Monday, April 16, 2012

The mission is getting even better

Ok i love being an assitant i must say. Its got a lot of responsibilities and alot of worries and junk that i dont like to do. I aint a fan of going to the office and being out of my area, i like teaching i am here to be a master teacher, but mainly a servant of God, in this position i have the duty and privildge to help other missionaries. It's really funny to help them, cuz the problems they got are always pride issues. Pride is so evil!! I dont want to be a proudful person!! Eww, gross pride!! So President was out traveling this week in Tierra Caliente with my comp so i had another comp. Elder Espinola for this week with me. He was my replacement in Patio Bonito! He was with me here this week. I felt bad for him, he was just with me while i had a super busy week being the only functioning assistant this week! The assitants from Tierra caliente were with President and my comp was with them and i had to manage the office this week. Had to go to the embassy and do some visa errands for Pres. had to go to some missionaries areas to fix some problems. Interview 2 zones this week! haha! Its was pretty fun to interview. I did them because there are some missionaries that are just hilarious and cant solve problems in there companionships!! AHH! One companionship was hilarious!! haha!! They have problems cuz one of them likes to kick and hit the other one. He is super aggressive and the other one doesnt like to work so he is always watchin tv and they get home like at 700 at night haha!! I was like dudes what are you doing!! Why are you here Elders! I cant believe the problems that Elders have, for being lazy and prideful to accept how to be better!! haha!! So i interviewed them, we came up with what i call a babysitter plan. So we also talked with the ZL there and they now call them everyday at 400 to seee how they are doing, how many contacts they have and lessons and all!! It was a funny interview. I aint always the most serious person, especially when it comes to Boas like these Elders, SO the elder was like my comp always hits me like this (and hit me on the shoulder) and i started freaking out and was like Elder wow, there is no need to be agressive, Elder Please do not hit, we are to to talk this out in a calm way, please do not punch me, remmember our bodies are temples!! haha. I was just messin with the guys, haha!! I am really starting to understand what it means by forget yourself!! Theres a quote that i like that says that when you loose yourself you have more of yourself to find. The more that we serve and give of oursleves and forget our own needs but look after the needs of others, we are so much more happy, there are less problems!! JUST LOOSE YOURSELF IN THE WORK OF GOD!!! Its great!!

So i have a capacitaion this week with these 2 zones about developing Christ like Attributes!! While preparing the training the thought came to mind, what characteristics do i have that are like the SAvior, in what way does my conduct reflect Christ!! The was the basis of my training i had with them. Hopefully it will help a bit, this week i am going to kenndey for 2 days to do some exchanges with elders and i have another zone trianing to talk about how to echar afuera el Natural man.( Throw out the natural man) I am excited! Were are gonna get these Elders to feel the fire of God!! The Spirit of God like a fire is burnin baby!!

Really the best part about being assistant is to see the miracles of God!! Oh my Gosh there are so many more smally huge miracles!! IT is great! I feel like i have been recieving so much mroe revaltioin for the mission, my area, my life in general!! Its great, I have to sleep with a notebad by my bed, because it seems that God always wants to talk at night for some reason. But i dont mind at all!

