5th Week in San Blas

7/25/2016:

"Hey everyone!! Well another week has passed. This week has been good. Not a seriously crazy one. At least in comparison to some of the other weeks. My companions foot is doing a lot better. He's walking more now so I'm hoping this means he will be up for doing service in the jungles again. I really love that. 

I am currently on week 6 now in San Blas. I hope I stay out here a while. Working here is going pretty good. As I explained in the other post, working here is at a slower pace. Prime working hours are between 2 PM until 5 PM. We try to work the other hours but not much else really happens. Men are usually working in the jungle until about 2, and at 5 many of the men prepare to go to their government meetings called congress. That lasts 3 hours and they have mandatory meetings like 4 times a week. We make the best of the time though and get like 4 or 5 lessons with members or less actives since everyone lives so close. I'm ready to start doing service again because that way we can spend the time better. I teach families without the father home too but they usually prefer to be there and listen as well. We found two new investigators this week. Our investigator Joan decided to get baptized next week since he wanted his brother-in-law to be there. Hoping to do his baptism next Saturday in the river. 

We are making progress in cleaning up our area book. I found 7 baptismal papers that had been filled out wrong. I managed to get a hold of the church offices, track down the missionary emails that had served there during the times, and get the corrected information for 4 of the papers. Wasn't easy. Some of them were already home.We fixed the information and are going to send in the records next week with the zone leaders to bring it to the church offices. It sucks because some of the baptismal papers have just been sitting in the book for 2 years and nobody has wanted to deal with them. Anyways, still working on those others. 

Being out here is beautiful as always. We have been getting blasted by numerous storms though lately. The other day after it started pouring we left a big trash can outside that we use for collecting rain water and it was completely filled within an hour. I'm glad about that because it means we don't have to walk 20 min up to the river every time we need to refill our water jugs. Living without running water here actually isn't all that bad. It did kind of suck though when we couldn't bath until about 7:30 PM the other day. By that time, most of the water in the well had been used. I got really sandy that night. Had to sleep with that feeling as well. The well system here is actually pretty cool. They dig these large holes in the sand {My entire area of Ukupa is sand. Basically big beach} and line the holes with large metal tubes going down about 10 feet. Water from the ocean and rain seeps into the well but no longer is salty or gross. It fills up again each night slowly. 

Had kind of a crazy experience today. Me and my comp woke up at 5:30 to go fishing off the beach. We had to go to the river though to catch small fish to use as bait. We get to the river and found that the storms had completely altered its shape due to all of the storms. We go to the river to cross it as usual and find that it was extremely deep where we would normally cross. It was at least 8 or 9 feet down. Maybe more. It used to only go up to our chest. The current pull from the ocean that feeds into river was also extremely strong so it wasn't safe to cross. I have to remind everyone that going in rivers and the ocean is usually extremely against the rules in a mission. However, here we bath and wash off in those places, do baptisms there, and even get water. Going in them is as common as taking a shower back home at times. For example, last Monday I cut my hair. We went to the well and saw there was very little water. I had to rinse in the ocean because we couldn't go to the river. My companion still couldn't walk. We still attempt to do everything as normal missionaries, but this place has some regulations that have been a little changed to allow us to function in the most logical way. I'm not going to wear dress shoes on a beach. Haha! 

This week I went on divisions with the other missionaries from Irgandi. There we helped the disabled men named Crespo again. The missionaries there have built in hours of each day to help him bath and go to the bathroom. It's actually a lot of work. We also visited a bunch of less actives. Basically all 300 villagers there are baptized they just don't go to church most of the time. Luckily the people here are pretty chill though. 

The Kuna people have a good sense of humor. You can mess with anyone and they love it. My Zone leaders told me that missionaries that are obedient, yet like to be silly and goofy, get sent out here. The people love missionaries like that. Every time I see an old Kuna woman walk by I say Moo. Which means grandmother. They always tease and laugh though. It's not disrespectful here. They called the last Elder that was here Elder Gordo. Which means Elder Fat. They were't being mean, it's just the way things are here. Nobody gets mad. Every time I walk through the village, a bunch of naked little kids come up screaming. Elder Aawayys..Elder Aawayys. It cracks me up. They can't pronounce the H in my name. Nobody can here or in Panama. 

We also give a ton of blessings here. Sicknesses are pretty common so people either come to us or the witchdoctor. Sometimes both. Though the tradition kind of gets in the way with the church sometimes, for the most part missionaries do well here. We read to them 3 Nephi 27 when Christ comes down to the poeple and they know it's all true. Their own culture testifies to it. Usually the mission does well out in this zone

Well..I've shared quite a bit now. Living here has really shown to me that money in this life really doesn't mean a lot. These people have everything they could ever need and barely ever use money. That being said, in my life I still intend to follow the advice of Jacob from the Book of Mormon.... The grammar isnt the same 100%. This keyboard is in Spanish and is different. Haha! It says:

'And after ye have obtained a hope in Christ ye shall obtain riches, if you shall seek them. And ye will seek them for the intent to do good. To clothe the naked, and to feed the hungry, and to liberate the captive, and administer relief to the sick and afflicted.'

