Monday, June 18, 2012

we are old 6/11/2012

Holy schnickers family! Tookies is out of elementary school. Franky done with high school! Jay going on 3 years as a wedded woman, Hen with 2 kids almost!! WOO!! Mom and Dad are our parents!! This is great!! Woo time flies by super fast!! I love ya all a ton!!

Well this week I am goin to the hot lands!! WOO!! I go on friday i believe! It wil be great!! tomorrow the new missionaries come in from the MTC, so i get to do some training and all with them. Then wednesdays are transfers for the other missionaries. On Thursday we are going to the temple with the mission and Friday I am traveling to Ibague!! Its like a big pueblo like 5-6 hours out of bogotà on Bus! ITs gonna be great!! I am excited! I have been super stressed lately in the offices here! It will be a good way to die! haha! But I might come back for a few days to bogotà next month to receive the new mission president! I am still AP though, just for the other half of the mission and i dont have to go to the offices!! YEA!!! I get more time dedicated to teaching! It had been a great area here in Bochica!! It would have been great to have had more time in the area here but i had to fullfill my other assignment!! But all is well!

I have some awesome friends here ! I feel like I have progressed so much in my 5 months here in Bochica! I have had to learned a lot of stuff in this time. The other day I was super out of it in the morning i was beat dead, tired and was just out of it! I have been having some problems with my comp lately! He is fun and all but when it comes to workin, we cant work good together. He has some blood pressure sickness and he gets super lazy from it! I couldnt really depend on him, and he cant do what I need him to do, I have been super stressed this past 6 weeks with him because of this i had to do a lot of the stuff while he was sick. We had to do a lot of division while he would stay in the house with another sick missionary or a member of the ward would stay with him and i would go out with another member to teach or I would do exchanges by myself while he was at home or he would wake up late or stuff like that and then when he can work he is super slow! I was gettin super stressed with all of this! With the AP life in this mission it is a fast pace life! We dont sleep much. We do alot for president right now that he is leaving. We have had a lot of issues lately in the mission! Stuff i never thought i would deal with in the mission and all. But i felt alone doin it all! So yesterday I was in Church and i have been focusing alot more on my prayers and i have been waitin for weeks to receive help from God about what i could do to deal with it all! Then yesterday I just got this awesome feeling that i have so many friends that I never even thought that i had! I went directly to the book of Mormon and started reading in Alma about Captain Moroni and Pahoràn and how Moroni was super mad at Pahoràn cuz he didnt send him backup troops when he needed them and it made me think about how I was demanding stuff from my comp with something he didnt have or couldnt do! I realized the importance of the Book of Mormon a lot more yesterday! The Book of Mormon is like a time capsule! My friends from thousands of years ago wrote me these letters! I cant explain it but the Book Of Mormon has come alive now!! Its great!! I love that Book! Yesterday was a great day! I love seeing the small a simple miracles in the mission!

Life is great! I love it! This week while my comp was sick. I wanted to make a colombian food called Arequipe and so my cmop said that you put condensed milk in the can and you just out it on the stove! I was like ar you sure, he was like yeah, that it put the can on the stove and then turn on the stove and the can cooks and turns all the stuff inside by itself! I believed him for some reason! needless to say the can blue up and we panted the kitchen with condensed milk haha! freaking Elder Acuna! Well dear family! I love ya all a ton!


we baptized her! 6/4/2012

So yesterday we had the best thing ever!! I feel so good to have been able to have baptized Janet Gonzalez! She is probably the strongest convert that I have had in the mission yet!! Holy shnicks! It was definitely the most powerful baptism that I have been to. Janet was super prepared for her baptism! Probably over prepared!! She was a Jehovahs witness gone mormon yea!! It was crazy!! I wanted to have a JW as a convert but she was so prepared! The first time she went to church she presented herself to everyone in the ward everyone knew her so fast!! For her baptism all of the organizations got her a little gift, like hymn book or church magazines and all! IT was great!! Janet brought some of her JW friends to her baptism too! Her family she was great!! The heater in the baptismal font doesnt work, so the water was ice cold oh my gosh it was the coldest water but it didnt matter to us!! Janeth was just so happy! She had the biggest smile on her face!! She was seriously jumping for joy literally haha!! She told me because she cant hold missionaries she just jumps while she shakes our hands haha! She is great! She enrolled herself in mission prep. haha! she is stoked she wants to be a missionary! After her baptism she gave her testimony of coming into the truth and how great it is to hear a converts testimony. so pure and sincere. They dont have a patterenized testimony, one really felt from the heart! IT was so cool!! She's a 21 year old lady from Santa Marta. She's into fashion and all, shes done some modeling, but she is like a little girl, still she is great!! What a great convert she will be!! She is really set in a firm foundation!!

