Week 10 (July 18, 2016)

Okay, so I got in a fight with my companion again this week. We had lots of water in our bathroom because apparently our toilet isn't hooked up and I dumped water in the tank and it just fell out the bottom. So I went and asked the bishops wife for a mop. She said that I could use the mop as long as it was clean when I return it. No big deal. So I mop the bathroom and get most of the water out of it. Then I mopped the rest of our house. Like the other 10 feet that isn't in the bathroom. We didn't have any fabuloso so i just used some bleach from our laundry.  I was rinsing the mop out in the sink outside and cleaning it all off and my companion comes over and says that I need to use "hace" for it. "Hace" is Spanish for "you do". So I'm totally lost, he keeps telling me "hace" and something about "cloro".  "Cloro" is short for Clorox. So I tell him like 100 times that I used Clorox. and he just keeps yelling at me "hace!!" So we were being really loud and someone from the bishops house comes and and asks my comp whats wrong and he goes storming off yelling something about me being a stupid gringo. So I talk to the guy that came out and he says use "jobon" which means soap. So I go grab some actual soap and clean the mop with that. Then we had a dinner appointment that we didn't talk during it. Then that night before bed I tell him he needs to clean up all of the little hole punched papers that he has left all over the floor and he asks why he need to clean them up. My answer was "porque está a mess" and he yells at me in Spanish "your in panama use freaking Spanish" So I reply "porque está no limpio!" which just means that it isn't clean, he then blames me for mopping and says that when I mopped all, the paper became hard to sweep up, then he went in the bathroom and did his thing for like 20 minutes. So while he is in there I grab the broom and sweep up all of the little papers super easy. He comes out of the bathroom and I just look at him while I'm holding the broom with all of them swept and give him a ha ha I can do it but you can't kind of smile. Then I finished sweeping and went to bed. We didn't talk the rest of the night. 

The next morning, Friday we didn't talk much. I was able to find out that "hace" means soap in Honduras where my comp is from, hence the problem. I never learned the Honduran word for soap in the MTC. Things were bad. so since Saturday I have been on divisions with Elder R. He is from Honduras as well and having trouble with his comp too but we work very well together and he speaks English so he helps me out a ton with my comp. Its been a good last few days. 

The last few days have been great. My Spanish is really improving, just in the last 2 days we have taught 12 lessons to either inactive or to investigators. Me and Elder R. in our divisions were killing it. we did have a problem Sunday tho when our investigator who has a baptismal date and had to show up for church but decided to bail on us and didn't show up. I honestly think that we need to drop her as an investigator. She isn't really progressing at all. We have taught her all of the lessons and she asks us all of these way simple questions that we have taught her all the time. Like who is Joseph Smith? We taught her lesson one twice already. Her husband is actually a pastor in a different church and I don't think he wants her to even talk with the missionaries. Its hard. 

We also played soccer with some less actives and non members. I only scored one goal. it was really hard to play with the non missionaries but I made it work. Then today I had some money left over from my last pay day so I went to the store and bought some soccer cleats to play in. I got to use them to play in today. I absolutely killed it. I was playing so well. I scored like 4 goals and had a ton of assists. My team didn't lose a single game. I love playing soccer. I think i should have not played any other sports growing up I could have been way good at soccer haha!! I can totally play with all of these other missionaries who grew up only playing soccer. When I told them I have never played soccer it blew their minds! It was pretty funny. 

I dont have much else for the week. It was a really quick week actually. Hopefully the next one is just as fast. Love you!! 

Elder Hamblin

Week 9 (July 10, 2016)

Well I have officially been a missionary for 2 months and boy do I love it. Even if sometimes we don't do lots of missionary things. I want to be out in the world contacting and teaching investigators and really helping the work! This week actually went by really fast. Our people with baptismal dates are still wanting to be baptized, they just don't want to go to church. which is kind of a problem. It really makes things hard. Lots of members here are inactive or less active. every time we talk to members i try to share something about the importance of going to church and renewing our covenants through baptism. 

Some new experiences I had this week, One was I got to give a blessing. It was with Elder R., the Shaffers cousin. We were out on splits and we knocked on their door, which is really just yelling BUENO until they come talk to us. But we went in and he told us he was sick so Elder R. offered to give him a blessing and then he told me that I had to anoint the oil. That's cool I know how to do that, but only in English. I have no idea how to do that in Spanish. Luckily some of it is in our white handbook. So I butchered the parts that weren't in there and read right from the book and that was it. Then he gave the blessing, we taught them lesson one, and I will probably never see them again. I really like hanging out with elder R., he speaks English so its really easy to talk to him if I get lost, but I can also understand most of his Spanish, and when I can't he helps explain to me in English what he is saying. He helps me learn lots of new words, especially all of the weird Panamanian words. I really like using the Panamanian. Which is probably not good because when I get home and speak Spanish nobody will be able to understand me. It's all good though. Its been really fun working with him and learning new things. I don't really know what else to say. Not a lot has happened this week. We pretty much just talk to the members and the less actives. pretty boring.

