Week 24

The gladsome tidings of this week are PLENTIFUL. We had a baptism/confirmation, a Family Home Evening with recent converts, investigators and longtime members alike, and then we had a whopping TEN investigators come to church yesterday, including a family of 4. We were on Cloud 9.

But before I get into that, I must share the not-so-gladsome tidings. And that is, that I'm afraid the destroying angel of cambios did not pass over our home last night. I'm staying in Loma 9 and training AgAiN but this time she's a Latina FRESH from the MTC (but I won't meet her til at least tomorrow, so I'm hanging with Hna Esponilla who's also from Honduras). And Hermana Castro is finishing the training of Hermana Hopkin's gringa baby. That's how it is in this mission, just babies havin' babies all the time. I was shocked tho cause on Hermana P-day I literally made a joke that Hna Castro would be finishing her training and here we are.

Anyways! Ah! Baptism! Carlos!

Carlos is... Wow. Where do I start. When we first met Carlos we lowkey wrote him off as a crazy old man who gave us a grocery bag full of mangoes one time but THEN one day we said ¨Hmm maybe we should share a message with Carlos¨ and we were SHOCKED because he immediately understood and remembered everything we taught SO WELL. Literally it was like he was just sitting there, so prepared, just waiting to be invited. We gave him a Book of Mormon on his birthday and he was thrilled and every time we came back he'd have EVERYTHING we left him to read highlighted so he could remember what parts he's read and where to find them and he always reads and rereads the pamphlets and conference talks we give him. I feel like I had a whole bunch more I was gonna say but I forgot it. It's okay. My email will still be here next week if I remember. Also I forgot my camera at his baptism so I took pictures of the pictures on Hermana Castro´s camera (lol sorry I'm TACKY, gowsh) with hopes that she'll send them to me later today if she remembers. But anyways yeah.

I have a story.
One day this past week we started our hour of Cosechas (a finding program where we leave blessings with people and then ask to come back) in an apartment complex that we work in all the time, and for some reason this day a door that has never called my attention before called my attention. So we go up and knock and yell and do all the things and nothing happened so we just looked at each other and said ¨welp I'm pretty sure this isn't even an apartment and nobody lives here and we're fools for trying¨ and we left. But THEN. Fast forward like 5 minutes. We were on a different floor (maybe even a different building?) and this little boy comes up and says "hey you guys knocked on our door 5 minutes ago and we want you to come back" so we follow this boy back to that first door we knocked on (turns out we'd knocked on their back door and that's why it looked so weird) and we came to find out that they were members but they were inactive because the mom lives with her boyfriend and felt like she shouldn't come back to church until they were married but then she started crying and told us that all morning she'd been crying and praying, asking God to send someone to visit that could help her have the courage to come back to church and also maybe leave her a blessing or something and we were SHOCKED because up to this point we hadn't told her that we were literally going around leaving blessings when we knocked on her door.

Anyways yeah. I'm so blown away by all the intricacies of God's power and compassion and mercy. There's an article in the April 2019 Liahona called the Widow of Nain [click on April for link] and I just like it really a lot because God was aware of that widow 2000 years ago and God was aware of this woman we found this week and that means that God is aware of you too, my friends. Como. no.

HAGW [Mom translation: Have a Good Week]
Hermana Tolman

With Carlos at Church. He was so excited that HE asked US for a picture in front of the chapel.

With Carlos on his birthday. We got him a muffin from a chino and put a candle in it to celebrate.

My camera was recording without me knowing but it caught this clip of Carlos talking to us and I didn't delete it cause I don't want to forget the funny way that Carlos talks. He's hard for me to understand sometimes cause he's missing some teeth (he calls me "Hermana Poolman" hahaha)

Hna Castro always makes fun of me for not knowing how to cook and I always deny it and say she's exaggerating but then she caught this picture of me with a burnt grilled cheese and I'm worried she might be right.

I love the cats but they don't love me back

Cute little pineapple plant

Week 23

This week went by QUICK, I don't even know what to say.

I included some more pictures of all the many staircases we have to walk up in my area.

