"I think I’d prefer to stay out here the rest of my life…"

Hey!

Not even to my island yet, but it’s a miracle I’m here. We’re on Nargana with Elder Wrigley and Sagers and this island’s got a cell tower and kind of has internet, so hopefully this gets to you.

So Friday morning we got up super early and drove to the port here. Amazing how the Pacific is only like 2 hours from the Caribbean. There was a police checkpoint halfway through the mountains and we had to show our passports or residency cards to get through, and none of us had them. So we had to kind of reason with them and they eventually let us through.

We got there almost without barfing as it was a super windy road, but when we got there the boat that was going take us had canceled. So, I had to go with the zone leaders to drop food off at all the islands that are as far as like 6 hours by boat. We waited for two hours to see if another boat would come that would at least take us to Playon Chico, 4 hours away, but none did. So we sat there until we saw some guys trying to push a big boat out in the water that had gotten stuck in the sand. After we watched them struggling for like 10 minutes, we ran out and instantly got it unstuck. And as we were walking back a guy ran up to us and said it was awesome that we did that, and that we push with the power of God since others hadn’t been able to get it out. So he offered to store all our stuff in the boathouse there and take us out to Cartí Tupile, which is like ten minutes out, in his little cayuco, and we could stay with the elders there for the night. He´d send someone out with all our stuff the next morning to get us.

So we got there and it was sick. Carti is where all the Kuna kids in Viejo are from and two of them had moved back so I went fishing with them and caught like 12 fish in an hour. What a dream. They were poisonous little reef fish, though, so I just used them as bait. Literally took me like an hour to meet everyone on the island. Everyone is super nice there, and all the houses are bamboo and super primitive.

The next morning we got a boat and went to Nargana to meet up with Elder Taylor and drop stuff off. The ride was sick. There are hundreds of little islands out here and only a few have people on them. Some are kind of big and are covered in trees and there are others that are literally like ten feet across and have like 2 palm trees. This island’s like the city of San Blas. Still got little bamboo huts but also a lot of concrete ones. It’s still tiny but a little bigger than the others and there’s a bridge over to the Isla Corazón de Jesus. We stayed because we could watch conference here because of the cell tower. Fell asleep super hard almost every session due to not having slept for a week and because the Spanish translation is hard to pay attention to. The jokes don’t really translate.

Been having tons of fun here. Wrigley was in Panama Viejo before me and I lived with Taylor my first change. We don’t really have any water though. They dug a well behind the house a few days ago but we have to boil the water and it takes forever so were taking a boat to the Monte in a few hours to go fill up in the river.

I think I’d prefer to stay out here the rest of my life…

Tomorrow we're heading to my island. They speak Spanish here but I don’t think they do on Tikantiki. But I’ve learned enough of the Kuna language so far, so I’ll be good. (I can’t wait to hear how that goes…I think he said that when he arrived in Panama too!)

Love y’all!

Elder Green