30 - Our little World Series!

After the breast cancer walk

Our little World Series

You are gonna love this week too Mom! More pics! The one is of me and Jendia and Jean Pierre.

First off I wanna tell you a joke I heard but it only works in Spanish. What is the difference between a pear and a Mormon girlfriend? Un es pera. el otro no espera!! haha yeah I know it is a pretty funny joke.

Grandma told me Marcus got a black eye from the scope when you were hunting. But I’m glad you guys had a good time with it. It sounds like fun! I’m glad things are going good there.

So good news. That kid we baptized last week, this Sunday we gave him the priesthood! So that was a super cool experience!

I’ve learned a lot, having a companion. It really doesn’t matter if you do or don’t like your comp. Every single one is going to teach you something and you really do need to learn it. But that just might be me. I don’t worry much out here I guess, and that’s awesome.

Don’t worry about the bags you sent. If Jesus wants me to get them I’ll get them! I hope the package isn’t lost.

I wish our weather was like a Utah 70 or 80. It’s more like an insanely moist Utah 125. But hey. I’m getting used to it! And you guys are lucky I’m not there to help pull weeds! I would do it the Panamanian way and take dad’s machete to it! That’s how you get it done out here.

But now on to this week on the wonderful island of Nangana. So first off, these guys showed up to start fixing the church and they said they will be here for a month in total. But that brings up problem number one. They don’t really work that hard all the time. They say how much work they have to do but they don’t really work all that much. The guy in charge just kinda sits in his hammock and takes naps. So it’s been kind of slow going here. And it kinda makes me mad, because I’ve worked on houses and stuff. I know that if you try, you can get quite a bit done in not all that much time. You just have to be diligent about it. So that kinda ticked me off a bit. And second, they use a ton of water. It’s not an easy thing to go get water. They will do it in their own time I guess. But I’m hoping this will go quickly and we can get the church back to ourselves.

Then Thursday through Sunday there was a huge, and I mean huge, softball championship! It was super fun! It was like it was the World Series out here. They play different than we do. They had 1st and 3rd base come in as close as the catcher, then 2nd base would cover 1st. Short would cover 2nd then the outfield would come in if no one else was on base, and they also tried to get some sneaky tag outs from outfield. None of it made sense to us, but we still had a good time. Only bad thing was everyone was there so no one was home all weekend. So that kinda stunk. And then Sunday President Carmack showed up. They got here an hour late, so we started church late, and then he left right after so I didn’t get to talk to him. Changes are this week so he couldn’t stay long but it was cool to have him here. He changed the Branch President, so that was a super super good thing. We are excited to start some new work! The new Branch President is all about organizing the branch and getting everyone working together. It’s just what is needed so I’m excited to help with that. He is a recent convert. He joined like 8 months ago, so he still is learning how it works sometimes but we are gonna get him some manuals to read. He invited us over for dinner. And I will tell you what, I was in heaven! His wife made us arroz con coco, banana de tentacion, con langosta, which is bananas, coconut rice and lobster! It was soooooooo stinking good! Easily best meal I’ve had in the country! It was so dang good! That woman knows what she is doing. And then also on Sunday, that kid we baptized last week got the priesthood, it was pretty cool. We taught him about it, and while we were teaching, Juan, walked past! He is one of our soon to be missionaries and he helped us teach about the priesthood. So that was a really cool experience. 

And by the way. Keep me updated if anything comes out about that jaguar. I think it’s called like the XE or something. It’s smaller than the XF but its supposed to be like a straight up sports car. So I think it’s going to turn out pretty cool. They were talking about it a lot when I was home. 

But that’s kinda it this week. Not much really happened but a lot happened at the same time. It was kinda slow but it’s okay! Things will pick up soon! But hopefully this week will have a little more variety to it! Love you! Keep the homies in line.

29 - United States of Awesomeness

Hey mom! Well first off, if you looked at the pictures first you know about the baptism. If not, now you know.

