"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!!"
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