"Like a beast-sized rabbit, the size of a capybara!"

Hey!

To answer your questions…Yes, I’m in Barrio Cincuentenario 1 (the ward.) It’s the second smallest area in the mission and I just found out the like second most dangerous but whatever, just a lot of drinking and guns, I guess. I don’t have a calling or have to play the piano, and we’ve only done a little service. The only tools anyone has are machetes. We´ll probably do more but haven’t had the opportunity yet. We did paint a house, this past week, and it sounds like we might do that a lot.

Service Project

Anyways, this week was Panamanian Mother’s Day, so naturally things got crazy, as they would. Things were basically the same just more beer and music and dancing in the street. It was kinda fun. Lasted from like the morning until the night, so we didn’t get much done that day.

We have more baptismal dates! One Venezuelan family, that’s been going to our ward for a bit, agreed to get baptized next month, but we found out they’re not married so they’ll have to get that done before. And our investigator with a date from last week also isn’t married to her “person,” or whatever it’s called, but it doesn’t sound like she wants to, so that’s a bummer. We do have two people who are married though! After a district meeting, we decided to visit a family we’ve talked to and I invited two of our good friends from the area above us, Elders Nellis and Mendoza, who are awesome, to come along, and they said they’d be baptized. I didn’t speak a lot that lesson but I said the invitation, terribly, and they said yes…so I’m stoked.

We also had a zone Christmas devotional at the chapel on the temple grounds this week. The Carmack’s spoke then we watched a movie called "The Cokeville Miracle". It’s super good and really makes you think about the angels we always have protecting us. I got to see a couple of my friends from the MTC at this, which was super fun. And we ate American food! Like meat, not just chicken and rice, which we have for every meal, near about. And the temple is sick. Literally in the middle of the jungle, halfway up a mountain.

So we get like the least amount of money, each month, of any mission, (I’m not sure that is true, but since Braiden served in the #1 most expensive mission in the world, I figured we’d have to make it up somewhere,) so I was trying to figure out how to make it last. So naturally I got cereal because it’s delicious. But I got Cinnamon Toast Crunch, my fav, and I ate it in a day. So that’s a bust. But then we went to the Chino, across the street, and ramen there is only 40c each. So were like heck yeah, but, the grocery store up the street has it for only 28c! So basically we’re freaking rich and that’s all we eat when we’re not at a members house. Except it’s hard because we only have one bowl and one fork in our house.

Also, crazy story. So there’s a huge graveyard next to Panama Viejo that we have to cross sometimes to get to different houses. We were coming back really late one night and I kept seeing flashing lights everywhere, so I’m like this is sketch. But turns out they were just fireflies, which are sick. But that’s not the crazy thing. I was shining my flashlight around and I saw a monster. A giant rabbit-like thing ran across the graves. Like a beast sized rabbit, the size of a capybara. And they don’t have either of those animals here. I was so scared. I’m kind of doubting myself now, but at the time I like could not move and I had gnarly chills!

And yeah our house flooded like Saturday or something. I wasn’t surprised because everything leaks in our house, like we can’t really turn off our shower. But it was all over the floor so we mopped it up but it kept coming, so we called the guy who owns the building and we got it taken care of. But now we only have one bathroom.

Our flooded kitchen...

We are one of two areas in the mission who has a washer. It’s on our back balcony and just hooks up to a hose. But we do not have a dryer so we just hang everything up to dry on ropes.

That’s it for this week! I’ll send some pictures when we’re at the church and I’ll try to get some of me in them!

Love y’all!!

Elder Green