"It kind of feels like I’m in Carpinteria…"

Nuegambi!

This week was awesome. I love it here in Veracruz. We work a lot in a neighborhood called Koskuna, which is pure Kunas, and another little invasion called La Victoria. So many friends from Tikantiki there. There’s also a ton of families from Carti, so I know my next Carti baptism is not far off.

It kind of feels like I’m in Carpinteria…just dirtier and with unpaved streets. We have a legit chapel. It’s super tiny but we only had 60 in attendance yesterday, so we all fit. The Branch President here is the guy who’s over Seminary for all of Panama, and he doesn’t even live here. But the counselors are awesome and are super willing to help.

Also, the Venezuelan's, Jusmery and Anbar, that I baptized in Arraijan live here! And we’re teaching her mom who’s visiting from Venezuela, and going back pretty soon, and she’s going to be baptized in the next few weeks.

Today for P-day we went with some friends from the branch to the top of a mountain nearby. It’s called Cerro Cabra and it took like two hours of bushwhacking to get there but you can see all of Arraijan and the city from there.

I didn’t know it was Easter yesterday either. I thought it was the next week and the Easter talks didn’t even make me realize.

Yesterday at church one of the jovenes opened his mission call. Only he requested it be sent in English, for some reason, but he doesn’t speak English. He tried reading it and failed so he just read the first country he saw which was Guatemala. Everyone was cheering and I went up to see it, and he had read the MTC he was going to. He actually got called to El Salvador…hahaha. So, we had to refilm it with me translating.

Almost forgot! We also had a baptism on Saturday for a guy named Rufino who’s 21. He’s been going to church for like 3 months and hadn’t been baptized, so the first time I went to meet him I asked him why he hadn’t been baptized yet and he just asked if we could do it on Saturday- haha. That went super well and lots of people showed up. I love it when baptisms aren’t the most stressful experiences ever.

Other than all that, there’s a house that makes Kuna bread here and people are inviting us over all the time to eat Dule Masi, the delicious unripe banana and coconut soup the Kunas eat. I nearly shed a tear every time.

For my spiritual thought, I will share one I’ve shared before about how important it is to love the people we teach and serve. I’ve already seen in one week here that one lesson where you really show the people you love them can get them to go to church.

Love you all!

Hastanoon diapeday

I’m learning Embera too!

Elder Green

"An dudamar sate Bab dummad anmar mandarsasokali biali anmar doggus gwenadgan pentakoe."

Hello!

Yes, I have cambios (changes) and I'm already in my new area. Only took a couple of hours to get here. This place has been on my list of places I've wanted to go since the beginning of my mission. It's called Veracruz and it's just on the other side of the canal from the city. I'm at the beach again and there are mountains and Kunas everywhere. Literally so stoked to be here.

My comps name is Elder Guillen of Honduras, whom I replaced in Mañanitas. He's like 26 and super solid.

And the house here is wick. Kinda small but super nice. We spent most of today pasearing (?) with a family from Carti and I've already lost our phone somewhere. Pray that we find it or this will be the fourth one I have lost or broken.

This last week in Mañanitas was juicy. We put a lot of baptismal dates for people that'll be baptized this next change no doubt. One of which was a referral we got from the Mexico City Temple Visitors Center. They called us and told us of a lady they had talked to on the church website and we set up a cita with her to teach her in a park by her house. She was super stoked about everything we taught about the restauracion and tithing and what not.

On Sunday, we had it set up to have bucco people in church. We did divisions with some jovenes in the morning to go pick people up from their houses to go to church. But dogs and drunk people ruined everything the night before and we only got 3 people to come. But later a family that's been inactive for like 3 years, who we visited once, llegared to church. We were super surprised and now we have two more baptisms from that family.

The people of the invasion are still set up along the river but they're doing better than before. We kept visiting there and found some members from years ago that we didn't know about.

Anyways I don't have much else to say. Elder Bámaca is with one of my buddies Elder Hamblin now.

Spiritual thought! The Señor knows exactly where we should be. I'm not in San Blas, but I'm in a little branch full of Kunas nonetheless.

 I took a taxi to the city this morning with an Elder who spent 18 months as a missionary in Guatemala and was reassigned to Panama. An dudamar sate Bab dummad anmar mandarsasokali biali anmar doggus gwenadgan pentakoe. ( I have no doubt that Padre Celestial will send us where there are lots of families to bless.)

And yes I am still District Leader. I have to take a little bus to the city every week for meetings.

Love you all!

Elder Green

"I'm pretty sure this is my last week in Mañanitas."

Hello!

This week was super slow but this weekend was super good.

To answer your questions, yes its always green here but a few days after it rains it like doubles in greenness. And its started to rain these past few days and all the plants have grown like a foot.

And conference was super good. Had to watch half of the first session on a tablet with the the microphone next to the speaker but after that it was good. I don't remember who was my favorite speaker but I definitely liked Presidente Monson's from the priesthood session. It was short and direct on how we need to be nice people. And Elder Oaks' talk on Sunday about how Padre Celestial and Jesus and the Espiritu Santo are three different beings. I wish people here would understand that.

For the morning session on Sunday we brought one of the families from Carti in our area to watch and they enjoyed it. And saw some other friends from Carti! They can usually watch conference on the island but the school is en panga right now and they haven't finished building the school so some of the people have come in to Panama to live with their other family members to go to school for now.

I did, however, get super sick during the second session yesterday. Don't know why but I felt like death and woke up today feeling worse. But like I've said before, you just have to pretend you're not sick and it goes away faster. And we accidentally planned lots of lessons for today so we haven't had much of a P-day yet.

 Also yesterday we looked out at one of the hills in the Invasion, the little pueblo where people make all the houses of scraps and wood and what not, and it looked like all the houses had fallen over. And we thought it was because of the rain so today we went there to see if we could help but the little log bridge across the river was destroyed and there was a fence put up around the place. And all the people that lived there were set up along the side of the river under shelters of whatever wood they could grab. So we went looking for some of our friends there and they said that like 3 days ago like hundreds of police showed up without notice with tractors and guns and started destroying everything. I guess they were all living there illegally but they've been there like a year and had water and power lines running through there. Anyways, they made them all leave and didn't let them take any of their stuff so now they're all squatting on the other side of the river with nowhere to go. Super sad and we have no idea how to help, but the people were all super thankful that we came to visit. We will figure something out.

I'm pretty sure this is my last week in Mañanitas and I'm kinda ready to go, but twill be a bummer indeed. Still praying to go back out to my juicy Kuna Yala home.

Love y'all!

Elder Green