Something's Gonna Happen

July 21, 2014

Soooo something's gonna happen with me, that I would say is pretty exciting...

I am being transferred from the Vancouver 7th ward to the evergreen
ward... No longer with elder Martin. That's not it though. I'm being
doubled into the area (whitewashed, starting the area) with a brand new missionary! I am training at 5 1/2months! Holy cow! I am pretty dang excited, but also a little nervous since I won't know the area, or anyone in it.. It will be mission changing I think for sure. So I
probably won't be getting my visa for at least 2 more transfers while I'm training this new guy. I have no clue who he is, or anything about him. All I know is that I'm training him and he is a new missionary.
It's weird that I'm leaving and not Elder Martin. He's already been in this area for 2 transfers... The cool thing is, we are both training! So he will be here for another 2 transfers. So exciting things are happening in Vancouver.

Now I'll go into my week. The first day of the week we helped a family move! Like all of their stuff from one house to another house in the same neighborhood. They were so thankful. They aren't members so it was a good experience for them. Then dinner with sister beltcher! She's totally blind and she raised like 6 kids! It's amazing, and she
cooked for us and everything! Super nice lady, and very funny as well haha. Then that night we had a lesson with one of our investigators, and it got super spiritual. An awesome night especially when right after that we got invited to a BBQ to eat some burgers haha. I'm
actually getting sick of burgers and corn on the cob... We have it so much, not too into it now haha.

Then we had another super awesome day. To be honest this week was a
way good week to end my service here in this ward. We has a bunch of lessons this day. 5 lessons total with two of them being with members present. We walked up to this trumpet street performer guy and he said he is just hitch hiking along with this random German guy... What a
life hahaha. As we were going up to one of our lessons our investigators grandson said "hey church people wait until I get back!" He was so cute he is 4 and he was coming back the next day, sadly we
could not wait for Haha. This day went by super quick along with the 5 lessons we gave two priesthood blessings... Amazing day. I found out that a member In our ward roomed with Sam sloop at byu idaho it's a pretty small world huh? Crazy.

An interesting story we came up to an investigator and we were talking
to her for a bit. As we were leaving she asked to fill our water bottles. It's been super hot here recently. Well she took quite a bit of time filling them. Well she came back with a completely different
water bottle that someone else had used. Needless to say I was appreciative of her generosity, but I did not drink that water haha. Then we stopped by a member of our ward, we had like 15 minutes left
of our day so he told us to play basketball with these kids. We did.
This member is super awesome, and he said he played a scrimmage game against Michael Jordan himself! Pretty cool huh?

We probably rode our bikes more than 12 miles in this one day. We tried our hand at some more garage sale oyming. Not much came of it this time, after that we had a lesson with a member and he made us lunch. So I don't know if anyone knows this but in Vancouver there is
this huge festival called "cruising the gut" holy cow it was sweet. We went there because we heard there was going to be a lot of people. PERFECT MISSIONARY OPPORTUNITY. Well they under exaggerated the amount of people actually there.. There were probably around 75,000-100,000 people there. Basically what it is is a huge car show. People bring their nice super amazing cars and drive them down the strip of
downtown. It was super cool. I got some awesome pictures of some of the cars and in some of the cars. 

We also had some cool experiences with talking to people. We talked to an inactive member who had been in active for 2 years and got her friend interested to talk with missionaries. It was super cool. Then this random drummer from Portland came up to us and started talking with us. Turns out he's a member and he just got back from a vacation to Utah. It's funny he moved to Portland and now vacations in Utah. It was such a fun weekend to be honest.

I am so glad that I was able to serve in this ward. I don't know if I really touched anyone's lives or made an impact on them, but the experiences here have made me become such a better missionary. My concept of missionary work has completely changed and I truly enjoy it a lot. I have such a  better understanding of how to teach, and what
to teach, and how to talk to people. I love people, I care about my brothers and sisters. When I say that I mean everyone. When I talk to people I feel for them, and I really want them to receive this gospel
that will completely change and bless their life. I didn't realize it before my mission, like at all. And I tell that to everyone I teach, I'm nowhere near the perfect Mormon kid and I wasn't at all back home either, but I know this will bless your life if you embrace it. And
that's not just for investigators, that's for anyone including members. Sometimes we get so used to having something so amazing that we don't even realize it anymore. Take a minute to ponder about how much this gospel has blessed you, and what it could to do more for
you. I promise you will find something there.

Love,

Elder Hamrick

Fruit valley road looks pretty sketchy huh? Haha!

Pretty great farmers tan!