In Panama there are lots and lots of cats everywhere (and also dogs and chickens and lizards and all manner of creeping things, but that's beside the point). Anyways, when I first got here for some reason I really didn't like the cats cause they were all really gross and mean and shy. But this past transfer, idk if it's the area or what but my heart has been SOFTENED and I LOVE all the cats here.

No doubt it is Satan trying to slow the work of the Lord because we'll be in the middle of a lesson or something and I can't concentrate because I'm admiring a nearby cat. Anyways.

Yesterday was a happy day at church because lots of people came that don't normally come. Also we were cleaning our house and we found a prized Kuna Book of Mormon

(the language is called something else but I'm dumb and I can't remember, but before coming here I thought Kunas spoke a weird dialect of Spanish but NO. Its not Spanish at all in the slightest. Pray for me if I get sent to the San Blas islands cause hwow).

On a more spiritual note, I was thinking. And.

All things obey Jesus Christ as their master and creator and everything he touches he puts in its perfect order, but with us (sons and daughters of God, potential Heirs of His Kingdom...) he lets us choose whether or not to follow him. But the principle is the same- everything he touches gets put in its most perfect and natural order. So there you have it, my dear kiddos,
!Let Christ put your soul in order
!Keep the Commandments
!Repent everyday
Thank you.

Week 22

wOaH hEy EvErYbOdY

This week I'm what the French call... overwhelmed by how much I have to say and how many pictures I want to send. We're just gonna powpow, keep it simple and organize it in 3 points.

Number 1. We had a baptism this week!! His name is Josid, he's 9 and I would adopt him as my own if I could. 

This is Jhovani. We´ve been teaching him almost the whole transfer and he's come to church a whole bunch but he has some Word of Wisdom struggles that are keeping him from getting baptized.

His mom and grandma got baptized in 2012 (when he was just a smol smol beb) but went inactive about a year and a half ago but one day we were out on the street talking to this man and Josid and his mom walked by and Josid recognized us and starting calling for us to come over but we were in a conversation so we couldn't and they kept walking. But we ended the conversation and ran to catch up with them to find out what the deal was and we exchanged phone numbers and well, here we are. We've been teaching Josid and helping his mom come back to church and it's just been soooooo. mm mm. Very fun. Josid has more energy than any kid I've ever met, he talks like a million miles and hour and is always just bouncing off the walls and making these weird funny crafts. It was funny, we had been teaching him for a solid chunk of time and then one day we were walking and I was talking to him and said something about Hna Castro and he was like "wait....who's Hermana Castro??" and we laughed. 

Numero 2. Today we had Hermana P dayyyyy- I got to see Hermana Hopkin my pal from the MTC and it was TOO fun. 

I got to see Hna Hopkin!

It's hard to tell but that brown ball of fur in the tree is a sloth!

Cerro Ancón from afar! 

We 'hiked' up this hill thing that had a great view of the Panama Canal and also I think is historic or something?? I don't know. [Note from Mom: Ancon Hill, which was used by the U.S. as a command post during construction of the canal, and is the highest point in Panama City. Now a jungle preserve and popular hiking trail along which a great variety of tropical birds, animals, and orchids abound.] We saw so many white people it was the weirdest thing of my life. But very fun, I enjoyed it. 

Also I saw a SLOTH and some other animal that I've not seen before.

[Note from Mom: It's an agouti! Basically an R.O.U.S.]

Number 3 is. I don't know. I just wanted to bear my testimony about the power of specific prayers. We started praying that people would be able to recognize us and representatives of Jesus Christ and literally that same day everyone we talked to was like "Hey tbh I was about to slam the door in your faces and tell you I was busy but then something told me not to??" and we were like "aw yeee".

Anyways that's all cause if I keep going I'll not stop and I wanna call my famfam. I love you all! Thank you for your support and prayers, I really feel them!

Hermana Tolman

Soaked from the rainstorm on our way to lunch!

Week 21

This week I had a mosquito bite that got infected and it was really just quite the fiasco that sucked up the majority of the week but I'm here, we're rollin, and everything's gonna be just fine I think.

