"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!"
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