Hermana Anne Tolman: : Week 56

Well, this week a kiddo named Emerson got baptized.

Emerson's Baptism

He is a funny, funny boy. There seems to be a lot of arguing here about how old people are so when I got here Emerson was always following us around telling us he wanted to get baptized but his grandpa was like "no he's about to turn 8 not 9" and everyone's like "yeah hmm probably that seems about right" (and when they're 8 we're not supposed to teach them cause it's a baptism of the branch not of the mission) but long story short we found his cedula and he was actually gonna turn 9 so we put a baptismal date for his birthday (yesterday) and taught him all the lessons.

The zipper on Emerson's baptismal suit is broken cause the salt water corrodes the metal so I gave him a safety pin from my dress to help close it up but there was still this funny opening in the suit, haha.

Then we got the bread boy (island baker) to make a cake and we decorated it with Nutella.

It had a very rubbery texture and didn't taste very good but Emerson was a happy boy when he received it and basically just licked all the Nutella off haha. It was a happy fun time.

Anyways here in San Blas they do a lot of things to scare away evil spirits and this week there's been a lot of drama on the island having to do with evil spirits (maybe a little too intense to talk about in a group email, but I'll tell you the story if you ever ask me). All this to say, we got our faces painted with red plant juice more than a few times. They also put mirror shards outside their houses and burn leaves and slap the walls and hammocks with giant leaves.

Dule-masi, fish, and soda for Lunch

At the end of a rather mentally challenging day, Hna Lopez found this doll and was laughing cause she said it looked just like me

This week I'ma teach y'all how supposedly to pray in Dulegaya (I say supposedly just cause I struggle to recognize all this when I hear them pray but this is how they tell us it is):

(Ammar or ani or we or ve) bab segoleh = (We or I or he,she or you) are going to pray.
Pab dummad = Heavenly Father
anoedi = I thank thee
ambega sogeh = I ask thee
JesuCristo bamachi nuki = In the name of Jesus Christ, amen (or literally it would just be Jesus Christ the Son, amen)

I love you all, have a good weeeeeek

The bread boy makes pizza with canned hot dogs and tiny squares of american cheese.

The final product. I'm always hungry at night but cooking is really hard to do in the dark so I always give in and buy some.

An artsy pic I took with the cat that lives in our house when we found him chilling in the window.

We spend a lot of our time being island nurses and using our hydrogen peroxide and ointment to help out the Kunas. Lets just say there is a lot of disease here.

We went to the shopping island to buy fruit, and when we came back with a watermelon everyone that saw us with it told us to keep the rinds to feed to the turtles. We were like ??turtles??, but soon discovered there's this family that essentially has a bunch of giant pet sea turtles that live right by their house.

We did the honors of helping prepare some warm banana mush so that we could drink it in a mug afterwards. idk.

Need to cross to the other island? All you need is a big block of styrofoam and an oar!

I took a sneaky video trying to show how the Kuna Dialect sounds. This is all we hear all around us during the day unless jovens are talking to us directly.

I took this video to send to my cousin Abby on her birthday but it doubles as a tender memory of Rosa, one of the funny members who takes care of us a lot

A sad short story is that me and Hna Lopez bought some gnocci while we were in the city and we fried it thinking that somehow it would taste good but it was NASTY. So we fed it to this cat and a couple weeks later the cat died. We dont *think* it was our fault but it could've been and we feel terrible.