~Jacob 2:19

I honestly love the scriptures and they do so much for helping me know the way I need to live my life. I hope all of you know that if you have a question our Heavenly Father will always be listening. Though it may seem trivial, the questions we harbor, he will always guide us and share his love if it's what we seek. I hope all of you have a good week! Love you guys!!"

~Elder Hawes

"That sunset picture I sent in the group message was actually Playon Chico. Island of my zone leaders."

4th week in San Blas

7/18/2016:
"Hey everyone!! Can't believe that another week has passed. Its almost like here time doesn't exist. A lot of the people don't even own watches. The only reason they know when we have church is because we hit this old diving tank with a hammer for all to know when we start. This week honestly hasn't been as crazy as last week. I have some awesome news though. We had a baptism!! We baptized this 17 year old named Javier. We actually did the baptism yesterday. We figured the best way to get attendance would be hitting the church bell a little earlier. Since the river is a little more than 20 min away walking we just did the baptism in the ocean about 20 sec walking away from the church. Doing the baptism in the ocean was pretty cool. Kind of funny though because right before I started we got nailed by this massive wave. Haha!! Luckily another didn't happen while I was in the process of doing the baptism. Javier seemed really happy and I felt great the rest of the day. I really loved having that opportunity. The spirit was so strong. In addition, we have another baptism scheduled for this upcoming week with a long term investigator called Joan. This guy has been investigating for a long time and is even better about coming to church than many of the family members that invited him. We decided to show him the baptismal interview questions and that helped him feel a lot better about it. Since we taught him the word of wisdom he has also given up coffee and alcohol. Luckily hes married so we don't have problems with that either. That's something I like here in Kunayala. Getting people to marry is so easy here. Marriages if performed here are recognized by the Panama government as lawful. I haven't seen one done but someone explained to me how they do it. The man lies in a giant hammock and the father in law throws his daughter on the man and rock them together. They take her out again and do it 3 times. Then their married. Kind of different huh.. Anyways...that makes our jobs easier. People realize the importance of getting married rather than just living together. In Panama people just living together is a huge pain. I remember a 60 year old women with like 6 children and grandchildren that told me she didn't know if she should marry her husband. That she might find some other guy..That's actually really common. I was super pumped about the baptism. Other than that not a lot else happened. We are still kind of stunted in working since Elder Cordobas foot still hurts a lot. We have still been having like three or four lessons a day usually. We cant go out and teach 10 lessons like I want to though because if we did that we could probably teach everyone in our area in about a week. ha. Small area.. Really good people though. The people here are very giving. I cant tell you how many times we have walked by peoples homes and they just give us things. The member I have mentioned in other posts named Fran came to our house this morning. He told us last night after sharing a message with his family that he was going to leave early in the morning to go fish for shark. He said that if god was kind enough to help him have success he would give us some. Sure enough..he stayed true to his word and brought us some. Something I love about these people is that they realize the more they give the more blessings they receive. It's ingrained in their culture since Ibe Orgum also known as Jesus Christ came down and taught it to them. That shark was really good by the way. Probably the best fish I have ever had. Oh..I'm also getting better at cooking. Here in Blas we just experiment cooking all the time. I like it though. I've cooked dinner every day for the past week for my comp and I. Ill be honest, I'm still struggling with the language here. I've learned its somewhat more primitive in the fact they have less adjectives and describing things is difficult. Their numbering system is crazy and depending on the shape, size, volume, etc of object being described.determines a different ending attached to a verb in addition to a fixed word that also attaches and varies depending on the number of objects being described. Its hard for me to explain. Anyways..I'm learning a few things. I'm going to attach some words..spelling to the best of my ability. Writing the way they sound rather than the way they are written. Written form sounds different than spoken. A ton of crazy rules. I try to speak a mix of Spanish and Kuna. The people love that.

Elle {yes} suli {no} banemalo {see you tomorrow} madu{bread} wadu {ear} ooa{fish} nade{bye} Bapdumad {god} asu{nose} ibeya{eye} igi {what?} mergi {white person.. like gringo}waga{latin person} and I use this one A LOT. Wechewlee {I dont understand}. Haha!! I know more but dont really know what to write. I hope all of you guys have a good rest of the week! Love you guys!!

/Elder Hawes

I'm also attaching a picture from the baptism yesterday. Me and my comp are cutting our hair today..in our defense. Ha!"