The isla is going great! I wish I had perfect Utah weather here, the weather here is crazy. It gets super hot, then the next day it's cold. And it's to the point of where I need to use my sheet sometimes. So my body temperature is off. There's no way I can be getting cold out here! I'm kind of curious to see how long it takes for packages to get here. But I won't really know if it gets to Panama or not. That's one of the drawbacks of living here on the island.

That's awesome about the cows. I kinda miss farm work. It's weird to think about missing it, but I do. I liked doing it, especially with Austin. It's crazy to think that we are so far away from each other speaking different languages, but doing the same thing.

That's super funny that you guys had to speak in Sacrament Meeting. I honestly don't remember the last time you two had given talks in Sacrament! You punks! Trying to get out of it! haha just kidding. I would do the same.

Our lessons are going good. We are actually doing mission prep classes right now. We have an 18 year old guy and a 20 year old girl. The district president says they have to have all the mission prep classes before they can do their papers. So what we did is we talked about the first 4 chapters of the book, they are about being called of God and personal worthiness. Then 3 and 4 are about the spirit. Then all the other ones are parts of the lessons we teach as missionaries. So now we just teach them the lessons as if they were investigators and then they try and teach it back to us. We teach them like the full-length huge versions of the lesson, which takes like 45 minutes and then we tell them to teach like 10 minute to 15 minute versions of it. So it's actually kind of fun, and it helps to have a missionary teach it I think. We live this every day, so we kinda know what we are doing with it. But it's pretty fun, we have a good time with it. They both really wanna serve in the United States of Awesomness (new name I decided on). I told them like what kind of food we eat there, and that we have running hot and cold water coming from every faucet, just things like that. Then we made them some Gatorade, because in America, we drink greatness. So therefore we decided Gatorade was American enough to be an example. The hermanas on another island have some kids that want to serve missions too, but they are going to teach them. 

For my studies lately, I have been studying the life of Jesus, and his attributes. In Preach My Gospel there is a whole chapter about the attributes of Christ. So that’s pretty good! But my studies are kind of everywhere because I have to study so much! But I’ll start writing things down to share with you.

Travel is super common, especially for elders, because my comp is the district leader. So we have to go on divisions with the hermanas every change. But we almost always take water taxi kind of things. It’s actually kind of fun! We like look at motor size on the boats all the time. There’s a few boats called the Iguana, there are like 3 of them. They all have two 115 engines. It’s crazy! Those things are fast! But nothing compared to the boat back home. I kinda miss that thing. 

I remember doing all that stake youth committee stuff. I actually kind of liked it. It wasn’t even bad! But I guess I had a different view of it. Tell her to stop complaining. There are some places where kids can’t even get to church. So at least she can get to a church. Or do what I did, just go home in between meetings! haha no I never did that! Only right after sacrament to grab some food but that’s it! 

 

But I hope Marcus doesn’t get married before I get back. I wanna do some fun things with him before then! There are so many things to do! But dang I remember Sweet Tomatoes! It was freaking awesome! I remember going to the little bar with all the pizza and loadin my plate up with that! I loved that part! Maybe even as much at the ice cream. I’m so going there after the mission! That place rocks! But make sure to buy the new transformers movie and any other good movies that come out. I wanna see them when I get back! 

Our mission president sends out a letter every week to all the missionaries and we have to write to him every week. If you are lucky, he will write you back. Well it could be super lucky, or super unlucky if he does, depending on what it’s for. I actually did go to that conference too but I just wasn’t in any pictures. That was out in Playon Chico, and their bridge isn’t as cool as ours. Theirs is a little longer, but ours is taller, wider, and nicer. We gave up on our dreams of being expert fishermen. It was too much time invested. But we actually never really worry about food. We buy more food out here on the island than we get from the city. From the city is only like special things we couldn’t get out here and drink mixes. 

