What a busy week, we are running as always. I’d like to share some of my experiences. We have been teaching a family of nine here, well more like eleven with the parents and of course twelve including the dog. We still have no idea how they all cram into that house. This week we went over there with Brother Montenegro and he explained the law of chastity, and the importance of marriage. He killed it and the testimony that he and his wife shared was just the topping on the cake. It was so inspired, the father said, “I need to get married.” (Which is the third time I have heard this on my mission.) This is incredible because Panamanians do not like getting married here.
The children have so much respect for their father. When we came, all the kids were sitting in a line from oldest to youngest (1 years old). I looked at them and for a brief moment, I thought, wow, the hills are alive! It was like a scene out of the Sound of Music but the biggest difference was we can’t sing.
We normally find about twenty-five contacts a week. My favorite this week was a man that once heard the missionaries and remembered all the Plan of Salvation. Another was a family in which they found out that the father was once a member but had become inactive at the age of sixteen. We have another 81-year-old woman who has been a member of the church for the last fifty years, but always wanted to hear from the Mormons (who knows)…
Another man we’ve been teaching is just the best. He is around 70 years old and he told us when we met that he had been trying to learn English. Apparently, he had a great friend from Jamaica that had been trying to teach him English. When we were arriving, he yelled “My Brothers, My Brothers, come in!” in the best Jamaican accent. He has told us that he has lived a very interesting life and had never been interested in any religion until the last few years when he took up studying the Bible. He now is saying that he feels like a blank page compared to what we know. We have been answering many of his questions. He has told us about a dream and now is seeking an interpretation. Again, this is normal here, many people believe strongly in revelation through dreams and many have experiences like this. In his dream, he described how he was shown the Book of Mormon. After listening to his dream about what he described and before we could show him what he was speaking of, he read the title and the subtitle to us and begged to know how much this book cost. I have never seen someone more memorized over a book before in my life. He was so happy when we told him it was a gift especially after we had told him what it was and what it contained.
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| Luis, the kid we baptized a while back, is now talking about going on a mission. He wants to be like us so much that he ended drawing a name tag on his shirt. If you look on the left side of his shirt you will see Elder Vera. |
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| I live in walking distance to a stadium they are building for baseball. This sport is huge here and I live right next to what will soon become the home for the Bocas Turtles. Apparently, they are the best in Panama. |
This week has finally become hot here. I am getting a little burnt, but that only makes my tan lines that much funnier. I have been a little bit sick as well. Because we are in a farming town surrounded by bananas the locals told me that I probably had parasites or dengue. I am actually not feeling sick anymore, and at times I have a decent amount of energy. I have seen my blessings take action as I am shouldering all the work that I need to get done. I just feel a little tired is all and on P-Day when I finally have a chance to sleep, I just want to study.
We are all very happy to hear that Elder Quinten L.Cook an apostle will be visiting Panama. All the missionaries will gather together for this and it will be the first time that we will all be together.
There are four missionaries serving in my area and one of them, Elder Hancock is finishing his mission here. Transfers happened to be in seven days which means that Wednesday night we drive down on a bus for 13 hours to Panama City and have the conference that Thursday. Later that afternoon we head back home, another 13 hours and will get back to work. This poor Elder will have to head back to Panama City to finish his mission on Monday, another 13 hours!