Week 87: Fell off the jetway again... & the best hour of my life 😌

MY PEOPLE,

Hellllooooo family friends and everyone else reading this I'm assuming if you're reading it you're either a family member or a friend.. but if you're some random person reading on my blog well, hello to you stranger :) Our week was freakin' doooope. We had some success with our investigators. Yes! Plural! We have another one now. We're the best! I know I know. Well..kinda. It's a kid who has is whole family are members but he's 8 and just doesn't wanna get baptized and now we are talking to him and he wants to so bad but that's later. HERE IS MY WEEK! 😊

Tuesday we had district meeting and it was super short so nobody complained about that haha. I had to give the opening prayer so that of course just set the tone for a bomb meeting duh. Then after we ordered Kebab and while we waited in the church, the Elders had a ping pong tourney. Let's just say I put on for my city 😎 took the crown and it was sad how easy it was. I took on Papito (Elder Salazar) in the championship round and beat him "humbly". (11-5) 'twas good indeed.

Wednesday night we had our lesson with the little kid who didn't wanna be baptized. His name is Gonzalo haha he's so freakin' funny. He's 8 and his sister Marta is 9 and they are  bundles of energy. Holy wowzers people! NON STOP talking and yelling and laughing and running around. It's insane. It's really funny cuz their dad is a.. well, there's no really subtle way to put this but he's is a very large man haha. It's really funny when he tried to catch the kids from running around. He tried while we were there and after about 30 seconds he was outta breath and he sits down & goes "I gotta lose some weight Elders, this isn't good" hahahahahaha it was so funny. We had a really good lesson in the Restoration with Gonzalo and at the end we asked if he had any questions and he goes "Yes... I wanna be baptized" It was funny cuz his dad was saying how he just didn't wanna be baptized and so they were gonna wait and then when he said that his dad looked at him with the look of "what the heck did you just say?" It was funny :) So they're gonna baptize him in August or July sometime when all their family can come. :)

We met with Amalia again and we had a WAY FREAKIN' GOOD LESSON WITH HER!!! It was so awesome. We read in 2 Nephi 31 and we were gonna read it all three of us together but she didn't want to read out loud so Van Moos and I just read and at the end she was like "Wow! That was really good. I feel good right now" and we both kinda just looked at each other like "Dude. Woah. The Spirit is really  working!" But after we read I look at her and I said "Amalia, I don't know if you've been praying to know if God is true, but I can already see a difference between now and when I first met you." She kinda lit up and admitted she was feeling better about everything and then I asked her if she would be baptized when she gets a for sure answer and she said YES!!! But............ since she's a foreign exchange student, she can't be baptized while she's here. 😑 It was kinda a dagger to the heart lol but I know for a fact that she is starting to feel that God really does exist and she's feeling His love more and more every day. :) Hopefully when she goes home in June she can find the missionaries and see what happens up in Norway. 🇳🇴 :)

There was a way funny story this week. It's probably not gonna sound very funny but oh my gosh my companion and I absolutely died. Hahahaha. Okay so we have a tradition where once a week usually on Friday we go to the McDonalds by our house and we get an ice cream cone. So we're chillin there eating our ice cream and I'm on my iPad and this guy walks in and my comp just goes "uh oh.." hahaha so I'm like "What?" and he's like "This guy right here I just made eye contact and he's way homeless and is gonna ask us for food." I look at him and he just didn't look quite right.  He walks up to us and we both just look at him and he just shakes his head at us and wags his finger and keeps walking so we're like oh okay good haha. He moves on to the next table and does the same thing to them. At the next table is a 35-40 year old couple eating alone minding their own business right? This guy goes up to them and reaches into their bag of garbage on the floor and pulls out an empty box of food and opens it up and starts eating the left over lettuce, onions and sauces and then he starts eating the cardboard and he bites it, realizes it's not supposed to be eating and he like makes this face of absolute disgust and opens his mouth like he's gonna throw up into the box. Luckily he didn't but his face was just the funniest thing ever. Then he puts the box in front of the guy sitting at the table and he reaches into his tray, looks the couple in the eyes, takes a fri, and slowly starts backing away and puts it in his mouth and walks out.... the look on the couple's face was absolutely priceless! My comp and I just died laughing and we were there for a solid 5 minutes just in tears because of what we just saw. Oh my goodness! It was so funny guys. Spain is literally the weirdest country and I love all 2 years I've been here. 😊😂

