the lady  who takes care of the old guy that I sent a video of a while ago that sounds like a zombie. Anyways, we're in her house and a game show is on the TV. A guy starts presenting himself and his name is Yas. When we saw this my companion and I turn to each other and at the same time we both say YAAAASSS in the most white girl voice of all time. Hahahaha! Oh my gosh! We were laughing so hard it was hilarious. Later in the lesson Veronica was telling us about how she read something a while back about polygamy, but when she was telling us she couldn't remember the word and she's like "what's like the guys called when they have lots of girls that the church used to practice?" Without thinking or anything I just blurt out "Pimps!" Hahahahaha! My comp died. It was funny and then I realized I said it. I was like, "Wait! No! That's polygamy." It was so funny. 

That was pretty much the week. I'm semi sad about leaving Cartagena, but I'm way stoked to get to Fuengirola. :) I'll hopefully have some good stuff for you all next week! I hope you all have a fantastic week and I'll be tryin to do the same. :) 

MUCH love.

Greenie Breakin',

Elder Tanner Brady Hammond

This is all that happened this week, hence the subject. 

Week 63: When Ke$ha said "it's going down, I'm yelling timber" she was talking about our country.

Gooood Monday to my favorite people ever :) 

Another week has come and gone and it was a fairly good one! Pretty normal other than we had intercambios with the zone leaders. This coming week I have to do intercambios again with some Elders in my district so that'll be goin down on Tuesday to Wednesday. We will be getting some news on transfers coming up this week as well so I'll for sure let you know about that too. Before I forget I gotta give the littlest brother two shoutouts. One for his birthday on Thursday.. DOUBLE DIGITS! Happy birthday stud! :) And another one for taking the championship on Saturday!!! The kid is 10 and he already has more championships than his oldest brother! 😳 So yeah! Good job R Ham! 🙌🏻 Now here's some of my week. :) 

Tuesday was a way good day. We had district meeting and it went really well, then with the other district in our zone we all ate together and so that was always fun. After that, we went and had a lesson with an investigator named Noemi from Nicaragua. Later that day we went and met with some new investigators named Mari and Joey, they're from Zimbabwe. We celebrated Mari's birthday with some very frozen cheesecake and there were a ton of people so we just showed a video and then we testified. You could tell some of the people really liked it. :) After we played soccer with a couple of investigators and other missionaries. It was a grand time.  

Well on Wednesday, like I said, we went and did splits with the zone leaders. I went with Elder Padilla and he's such a beast. I loved being able to work with him! We taught a lesson to an investigator who wants to be baptized, but she's living with her boyfriend and they have a kid so we had a lesson about marriage and we were talking about how the gospel blesses families. We challenged her to read the scriptures and pray every morning and night before they go to sleep together! She said she would do it so I'm waiting to hear how it went.   

Thursday morning we were still in Los Alcázares from splits, we didn't do much in the morning, caught a bus home around 1:30 and got home round 2:00. We came home and then later we had a lesson with an investigator named Jose. We talked to him about the 10 commandments and it was a pretty good lesson. Thursday night we had our weekly English class and noche de hogar and it was my turn to teach it. I talked about prayer and had a little activity using a tie and they had to tie a knot in it without letting go of it with their hands and the only way to do it is crossing your arms like you're praying. :) Hahahahaha! I got a package too. 😍😍😍 I said haha so much because I brought the Mike 'n Ike's to the church with us and one of the dudes comes up to me and my comp as he's eating one and tells us that the candy looks like the "pisha de un gato" hahahahah which means, well, a cat's private part. You could say we died laughing especially cuz the sisters were like what does that mean??? 😂😂 Way funny.

Friday... hmmmmmm. We were supposed to have a cita with Jarel but his parents weren't home :( we had a really good lesson with a less active that we have and we read in Enos and talked about answers to prayer and it was really good! Later we walked a lot and talked with a couple different/new people. Really not much happened. Oh, I just remembered! We finally met with Juan again! We had a good lesson with him about the Plan of Salvation it was awesome. He found a job here in Cartagena so we will be able to meet easier and more often with him! 

Saturday was boring as well except for we played soccer in the morning up in Los Alcázares with the zone leaders and other Elders as well. A ton of members came and we are planning on playing every Saturday so I'm down. :) A couple funny things happened Saturday night. We had nothing set so our goal was just to find people. We went to a place called Santa Ana and it's just a cute little down not big at all. We were walking and these two 13 year old girls from the other side of the street just yell "HEY MISSIONARIES!!" So we're like "Oh hey!" and wave keep walking then we hear them telling us to wait so they ran over to us we talked to them for like 20 mins just about what we are doing and we told them about the Book of Mormon and gave each of them one and they got so excited. They loved it. We told them about our English classes and they got even more excited so hopefully they come to that. (Luke... I'll be sure to talk about you since they're your age bro. I got you 😏) 

Sunday we did the usual, ate with Pepe and Trini and then went to church. :) 

Thank you all for everything you guys do and I hope you have a greatttt week. :) Let me know who wins the elections. Nothing compares to our parade election. I'll attach the pic so nobody forgets my last 4th of July back home. 😂😂 BYE PEOPLE LOVE YOU ALL!!!

Much Love.

Trumppin,

Sir T Ham 💸

PS - Garet and Keri vetoed the picture of the parade election.  If you saw it you would thank us. 😂 We are trying to protect those involved and the innocent.  

Posers

At a castle with the cruise ships

Cool castle again :)