First Zone Conference with President and Hermana Garrett!

Hermana Castro with her "grandpa" Fidel Castro's BFF Che Guevarra (just kidding, her dad is actually Japanese. I had to BEG her to take this picture)

Anyways. 

While I was, shall I say, bedridden with disease, I was rereading my journal from last summer and the first entry said "There's no point to a journal if I only record the moments of certainty and strength and fearlessness. It's important to remember that we've had moments of being scared and uncertain so we don't think it's a new thing when it hits us in the future and also it gives more meaning to the peaceful, empowering moments God gives us cause then we remember that we still have the capacity to feel that after we've been feeling the opposite" and I tell ya what, I think God let this infection happen to my leg so that I'd sit down and review my journal entries and FIX my gosh darn attitude. 

-----------

*INSERT 10/27/21: Looking back at my mission blog, I realize just how little I disclosed about my infected bug bite in my emails to home. So here's some pictures and the story as it was described in my journal at the time:

7/4/19

"I will now recount what I like to call 

The Unabridged Saga of My Leg ☺

It all started last Saturday? Sunday? (well NO, it all started when I scratched my mosquito bites, but we're not gonna talk about that cause I have vergüenza)

The point is, it all started not so long ago when I noticed a bug bite on my leg was unusually red, and I said "Oh? What's this? Hermana Castro?" and she was like "Oh? Maybe it was a chinche?" and then we spent like 5 minutes trying to help me understand what a chinche is (*drawing pictures and trying to make sense of the spanish/english dictionary) but I just didn't know so at the end I just said "welp, tomorrow is P-day, maybe I'll just ask my parents to google chinche and then tell me or send me a picture or something" and that was that. 

    So then P-day comes and I'm talking to my parents (and by "talking to my parents" I mean I was listening to my parents because the microphone on my computer wasn't working so I was just typing things into a chat and then listening to their responses) and I was like "Hey can you google what a chinche is?" and then I made the grave mistake of sending them a picture of the bite on my leg. My mom was like "Talk to the mission nurse!!" and I was like "yeah yeah, I'm gonna be in the mission office this week for a conference so I'll just wait til then to ask so it can be face-to-face" because the mission nurse was Hermana Current (the mission president's wife) but now it's Hermana Garrett and I didn't know if she knew she was the new mission nurse and I didn't want to call her and be like "Oh hi nice to meet you, I'm sure you're not feeling busy and overwhelmed on your first couple days in Panama so I'm just gonna complain to you about my leg". 

    So anyways. P-day ends at 5 and we get back to work and in the last cita of the night the woman we were teaching saw my leg and goes "sweetie you need to go to a clinic" and deep in my heart I knew it to be true cause it was starting to hurt really a lot. 

    So then the next morning we called Hermana Garrett and she didn't answer and then later, like an hour into proselyting, the phone rang and we thought it was Hermana Garrett but NO, it was one of the APs calling me back from her phone and telling me she was in a conference and asking me what I needed. But the trick is, it wasn't the white AP, it was the OTHER AP who doesn't speak english and I got flustered and stumbled my way through explaining my leg in Spanish and then he was like "ok yeah I'll tell her to call you back when she can" and so we kept working but OOF it hurt so bad. I said "Hermana Castro, can you say 'Stop being a baby!'? and she'd go "Stop cry! You are a strong woman!" (*in english) and it was just like that all morning while we were climbing stairs. And then finally around lunchtime (*at this point I was starting to really stress cause it looked worse and was more and more painful), Hermana Garrett called us back and said "Yes, good heavens, go get some medicine". 

    So we went to the doctor and they gave us a BUTTLOAD of antibiotics and some ointment and called it good. It's funny- the doctor would say a bunch of stuff and then I'd turn to Hermana Castro and she'd respond for me like my mom when I'd go to the doctor as a little kid. The thing is, my bodily vocabulary is very limited in Spanish so when stuff like this happens I just get really lost. Anyways, yeah. 

We kept working and I took my medicine.