That's pretty much all I got for ya for now... I GET MY LAST TRANSFER CALLS THIS WEEK. HOLY! WOW! THAT IS INSANE. We find out if Van Moos and I are staying or if he's peacing out.. We're hoping he stays but we're all gravy with whatever yo. I love you all, I hope you have a great week, I hope you're all happy. 🙈💰😍

Much love.
Homegrown Honey, You're SO Money 💰,
t b ham ⚡️🏆

Shark Boy & Lava Girl 😎

Week 86: Faaaaat guy in a little coooat 😎

Fam Fam Fam 😍

Madre mía! It's been such a boring/weird/chaotic week. It was all around good, but not too exciting or anything special. Most of the week was spent trying to get in, through and out of the centro to get to and from our area. I explained that a little bit last week when we decided "if we couldn't beat em, we'd join em!" 😂 We saw some really cool floats for the Semana Santa of Jesus and everything. I took pictures of my favorites so I'll be sure to attach them at the end here. :)

Sooo, we had district meeting on Tuesday. Our DL is almost going home. He leaves in a couple of weeks. 😂 😬 We had intercambios on Thursday and I was with him. He's from Oregon, is 7'1, 300 pounds and he doesn't play sports. 🙃 He's so freakin' giant! He fishes, so that's good for sure. He's a good kid, but like I said, he's kinda ready to go home. 😂 We didn't really have anything special happen during our time together. We taught a couple of street lessons about Easter and showed them the new Prince of Peace video!

We met with Amalia again on Saturday as usual! She's progressing little by little. She said she didn't have time and she kinda forgot to pray. She's reading in the BoM and she's starting to understand the whole prophet concept. She's still unsure if God actually exists, but like I said, little by little haha. We talked about the plan of salvation with her, and it was really cool to see it click with her! When we talked about the 3 kingdoms, she was curious to know how to get to the Celestial, so we are planning on going in depth about that soon. She said she's hopefully going to come to church with us this upcoming week hopefully the members that she lives with will come. They haven't been recently but she said if they go she will come!

We had an English couple come to church the past 2 weeks, and I had to translate for them. The man loves to talk, so it was funny how we would be translating and he'd just turn around and start talking to me and my comp and his wife was just like shut up I wanna know what she's saying! It was so funny. He just kept praising us for the work we are doing and it was actually kind of sad. He was just like bashing on the big guy because it is super obvious that he wants to be done with the mission. 😂 He kept telling me and Van Moos how good we look and he can tell we love what we're doing by the look in our eyes, :,) He was saying how he wished missionaries in Europe would do more service and work with the elderly more. He made a really good point actually. He was saying how if we work with them, they'll ask their kids to look into who we are and from there we will know their kids then start working with them and maybe it'll work back up to the person we helped. We've been focusing a ton on working with younger people from ages 15-25 ish, and it's been alright but maybe the whole working with the older people will help too! We had a family come up to us yesterday and tell us their 8-year old son isn't baptized yet and they want us to come over and help him with that so on Wednesday we're gonna go teach him and see what's up with him. :)

That's pretty much all I got for you guys for this week. I'm sorry it's boring! I promise I'll spice it up next week 🙃 Just know that I love you all and I hope you had a great Easter yesterday!! ❤️

Much love.
Hot cuz I'm fly,
Tanner 

As you can kinda tell from the pics, it was packed everywhere and impossible to get to and from places 

Huge Mexican ship passed thru Huelva yesterday literally biggest flag I've ever seen.