San Blas Island pics

Excerpts & Pictures from Jaden's emails sent home 8/30/2016:

"The pic is of me and some friends at zone conference attempting to fish out of the toilet. haha! There are always a ton of fish over there. We wanted to say we caught a fish out of the toilet. Ton of bites but we didn't get one"

"The other picture shows the view from our porch every morning when the sun rises."

8/1/2016:
"Here are some pictures showing the trail to Irgandi from Ukupa. One pic is of the cliffside you have to pass by and the other is showing the river you have to pass through. The deep part of the river goes up to your belly button sometimes and you have to wade through it."

7/25/2016:
"This is me bathing in Irgandi. The river where they live is in the jungle. The day I took this pic there were monkeys playing in the trees above us. I couldn't get a picture of them though because I was in the water."

"This pic is my hammock with all the netting. Mosquitoes are crazy here. They are huge! It stings when they bite you. They get bigger than my thumb nail and I actually thought it was a completely different bug when I first got here due to the size. Missionaries have also got malaria here. My trainer Perkes got it during his time in my area. Luckily, they give us this medicine called Supramycina which supposedly prevents more than one type of disease in addition to helping with acne. Nice bonus."

"Here I'm sending a picture that I took while in Irgandi. Its missionary technology. haha! Some of the last missionaries that served there were clever. They found a way to make a urinal out of a small hole in the wall. It works pretty well."

"The other picture is from when we had our zone conference in Playon Chico. I thought the picture looked cool. I set the camera on a green hymn book and it gave it that green glow look. ha!"

"I'm sending here another picture of the sunset while we were at Playon Chico."

7/18/2016:
"Here is a pic of me shaving. Kids that it was funny watching me. There were like 15 kids watching. That's pretty normal. Its the same way when I'm at the well cleaning myself."

"This picture is me with the other area called Irgandi. It's another small area."

"This other picture is how we collect water. We just put buckets under the roof and we gather water that way. The green garbage can is our water collector. We use the other buckets to wash dishes and flush the toilet. When we don't get rain water and run out of our supply we have to get water all the way from the river."

7/12/2016:
"Here are some of the jungle flowers and plants."

- Elder Jaden Hawes

Service in San Blas

7/12/2016:
"me planting pineapple plants. You just stick that part of the pineapple that we cut off in the ground. It then sprouts another plant. I think pineapples look funny when growing. Haha!"

Creatures of San Blas

Excerpts & pictures from Jaden's emails home on 8/30/2016:
"I'm sending these now since I couldn't do it yesterday. 

One pic is of some sand crabs that I caught. We tried using these once when I went fishing. These crabs and sardines work pretty well." 

Excerpts & pictures from Jaden's email sent home on 8/16/2016:

"Here is a close up pic of the hammerhead shark."  - which ended up being dinner for someone else in the tribe.

"The other pic is me holding the baby crocodiles" - which ended up being dinner for Jaden and his companion.

7/18/2016:
"This pick is interesting. Try finding the spider. The thing is massive. Bigger than the palm of my hand. Big spiders are common. Found that in the house of the San Blas zone leaders while we were there due to my comps foot."

7/13/2016:
"I just finished a service while this was loading. This is some cool bird that we saw. I might be a falcon. Or hawk. Not sure. Some type of predatory bird"

"One of those massive crabs on a palm tree. This is the type that lives in the ground I showed in other picture"

"One of those massive crabs on a palm tree. This is the type that lives in the ground I showed in other picture"

7/12/2016:
"One of these pictures is showing the holes that the big jungle crabs live in. I could be wrong but they might be called coconut crabs." 
"Trust me..you dont want to stick your hands down those holes I showed in the last pic. the crabs are huge and would really mess your hand up"

"The other is just another picture of a crab that I liked. I have never seen so many different species of crab in my life"

7/6/2016:
"Some pictures of the bats that are living in our roof."

7/4/2016:
"Here is a picture that I took with someones pet mountain pig. The thing is funny. It follows them around like a dog and makes funny squealing noises."

"The other picture is me with a massive toad. These things are all over the place at night. Crazy thing is...this isn't even as big as they get. I've seen bigger."

Food in San Blas

Excerpts from Jaden's emails sent home 8/30/2016:
"Here is the small fish that I caught at zone conference while hand fishing." 

"Here is a pic with me holding the small shark and some of the other fish. I gutted the shark and the other fish. It all tasted pretty good."

Excerpts from emails home 8/16/2016:
Baby crocodiles for dinner
"The pic is me holding the baby crocodiles"

"In the pick I'm putting seasoning on turtle meat. The other pick is of the finished turtle meat." 

"I'm sending a picture now of the deep sea crabs that people find here when they go spear fishing."

