Week 75: Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Chaaaanges & I'm 20 💰😱

Ladies and Gentlemen, Boys and Girls, Children of all ages,

Welcome to the week of Elder T Hammy! Another one bites the dust and it's been quite the week. It was full of intercambios, a worldwide mission conference & a whole lotta nothin! I don't have a ton to write, but let's get to itttt. 😊

Sooooo, Tuesday me and hijito (my companion Elder Bettridge) made our way out to Malaga for splits with the ZLs. I was really excited for this one because I was with Elder BERRY!!! He was my companion back in Almería about a year ago. :) It was so awesome to be with him again, we've both changed a lot and when we were together it was so much fun. I wanted to work on teaching in the streets, so we did our best to find some people in the street to teach! We found a couple of people and taught them and it was cool to work with Elder Berry again and see how much we've both grown and how much our Spanish has improved. We used to be some of the youngest but now we are literally the oldest 2 elders in our whole zone. 😂😂😂 That's so weird how fast time goes by. Good Ghandi.

Wednesday was the Missionary Conference! It was so  freaking awesome. We had one last January and I loved it. I was sooo excited for this one. :) This is where the first part of the subject comes into play, because they announced some changes to the life of a missionary! Starting now, we get a longer Pday (holla atcha boi). We will start planning in the morning which means that we will basically just get home at night and be able to just relax and they are letting us go to
bed as early as we want from when we get home haha. Then some other minor changes to the schedule and when things are done during the day! It was funny because as they were announcing the changes, they were doing it for like normal missions in the states. However, because we are in Spain, we knew that our schedule would be totally different so we weren't too interested in like the timing of everything because we knew our mission would be totally different. We were right. :) All in all it was a great conference. 😊

Other than that, not a whole lot. We played basketball on Friday with a recent convert and another member. They are from El Salvador. They were so good! It was fun. Bridget and Leonor were both sick this past week so neither of them could meet with us :( but Leonor's daughter Sara, who is like 9, and a member came to church. It had been a couple weeks since I had seen her and she sees me and just yells my name and gave me a huge smile! 😍😍😍 Awe man it was adorable! She's so cute!  I love her so much! :) We're planning on meeting with both of them this week so we can get back into the groove of things meeting regularly and what not.

I wish I had more to write to you guys, but I don't! I'm
sorry, but I promise next week will be better! Happy Super Bowl Sunday this week, Go Cardinals! (Name who said it and you win a prize from me) AND I'LL TALK TO YOU GUYS WHEN IM TWENTY YEARS OLD WUT. I love you all :)

Much love.
One year older and wiser too,
Elder Tanner Brady Hammond 💰😏😍💰

Splitz in a SKETCHY elevator

Mission Conference

Dope skies of Spain

Week 74: Like a Trampoline ⚛️

Dear People,

Greetings to all my fellow citizens of the world! Its me, Tanner again. Of course, you already knew that due to the fact you're reading this email. :) I'll start off this email by apologizing if it's blandness. Literally nothing happened this week so this will probably be my worst email of all time. 🙃 I did realize what Drake meant when he said "Like a sprained ankle, boy I ain't nothing to play with" tho! But that'll be for later. :) Here's my weeeeeeeeek.

Alrighty then Tuesday we had a wayyyy good district meeting. For those of you who also read my boy Elder Beckstrom's emails, you'll notice we both usually say that nothing compares to our district meetings. Well, it's because it's true. We're still banking on president making us zone lords together sometime soon. 😝 We'd give a killer zone meeting. But our district meeting was good. I gave a workshop on trust and faith and I used the example of Jared's brother in Ether 2 & 3. Such a grand story. I just love it. After we made our way over to Dominos for some buffet pizza and might I add - Fuen has the best Dominos I've eaten in history.

Let's see! Not a whole lot happened on Wednesday and Thursday. Now that I think about it I literally can't remember anything from those days haha. I'm sorry. I think we passed by some old investigators and we got lucky and found some at home and taught them a lesson! It went decently well, but then ended with them saying that they already believe their evangelical church is true so no need for us to try to convince them otherwise. They said we could pass by when we were in the area but other than that not to waste our time haha. So I mean a solid lesson just not much came of it except that they are really great to meet with and have become our friends.  

