"See the Good"

 Hey!

Freak, I didn't even know it was Thanksgiving this week. I don't even know what month it is. I've been writing October in my journal for the last two weeks but I guess it's like November now. So yeah, we didn't do anything for it. I think I ate an entire pineapple for dinner that night.

This week a hurricane passed through Panama. We had no idea about that either. But it rained super hard for 22 hours straight and most of the next day. Not much wind or anything but the rivers were almost as high as the bridges. We still don't have a phone and somebody told us everyone in the ward was calling us to make sure we were inside...haha. We worked all that day and had 7 lessons. Didn't think it was that serious but turns out quite a few people died nearby because of trees and mountains falling on them, but it passed and it's back to the bloody heat.

'Baby Coco Party', aka district meeting.

And yeah our new house is wick. I eat a coco every morning for breakfast. That's where I got them for our baby coco party. It was just a district meeting and I've been slacking on the treats as of late, so I bajared a couple of those in the morning and everything was listo listo. A member lady, Hermana Granado, lives across the street and she's basically our mom. She invites us over to eat all the time and we wash our clothes there.

Our own Coco Tree in the back yard.  

And the little kitties are at the house of this old guy Luis who got baptised like a year ago but can hardly walk so he can't go to church, and he lives alone. So we visit him a lot and help him with things. Last night we went kinda late to go see him and one of the little cats had fallen inside of the chair they sleep on so we rescued it. Perfect timing.

Pile of cats

This week, like most weeks, I had a moment of extreme sadness missing my island life and my island people. And I was like, back in Carti I just walked around with a hymn book and a Libro de Mormon and it was prime. So I started doing that again this week and felt so free. We've been going around a new part of our area a lot, which is called San Jose, and is a proper Panamanian jungle ghetto. And due to the freedom of no bag, we were talking to hecka people and exploring a heckuva lot more. Lots of narrow little dirt paths that lead to houses way back in the trees. Down one we found a guy named Oscar who's 18 and lives with his wife and her little brother. Wicked little cinderblock house with dirt floors. These guys basically knew nothing about religion and what not so we taught them how to pray and everything and they may be solid.

Also had an unreal stressful day on Saturday trying to make a baptism happen. We told the Bishop and our ward mission leader that we were going to have one on Saturday but I guess they forgot and we couldn't get a hold of them all day Saturday. We were going to baptise the others from the Morris family that we baptised last week and we couldn't find the papers for the baptism of the dad Carlos who got baptised like 50 years ago in Carti. So we planned on baptising him too, but nothing worked out and we had to cancel it. They were all kinda bummed and we were hecka bummed. but I guess it's good because turns out we had to ask Salt Lake if they had his papers for baptism before we could re-baptise him. On Sunday, though, we were talking to a guy in another ward from Carti Tupile who said he was there when Carlos got baptised and he was like one of the first on the island to do it. And Carti was legit like the first area outside of the Canal Zone where they had baptisms in Panama. So gonna be legit if we get to redoit next week.

Spiritual thought this week is from a picture Joleen sent me in the MTC that I printed off and left on the wall on the island. It says "See the good." I had some times this week where all I could see was the frustrating, annoying stuff but I learned from some of our investigators who live in houses made of tin scraps that if you don't focus on the water coming in through the roof you realize how lucky you are to have a house at all.

Aurora Borealis? 

Love you all! And happy birthday to Fitz!

Still don't need anything from the states, but see if you could find a place for me to buy yucca and platano when I get back.

Elder Green

"...the Spirit speaks louder than we do..."

Hey,

This week was kind of hard, but super solid.

Our scheduled baptisms still haven't happened, but hopefully this next week everyone will be back from the island and then we'll get them done.

Monday was Day of the Dead, Tuesday was Independance Day, and Wednesday was something like Flag Day...Panamanians like to celebrate. That's just three of like 50 holidays they have. But anyways this week there was a lot of partying and it started raining bucco, so half our area was flooded most of the time.

We were also supposed to have a lot of investigators in church this Sunday but they all said they slept in... hahah. We're still visiting the Ngobe family and they're super solid. The other night the wife asked if we could go teach her cousin, who lives nearby. And along with her we have two other Ngobe families we teach. I always ask them how to say things in Ngobe but never know how to write them. We're also planning on baptising the 18 year old son of the Colombian family in the next two weeks.

We had two service projects this week. One was with some recent converts of the Hermanas. We did a lot of macheteing and harvesting yucca. It's this beast root that you pull out of the ground. Nearabout lost my fingernails trying to dig them out...before I figured out how to do it.
And the other was for a Kuna family in the ward. The grandpa is the branch president of Ustupu and they're building on to their house, so we carried like 150 bags of sand for cement and a bunch of cinderblocks.

Last night I had the most spiritually guided house find ever, I think. I was super frustrated last change because my comp didn't want to go anywhere that had trees or dirt or anything like that, so basically we didn't work in most of our area. So far, this change, we've been working in all parts and exploring areas where we haven't been yet. So last night we were going down a street that I didnt know, and there was lots of music as usual, but I see a little bridge over a river and up the side of a hill into the forest, and I'm like 'boom it.' So we went back there and found a little house and the family came out and welcomed us in. They said they were Catholic but listened to everything we said and then we invited them to get baptised at the end. And there was like a minute of silence and it was 'awk' and I was going to say something but I didn't and then they agreed to be baptised and seemed super sure about it. So from that I learned that the Spirit speaks louder than we do, and if I had said something I probably would have cut the Spirit off from saying what they needed to hear or feel.

So this week we're going to keep looking for houses in the forest.

The pictures I sent this week were of flooded rivers and other parts of my area that have no name.
And we have a house...we're moving in on the 15th!

Love you!

Elder Green