So last night all of our appointments failed!! 4 in a row!! So like a month ago we got met a less active member that we never were able to contact she lives like 2 blocks from our house. It was 730 and we decided to see if we could find her house so we went searchin and we got lazy and knocked on a door to see if they knew where she lived. IN colombia the addresees are by number so we were lookin for Kr 27 number 1·27We knocked on Kr 27 Number 1a-27 We knew we were close we just didnt want to look at the end of the street to see what way to go. It was a 5 story apartment complex and i just talked on one of the speaker phone door bell things. And i was talkin to the lady through the phone phone thingy in front of the house and she was like let me see if there is a Carolina that lives here. she was like no, but i will come out side. She she came out, and her brother and her Mom! We were like we dont want to bug you but we are just lookin for a house!! And then we got to talking about the gosple, and then the Jorge(The brother) was like i will come out with to find it!! He got his umbrella!! IT was poorin rain, we ar in winter right now!! ITs like flooding here! And we came out with us to find thi s house we walked to whole block when it was really like 3 houses to the left when we took a huge loop to the right haha!! While i was talking to him he asked me, can you help me, sometimes i feel like something is missing but i dont know what it is, its like a whole inside of me and ineed to fill it with somethin. I almost fainted of joy!! We taught him a bit about the restoration and how the gosple heales the wounded soul!! He was like WOW!! i felt like that hole just got smaller!! So we are now teachin him and his family we have another appointment tonight!! THE MISSION ROCKS!! I love it how, God blesses us with a miracle, he know when give our day he blesses us with miracles!! It was 730 on Sunday, we have to be in the house at 8 on Sundays, but because we were not satisfied with goin home early, we wanted to Work, God led us to this family!! How great it is! God blesses us when we give our all!! Today we have a lunch appointment with a guy we met this week contactin and he invited us to lunch!! We knocked on his door and was like how about ya all come on over for lunch on Monday and we will talk more!! STOKED.

Being assistant is was more tiring but it pays off!! I believe that ya i will die in the mission as AP. Its usually a death til do you part thing, but maybe the new Pres will change his mind, he come in July. So i will be AP at least tip august with him, but then Ijust have one more transfer. but we will see.! What ever the lord has in mind! Life is well and great! Love the mission and I love my God! Elder Hammer

April 10, 2012

Well my comp aint really dead. He's just leaving and dying in missionary terms!! He leaves on Wednesday to go with president to the Hot lands, I get to stay in bogota! Then my comp will leave on next Saturday. He'll come back Wednesday from the hotlands with President!!!Ahh!! It is sad to see him go, he has been a good comp and a great friend! Elder Perez will be greatly missed!! Today was his birthday! So i woke up and made him breakfast, pancakes and french toast!! these are rarities here but i managed to find them. He had about half the zone over last night and had another all out pillow fight!! Then in the morning we all sang happy Bday and all and i gave him a butterfly knife for his brithday haha!! Good bday gift right!

So i get my next part time companion tommorow. Elder Espinola. Hes an argentinan! Hes cool. But the thing is is that hes not gonna be my new comp. Hes gonna be with me for a while until the new transfer comes in 3 weeks then he is gonna go to Ibague.So hes not an an assitant but will be my assitant for a while haha!! Basically is gonna be following me around for a while!!

But i want to take advantage of this time and work alot of time in our area!! Just to let you know the holy spirit does guide! We were walking home on Good friday at night at like 730. I got the impression that we needed to contact but didnt know where or who, but knew we needed to give a book of mormon away. So while we were waiting at stoplight someone grabbed me by the arm, I thought we were gonna get robbed!! AHH!! but no, he asked what church where we from, i told him who we were and he got mad and left when i told him! I yelled and asked if he needed help with somethin. Good thin i am a gringo and he didnt understand me, i yelled again, he didnt understand me, so he walked back to me, i told asked if he needed help, he got mad and i asked him is there something that we did to make you mad or is there something to impide you to listen to us. He doesnt believe in modern prophets. We talked about the restoration, he didnt like a thing about it, then we kept testifying about the necessity of the Book of Mormon he softened a bit, then we kept talkin to him. By the end we have talked for over an 1 1/2 in the street, we gave him a Book of Mormon and a pamphlet of the restoration and an appointment!! AHH!! I love the sweet miracles of the mission, from turning an angry, misunderstood man into a believer!! This is what the mission is all about!! Love Ya All Elder Hammer