We met with Bridget again! And we had a way good lesson with her on Friday about the Plan of Salvation and she loved it! She told us family is a big part of why she has interest in the church, and she said she really does want to gain her own testimony about the truth of all this stuff and know it's true. :) She told us she was going to come to church again and it was a really good lesson. The bad part of it: the next day we were walking in the street on our way to play some soccer, and we passed her and she was smokinggggggg 🙃😩 and I'm not talking like smoking hot, I'm sayin' like a cig guys.. let's just say it was a bit awkward.. haha we just said hi to each other and kept walking.. after we passed her I say "Welp, I'm willing to give you 90 dollars if she comes to church tomorrow." 

She didn't come. Dang! 

But hey! Like I said we were on our way to play some soccer! First time I've played in about 2 months and boy oh boy did it feel nice to get on the field again. I will admit, I was a little rusty, but I will admit I held my ground. Now if you'll remember earlier how I mentioned that I know understand what Drake meant? This is where that comes in to play. Alright so I got the ball right and I'm on a fast break, I'm weavin' in 'n out of all these kids and then I stop cuz someone is in front of me.  SO I RAINBOW THE BALL OVER HIS HEAD FIRST TIME EVER ATTEMPTED IN A GAME. The ball goes over his head, the ball comes down right underneath me, I try to keep running, I step on the ball, and I fall to the ground. Ankle = gonzo. Oh but people the amount of potential that was available in this play was incredible. You should have seen me out there. I looked like Greg Ostertag or Mark Sanchez in their prime. (lol) but yeah long story short I did a sick soccer move over this kid and then stepped on the ball and totally destroyed my ankle. It hurt but it was cool. 

I think that's pretty much it for now! Like I said, not a whole lot happened other than what you've read. I love you all and I want you to know I'm happy and loving it out here. Some days more than others but I mean for example yesterday was just a great day. Nothing happened in particular, I just I found myself smiling all day. ☺️☺️☺️ Life is good and God is great. I love this Gospel and I love all of you :) Have a grand week!

Much love.

Ankle Breakin',

T Boyyyy 🌈

DORK!

Worldwide Mission Conference

Week 73: Selfies & Testigos 😛

Ladies & Gentlemen :) 

Ahh man! What a week it's been here in good ol Fuen :) S/O's this week: FAMILY cuz the best and sent me a package with dad's work friend full of letters and love. :) I love you family! :) My boy Brady Childs needs a shout out cuz he's peacin' tomorrow on the Lord's errand. He's gonna kill it in Brazil I know it. :) Good luck bro ❤ Also shouts to Grandpa Kenneth and my cuzzzzz Kanon cuz they have their birthdays tomorrow! Happy birthday lads, love and miss you both. :) Alrighty then... I guess I'll tell you guys a little bit about my week! 

So Wednesday we had Zone Conference with two other zones over in Málaga, it was a really good conference! The APs called everyone telling them they had to prepare a five minute talk and that they'd choose three random missionaries to speak. Well, of all 55 missionaries there, guess who was one of them? Yep, me. 🙄 It's okay. :) I talked about The Doctrine of Christ and read a little bit in 2 Nephi 31 when Nephi is talking about Christ's example that we need to follow. I also shared a little bit out of the talk from last conference called "The Master Healer". It was good stuff. :) That night we had English classes and after a less active member calls us and is like, "Hey! I have two friends over right now, can you come

over?" So we're like siiiick. We went over and taught them but it wasn't anything special. They didn't seem too interested and honestly I don't think either of them understood Spanish para nada lol. One of them was from London and the other was from Turkey. I'd say it in Spanish then repeat it in English. It was weird. 

But that same less active member literally planned out our entire week for us! She has a ton of friends that she wants to listen to us. She scheduled at least one cita with all of them for every day of the week. Thursday we went over and we met with a new girl from Ecuador named Nancy. She had a little bit of interest, but maybe the more we teach her, the more she will open up. The lesson went really well though! We talked about the restoration a little bit and how much God loves us. :) 

Friday we had a lesson out in our pueblo called Benalmádena. It is a super touristy place. I love it. It's beautiful! We were supposed to meet in a park with a guy, but he was taking forever and we had to get back so we called him and rescheduled for Saturday. We caught the train home and then we went back over to Lorena's house (the less active who set up all the citas) and taught our investigator Bridget! We watched the restoration video with her and she had a ton of questions about baptism and the priesthood! She loved the video and is progressing really well. She mentioned how baptism is something that's life changing and how she really wants to make sure she does it for herself because it's what the spirit tells her is true. 😊 She also came to church with her daughter Nikol again yesterday! It was awesome and they both loved it a ton. :)  

