A blog about me serving as a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in Panama. I have been called for two years, not panamantly.
Usually, life is hard here on the island, but we just hit mango season and everyday someone gives us free mangos. I just don’t know what I’m going to do when I come back home and can’t eat three to four mangos a day. General Conference talked a lot about repentance and my companion is already apply these teachings to the zone and I love the way he handles situations. When some missionaries complain about a situation or something doesn't go their way, he always asks "Well, what are you going to do differently?" It’s just nice to remember that we are not perfect and that whatever happens, no matter how many times we may have fallen, we can always choose to pick ourselves back up again and keep growing. Because honestly, that's why we're here.
It was nice listening to the spirit this week and we had a random impression to visit a specific house. We went over and found someone that needed to hear our message in that moment. This man is now preparing for baptism. Yay.
This week I got to try a traditional medicine that a healer made. It was just boiled roots and plants, but supposedly it helps give you muscle. So... watch out for pics next week, I'm going to double my size.
I have loved the new school theme they have here. "We either study, or we pick up our machetes and go to the monte." Either way, you're working hard.
Not a lot of fresh water on the island, so even the animals drink soda :-)
Well I have a new companion, Elder Salavarrieta from Medellin, Colombia. We are still rocking it out here in Ustupu. We're working hard, loving life and learning daily more about the beautiful Kuna culture and working to learn the language.
Arrival on Baptism Beach
The last week we went into the city for a conference and had two hours of free time. As I am a zone leader on San Blas with my new companion, who has been out for 18 months, I spent my time helping other missionaries in my zone get their shopping completed. I also had the chance to go to Nargana again, this time with my new companion and because they have nowhere to baptize we went out on a panga to a stranded island known as 'Baptism Beach'. That was cool finding a baptism of faith.
Elder Salam
The water situation here is kind of funny, we usually get water about three days a week. For drinking, we only drink sodas or filtered water and so needless to say, I will want to see a few doctors when I get home. Anyway, the bathrooms are hillarious, ours happens to be the nicest one that I've seen here. There are some that are just a hole on a deck over the water. Sometimes you will see kids swimming in the water near those areas and let me just tell you, I would not want to swim in the water on that part of the island. Often times they will catch small fish from those areas and use them for bait to go fishing for bigger fish.
The cats on this island are so friendly, and they will come when we call them. We caught a rat the size of a big mouse this week in our house (it is very common to see rats). As this happened, a cat came by, grabbed it, and went off with it in its mouth. Gotta love them!
Today is the last transfer of my
mission. I am going to finish out my mission on the beautiful island of Ustupu
for the next six weeks. My companion Elder Dudley after serving on the island for one year has gone back to the main land. We now have four Sister missionaries serving here and three new Elders on the islands. They will replace the three that finished out their mission here. My new companion will be Elder Salavarrieta. Today I
downloaded a few pictures of the Dule Gaya script that we study from here. As well, here are a few more pictures with Elder Dudley.
Elder Dudley doing service by bringing bananas to someone's house,
teaching English and moving bags of sand for others.
Sadly, there was a death on
the island this week. It is not the first time, but it was the first time we were
invited to participated in the ceremony. From where we were standing, they tore
down the side of the wall of the stick hut and just let everyone walk in. Outside
were waiting benches so that others could rotate in. Everyone gathers round the
person who has passed and then started to mourn and wail. When I say that, I mean they actual go on wailing throughout the day. It is custom to hear a traditional
saila prayer chant and the following day they bury them in the monte (mountain).
After those two days pass, they follow up with a big party celebrating their
death and the life they lived. In San Blas when they have a party here it just
means that there is a lot of food. With the wall of this hut still tore down
they use the inside to make some arroz a liquada for the entire community. It
is common to do this for the next year and every additional month of death
until they reach the two year mark depending on the person.