But this week was pretty crazy. We had a seminary graduation. It was with us, Carti Tupile and Tikantiki. So Thursday and Friday me and my comp were getting ready for that. Just so you know, pretty much the ward works through the missionaries. They always ask us to help with everything that ever happens. Without missionaries a lot would be undone. So we had to work on that for pretty much 2 days. Then Saturday morning at 8 am. we had a baptism. It was just me, my comp, the district president, and the Milmer. Small crowd for that one. but it was ok. He is the kind of kid that doesn’t really care about things like that so it worked out fine. I felt like those first missionaries how they would just kinda take the person to the nearest river and get it done! So that was pretty cool.  Then we had the other islands show up so there were kids everywhere. We had the seminary graduation and it was pretty fun. We got nachos after and I was in heaven. I missed liquid cheese! But it was a good time. We didn’t get much sleep though. Our hammocks take up almost the whole room where we sleep and we had to throw 4 more people in the open spaces we had. There wasn’t hardly any room in here! We were kinda crammed. On Sunday we were exhausted. We went to a member’s house for some lunch. It was super good! It was rice and chicken and carrots. Dang I miss those carrots! That was my week. Not much, but at the same time a lot of stuff went on. 

But other than that not much is happening, just some teaching. We have movie night with our youth. Me and my comp go to see the Columbians and buy Disney movies and then we all watch them on Fridays. Then Saturday mornings we are starting a thing where we play sports in the morning. So we do a lot of work with the jovenes.

I hope things are going good in the hood. Keep Brooke in line and Marcus away from thoughts of marriage! Love you!

28 - A Day on the Island

Well my week was kind of weird. No the storms haven't really stopped but they don't happen at night as much. So that's better! The emergency plan for the island is a few  simple steps. 

1. If rain comes, close the windows.
2. If stuff starts flying away, get what you can.
3. If all else fails pray.

Those are the 3 steps to emergency preparation on the island. But seriously, there aren't any shelters. If your house blows away, it blows away. The church is actually one of the most safe buildings on the island. The only ones more safe are the brick and cement buildings. 

But you have no clue how hard it was for me to judge those little cuties! They were all so dang adorable! And I decided I really want to bring you and dad out here when you guys come. It's a super amazing place! They have 2 hotels on the island, so there's totally nothing to worry about! 

 

I got emails from Landon and Tyler  of them telling me where they got called to, that's so awesome! I can speak Spanish with Landon  now! And I can have Tyler go to a Bayern Munich game with me! So it all works out in the end! That's awesome about Tyler! It's crazy that he was ready for the military and everything, but then just decided to change course and do mission papers. It's a great thing to do though! A mission will teach you a lot of things. 

 

So now to investigators, we have 2 teenagers and 1 little girl. One teenager is this Saturday, the little girl was supposed to be in a week, and the other one was set for a few weeks from now. But if the little girl didn't come to church, we won't be able to do it next week. It will have to be moved back. The other one will have to be moved back too. 

 

Spanish is coming along pretty well. It's hard, but it's an every day effort. It actually helps having an English companion because he can explain things to me so I can understand it. My comp has a little over a year, like 2 weeks more than a year. He has like 4 months out on the island. 

Tell Marcus I said happy birthday, he hasn't written me in like a month so I can't tell him myself. But that's too bad about Brooke. I know what it's like to be let down by people, especially when you give them something special! So I feel the struggle. 

Now to the routine. So we wake up at 6:30. I kinda just lay in my hammock, then I say prayers, then we start talking, then we study, then we eat. We switch off between granola bars and pancakes, then more study, then we talk during study time, then it turns into doing anything necessary, as in wash clothes, clean up, bathroom etc. and we keep doing whatever we need to. We eat lunch then continue with random things and we go work. Then we return at about 7 or 8, make dinner, if we have any more lessons after, we go back out. Then we call it a night and start getting ready for bed and work out. I do push ups, about 50ish. Then I shower and get in the hammock. Then we normally have night talks. And that is a day in San Blas islands for us. Then there comes in random things we have to do, like de-bug the house, which means picking the bee hives off of curtains. We have to kill quite a few cockroaches. Then service, and just random little things we have to do. But this week was weird, we had to go to Playon Chico for a district conference so we spent Saturday and Sunday traveling. 

But nothing else really happened. I love you!

