Week 16 (August 29,2016)

Okay so last Tuesday we hiked up the mountain in our area to teach a lesson to the investigator who we think will be baptized lately. We talked to her and she believes the church and wants to baptized and all is well. So Wednesday we went back to teach her another lesson and we changed her baptismal date to August 27th. Yes, that means that on Saturday she was baptized. I got to do the baptism, totally in Spanish, and one of her friends husband did the confirmation. It was crazy sweet to do!! She really was truly prepared by God to receive the lessons. It was way awesome!! I have pictures attached, it was such a cool service and experience. 

We also have another baptism lined up for the 10th of September with another girl from the mountain. My comp refers to it as the gold mine now because we have so many investigators who live up there. I hate climbing it but it is totally worth it to teach all of our lessons. We climb it once a day at least, even if we just teach one lesson on top. Its worth the sacrifice. Our next baptism will be with the daughter friend of the girl we just baptized. She is also the primary presidents daughter, she couldn't get permission from her father for the baptism but now she doesn't live with him anymore so we can baptize her, should be a super easy baptism. When we teach her the lessons she knows all the answers to the questions, she is only 10 and has basically been a member without being baptized her whole life. 

The last thing that happened this week was we had dinner with a family or more like a feast. They just had an assortment of things to eat and it all tasted so good. I don't even know what most of it was, I pretty much just put it on my plate and ate it. pictures attached as well. The short Elder is our district leader, my comp is the chunky one, the one in the glasses is Elder P, he loves to play basketball and he speaks English with me to try to get better. he is pretty cool. 

And yeah. that is it, overall an incredible week. BTW, the ear is all better.

Love you all!! bye!! Jayden

Week 15 (August 22, 2016)

Okay, went to the doctor on Saturday. That was an event. I was expecting to pay a lot of money for a checkup, turns out the doctor lady only charges one dollar for every checkup and didn't even make me pay because I was a missionary and taught her things in English, as well as shared things about our church. So that was pretty cool. But what she told me is that in my ear I have a fungal infection. Which in English doesn't sound very cool but in Spanish the only way to say it is "tengo ongos en mi oreja" which translated directly means,"I have mushrooms in my ear" so that's pretty cool! I called the mission nurse and told her the news and she told me what medicine to buy at the pharmacy so I bought that too and hopefully the infection goes away within a week. The overall cost was 5 dollars. Not to bad ha ha!!! 

Other news this week. We have an investigator who needs to go to church one more time and receive a couple lessons and she should be baptized, hopefully her little brother will follow her example too. He receives the lessons but won't attend church with her. We also have a lot of good potentials to work with lately.  We get lots of potentials and new investigators but we never teach them more than once or twice.  

Me and my comp have been getting along quite well lately. My Spanish is really improving and he really likes that. We can actually communicate quite well. He teaches me things not to say and I try to remember everything that he says. Its an okay trade off. Last night we cleaned our little house. it looks so good!! probably the cleanest it has ever been. We mopped everything, no more moldy shower or bathroom floor as well as no more mud in our other room. Not a whole lot to clean in our single little room but at least it is clean now. 

Today we played basketball and four square, I haven't played soccer in 3 weeks. kinda sad about that actually. we ate lunch with another set of elders. he made food from El Salvador, super good!! It was like tortilla pancakes with cheese and meat in them. pretty great. 

So the only thing I don't eat is the tomatoes in our cabbage salad. We eat a ton of cabbage and my comp doesn't like pork and beans which I feel is very specific to not like but other than that we both eat everything. Like this week we ate a soup that had a whole fish in it, like head, tail, skin and bones. Not a small fish either. like the size of a trout when we go fishing. It was actually a really decent soup, the bones in the fish suck but it was decent tasting. 

For laundry we just drop our clothes off to the members that do everything for us. They are super cool, they do our laundry and feed us whenever we need food and they live like a half mile away. Pretty close in our area!  We supply the soap and Clorox, and we serve them in their home all the time so it's a nice trade off.  So they are parents who are like 55-ish, they have 4 kids, their kids have kids. Overall like 10 people are there like all the time. Its like grandma Margarets house, tons of people there all the time but only the parents live there. 

And yeah that was our week. pretty loaded with lessons and finding new people to teach. overall pretty fun as well!!

Love you!! 

Jayden

Week 14 (August 15, 2016)

Well I'm officially 3 months in. I thought that I would be better at Spanish by this point but I guess it is pretty hard to learn a new language. My Spanish is starting to get better tho. During our zone conference with our mission president I could understand all of the Spanish he was saying. It was pretty good. I am also starting to pick up on the local accent, its pretty hard but I can find words that the locals say and sometimes fit them into a sentence that actually makes sense. Our mission president is super cool, he is from Florida. He has the highest wishes for our mission. Panama is the hardest baptizing mission in central america. The people here have everything they want already so it is hard to get them to see the light of the gospel and the blessings that come from it. The people here just don't have the will to do anything. Makes things hard. 