Saturday we went back to meet with the guy who bailed on us on Friday, and he bailed on us again. It's okay because we contacted this guy who was very religious and he gave us a picture of Jesus and he just went off on what he thinks about Jesus. He's a good guy. And I also got a cool pic of the park/ocean so I'll for sure send that. :) Later we met with Leonor! Her baptism was supposed to be this day buuuut she's still living with her boyfriend. So we talked to her about that and she said she literally never had time to talk to him so it's really hard. He's always busy or she is doing something. But we read with her in 2 Nephi 31 about baptism and how if Christ was perfect but was still baptized, how important it is for us who aren't perfect to be baptized! She talked about how she really does want to be baptized, and she had some doubts/questions about the Priesthood and why women can't have it. We told her the priesthood is meant to bless everyone, not just the men, and how God said it would be that way, so that's how it is. Luckily our ward mission leader helps us take care of questions like that too. She understands now and she knows that just because the women in the church don't have the priesthood, doesn't mean they don't play a huge roll in the church. :) It was a really good lesson and instead of setting a new baptismal goal with her, we set a goal of when she needed to talk to Jamie (her boyfriend) so that later we can set a baptismal goal again.

A couple funny things that happened to end my email and will explain my subject line. We were walking in the street one morning and this construction worker comes up to us randomly.  He says, "Yo! Can I take a selfie with you guys?" I told him yes and so he took a selfie with us. :) Then later that day, we were just about to leave to go work and someone rings our door so I go over to the phone and pick it up and this guy asks if Christian lives here. I said I was sorry but he had the wrong piso. Two minutes later someone knocks on our door so I open the door and it's two guys and my first thought was Jehovah's Witnesses. I was right. They go hey is Christian or Isaac here? I'm like no. They say oh well someone told us his name was Isaac and that he lived here and wants to learn more about our church. We're Jehovah's Witnesses.  I say, "Well guys, Christian and Isaac don't live here and I'll be honest with you, I do exactly what you guys are doing but for my church, we're Mormons." They laughed and so they gave me a pamphlet from their church and  I went and grabbed a restoration pamphlet and gave it to them. So yeah that was definitely one of the weirder things that's happened to me on my mish. 

Well boys and girls, there ya have it. It's been a good week and we're hoping for another good one! Elder Bettridge's Spanish is coming a long little by little, but he'll get there. He's working hard! :) I love you all and I hope you have a great week! 

Much love.

Good News Preachin,

T_HAM2

My group from the MTC... our hermanas go home in 2 weeks! 😳

Pretty park :)

Me singing in the talent show 😂

Week 72: I almost got hit by a car today lol

Fellow Mates,

Oh my good golly gee I just want you all to know how much I miss you guys. I hope your week has been amazing, mine was pretty solid. :) I also just wanted to clear up two quick things about my email from last week. 

1. When I said Abraham's wife, I meant Lot's wife. My bad haha. 
2. Also 2nd thing, The selfie of me was not on the toile.. Hahaha! It was in the bathroom but I wasn't on the toilet, the lighting was just really good 😬😂! So, yeah!  Just so you know! :) 

BUT HERE'S MY WEEK!

Leonor - we met with her on Saturday and it was awesome! We haven't been able to meet with her for the past couple of weeks so it was good to finally meet with her. We watched the movie of John Tanner and talked about the faith he had to help the church out with his money and how he had the faith that his leg could be healed. We talked about how he acted on his faith. We told her that she needed to act in her faith as well. Last time we met with her we talked about how in order to be baptized she needs to either move out or get married. She told us neither of them really want to get married but she does want to get baptized. We told her to tell her boyfriend that she wanted to get baptized and see what he thought. Anyways, this time we did a check up on how it went but she said she wasn't able to talk to him about it, so we told her about how she really needs to trust in the Lord that he will help her out because she's doing what is necessary to return to live with him again. The spirit was so strong and it was awesome. :) So hopefully she is able to talk to him about it! Also, I forgot to mention we actually got a chance to meet him and he watched some of the movie with us but then he left. He's a good guy, but just doesn't have any interest.. yet. 😜