It was a nice surprise lunch in which we did not have to pay for. However
sometimes here they just rinse out the flavor of the food with water which I forget about every once in a while. Most of the time I drink this cup of water and then
I notice that everyone else just spits it out on the floor and then I catch on
and just follow along. But this time I drank a little bit and a little bit and
that is when I realized that they were all just backwashing into the same
glass. I basically drank a full glass of backwash water. Yuuup! But other than that,
it was a good meal. I have officially decided that I may have to adopt this tradition.
At my funeral, it will all be catered by Wendy’s and backwashed Frosties.
I have loved how my companion has been trying to teach our adopted grandpa how
to solve a Rubix cube. Every time he is able to match up a few more squares or
sides he just gets so excited.
Oh, and
because the Kuna alphabet has like 14 or 16 letters, they tend to spell things
just a little off which I always find amusing. One that I heard this week is and please don't ever forget this guys "Dios es
Crante" (or Dios es Grande) which means God is Good!
Well another
day and another can of chicken. We had the opportunity to go down to Nargana to
do divisions with the other Elders. It was actually quite a different island,
because the island was very civilized. (They are really one of the only
islands that have separated completely from the native traditions). They actually had
a bank, library and full on jail. As well, there was electricity lines running
through the island with post lamps. The major part of the houses were made of
cement and more than half of the people had cable. The funny part was they
still do not have running water. Everyone who needs water has to take a kayak
with huge barrels to the mountain where they fill them up in a river. (I can’t
tell you how many times we helped move barrels of water from the docks to someone’s
house just in a single day). What’s
interesting is that water is only used to shower. Their drinking water is
bought in bulk from cargo ships. The Elders there are doing great and are
finding a lot of success. It was a great surprise to them when we were able to
finally drop them off a stove.
Highlights of
the trip were of course:
1.Making a new
friend who was the most adorable monkey. You would sit by her and she would
just run over and hug you and then sit on your lap. It was hilarious, I think
she was climbing around all of us looking for food to snatch. She got Elder
Dudley’s water bottle and a granola bar. But my favorite part was that she
checked each of us to make sure we didn't have lice. I'm officially convinced
that every doctor’s office needs a monkey to do free lice checkups.
2.The boat trip we took was gnarly. The waters raised
and the boat only had one half broken motor, and we sat in the front of the boat (i.e.,
the part where you get the least wet, but can feel the crashes the most). The
waves were so high that as we were on our return trip we got just soaking wet
and covered in salt.
3.As we dropped
off people in Achutupu, there were so many boats that we had to stop by the 'gas
station' dock. That’s when we saw a box just sitting on top of one of the gas
barrels with the name Elder Dott’s written on it. We asked the driver what was
in that box and so he went over and pulled out a Book of Mormon. We ask him if
we could have the box and after the driver asked around a few people they said
that it was okay to take. They had no problem so we planned to take it back to
Ustupu. While on the boat, we inspected the box and found that it was around two
years old and was air shipped in. While this was going on the driver came up
and asks if he could have one of the Books and so we gave him a copy. (This was
the same boat driver that invited us into his house to eat Dule Massi a few
weeks back). If we get permission again to go to other islands, he will
definitely be one of the first people to visit.
After the trip
to Nargana, we came back and realized the house was kind of a mess. So that
same night we pulled out trash bags and started cleaning and sorting through
all the extra stuff that we didn't need. We ended up burning some of the old
clothes that were stained, trashed, and had ripped holes in them. Surprisingly
it is more common than you'd think to light a fire in the middle of just an
entire civilization built upon dried out leaves and sugar canes. They do it all
the time with very few problems.
A lot of what
we do here in San Blas consists of 'Attitude and Effort' in the words of the
former missionary Elder Seaman. “When we just bring ourselves to a positive
attitude and give our best effort, we feel better. Even when we fail, because
we gave it our best” and it’s true. After having a week that had not had as
much success, we started praying constantly and giving our best effort but still
not getting what we wanted. Yet we still can feel satisfied with the effort to
do good. But this week after putting in a great effort, God sent a few new
people here to the island Sunday morning. Two of them who have never been to
church before in their lives, wander into the church building after a long
trip. I love being here on the mission, because even when my effort isn’t
enough, a lot of the time I get to see the hand of God edifying my work.
