Dos Años: "Now my room smells like a burnt mattress...and there are still bed bugs!"

Elder Varquez and I, above the city.

Hey!

To answer your questions:

-Yes my arm hair helps keep the mosquitoes off, but not the bottom side, or the rest of my body.

-The pictures of the sketchy lot is the cemetery we cross every day to the Sister’s area that we steal from them.

About to walk through the sketchy cemetery.

-The picture of the sketchy pier is from this abandoned part of the city that’s inhabited by homeless people now. We went exploring it last week.

Of course Taylor had to stand here.

The rooster monument, in the background, is a memorial to the over 20,000 people who died
building the Panama Canal.

-And no I don’t need new shoes. Mine are still good.

So this week was mostly frustratingly boring, but also really fun. I guess I’ve started to realize that I’ve been walking the same streets, which means every Street of Panama Viejo and Puente del Rey, every day for 3 months. We didn’t have a lot of appointments at all this week, so we decided to go house to house, like Testigos (Jehovah Witnesses), which we never do, but we found some really cool people who love the message but won’t come to church. But they say we can come back so at least there’s something to do, because there’s been a lot of sitting under trees thinking of who to visit lately.

We taught our investigator Benjamin who we found last week with two members who served missions the other day and it was wick. He totally understands everything and kept saying he really wants to come to church but his wife doesn’t want him to. So I left him with a few scriptures to show her to try and convince her. All of which I had found that morning studying because the only scripture I actually know is John 3:16. Well I think I know it. Maybe just the first part. But anyways, he´ll for sure get baptized…maybe not while I’m here…but someday.

Franybeck and Carlos, the family who had us over for Christmas, are still more active than most of the members but won’t get married so they can’t get baptized. We have family home evening with them almost every week. Both of their children have said that they want to get baptized, so we are going to talk to them about that this week.

We’re also going to baptize two of the Kuna kids who are nine. Chamille and Chino. I don’t know Chino´s name but one time he got a haircut that made him look Chinese so I called him that and now everyone does.

Teaching the Kuna kids.

I wonder if this cute little girl is about to pull the hair on Taylor's arm.

We taught another awesome lesson to another Nicaraguan guy named Renee this week. There’s a little lawn next to the ocean, by the ruins, that we sometimes go to contact at, and we found this guy sitting on a rock under a tree, so we started talking to him then somehow got to teaching the Plan of Salvacion. He thought it was awesome and luckily my companion knows the scriptures much better than I, so he had everything to back it up. He said he wants to go to church too and that we could come by anytime this week.

In other news, we finally got bunk beds in our room, and as I was moving my mattress to the top I saw a little black spot on the side of it. So I poked it and like 20 bed bugs went running all over the place. And there were several of these little colonies of them. We were freaking out. We started squishing the ones on the ground and they were filled with blood. I have had an extremely itchy face rash as of late, which also covers the rest of my body and especially my right ear, and I think I found the reason. I ran to the kitchen and got matches and started burning all of them hiding in the mattress. And it was working until the freaking mattress caught on fire. So we start punching the mattress to put it out and like thirty seconds later it went out. Now my room smells like a burnt mattress, and there are still bed bugs, and everyone else in the house has discovered their mattresses have them too. So Young has moved to a tiny hammock on the balcony, and I’m just dealing for now. But I’m so freaking itchy.

One last thing. We went shopping before we came here and there’s this homeless guy, who’s a pro with crutches that hangs out in front of the store, that I always talk to. For some reason outside the Super 99 is the mecca for crippled homeless men. His name’s Wheatley, and I don’t know much about him but he always tell me to bring him something to read, in Spanish, English, Chinese, or Hebrew. So I’ve given him all the pamphlets for lessons and like twenty minutes ago I gave him a Libro de Mormon and I think he’s still reading it. Don’t know what else to do, but if he says he wants to come to church we´ll find a way to get him there.

That’s it for this week. We haven’t done anything fun today except throw paper airplanes off the roof of our building.

Love y’all!

Elder Green