    Then on Wednesday we had the Conference to meet the Garretts. I took a bunch of ibuprofen and wore a long dress to cover my leg but then we were at the conference, sitting on the front row with the other hermanas and President and Sister Garrett come in and start shaking hands/hugging everyone cause it's our first time ever seeing them and when Hermana Garrett comes to hug me she goes "Oh HI, how's your leg?!" and then right after that Elder Johnson, the Senior missionary who's a classic Dad (actually he reminds me of my uncle Creighton?) comes to shake my hand and goes "I heard about your leg, are they sure that was a mosquito?" and makes this really disgusted face and the point is everyone was talking about my leg super loudly and in front of everyone so I was embarrassed. (*looking back, I laugh that I was embarrassed so much by people simply caring how I was doing, but in my head at the time it was not cool to be sick or injured in any way. It meant other missionaries thought I wasn't working as hard/was looking for attention). 

    And then later President Garrett was like "Tell me about some of the miracles you've witnessed here on your misisons" and just after my Zone Leader finished telling us his inspiring tale about how he swore he'd work every day of his mission so even when we was throwing up every 10 minutes he kept going, Hermana Obaco started telling this story that had to do with an old woman with a nasty infection and when she said infection she paused and looked at my leg and everyone laughed.

    Then after the conference I was in the office getting reimbursed for my doctor visit and heck ton of antibiotics and I found out that apparently my mom had eMaIlEd ThE sEcReTaRiEs and posted the picture of my leg on the PaNaMa MiSsIoN FaCeBoOk PaGe and I wanted to DIE. I never want to show my face in the mission office again but I'm in the Panama City zone now so I literally have to go back every week for District Meeting.

    Anyways, fast forward to that night, we were having dinner with members/a meeting with the Elder's Quorum President because he's the son of the woman who gives us food and it's weird cause he's an RM thats barely older than us and I always imagine the Elders Quorum President being an old dad but it's never like that here. But anyways yeah. They saw my leg and started going off about how I need to drain the puss and then the mom starts getting out all these bottles and gauze and goes "I'm sorry but I just know you girls aren't gonna do it so if it's okay I'm just gonna do it for you right here right now" and then the next thing I know they have my leg up on their table and they've got a flashlight and they're using q tips to squeegee the puss out of it and not to be dramatic or anything but it was basically like the part in the beginning of the Joseph Smith movie when the doctor is operating on his leg and I was SWEATIN so much from the pain (*I remember being drenched in sweat and looking up at the EQ President and him flinching and going "duele mucho??" and I just nodded my head while staring into space) but then afterwards as we were walking home it barely even hurt and I had new hope in my heart that everything was going to be okay.

But THEN. I wake up on Thursday morning and my ankle was super swollen and it was covered in fry-sauce-looking puss and I couldn't walk. pero bueno- I already had my medicine so we just cleaned it up and commenced with our normal routine. But then Hermana Castro, after personal study, told me she kept getting the impression that we needed to go back to the doctor. So we called Hermana Garrett and explained and I started crying a bunch cause I was super frustrated with myself and then we started getting ready to go back to the doctor and I'll never forget staring at my snotty swollen face in the mirror while Hermana Castro fixed my braids while saying "Special day! It's your special day!" (but you have to read it in a super high voice cause whenever Hermana Castro speaks English her voice goes from being super intelligent and mature sounds to super high and child-like and it's so cute and funny) but anyways, yeah. I'd been telling her all week that Thursday is the 4th of July which is Independence Day in the United States and how I was gonna buy a Panamanian-style hot dog to celebrate. Anyways. We went back to the doctor but this time we meant BUSINESS and luckily and new doctor guy meant business too. He studied all the pictures I had of it on my camera and wore headgear with a flashlight and magnifying glass to look at it and then gave us a supermega antibiotic and pain meds and told me I had to stop walking on it for 3 days. And we said "3 DAYS?!" and he said "Yeah. Right now it's not super serious and should be able to heal with antibiotics and rest but if you keep walking on it we're looking at hospitalization with antibiotics in an IV and permanent damage cause the infection is going to spread to the rest of your foot and leg." And we sighed and took the drugs and left. 