It was bomb- April 2, 2012

I am eternally grateful for General Conference!! It is the best thing in the world!! We surely had some lives changed this week! from Conference we really get recharged! We had only a 2 investigators that could go with us to general conference this weekend, but their lives were changed!! The stake center is kinda far away!! But wow!! We put a baptismal date with Laura it was the second lesson we had with her. The 1st lesson was more like an intro. to what we do and just an overview of what is the Gosple and we invited her to come and know Real Prophets and apostoles through Conference!! She received revelation before she even got there!! We gave her a pamphlet about the restoration and she read it before the conference and she prayed and knew Joseph smith was a prophet before we even taught her about him. She read all of the testimonies and up to ch. 5 of 1st nephi in 3 days!! Wow!! she has really been prepared to receive the gospel!! What an amazing investigator!! she went to both sessions on sunday and loved it!! WO!! YESS!!

Sometimes being AP I dont like it cuz it takes me out of teaching in homes with people and workin in my area!! We alaways are doing something, but when we do our best the lord blesses us with Golden investigators. We have few investigators in our area, but they are all excellent investigators.The wonderful mercy of God!!! our area is a diffucult area! We share our area with a 2 sister missionarys. They are cool, but they know the area better and have more of the investigators!! Usually when we contact and we get new investigators and they are girls we just hand them the refernce so they can teach more often to them! This Wednesday and thursday we have training that we are in charge of doing!! I am stoked! I love doing trainings! Our mission is Awesome!! It is definately unique! No one has missionaries like we do. Everyone from every backround but looking to serve God! Love it!! We are gonna do a Contact work shop! Workin on how to contact people!! I recieved a lot of reveltaion in the conference of how to do better in our trainings and how to teach! President gave my comp and I two hours to train this conference so we are gonna divide up the missionaries in 2 groups. I am gonna talk about how to lose fear and just preach the gosple! Then about how to have the confidence in teaching the doctorine and then some practices and all!! My comp and i have made certificates certifying them saying that they have been properly trained to contact and we have this awesome work shop planned out! bbut as always if you have any ideas or somethin hook me up!! I need them still!! All is well in the lords field!! Love and miss you all! Elder hammr

Transfers - March 26, 2012

Well, this past week was the week of transfers. It was super busy. We were only in our area 2 1/2 days but we worked our tails off and were able to get 12 lessons in!! But it was a crazy week, alot of running around the city, helping everyone with transfers and all!! ahh!! transfer week is always a lot of work and stress! But we are doing work!

So this week we went to pass by for a lesson with someone we contacted the other day and we got them the dad of the lady invited us in and all into their garage! We were like alright, they were settin up for some christian worship service, we were like, we will pass back later, but they were like no stay, stay. so we stayed and like 20 minutes later the meeting started it was a small congregation of like 20 people. We started singing and all and then we started clappin our hands and all! It was pretty fun! I had fun singin and all!! and then they started a Bible study, and we basically studied the law of Chastity and Word of Wisdom! so in the class the pastor held up a poster about the things that damage our body and all! In the class we talked about how drugs, alcholo, sex, pornography, tatoos and all damage our body. so on this poster board it had a list of all of the these things!! the pastor said that we shouldn't look at women in inmodest clothes and all of that stuff and on the poster it had a list of all the things written down but it only had one picture on the board and it was a picture of some under wear model!! haha!! I almost died laughin! haha! It was great!! We were like why do they have that on the board!! It said drugs and all but had not picture of drugs, just they lady in her underwear haha!! the lady that we contacted is the sister of the pastor and we met this lady one day in the street and she was crying and she came to us crying and all and told us everything how she just broke up with her boyfriend and she didnt know if she was pregnant and how she has all of these problems and all! and then when we were in this meetin she was all like the most active one in the Church all like its bad to fornicate ya dont do it!! I was like what!! you dont know if your pregnant! haha!! But we had a great time there!! We sang and prayed like 20 times in this meetin!! Good times! But as we left the meetin my comp and I were like, wow i am so greatful for the restoration!

