Dos Años: "We're Killin' It!"

Hey,

A lot happened this week.

First off, we're no longer teaching Yolanda. She likes us but says she's way too busy right now and her sister doesn't like us coming by. But she said she'd keep reading and praying and call us in a couple weeks.

We met with Renee a couple times and one day he brought a friend! I guess he knew him in Nicaragua and he had just moved here and bumped into him on the street. When we taught him I had just come back from walking out to the little island by our spot. The tide goes like a mile out and theres a big sewage pipe you can walk on out to it and it's like a little rainforest out there. Somehow I was covered in mud from that so hopefully that was a good first impression on his friend who wouldn't answer questions and said he was just there to observe. He didn't seem too interested but we left him with a Restoracion pamphlet and he read through it a couple times.

Hiked out to this little island

Varguez and I were super bummed one day this week because we thought we werent having much success in the area. It's still really boring. But we realised we have like 7 really good investigators, and considering most areas are like 20 to 30 times the size of ours, we're killin' it.

St. Patrick's Day was wicked. We started divisions with the zone leaders that night, who live with the assistants, who were starting divisions with some other zone leaders, so there was 8 of us. Leite and I went and found root beer at a super expensive store. Virgils in a bottle was $2 each but cans were diece so we loaded up on those, then bounced. Literally played ping pong for the next like 3 hours before everyone went to bed. But I did not sleep a wink. As I said in my farewell talk, I was very full of root beer. It's a real thing. Then I got up to go to the bathroom and I watched a cockroach follow me back to my bed. Did a little zig zag to throw it off but it still followed. Finally killed it and then I started hearing squeaks everywhere. That house is infested. Then my ingrown toenail was bothering me so I got out my knife and cut half of it off. I dont know, that was a weird night. But the next morning everyone wanted to play soccer so we took a cab across the city to a park. I had not come prepared so I went barefoot and with a borrowed shirt. Played for a bit then ran like two miles, across the city, to take a bus back to the house.

St. Patrick's Day was as weird as this picture.

Later Leite and I taught a super rich Canadian guy named Paul, who doesn't speak a lick of spanish. Never have I felt the gift of tongues more real than while teaching in english. We started and I was like crap, I don't know this stuff. So I was translating everything in my head, and I could feel my lips forming the words in spanish but english coming out. It was kinda a weird lesson because this guy doesn't really have much of a religious backround and had tons of questions about the cosmos and God. But it was fun. He had a lot of stories too. Like he's been everywhere. Used to live in Glendale too but accidently got addicted to cocaine so me moved to San Fran, then to Seattle, then back to Canada, now he's here.

We had a lot of meetings this week too. Zone conference earlier in the week, then a priesthood meeting Saturday night. An area 70 guy spoke and showed that over the last five years membership in the Panama stake has gone up 500 but attendance has gone down 100. Kinda sad becuase you can see it. People just don't come to church if they don't want to. Sunday morning was stake conference and Flaco (aka Chino) needed one more week of church attendance before we could baptise him. So Varguez and I got up early and went to the Kuna house to wake them up. We only got him and Nalleli to come but that was probably better because we had to take them on a bus to the city. It was their first time there, they were so stoked. They've never really left their Island or Panama Viejo. But that was super fun. We sat in the back and drew pictures of San Blas the whole time. I also paid attention, but I remember nothing. I think they talked a lot about how every member should be a missionary.

Taking Flaco and Nalleli to stake conference

So that is my lesson this week! You dont have to be a missionary to share the gospel. Like all you have to do is give the missionaries your friend's address and they won't even know you sent them. Or you could be cool and talk to your friends about it and invite them to things. Or talk to strangers! Talking to people is not that hard.

Only had two mangoes this week. I can control myself. But I did eat like five bananas yesterday. And two raw platanos this morning.

Is this week Easter? Also what is Good Friday?

Love y'all!