We had a good stressful week this week! I am gonna be in Bogota til the 15th I believe and then i am going to Ibague tod ie haha!! I will be home 4 months from tommorrow! WOOW!! I got 4 months to work my booty off!! I am excited to go to ibague. My comp is great, Elder Pesado, i am stoke! Elder Acuna is cool and all but stress me out alot!! But all is well! He's a great friend but stress me out when it comes to gettin to work! But i love him!! Right now we are doing some hardcore work with the mission! Alot of changes tryin to prep for the new mission president! But all is well! I am happy being busy and workin hard! I love P'days! They are the best. I wake up do my normal routine and then by 930 I take a good huge nap! I love nappin! I dont sleep in the week but pdays i love to just sleep! Today we went to monserrate the catholic church on the hill again! It was fun! We took some cool model pics and all! IT wa a beatiful day in bogota today! I love the way that the church is moving forward!! IT is amazing!! I love the church website, the new message and videos about the savior! It is great!! I am loving the mormon messages! We teach alot using the mormon mesages they are so great! I love them, They are such great boosters. How great it is to have this technology! I love ya all a ton! I am loving serving the Lord!! I am learning so many things that i couldnt learn in anyother place, or any othe time!! Love Elder Hammer


the week of assistance 5/28/2012

Well this week was a super busy stressful week. I am grateful that it is pday! We worked alot this week with little bit of sleep. Well last week I went to Girardot with President!! It was the best trip ever!! We got to stay in a hotel, eat with president, and president loves to eat good food! I loved it, we got back thursday afternoon and then we had a turkey dinner with president and his wife! We had thanksgiving in MAY!! haha!! I loved it! Then on Wednesday we had to go to Fusa. Their area was havin a lot of problems there so we had to go and interview the Elders and do some work with them and i felt more like a Cop than an AP. At times we have to do some weird things. Its sad to see when a missionary has a struggling testimony and see how it affects alot of people!! But we spent all day Wednesday doing that, then on Thursday i was in Kennedy, then Friday I was in Tunjuelito!! There was an Elder that got sick on Wednesday and then we went to the hospital and President took care of that, but the hospital kicked the Elder out of the hospital at 3 in the mornin, so he calls us terrified as heck cuz he only has 3 months in the field as a gringo! haha! So i went and picked him up at 3 in the morning! but I had to be up at 5:30 to travel again the next day!! Then we sent him back to his area in the hotlands and then he called me on saturday saying he still was sick so he came back to bogota, he got lost on the bus ride, had to go find him haha!! It was easy to spot out a tall blonde hair blue eyed gringo with all of the short colombians haha! So i spent all day Saturday taking him to get tests done. oh ya and ever since Thursday my comp was sick he has a high blood pressure disease and he was knock out haha! SO I had to do all this basically hauling my dying comp haha!! But he is a good sport! So i got back late Saturday night, then yesterday we had problems with an Elder he was beating up his comp. so he came in from the hotlands and he is with us right now! He is an interesting Elder, he was with us last week for the same problem haha!! We dont know what to do with him haha!! We like to mess with him though haha!

 Well there are possiblities that this week i am going to TIERRA CALIENTE!!!! I just might leave Bogotà! What in the world! I dont really want to go. I think though i can stay here until the next transfer. I just want to welcome the new Mission President and then i will go to Ibague! so thats the plan as of now!! I think President will let us do that. I want to be the one that kills Elder Acuna!! I deserve to kill him!! Than my next comp will kill me!! AHH!! I will still be AP but in the hotlands!! Its different type of work! But it will be fun! Elder Pesado is the best he will be my next comp!! He is argentinen!! I am stoked!! He was in my second zone while i was in Patio Bonito! This Elder is a Boss!!! YES!!! We are gonna baptize the world down there!! WOO!! So this week was one of those weeks where we only were able to teach taxi drivers and the people next to us when we were traveling!! but the next letter will have baptism pictures!! Janet, the Jehovahs witness lady is getting baptized on SUNDAY!! YEAH!! She is super cool! She invited some of here JW friends to her baptism and all of her neighbors and everything, she was so prepared, it was alike it was almost too easy to teach her. She rejected the missionaries before, but this time she was ready to recieve us!! How great it was!! Well family, love ya tons and miss ya alot. Love Elder Hammer