Sorry I couldn't email for real on Monday. We had to leave for the islands so I wrote a quick letter to dad.
Haha well I wasn't in charge of anything during our trip to the islands. My comp had to go do some things. He had to interview the presidents and ask a ton of questions like if they were following all the rules of how to do things and all that stuff! I actually stayed on the island called Playon Chico. It's where the ZL's are. We just pretty much did splits. Me and the ZL who is going home in a week went out and taught some lessons Monday and Tuesday. We had a lesson about the Plan of Salvation and Elder Jensen was like 'And my comp Elder Adams is going to explain it' and just looked at me. The funny thing is before, I would have been terrified and been like what do I say to this guy? But I was just like boom! I just started teaching and it was a super good lesson. I could feel the spirit and it really helped my testimony about eternal families and temple marriage. Me and my comp have been talking about what we want in a future wife. I can't imagine marrying her anywhere other than in the temple. If I love her enough to marry her, I don't wanna lose her after death! So yeah, it was a pretty good lesson.
But I
love it so much out here! Me and my comp talk a lot, like about
everything under the big blue sky. Like we both love it out here. Thinking about going back to the city just doesn't sound fun at all! Like they have fast internet and fast food, and
malls, and members feed them but other than that, the island is so much
better! Everything here is just kinda chill. It's a super simple lifestyle. Our island is like perfect! We don't have very much Kuna culture here, and we don't have like running water or anything like that, so it's kind
of a trade off. But I love it here. The majority of the people
speak Spanish, so it's easier to communicate. When we have someone
who doesn't speak much Spanish, some of the members are super willing to
help us. They just kind of translate from Spanish to Kuna so it's a
super big help.
Before I forget I realized
something else that I could use! It's a dry bag. I know like a ton of
brands sell them but just like a little bag that's water proof. And when I say little I mean little. Like one that is a foot tall or so is
plenty big, because we do a lot of traveling out here. I just have
my backpack and it's not water resistant at all. So it would be nice to
have my important things dry.
But I'm so mad
about you getting to see the temple dedication! I wanna see Elder Holland speak sooooooooooo bad! I love
every talk he ever gives! They are always so good! He is such a powerful
speaker.
And speaking
of, yes we did have the baptism. The night before, a huge storm came in,
and I mean HUGE! It was raining all night long. Then the next
morning it was still raining. It actually swamped the district boat,
like it was completely under water. The engine had a ton of water
in it. So they took it off and tried to fix it, but the rain was still
going. Luckily they got the engine working again, so we called up
all the little kids going with us, and said get here in 30. So they
showed up, and the rain stopped. So we all hop in the boat and take off
at the blistering speed of 4 miles per hour! It took like 30 to 45
minutes to get there. When we got there, we had the service, then the
district president baptized his granson, and then I went in the water with the
girl we taught. She is 17 and I guess missionaries have been teaching her for
years. Like tons of missionaries have worked with her, but she
never accepted a baptismal date. We were the first ones she accepted
a date from and then we baptized her. So it was really cool. We like
to think it was because we are so awesome. haha
There are so many people
to teach on the island! Like we have 40 members at church every week and there
are a few inactive members. But the problem is that the records weren't kept well, and no one took care of them. So sometimes we contact someone and they're like, oh yeah my wife is a member of your church but no one else in
the family is. There are a ton of cases like that. And there are a ton
of people that have never spoken to missionaries in their life. So we
are far from running out of people to teach!
And
yes we did start teaching English this week. it was really weird. We
had like 15 people show up to the first class. We will see about the next
one! We taught them just little phrases that they could use, and
then started going into verbs and how to conjugate them. It's kind of
hard to teach it, but it's still fun to do! Which brings up, German study
is going great as well! It's actually super hard! But still fun!
Now I'll talk about the trip. So we went to Playon Chico, which is 4
hours away. Then I got off the boat, switched with one the ZLs, and they went
back towards our island a little. They stayed the night at one island because
they had to go to congress on that island to try and get the sylas to
let them have internet on the island. They made a contract the
church can be there for 20 more years, and then they will see if the
church can stay of not. The sylas are like in charge of
everything so we will see how it goes! Then the next day, they went
like 3 more hours to the furthest out island. Then they came back to
Playon and I got back on the boat with them. We had to try and stay in front of a huge
rain storm! Like half way through out 5 hour trip, not including
time in one of the islands to do the whole thing, our engine started
dying. We could only get half speed out of it. The last 30
minute trip we had, the engine was like close to death. We really didn't
think we would make it. But we gladly did! It was such a long trip. The
first day was like 7.5 hours total, the second day was 8.5 hours total
so it was super crazy. I only had the 4 hours the first day and then
like 5 the second day so it wasn't that bad for me. We were getting
home at like 8 so it was pitch black. But during the sunset it was
probably the prettiest sunset I have ever seen. It was so cool. Just us 3
on a little canoe with a 15 hp engine and all you could see were dense
jungle on the left, clear open ocean on the right. The sunset was a dark orange light red. it
was so pretty! It was a super cool
experience. I've seen things some missionaries that even serve out here
will never get to see. But that was our trip. It was crazy and we actually did
get rained on a little bit but it was fine, we had fun.
I love you! Have a good week!
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