Week 33

This week… she was a wild one. The good news is we had 2 baptisms!! One on Friday (an 11-year-old boy named Malkiel whose whole family are members but went inactive) and another one on Sunday (a 40-something miracle man). It's funny- you´d think the baptism of the niño would be the low hanging fruit and the one of the middle-aged man would take more effort but NO, quite the opposite. The baptism of Malkiel has been in the works literally since I got to this area in June and we met Enrique literally ten days ago and now he's baptized. And it was the smoothest most painless baptism I´ve ever witnessed.

Don´t get me wrong though, Malkiel is a good boy. He told the Primary president when he was 8 that he was gonna get baptized si o si and he`s kept that determination up to this day even though his parents are VERY inactive. Other side note on Malkiel, one time after a lesson it came out that German isn’t the main language we speak in the United States and he and his mom were SHOCKED.

Malkiel's baptism

Malkiel and his Family

Malkiel with Primary Presidency and the Bishop

Now for Enrique. Always whenever we drop people we say "well, maybe the missionaries will pass by a few years down the road and he´ll be ready to receive the Gospel" but you don't really know if you believe it. But Enrique is living proof that it can happen! 

When we arrived at Enrique's house (after a lot of rejection and disappointment) he was like ¨bahh who sent you here¨ and we said ¨wot¨ and he told us that he´d met with the missionaries 3 or 4 years ago and went to church but then he got too busy and they stopped coming. So we set a baptismal date with him for October 5th and when we came back to teach lesson 1, before we even said the opening prayer he was like ¨hey do you have another Book of Mormon? I lost mine but I want to read¨ and he had written his baptism date on this card and also ¨My church as of September 19th 2019¨ and we said ¨wow¨. 

 And then the next day when we came back he'd read and marked multiple chapters in the Book of Mormon and we said ¨wow¨ and then last Tuesday when we were saying the closing prayer I felt the impression to invite him to be baptized on Sunday the 29th instead of Saturday the 5th (cause technically the first day he would be eligible would be the 29th) and he was like ¨yeah duh, I wanna get baptized asap¨ and there you have it, friends. He got baptized yesterday. A little 16-year-old in the ward baptized him and everyone had doubts that he´d be able to do it but alas, it was perfect. 

It was ALSO crazy cause the mission had set a goal for 125 baptisms in the month of September and Enrique was the 125th baptism! We reached the goal exactly! Talk about inspired goal setting.

Enrique's baptism

I`ve always had doubts that people could be ready to be baptized that fast but I think God let me have this experience to remind me that we don´t get to counsel him. In the Book of Mormon there are stories of people who were converted and baptized within the span of a day.

Other misc good news is Zoila's gettin IN to Family History and we started teaching Josit (who got baptized in July)´s dad.

I love you all! Keep the commandments!

Hermana Tolman

Also we went to a BEAUTIFUL land called Isla Perico (it's an island but they built a road over the ocean that goes to it. Kind of like the Florida keys but a lot smaller of a bridge) for Hermana P day this morning.  

Week 32

All is well with Hermana Tolman! No time for a letter this week, but here are some pics she sent us:

A Diablo Rojo sighting in the city!

Hermana Ruiz' impression of me

Week 31

My friends,

MUCH has happened this week, but at the same time nothing at all.

Remember how a few weeks ago I said the week had been full of scams? Well I tell ya what, this week was full of bargains. The biggest bargain of all was my THIRD temple trip here in Panama. Most missionaries only get to go once so I guess you could say I've been sorely blessed. It was glorious and wholesome.

Templooooo

The dress I'm wearing in the picture at the temple cost me literally a dollar and fifty cents. One thing I don´t get about Panama is that everything is either ridiculously expensive (ie $5 for a tiny bag of cheese or $2 for ONE picture on photo paper) or suuper cheap, like this dress for a dollar fifty.

I could say more, but I think the pictures on the previous page will explain better.

An article in the Liahona that made me laugh for the same reason the "Disculpe: Trabajando para usted" did.

