Working hard, and feel like I'm in a different world up here in Boquete. Literally, we have run into more Americans here than I've ever seen in my entire mission. It has been weird how often we are speaking English and it’s now weird to speak in English; wow!
We have been working with a couple of families this week and we actually have had people come to church. Most investigators that we have said that they would like to go to church but if you don't show up at the door in the morning they aren't eager enough to even leave their bed, because its 'too cold outside.' This is the only area where this excuse could actually count in Panama. (Boquete is noticeably colder than other regions of Panama. We live on the top of a mountain and most days we are in the clouds and cannot see more than fifty feet in front of us.) This week we passed by three of the five investigators homes who said they would like to go and all three families actually came. Wooo! It could not have been a better Sunday.
To tell you a little bit about our investigators, we have one investigator who is sixty whose wife left him around ten years ago and he just slipped into a slump. He ran out of savings and he now needs to go back to work. He has been looking for whatever kind of camarón (casual work), day job, he can get. It has been about two weeks where he hasn't found anything. We told him if he put God first in his life and went to church that God would help him with his needs. This last week he did, and he was excited as we picked him up to go to church with us. He got to church and enjoyed it. At the end of the meetings, we had a potluck meal because it was the fifth Sunday of the month. This happens to be a tradition here in Boquete. He ended up having a forty-five-minute walk home but he did get there. We did go to visit him that night and he told us that he found a job for this Saturday that would normally pay for three days of work. He also mentioned that the lunch that we had on Sunday was a huge blessing because he didn't have any food in his house to eat. These blessings seemed to just drop from the sky in front of this guy.
It is amazing how many people we have found that lived in the US. We found a woman who studied at Utah State, walked around temple square, and visited a few temple dedications. She has kept in contact with old friends that are members but had never met with or heard from the missionaries. She loved Utah, but just for whatever reason she is here now. She says it was for family but... I am not sure but is now here wither two children. It is just mind-blowing, that we have run into a few incidences similar to this one.
The Lord seems to be waiting for us to pray for our needs. And sometimes it is just the small and simple things. This week we were far away from home. We had been walking all day and had a lot of rejection. I prayed that we could get a taxi home and literally within second’s boom, out of route a taxi just seemed to be wandering at 8:00 at night. It is just these little things that remind me... Oh yeah, that’s right, I'm not on my own. He is actually behind all of this. I am not doing practically anything. He is controlling it all. What an amazing opportunity this mission has been.