we welcomed another one

This weekend we welcomed Ricardo Fernandez into the beloved fold of our Heavenly Father’s Church!!!!! Hip Hip Hurray!! It was a very interesting service! The thing about Colombia is that it is Colombia haha! At times you have people flake on us. We have our Ward Missionary Leader here that is in charge of filling up the baptismal font for us here. It takes awhile to fill this puppy up - almost 2 hours to have enough water in the font for a baptism. Anyways he got there about 1/2 before we did. So about 1 hour before the service starts. The font was far from being filled, so we used the bucket method to help the font fill a bit faster. There’s a water spicket outside the building so we got some buckets and filled them and ran them to the font to speed up the process! haha! It is the most frustrating thing in the world when someone flakes out on you, but we had the service in all matters.


My companion is rapping up his time here in Colombia so today we went to Centro! It’s like the worlds biggest swap meet in the world. It was kind of funny to see the things people sell there. They just find random stuff I think and try to sell it in the streets. Everyone came storming after me saying Hey Gringo buy these shoes, buy this tv remote! I felt like Brad Pitt at the Grammys haha! Everyone wanted me. I took the opportunity to talk to a few of them and instead of them selling me something I turned the tables around and gave them a pass along card and contacted them haha! We also went to the Capital of Colombia and saw the Palace and the Goverment buildings and went to a museum of the money of Colombia. It was pretty cool! In the plaza there’s a boat load of pigeons and people sell corn that you feed to the pigeons. There were a boat of these pigeons everywhere. We went to the goverment offices there too. The goverment building was taken over a while back in the 60s or 70s something like that by some revolutionary group called m-19. They blew up the building and took it over with a bunch tanks and what not. Its a pretty ridiculous story, look it up in the internet. But they had a little memorial there about this revolutionary act. In Colombia there are3 major anti-colombia groups the M-19, the Farc and some other group, I dont remember their name, but they are like a mafia of some sort. Its ridiculous to hear all the stories about these groups. Their actions are very prevalent to this part of the country. iIn Patio Bonito there are a lot of victims and refugees that we see here and we teach alot of ex soldiers that we are teaching too. They got some intense stories.


We had a baptism planned for this week but we are going to hold off for another week on this one. We have 2 kids that will be baptized Sebastian and Santiago. We are trying to baptize the whole family but the dad is being stingy on getting married, but these kids are stellar. I have a blast with them. My best times here are with the kids. They love it when I beatbox and do my weird things. My comp thinks I’m a retard when I do things like that but its a all cool. We also put another baptismal date with another investigator for May 7th!


We have basically a whole new zone here. Transfers were Wednesday and we now have 4 GRINGOS in the Zone!! Thats kind of crazy!! There’s only 18 Gringos in the Mission and 4 in one Zone!! Almost all of us a newbies. 4 of the 12 finish the mission within August and the rest of us have 8 months or less so we have good fresh blood and energy! They are all super cool!


This week I felt very popular! I received a lovely 3 Letters!! WOOOOW!! The letters are coming but packages who knows! I didn’t know about this address but the letters that say Colombia Bogota South Mission P.O. Box 30150 Salt Lake City, Utah 84130-0150. They all make it here!! I got a wonderful letter from my dear friend JOEY PAZZI!! What up my Homie! It was a spectacular uplifting letter for a good dear friend!! Joey you need to facebook my Bro and send him your Email address to send to me!! Brenden also! I also received a lovely letter from Dear Grandma Brennan. I love getting letters from her and telling me grand stories of her everyday life activities and I also got a ward letter from Heritage ward with an awesome pic of the Whole Ward!!! Thanks Godfrey Fam and Beloved Heritage Ward!! So it feels good to feel the love and know that I am gone but not forgotten! haha!


And what great news to here about dear Sarah preparing to be wedded to her love in these upcoming Months!! WOW! My friends are getting married and my man friends in the mission are getting dear Johnned haha! I got a letter from one of my good friends from the MTC that’s now serving in Argentina. He sent me a lovely copy of his Dear John letter! haha! Gotta love the love life! haha!


But I will be calling home for Mothers Day. What is the schedule ya’ll got for church? I can probably call at about 2 o clock your time I believe. That’s usually when we finish with our lunch and church and its the easiest time of day to manage our schedule! Tell me what you think and we will work something out!!


Crazy that this week is EFY! Seems just like yesterday Heather, Cristal and I were preparing for EFY. Now I’m on a mission and Heather and Cristal are preparing for their marriages wow! haha! I wish all of my friends the best of luck at EFY!! Have a killer time and enjoy the strong spirit of EFY!!


Love Ya all.
Elder Hammer