"I saw the inside of a fireball, and lost all the hair on my legs… but I’m good."

Hey,

So Carnival has begun! It’s pretty tranquilo in Viejo but we were in San Miguelito, the next town over, earlier this week, and there were tons of kids walking around in the streets. Then, a man in a monkey costume and a giant tribal mask would come running around the corner with a whip and chase everyone. It was super fun. (Do not add exclamation point here.)

Also Elder Nellis and I did divisions in our area this week and it was awesome. There are lots of little alleys with houses all the way back that are super hidden and kind of hard to get to sometimes, but I decided to visit an investigator we haven’t talked to in a long time. She wasn’t there, so we explored another part of the alleys and talked to one lady who said she couldn’t talk now, but we could come back later. We’re supposed to ask for references from everyone for people that might want to listen, but I hate doing it because it’s weird and never works. But we asked her and she said to go up the alley a little more to one of her friends’ houses. So we went to the house we thought it was and a lady came out and let us talk to her. It was the wrong house though. She was a little crazy but she said that the day before, two Mormon girls in normal clothes, an American and a Mexican, had talked to her just walking through Chanis, a random neighborhood that’s not really part of anyone’s area. She was talking about the Hermanas in our district who must have talked to her after walking to their new house, after we helped them move the day before. So she thought that was really cool. So we taught her the restoracion and it was probably the best I’ve ever taught it and I was super cumf with my Spanish the whole time. We didn’t know if she understood everything, but at the end we asked her to pray and she did. And she went over like every point we taught her in the prayer, and said she hadn’t even thought about baptism in five years but asked if she should now. It was awesome, she remembered everything. At the end she asked us how old we were and she flipped when we said we were 18. Then she told us we were in grave danger staying in Panama Viejo past 5- haha. So she wants to get baptized at the end of next month... if we can get her to church!

This experience taught me to follow Preach My Gospel, because if the Hermanas hadn’t contacted her, even though they were just in normal clothes, and we hadn’t asked for a reference, then we probably wouldn’t have found her.

And Isai is getting baptized this Saturday! Nellis and I planned a lesson for him to teach him the orginacion of the church and we gave him the conference issue of the Liahona. I even chose that talk you said dad shared about biking through the dark tunnel, for him to read. He really liked it. (Click here for the story.)

Awesome Mola that Isai and Cesia made for me.

Looking for a place to baptize in the ocean...I guess it won't be here!

I’m hoping we move the washer from the old house over to the new one. Because since we’ve moved we’ve had to use the Chino Lavanderia across the street where we have to fill the washers with hoses. It takes forever. We do get to watch the Panamanian news while we wait though. This week’s breaking news was that we should spend money on clothes and food, before we buy beer and lottery. Panama’s figuring things out.

In other news we found out our oven is gas, not electric as we were told. I was waiting a long time for it to heat up, which wasn’t happening, so I pressed the igniter button. Then I saw the inside of a fireball and lost all the hair on my legs… but I’m good.

Today, Salamanca and I climbed Cerro Ancon. It’s this mountain above the city, with a giant flag on it. Near about got attacked by a vulture. Also I bought a wee saw blade, and made friends with a guy that has like a woodshop downtown. Bought a block of wood from him. It was a fun, tired P-day!

Cerro Ancon

So excited to have a block of Panamanian Cedar.

We also had a big missionary conference at the temple, this week. Elder Alonso and Elder Christensen, of the Seventy spoke. It was really good. They talked a lot about how we should contact people and be more effective missionaries. I was only disappointed because somebody mentioned food at the beginning, but there was no food afterwards. I did get to hang with a bunch of my MTC buddies though! I freaking miss the MTC. Literally so fun.

Elder Aycock pulled 3 ligaments and has to go home.

Good to see some of my MTC buddies!

Love y’all!

Elder Green