Bridget - well we met with her and her 14-year old daughter Nikol and we taught them at her friend's house who is a member with our ward mission leader and it was great! We talked about the restoration and she had a lot of good questions and it was good because we didn't know she had a daughter but she was there and listened and loved it as well! The best part was this Sunday. She was planning on coming to church with her friend, so we called her on Saturday to see if she was still coming but she didn't answer. When Sunday rolls around and we're about to start and she came in with Nikol and her 3 year old Christopher came in! Ahh! It was so awesome to see them all! They loved all three hours too so that is good. After sacrament meeting, one of the members came up to Nikol and they were already friends so that helped out a ton and the mom and Bridget were also already friends! It was awesome! They're both progressing really well and we are meeting with them tomorrow night and hopefully going to be setting a baptismal date. :) 

We had some interesting things happen this week with some Spaniards... I don't know why, but every Spanish male we talked to just was in the worst mood ever. First of all. I was making calls to see if some of the referrals we had wanted to meet with us and I called one of the numbers and asked for the girl and this guy says he has nothing to do with her, so I'm like alright well I might as well see if he has any interest... I go "Oh, excuse me I must be mistaken, what's your name?" He goes, "I've been talking to you for 30 seconds and you wanna know my name?" I say, "Oh, I'm sorry." Then he said that he doesn't  even know me and he's not going to give me his (lots of swear words) name. I said that I just wanted to share a message about Jesus with him. Oh my goodness! This guy went OFF. You guys all have seen the Spongebob episode where they learn about the swearwords right? At the end when Mr. Krabs just explodes with swears? Yeah, I felt like I was right there with them except instead of old car horns and dolphins squeals it was the and every other word you can think of. 

Second story. We were in the elevator on our way out to work and a guy gets in on the floor below us. The first thing out of his mouth is calling us swear words.  With a huge smile on my face I introduced myself and companion and said that we would like to get to know him better. He got even more mad! He starts yelling at me because apparently the missionaries before us make too much noise upstairs at 7:00 in the morning. I'm sure we make noise at that time also and so told him I was sorry and I'm like sorry we have weights we didn't know anyone lived below. We haven't had anyone tell us to keep it down before so we didn't know. I thanked him for telling us. Then I tell him I've only been here for like a month and he interrupts me and goes says he doesn't care if I've been here for 3 seconds or 4 years shut up! I'm like sorry guy we will. :) Then he's like, "I see Jesus on your door, I believe in Jesus and Jesus thinks of others. Well, you don't think of others. You just think about yourself! Uhhhh ohhhh... the family will understand when I say I almost went "Keri" on this guy. In the calmest way possible (on the calm scale of 1-10 (10 being my mom when she's absolutely livid) I give myself a 6) I told him I'd love for him to find two other 18-19 year old kids who gave up everything they had to come out here and serve God and serve other people. I told him that thinking of others and serving them is all I've done every single day for the past 18 months and I'm the happiest person ever doing it. When I said all that he didn't say a word. I told him if he has a problem with us next time to just politely ask if we could stop doing it and we'd be more than happy to stop. 😊 The best part of it all was we get out of the door and my comp goes.. "I have no idea what just went down or what was said but you just made that man poop his pants!" hahahahahhahah 😂

So yeah that's my week! :) It was a good one for sure even though those two jerk faces tried to ruin it hahaha. I hope you guys have an excellent week! 

Much Love.

George Lopez,

E. T Ham™

Some cool sand art!

Goofy!  My BOY!!!

Week 71: Deja Vu 🏦

What's uppppp erry11111 :) 

Well wowzers! Time is going by so fast. MY week was a good one. Some ups, some downs, some grapes, some food, some talkin' in church, some training and some New Year. :) 

I'll start off with the ups. :) Monday night after we ended PDay, Elder Pearce and I taught our last lesson together to a new investigator named Bridget!! Ahh! She's awesome for sure. She's a referral from a less active in the ward. She came to the Christmas dinner a couple of weeks ago. She's from Columbia and lives in Spain with her sister but only has been here for about 2 months. She has 2 kids and has a desire to follow Christ. :) We talked about the Book of Mormon and we wanted to give her a copy but she says, "Oh! I already have one!" I asked he if she would read it and pray to know if it's true because that would be a good idea for sure. So she is going to read it. She wanted to come to church with us too so we went by her house yesterday buuuuut she was caught up with all the stuff for New Years (that was kinda the down of the week as well) but hopefully she comes this week! We are meeting with her again tonight so I'll letcha know how it goes! :) 