Week 85: If ya can't beat em - join em 😎

Hey Hi Hello Fam 💥

'Tis upppp everyone?! It's me again, comin' atcha from Spain. Another weekly report on what's been happening in my life! I once again find myself getting happier and happier every day and it's just good time to be me. I can't help but think of all the blessings I have in my life, the people I know, the happiness I feel. :) It's all so good and there are so many things all of us have been blessed with so count your many blessings. Love life and love God. Because God is Gr8. 💯

MY WEEK ----

Alrighty then, so Tuesday, we had interviews with President 
and they went really good. We talked a lot about finishing these last 9 weeks with double the effort due to certain circumstances. We basically just talked about the work here and how to help it. We talked a lot about focusing on the right things once I get home to be a great son, sibling, boyfriend, husband, father and example in general to everyone else around me because there are eyes watching. 👀 Good stuff. We missed our bus due to talking to him for so long so we had to wait in Sevilla and it was fun. :)

Wednesday we had to go back to Sevilla for a Zone Conference. I mentioned last week, I got to see my best friend T Becks for first time since 2015. 😭😭 It was a great day to say the least. He didn't save me a seat to eat with him so that was messed que hay though.  😌 I also got to see some ex comps who I love dearly, and a familiar face from WX good ol Chad! It was a great conference and was filled with great insight on how to be a better missionary.

Freakin Beckstrom and I are such a good team, if we were comps.. ahh man. Sister Anderson kinda threw down on some peeps for their dirty apartments that were inspected haha. And also, whenever we get interviewed while we wait, we teach her as if she was an investigator. She threw down on us and basically said we need to be better teachers and that Jesus wasn't a prophet, he was a teacher. It was good stuff! In our defense, we only teach in Spanish so teaching in English was absolutely not normal. I thought we did a fine job but she thought otherwise 😬 and it's good to be reminded. It 
solid 2 hour bus ride and that was that.

We met with a homie named Prince who we didn't know was a member. We thought we had a baptism but then we find out he's a member. It was awkward for sure. He's homeless, from Ghana and so we met with him on a park bench last week. It was a funny lesson because my companion likes to make people laugh randomly so it was funny. Prince is a good guy for sure though. He won't come to church but he loves "da eldas fum da chuch of Jesus cwist of latta day saints" hahaha! That's what he calls us every time he says our name or anything relevant to the church. Really funny. He's a great guy. :)

We met with Amalia again!! It was another solid lesson and she is progressing reading the Book of Mormon. :) We are trying to get a really good friendship with her so that she has a good first impression of the missionaries and mormons in general and we can be our friend if she ever needs us. And so we will talk about random stuff and it's been going really good. :) She doesn't believe in God... yet. But she said she wants to because it would make life easier. We showed her the video The Hope of God's Light, and she absolutely loved it! I looked over at her midway through the video to make sure she was understanding it and she had the chills! It was so awesome! :) We got done and she was like that was incredible. So we talked a little bit out it after and we ended by inviting her to pray to know if God really is there and we bore testimony of His love for her and that He misses her and wants to help her. :) It was a solid lesson all around !😌

SEMANA SANTA!! Holy freakin crazy! Jesus and Mary are everywhereeee. So many people. During the week of Easter, Spaniards go all out people. Like the whole city is just a giant parade and party and so it's just absolutely nuts. We tried to go work yesterday and to go our area. To get to our area you gotta go thru the central part of town which is where ALL the parades and parties are. Sooo we got stuck for 3 hours in the city and finally after about 45 minutes we went with the tactic "Well, if ya can't beat em, join 'em!". So we watched some of the parade and stuff and tried to contact some people. It way very good because we have pictures of Jesus and so we did our best with that. Some people listened, others just took our card because "pity the fool" 😎 which was still good. I'm excited for this whole week! 😂 You'll see lots and lots of pics so be ready.

I love you all! I hope you have a fantastic week and you'll be hearing from ya boii in another 7!! 😛

Much love.
15 Minutes in Heaven 😍
Mister Tanner Hammond 

Myyyyyyy boyyyyyy (Beckstrom)😎😛😍

Da Pier 😌

Semana Santa

Semana Santa madness

Week 84: April Fools, doofus.

People People People,

A very good afternoon/morning/night depending on what time it is to all reading this letter. It's me, Tanner again. But of course, you all already knew that cuz if it wasn't me, you probabaly wouldn't be reading this email. ;) I NEED TO GIVE A SHOUTOUT TO BERKS FOR MAKING THE UTAH CHEERLEADING TEAM! YEAAAAAH BUDDY!!! Congrats sister, I love you and won't be able to watch you much but I'll be cheering for ya. :) It's been a wonderful week here in Huelva. We finally had some good luck and had a good time as well, let's get to it. 😊

Well let's see, Tuesday morning we had a senior couple named the Hopkins come down and they made us pancakes and then we had district meeting and then after that the Hopkins came and inspected our house to make sure it's all clean and we have all the stuff we need. I'm proud to say that of all 25 other companionships, our was among the 5 cleanest 😏 We were the last one, so she may or may not have just been sick of inspections so she did it super fast and didn't really care, but in all reality it was easily the cleanest piso I've ever been in in the past 2 years. 