"The other pic is of the iguana that I ate. It was in one of those nasty soups. of course...."

8/8/2016:
Fox for dinner
"This here is a pic of some fox meat I cooked up. When eating we had to be careful to not eat any small shotgun pellets. There were quite a few. Luckily I didn't bite any. Found quite a few though."

8/1/2016:
Armadillo and baby fish
"Here is an armadillo that some guy in the village caught and came to show to us. Sadly I didn't get to eat it but I still thought it was cool." 

"This other pic is of something new here that I've never eaten. Those small fried things {not the large fried plantanes} are actually baby fish. Lately everyone has had them because this year happened to be the year they came out. Every few years these tiny fish can be found in the millions in the river. Eating them fried was actually pretty good. They reminded me of the homemade hash browns that mom cooks sometimes."

7/25/2016:
Sea turtle egg story excerpt from Jaden's 7/12/2016 letter:
      "After getting here one of the members came over to our house and asked us if we wanted to try eating sea turtle eggs. He brought us over 18 and I cooked us up some sea turtle breakfast burritos. Haha! I cooked some canned chicken to go with the eggs and the wrap. The eggs had the consistency of this type of rice I've tried before. Its called Coos Coos. I have no idea how to spell that. Haha! It tasted similar to chicken eggs though. I think those eggs are illegal to eat in nearly all other parts of the world. However, in Kunayala anything is fair game."

More sea turtle egg pics Jaden sent 7/25/2016:
     "This other pic is of the turtle eggs before cooking them."

"It's me cooking the turtle eggs." 

"I'm attaching a photo of my sea turtle breakfast burrito"

Shark story excerpt from Jaden's 7/18/2016 letter:
     "The member I have mentioned in other posts named Fran came to our house this morning. He told us last night after sharing a message with his family that he was going to leave early in the morning to go fish for shark. He said that if god was kind enough to help him have success he would give us some. Sure enough..he stayed true to his word and brought us some. Something I love about these people is that they realize the more they give the more blessings they receive. Its ingrained in their culture since Ibe Orgum also known as Jesus Christ came down and taught it to them. That shark was really good by the way. Probably the best fish I have ever had."

"Here is a picture of some of the shark meat that we were given. It was really good!"

7/18/2016:
"Here is a pic of the crabs that we caught before and after cooking"

"I have attached a ton of pictures of those crabs. I just thought it was crazy and wanted you guys to see them. They were pretty good. Eating them is exactly the same as the Maryland ones. There is meat inside the claws and the body. They are petty good. The only thing missing, butter. I keep trying to find butter here but hey never have it. My comp only ate two so I ate all the rest. I'm sure you could imagine that I sat there a long time but wasn't complaining. I got every piece of meat out possible. In each of the legs as well. Haha! I probably became the number 1 predator of those things."

"I'm sending a pick of some fish {do le masee}. In this soup, they didn't even gut the fish. It was pretty gross but its not uncommon for them to just cook entire fish without cleaning them first. It was kind of gross."

7/13/2016:
"I'm sending here a picture I took that Fran gave us after the service we did in the jungle. He gave us rabbit soup."

7/6/2016:
"One of these pictures is of a pig tail that I ate with rice. That was kind of gross. They told me it was the tip of the tail. I honestly thought it kind of looked liked the weiner. The very tip had hair on it. Haha!! Gross huh."

"This here is a picture with a closer up veiw of that soup I was eating in the other picture of me at the celebration we got invited to. The soup is called Do/le/masee. I have no idea how to spell it, thats just how it sounds. Haha! Its okay. Its composed of cooked plantanes and whatever else they decide to thrown in. Essentially just a soup. In this case, on the spoon you can see a chunk of tuna that they caught and threw in."

"Here are the before and after pics of that rabbit that I cooked. They just cut off a leg and gave it to us. I boiled it first then cooked it on a frying pan with soy sauce, cajun seasoning, salt, pepper, mcormick steak seasoning and a little bit of oil. It was really good. I tried the meat right after boiling it and it had a texture and flavor  similar to that of a boiled pork chop"

7/4/2016:
"This picture is of all the fruit that people gave us in one day. The purple looking one is a new fruit I had never tried before. It had a texture similar to that of a boiled egg. Tasted kind of milky. Its white on the inside. I don't remember the name though."

"Here is a pic [of a fish] that a member gave us. We got it from the guy named Fran." 

6/29/2016:
"Also, this is a pic of an animal that some villagers caught in the jungle. Its freakn huge and I thought it was a dog. However, look at the feet. They told us its a massive raccoon. We ended up watching them prepare the meat. I thought that was interesting."

"The animal was boiled to get the fur off. It was grey before and they said had the characteristic mask looking thing on the face that raccoons have."

- Elder Jaden Hawes