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!

Week 57: Castle Climbin 🏔

Hello hello hello to all :)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Much love.
Larp or Die,
E. Tanner 💎💰💸

The Castle 😛

Los Elderes de Cartegena 😈

Pano

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

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

Oye que pasa familiares :)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Much love.
Reachin' Out,
Elder Hammond 🙋🏽

Old comp Llavina. Miss him :)

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

Down by the Port

Week 55: The Week I Was Speechless

Hey What's Up? Hello Everyone! 😊

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Much love.
Hangin' tough,

Elder Hammond, B. Tanner :)

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

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

PDay Paddlin' 

Paddlin' is kind of like Pickleball. 

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

Champ!