Me at the end of the week, full of rice and discouraged cause the fave investigators flaked out on church.

What I say when we get rejected in a mean way.

We were talking to an Elder who's the housing secretary and he said "I used to be in the area that borders yours and I'm MAD cause you have that Christ statue in your area and me and my companion could see it from where we were and always wanted to go take pictures with it but we couldn't but you two CAN and you DON'T" So anyways, we thought about climbing the hill to take pictures with it while we can, but opted to take a far away picture and use our time on P day to nap and read emails off our cameras.

Beautiful temple grounds

Week 30

HELLLOOO

For once in my gosh darn life nothing changed with transfers! Yesterday was one of those days where you just have really solid good lessons and feel like you’re on top of the world and fulfilling your purpose as a missionary and I said ´oh no I don’t want to have cambios because Hna Ruiz and I work really well together´ and then the Lord heard my prayer and here we are, having a normal P day, tranquilito. 

Chillin' on Soila's lovely porch

Other than that I only have SILLY things to share from this week.

The first thing is that Nemesio has these DUMB dogs that I also love and one day they just followed us around to all our appointments and waited for us outside while we were teaching. We got to the end of the night and went back to our house and one of them, Canela, was still with us and obvs we didn’t let her in the house but she went around to the other side of the house and cried outside my window all night.

The next thing needs explaining (It makes me laugh every time I think about it but maybe its not even funny, idk) Entonces ok si yes. One time we were at a bus stop and we talked to this guy from Pakistan named Prince who came here in January when the Pope came to visit and stayed here because it's not easy to be Christian in Pakistan. 

But the trick is, he barely speaks Spanish. He DOES speak pretty good English though and that’s why we started talking in the first place. Anyways he told us that he wanted to come to our church and we gave him our phone number and yeah, that was that. Come Wednesday, he called us to ask the address of the church and we happened to be at the chapel and one of the members who’s like, 60, offered to use his smart phone to send his location to him. Then on Sunday we get to church and the same member was there and was like ´Hey Hermanas I texted Prince in English and told him that I’d wait outside and show him where to go´ and we were like ´woo yeah awesome thanks´ and then church started and halfway through we look back and the member was sitting with this other investigator that came in late and we were like ´woop Prince didn’t come but hey good thing this member was so on top of it and sat by this investigator that we didn’t realize had arrived´. Anyways then after the meeting we find out that the member thought this other investigator WAS Prince so he´d been calling him Prince and trying to explain things in English and I don’t know why but something about the whole thing just makes me LAUGH.

The last thing is that one day we finished teaching this young couple and we said ´Is there anything we can do for you?´ and then they got all quiet and smiled and the husband said ´Vamos a ser papás´ but SILLY Hermana Tolman heard ´Vamos a hacer papas´ and I was like ´oh that’s random but HERE WE ARE, we´re gonna help you make some potatoes!!´ But NO, they said that they were gonna be parents and they wanted us to pray that everything would go well with the pregnancy.

Anyways that’s a wrap. We finally found a junglish part of Loma 9, 12 weeks later. 

Also Hermana Ruiz's birthday was on Saturday and sometimes as a mother you worry about if your child is having good (!obedient) fun but then she wrote me a note and left it in my dictionary and it really was just. Mothers day in September. I love that sister. 

Ok bye.

Canela wants to be a missionary too!

Canela crying outside my window

Another one of Nemesio's dogs, Sultán, patiently waiting for us outside a lesson

A tiny newborn kitten we found abandoned under a bush

José Santamaría, a guy we´ve been teaching. I could tell you lots of crazy stories about this guy

This particular day every single one of our lessons fell through and it we got soaked from the pouring rain so we went over to a members house and offered to help her clean and move furniture. She let me borrow some of her dry pants and shoes while we worked.

Recent convert Matteo and his many nieces and nephews

   

Week 29

I´m back again this week with another sneak attack baptism of a person I´ve never mentioned before until now even though we've been teaching him since June. But I´ll catch you all up right now. His name is Nemesio. When we met Nemesio, we did NOT think that he was what us missionaries call ¨positive¨ (a person who seems like they´re going to progress and get baptized). He was super quiet and always had this blank, confused look on his face like ´Who the heck are you and why are you at my house´. 