    We called Sis. Garrett and she didn't answer so (*being the dumb kids that we were...) started proselyting again cause we didn't have permission to go back to our house. I was really just a pathetic sight to see because when I walked a bunch of puss and blood would ooze out and then I'd just take out this crumpled up paper towel from my pocket and wipe it off and keep walking. 

    We left a blessing with this young couple who were financially struggling and weary and then 5 minutes after we left the husband chased us down to give us some homemade mosquito repellent because they'd seen my legs and felt bad. 

 Anyways.

Then Hermana Garrett called us back and told me to spend the rest of Thursday and and all of Friday at our house and then to call her back on Friday night and give her an update, so that we did and then Elder McGary, my district leader, called us that night to get our indicators and we explained that we hadn't worked that day he was like "Um, what?" 

and OOF, I tell ya what, something I don't appreciate about the missionaries in this mission is that they all seem to think that if you go a day without being able to work then it means you don't love God or something. ayiyi. But yeah, Hermana Castro knew I was disappointed about not being able to buy my 4th of July Hot Dog (*it was at a food stand on the opposite side of our area from where we lived) so she made tortillas and put fried hot dogs in them and it was the most tender act of love I daresay I've ever received. 

    Anyways now I'm here and it's Friday. The Elders came and gave me a blessing (we were bummed to have to put on skirts but it was ok.) When I say the "Elders" I literally mean my entire district cause it's just us and then my district leader is in a trio. I really respect the Priesthood and was really grateful they took the time out of their day to come but the whole thing was just the most awkward experience of my life. (*let's just say friendly, casual interactions between Elders and Sisters was very unusual at that time and to add to that I had a lot of contempt for Elder McGary in my heart and was disappointed that the blessing I received didn't feel the same as getting one from my dad at home).

    Really just everything that's happened this week makes me want to die from shame and awkwardness. 

    But I actually think it was a sneaky trick from God to help me get back on track with my attitude. It's like the one C.S Lewis quote that says "Only real risk tests the reality of a belief". 

    To be honest, last week I was having a really rough time and questioning how bad I really want to be here but after this little leg fiasco I've realized very firmly how bad I do want to be here and just how much I DON'T want to go home or rest in the house all day (*the house feels like a hellish sauna during the heat of the day).

    Also it always feels good when investigators call to ask why you haven't come yet that day. I think everything's gonna be just fine and dandy. God cares about our feelings but God cares even more about our progression.

Thank you for reading my novella, have a great night." ▉

**The next few pictures show the progression of how it healed. Even now, over two years later, I have a bruise-like scar from it.

I had a dream of buying a Panamanian hot dog on the 4th of July but then we ended up having to stay in the house that day and so Hermana Castro fixed this festive meal for us.

Hermana Garrett took this picture with me to let my mom (who she met at a Tab Choir rehearsal) know that my bug bite was being taken care of and I wasn't dead in a ditch somewhere.

Leg on Sunday night

Tuesday morning

Thursday Morning

Thursday

Friday

Saturday

July 14th (a week and a half later)
A friend of mine who has a degree in bug science told me that the fact that there was a hole implies that it was actually a spider bite, not a mosquito bite. He said it was most likely a brown recluse.

October 2nd (three months later)

Over a year later

Week 20

Hello everyone,

This week was haha really challenging.

The only moment I have to share is that one day we were talking to this super old lady who had a cane and GIANT parrot on her shoulder and she kept going on and on to Hermana Castro about how I look just like la Virgin Maria.
That's all.
Thank you amen, have a great week.

Oh wait just kidding that's not all! We also had divisions this week and I was the lucky winner of going to Veracruz. Veracruz is the most coveted area among sister missionaries because its this quiet peaceful town nestled between the beach and a giant green mountain. It's super pretty and quiet there. I forgot to take pictures but it was very good. 

Also I was with Hermana Rice who´s the trainer of my trainer so we had lots of weird moments where we did the same things and said "whot! wheredidyougetthat"

OK now that's actually all.