On Wednesday and Friday for morning exercise, me and Van Moos went over to a park and we ran routes. 😍😍😍😍 Van Moos played in high school and so he's got some pretty good hands luckily. It was so funny though because the grass was wet.  One time he ran a 10 yard curl and he slipped so hard on his butt. It was so funny. After when I couldn't stop laughing he made me run routes for him and I'd be lying if I said I wasn't a younger Odell Beckham Jr. Gosh my dad gave me hands down some of the best hands. By the end of our session, there was a group of like 15 people who just had stopped and watched us. 😂 It was good fun.

We found our first semi-solid investigator since December last week!!! She's so cool her name is Amalia, she's a foreign exchange student from Norway who's living with some members here in Huelva and she's been here for like 7 months so she speaks decent Spanish but pretty much perfect English so that's way cool. :) She's 17 years old but she turns 18 in like a month, which is good because her parents are pretty atheist and wouldn't let her get baptized but once she's 18 she is able to make her own decisions. Hopefully we can help her find the truth and baptize her before both of us go back home in June! Right now she says that she doesn't really believe in God, but she said she wants to because she feels like it would make her life a little easier. :) We talked about the restoration with her and it went really good. We got talking about the Book of Mormon and she asked where the gold plates were now and we told her that Joseph Smith gave them back to Moroni and that Heavenly Father wanted it to be something of faith. She felt frustrated because she didn't understand why God just appeared to him and why doesn't he just come down and say it to everyone the world would be a better place and everything. I didn't really know what to say. We both bore testimony about having faith and that we can find all these answers through prayer and reading and so she said she would read and that she would pray and so we're going to be meeting with her again this Sunday and she seems really excited about it!! :)

On Saturday night we went to the store to buy some candy because Sunday was gonna be spend all day in the church watching General Conference. We were going in and this lady stops us and asks us to get her some bread. I went in and they kicked me out. I asked her if she had any money and she said she wondered if I could buy some bread for her. I figured if I buy her bread, she can't go use it to buy and drugs or anything so I told her I would.  We went in and there was a group of kids who were holding a donation fund and a girl comes up and asks if I will donate something to the food bank. I was hoping that since I was buying this chick some bread my comp would be like yeah sure ya know I will.. so I look at him and he just gives me this "this is your problem dude" look and in English says, "Remember, I don't speak Spanish!" Hahaha freakin' loser. So anyways I'm said, "Ummmmmmmmm, yeah. I don't know what you want but sure." So I bought the lady some bread and then donated some rice. I'm such a saint. 😇😉  So we leave and I go out expecting to see the lady to give her the bread and she's nowhere to be found. My companion says, "April Fools, Doofus" thinking that maybe she was pranking us. But after like 5 mins the lady finally comes and she was super grateful for the bread I bought her. :) It was a good and funny experience. :)

Conference was doooooope. It had so many good messages. 

I love you all and hope you're all fantastic. 😊 This week we have to go to Sevilla on Tuesday for interviews with President and then on Wednesday again for Zone Conference and I get to see Elder Beckstrom! :):):):):):):):):):):)::):):):) It's been 18 months since we've seen each other. I'm kinda excited. Pics to come foshizzle. Anyways. Once again, os quiero un montón y espero que tengáis una buena semana! Y acordáis que yo soy el chico más guapo 😍😜 lol only some will know what I just said. Doesn't make it any less true though. 😎 BYE HUMANS!

Much love.
Hot sauce in my bag swag,
TaNnEr B 💰:)💰:)💰:)💰:)

This is Juan. And investigator that I found when I was in Cartagena about 6 months ago and my boy Elder Garcia baptized him the other day. I was SO FREAKING HAPPY!! Juan was like my older brother.  I love him so much and I'm so happy to see he made the steps necessary to better his life and follow Jesus :)