While we were in the meeting in the bible study part, we taught alot actually. They knew what we shouldnt do but they didnt know why. It is so important to know the doctrine of why! they understood the princible or fundamentals but the doctrine is the meat of the lesson so we taught them the why! My testimony was strengthened so much of the great importance it is to understand the doctrine. the doctorin is everythin! I love the church. It is the best.

Sadly this weel Pedro couldnt get married!! His wife had an error in her papers. so the weddin is still on pause! hopefully it wont take too long to get it all fixed!! But i am sure it should happen soon!! Well all is well here on Bogota! living and loving life.
Love, Elder Hammer

Love of Reeses Peanut Butter Cups {March 15, 2012}

I got my easter package this week!! Thank you alot my family! i loved it a whole ton!! the Easter Bunny came early to Colombia this week! haha!! I loved the candy!! Mom. I love your spanish!! haha!!! Jesus Christo!! haha!! Its Jesucristo!! Its one word without the H and the second s. haha!! I love my Mom!! But loved the candy, and letters and Moms talk! killer!! loved it!! I learned alot about love from this package tat ya ll sent me! Well i opened it while i was in the offices and i gave everyone in the office a little something somethin, and all and i gave President a reeeses cup! He first refused it and I was like pres, when was the last time you have eaten a Reeses cup buddy. and he was like 5 years i suppose!!(pres served in argentina for 2 years then they called him to extend 3 years as Mission President in Colombia) He hasn't been home for 5 years almost!! what a great example of service to the Lord!!! So anyways he ended up accepting the candy, just small little recesses cup! Then later on that night Sister Casablanca called me(Presidents wife) and gave me thanks for giving her a reeses cup!! I was like umm your welcome!! President saved the reeses cup for his wife cuz he knows its her favorite candy!!! Wow!! What an awesome small great act of service!! I love president!! It made me think of how important it is to to the small sacrifices!! I am sure that pres wanted the candy, something so small that he was always thinkin of his wife, in every ascpect, as smallas a candy!! What a great Mission President I have!! I am greatful for his example that he gives me!! He is a great man, by example and love!! I will be workin and he just comes in and distracts me to tell some small story and is just a great man!!

 I love my companion!! Elder Perez is the best thing that has happened to me!! haha!!! We are super close!! I trust him with everything we get a long super!! The other day he was like Elder hammer if i was a woman would you marry me!! I was like what haha!! Thats the best question to ask me!! haha!! What a grear kid, we get along just perfect!! After this small demonstration of service by president we try to implemant more service in our companionship!! Its great!! Just small things to do!! While i stole his shoes and shined them, while i was showerin he made me breakfast!! What a great companion i have!! I am greatful to God for having him as a comp!! Well I complete my 1st transfer as A.P!! its been great!! I travel alot! Tonight i get to go to the airport to pick up the new missionaries!! I love doing that, they come with great emotion and desire to get the work going!! Good kids!! Seems like my lovely family is doing great!! Proud of my fam! Sister JAy, your house looks super tight!!! Wow!! I might have to crash up in there!! Wow!!! Evy looks like a champ!! wow!! I am gonna have a great time hanging out with that little baby! wow, and the one that comes after!! BIG NEWSS!! Remember Pedro, they guy that got stabbed and God healed him!! Well, he is gettin married this week and Baptized Saturday! He called me and gave me the news! I almost cried literally of joy!!! WOWOW!!!! How great that is gonna be!! To witness his marriage and baptism!! I am super stoked!! THe Lord does miracles!! A man living on the streets, to being stabbed, to now have a job, be reunited with his family, getting married anad being baptised and recieve the preisthood!! TALK ABOUT MIRACLES!! Pedro is my pride and joy of the mission!! My faith as come to knowledge from seeing some many miracles in my life in the mission!! The gosple is true!! I love my savior!! There aint nothin better than being a missionary!! Well gotta go pick up new missionaries now!! TTYL!! haha( havent said that in a while haha Elder Hammer