To be honest, we weren´t really planning on coming back to him but then as we were leaving we asked if there was anything he needed that we could help him with (his wife is super sick and so he works and cooks and does all the laundry and cleans) and he asked us if we could bring him a bible because the one he had was literally falling apart and had tiny letters that he couldn´t read very well. He said ¨My dad taught me that its important to read the Bible but I don´t understand it very well¨ and we told him we´d get one from the mission offices and come back to give it to him. Anyways the story goes that the mission office was waiting for the order of bibles to arrive for 5ever so we passed by his house one more time to tell him that we were working on finding him a bible but then we also said ¨well hey hey hey, we don´t have a bible to give you right now but we DO have The Book of Mormon: Another Testament of Jesus Christ and it will help you understand what you read in the Bible ;). So we left him with a Book of Mormon and then kept checking with the offices to see if the order of Bibles had arrived so we could go back and give one to him and FINALLY like a trillion years later (like literally a month later) the bibles arrived and we went back and he´d already read a few chapters of the Book of Mormon. He was still very quiet and confused but we started teaching him little by little using the Bible and The Book of Mormon and I gotta tell ya, literally in the span of a few weeks his countenance has changed from night to day. 

Now he is a HAPPY man! He laughs and has confidence in his ability to understand the scriptures and also like, trusts us?? His wife taught him how to read when they were 19 and I think that´s really tender. Also he´s a taxista (taxi driver) and always stops to wave at us when he sees us walking. Anyways. By checklist standards he could´ve gotten baptized weeks ago because he always keeps his commitments and comes to church and stuff like that but he wanted more time. Good thing our District Leader this transfer is GOOD and instead of pressuring us to baptize him before he felt ready just told us everyday to keep reading the Book of Mormon with him and helping him gain a testimony. We´d always finish reading in the Book of Mormon and then he´d be like ´Wow I really just know this book is the Word of God and that it´s important to keep the commandments and I´ve gotta get baptized.. just not quite yet :P´ and we´d leave just shaking our heads and laughing like ´Silly Nemesio, when are ya gonna getchurself gosh darn baptized´ cause I feel like you know someone's converted once you stop having to babysit what's going to be their baptismal covenant. So yeah we just wished that he´d make up his mind to get baptized and this week it FINALLY HAPPENED!!

And what a baptism it was. Apparently there is a hurricane passing over Florida and Puerto Rico and Costa Rica and Panama this week are experiencing all the shreds of it. Torrential rain isn´t new but I tell ya what, the wind this week was brutal. Anyways. The silly silly members flaked on the baptism because of the fake hurricane leftovers (and by that I mean it wasn't even raining when we had the baptism, just earlier on that same day) and only like 4 or 5 people showed up (about 4 of them having a part in the program). But it was OKAY because we sang Nearer my God To Thee and Nemesio CRIED. Never in my life would I expect to see a man like Nemesio cry. The whole baptism was very small and imperfect but very beautiful and special all the same. Patience and diligence really pay off. 

Also we used to teach the boyfriend of a member whose name is Carla but then they moved and we were sooo sad but she made a surprise appearance after the baptism and it was a happy time. She's one of the many people here that to me looks like a cool pirate lady. 

Every day I just feel like I´m in Pirates of the Caribbean. There's this crazy guy we always see that has dreds and also a bald spot who sits and talks to the dogs and he makes me feel like I´m in Pirates of the Caribbean. Anyways. This has all gone on too long but I feel like I should end with something more inspiring. 

One of our recent converts always tells us that it's important to start learning the culture of the Celestial Kingdom right now so we can feel comfortable when we get there and THAT I think is an inspiring thought. So there you have it. I love you all, God does too, have a great week.  

(Also I threw in a picture of some of the stairs in my area cause I feel like I haven´t complained enough that I´m going up stairs like that all day everything and I STILL don´t have buff legs ugh)