I did meet with President Current this week for an interview. It was really fast. He told me that I can be a good missionary. I need to set goals for my mission and work hard and be obedient. which is easy because all of the rules he wants us to follow here I followed in the MTC. No big deal. 

Love,

Jayden

Week 8 (July 3rd, 2016)

Panama is incredible!! I see something new and amazing every single day!! New things for this week would include:

 I had oysters at an inactive members house. It was the first meal I didn't finish while being here. He was laughing so hard at me trying to choke them down. He eventually told me to not eat them. I had one more then called it good. 

Lizards. Literally everywhere. We have flies in the United States, they have lizards. Literally all over the place. It's so weird. I have one living in our bathroom in our shack of a house, it lives in our moldy bathroom. Which i did buy some cleaner for it so that will change soon. 

The milk here. So lots of people here just drink the stupid powder milk, and I'm not about that life. So me and my comp went and bought real milk. They keep it in a box. Its ultra-pasteurized, whatever that means, so it doesn't have to be refrigerated before opening. So they sell their milk just in the middle of the dry food area. So strange. But when we opened the milk it tasted delicious. Like for real better than the milk in the states. and it was whole milk. It was so good!! And I'm not worried about getting fat here at all because we walk, so dang hot that we just sweat buckets all the time. And most places don't have air conditioners so its hot inside too. Its terrible!! Just sweaty all the time! I've already lost weight!! I'm going to come back with chicken legs!! 

I had my first experience with hearing gun shots this week. It was definitely different. There are usually fireworks going off all the time at any hour of the day, which is strange because you cant see them all you can do is hear them but this was gunshots. Like 15 of them. It was weird. We were just meeting in an inactive members house and suddenly like 200 yards away just tons of shooting. I don't know where it came from and we didn't get to investigate because we stayed in the house. Then we went and played soccer outside the church with some other elders and a  few less active members. I scored 3 goals. Maybe baseball wasn't my sport after all!! haha!!

Another new experience I had this week was when I turned my head on the bus and BOOM! lady breast feeding! Never saw that in the states. Since then I've seen it like 4 times. and it always cashes me by surprise. And one time I swear the kid was like 4 years old. It was like watching the movie grown ups!!! 

Another new experience I had was with the family that treat us like family. We went in their back yard thing and we saw two 13 year old kids boxing, they had gloves and headgear and we helped ref it. Then i fought a 17 year old kid, but he was scared so we only did from the neck down and the belt up. It was dumb. Way to easy to block everything that he threw at me. That being said it was hard to throw anything back. My best way was just let him hit me in the ribs and then hit him harder right after. And it never hurt. It was fun to be in there but it sucked not being able to really fight. Speaking of fights me and my comp had a little fit. We were supposed to plan for the week, like we have done a hundred times each. so we get ready to plan and he wants to read preach my gospel about planning. Which is fine because I can read in Spanish like a champion. But he wants to read the whole planning section. Its 13 points long and would take forever!! So I try to tell him we aren't reading the whole thing and we can just read the titles and call it good, but he gets all mad and throws his book and says fine, and that was the end of planning and then we didn't talk to each other for like 3 hours. Pretty great!! That was like 3 days ago tho and we are super chill now. Its still really hard to communicate but I am slowly getting better at understanding him. The problem is once I finally understand what he says in Spanish I realize that its really vague and could mean like 13 different things and then I still have no idea what he means by it. Its super difficult to communicate. I can speak to him just fine I just cant understand anything that he says. Not to great! 

The last great and different thing that happened this week is we committed someone to baptism. 3 different people actually. It was great!! I actually taught the lesson to one of them and she said yes to baptism on the 30 of July. Super excited for that! We have another one on the 23rd of July as well. Its going to be great. 

Overall this week has been incredible!! We have got a lot done! We finally had a few less actives show up to church! that helped a lot! there were like 40 people in church, which here feels like million. It was good! Happy fourth of July by the way! I think its dumb they don't celebrate that here. I think the whole world except England should celebrate the holiday, but thats just me. haha