Training - Well, my new companions name is Elder Bettridge. He is from Hurricane, Utah! He's a good kid for sure! He's quiet, but you all know me and know I will break him out of his shell! 😏 I picked him up in Malaga on Wednesday, then we came and we were in meetings/devotionals/firesides with all the other brand new missionaries all night. The next morning they had an appointment for their residency so they did that while all of us trainers hung out in the office. I met a couple of new elders. One is named Elder Krummenacker or something like that. He is straight up one of the funniest people I've ever met. Also his trainee is from Draper, Elder Rembacz. He is a total homie!  They both slept over in our piso on Wednesday night it was a good time!

Food - We ate on Saturday night for New Year's Eve with our first counselor in the bishopric and his family. It was really fun and pretty good. We were with them from 8 until 10:45 ish and then we went back to the office and waited for the New Year to come. :) 

Grapes - Spanish tradition is the last 12 seconds of the year you get to eat a grape for every second. So the members we were with gave each of us 12 grapes and we spent the end of 2016 eating grapes! Me, Elder Bettridge, Elder Gomez and Elder Pesce were in the office and celebrated there. Elder Garrard and Elder Ohlund ditched us and went to their piso. But it was fun. I'm extremely excited for 2017! 😛😛😛

Talks in church - yesterday I started off the year with a killer talk in sacrament meeting :) I talked about the Light of Christ and how all of us can find it we just have to look for it. Everyone told me they loved my talk so I mean I guess it was the bomb.com right?

I watched a video that came out a couple of years ago talking about Abraham's wife. it was about how she dwelt on her past too much and when she looked back she turned into salt. Anyways, there was a scripture in the video and it was in Genesis 19 verse 17 and it's short, sweet, and simple: "Look not behind thee." Don't look back on the past. Remember the good times, yeah.. but don't worry about mistakes that were made or anything like that. Look forward to new things. 

A new year gives us the opportunity to start fresh and make the most of it. So don't look back, just look forward to bigger and better things and learn from the past. I look forward to seeing you guys in 2017! 😍

Have a great week and thank you all so much and I love you all :) 

Much love.

2017,

T Ham 🐲

Selfie cuz new year and only pic I got 😊

Week 70: Short and Sweet. I'm Training! Happy New Year!

HEY LADIES AND GENTLEMEN!

Well, I talked to the fam bam yesterday so I don't have a ton to say for a whole letter, but I just want to wish you all a HAPPY NEW YEAR this upcoming week! I can't believe it's like literally 2017... I'm looking forward to a lot of big things happening in 2017. I also want to thank everyone who sent me packages!!! Ah! You guys are the best and I love you all so much. I hope your Christmas was grand, and 2016 goes out with a 💥.

Soooo... some stuff about my week right quick. We met with a new home boy from Columbia named Cristian who is 21 years old. We showed up to the cita with him and he got very excited to meet us. He like hugged me! Hahahaha! It was so funny. So he goes on and tells me that he wants to be a missionary and I was like, "Okay, first we need to teach you everything and then you have to get baptized AND THEN you can go on a mission." And then he says, "K! Sick! So when am I getting baptized?? Haha! I was like, "Now man! Let's go!" So we are going to be meeting with him again soon and I'm excited for that! :)

Also, as the subject says, I'm going to be getting my first hijo! I'll be training a brand new missionary and he won't know any Spanish. He is coming straight from the good 'ol USA to the MTC to me. I pick him up on Wednesday and so I'll be sure to get some pics for next week! Wish me luck! 😬

Thursday Hermana Burrell and I did our dance/song (no touching) in the talent show, and as presumed we killed it! 😛 Hahaha! It was so fun and everyone loved it! The music was a little loud but I mean other than that and my shirt coming untucked we did a really good job and it was fun! :)

I love you ALL so much, have a great end of the year and you'll hear from me next year! HAVE A GREAT WEEK AND MAY GOD RAIN BLESSINGS ON ALL OF YOU HUMANS!

Much love.
Trizzainin'
E. Tan Ham :)

The zone in Malaga on Christmas Eve

We went to an aquarium today for PDay before we came to Malaga. It was dope! We played mini golf and I won! :)