27 - The Month of the Storm

Well first off I gave up on German. Now I'm getting into Italian a little bit. And no, no one speaks those languages out here, but while I have the gift of tongues why not try it out? haha It's kind of difficult sometimes. But Italian is so close that sometimes you can use Italian and people think you are speaking Spanish! It's actually kind of funny to do.

Conference was great! But me and my comp are kind of worried, all first session of Sunday is about the prophet and how we respect him and follow him. Then Pres. Uchtdorf told about if the prophet can't make decisions, his counselors can do it for him. And then to start President Monson's talk he said like I hope you can pray for me to give this talk. So me and my comp were getting all worried over here! But other than that my favorite one was Elder Holland's talk on Saturday, I don't remember which session, but it was a super good one!

I just hope Marcus isn't married by the time I get back! I wanna be able to go do some fun stuff. But maybe he will finally wanna hang out with me by then! haha. But it's kind of funny how big of a problem facebook and twitter and all that stuff is. People just get caught up in all of it, when there are so many more worth while things to be doing. 

 

But we have a 15 year old kid and a 9 year old girl who are pretty ready to get baptized. The 15 year old has all the requirements done. He always gets super excited when we talk about the Book of Mormon or something about the church. The 9 year old girl, her sister is a member and comes like every week. The younger sister needs to come to church. The only problem is we won't be here next week, so her sister who is a member needs to bring her or it won't happen this change. So we really hope she does! We have another person who is like 16. His girlfriend is a member, but we aren't too sure about how interested he is. But we are trying our best and working hard.

Yes, we can get our food and mail even if we stay on the island. We just make a list of what we need, and then they buy all the stuff for us. They drop it off as they come past. But we have a crap load of stuff! We got Febreeze (Hawaiian Passion) something like that. Me and my comp were in heaven! It smells so dang good! I also got a letter from Bro. Beckstead. The ZLs brought our mail with our food and stuff. The only problem is it's super difficult to send letters from out here. You have to send stuff into the city by plane and then they send it from there. But it's super sketchy and sometimes they don't even send it. So that's the only problem with it. And yes, sometimes they do fly you in instead of coming by boat. If they know you are going in far enough before hand, they get you a plane ticket. Yes, we do have a kitchen in the church, complete with a cooker and a table. But the good thing is our cooker is a propane one so it's a million times better than those stupid hot plates! I love cooking on real fire! It makes it a lot more fun! 

Now to some things that happened this week. First off I had to judge a singing competition. It was from preschool to 5th grade and they asked me to come be a judge. It was super funny, the other two judges were like singing teachers at other schools. Then me, some white kid. So I had a good time with it. There were some freaking cuties there! And when it got to the really little ones, they got nervous and some cried a little, I felt so sad! So I gave them all like the same score! I was like no! It's okay you adorable little girl! Don't cry! It just pulled at my heart strings! 

Then comes the fumigation story. So they fumigate for mosquitoes every once in a while. So they told us they would come at like 9 so we were just waiting for them to get there. Then out of nowhere they start it up and smoke starts coming up from the floors. So we are like, crap! So we run to a window, start taking out the slats and jump out of the window! So yeah, we had to escape out of the church. 

Then 3. I guess October is the month of the storm. They say that during the month there are like storms every day. And they get huge wind storms a lot. During the day they are fine because you can see what's going on, but at night it's kinda creepy. But they have a thing here, whenever there is a big storm, they believe if you blow on a conch shell the storm will pass faster. So the wind is blowing like crazy and you can hear a faint conch shell being blown. It's super, super cool actually! But on Saturday there was a storm during the day. I looked out, and it was pouring, but I could see two boats tied together that broke off from the land and were just kinda cruising on out to open ocean. It was pretty funny to see actually. But the storms at night aren't quite as fun. But I guess it's just how it is.

 

My missions president replied to me and my companion's letters last week. He actually asked my comp if he thought I would be able to be the branch secretary for all of San Blas Islands. That's the calling my comp has right now. So that's kind of scary! But it's cool to think about too.  

But that's pretty much all that happened this week. Nothing too exciting! Just a ton of conference! But I love you. Keep it real home slice.