It rained quite a bit this week so we weren't able to teach a whole lot. And it isn't worth using an umbrella here the rain is just to much. 

Our lights in our apartment went out this week, so we haven't had lights for the last two days.  The owner says he will fix it but we aren't really sure what the problem with the lights are so it could take a bit to fix. 

Yeah that's like it for the week. Pretty boring compared to the other weeks but I guess that's what happens when all it does is rain. 

Dad, our apartment is the worst that I have seen. we have 2 people with houses in our district, another set of elders in our district have a super nice apartment and we have a tiny one room thing. We do have a fridge, it is extremely small and we did buy a new stove, but no oven and no microwave. Our toilet also doesn't flush so we have to use a jug and pour water in it to make it flush. sometimes its a little harder than it sounds. we also have more mice in our apartment.  The struggle, I will set more traps tonight to take care of them. 

Tell Kayla I am way proud of her and that when I get home we can totally do tons of triathlons together because that has always been my dream to do one. 

I have a flash light that we use when its dark. We get home at around 9:30pm every night so we just shower and go to sleep then it gets light at like 7 in the morning so the light isn't to big a deal.  It is just a bit hard to read in the morning, our window on our house is very small and faces another house so we don't get much light. 

Have a great week.
Love you,
Jayden

Week 13 (August 08, 2016)

This young lady just finished her mission at Salt Lake Temple Square and went home to Panama.  She took a care package back to Jayden for us,  He is serving in her ward.  It was nice to meet her and her mother before she went home. (Gary)

Well this week has been pretty good, we had changes. We have a new Zone leader. Hes a gringo which is pretty great. Our new zone is pretty boring though. They took all of the cool people out of our zone, and the other cool person, Elder D. died. Dying just means you finished your mission.  So now our zone is very boring. We only played soccer today for like 20 minutes unlike the usual 2 hours. Although I was able to score 2 goals in that short time. Not to bad for a gringo!

The mission work this week went pretty good. We had a bunch of lessons and found 7 new investigators. We had 4 investigators attend church yesterday and that isn’t including our 2 regulars who had something going on yesterday. As for baptisms we should have some this change. We have a 3 baptismal dates with our investigators, although I know one of them isn’t going to happen. She isn’t married and we didn’t know that before asking her to be baptized. I honestly couldn’t even believe that she said yes to being baptized. It was only our second time teaching her and the first time we taught her we didn’t really teach much, We only found out who she was and assessed the needs in her life, which we didn’t do very well at because one of her needs is to be married.

Other things that have happened this week:

•  I was wondering why I haven’t seen any spiders here. I’ve heard there were lots here and they were big but I didn’t ever see anything. So this week I’m getting ready for bed and look down and see a spider crawl under the door darting across the floor. It was decent sized, about the size of the biggest spiders we have in Utah. No big deal though, I grab my shoe and smashed it. I figure that the reason that we don’t have any small spiders is because the lizards that are everywhere and super fast are eating them all, and this spider was big enough and fast enough to get away. So the next day we are in a member´s house and I look over on the wall and there is a freaking gigantic spider. It was easily the size of my palm. It was a greenish grey color and it was pretty fat. I figure that this spider was alive because it has been eating the lizards. The people living there hit it with a broom but the spider just took the hit like a champion and ran down the wall to the floor, then ran into the bathroom where my comp had to step on it twice to kill it. Not exaggerating that story at all. That spider was absolutely massive!!!
• On Saturday we presented service to one of our investigators. We mowed their lawn. And by mowed their lawn I mean we hacked at it with machetes for 2 hours just cutting the grass. It was very ineffective and I loved it. It is so much worse than just mowing the lawn. 
• On Sunday at church I saw the family of Hermana R. and her daughter showed me the picture of you all. I think it is so cool that you were able to meet someone from my mission! Thanks so much for the package! I'm not really sure when to open your little letter because it seems like everyday I can feel everyone of those emotions. I just treat the mission like baseball. If you strike out your first at bat you still get to bat the second time.  It pretty fun to make baseball comparisons tho. I miss baseball so much. 
• I got my package from Sister R. this morning which I'm sure you know! Thank you so much! I'm so glad that you could get to meet her, even with the horrible google translate. Your emails to her translated very well. Her emails in Spanish made sense to me I'm not sure why the translation is so bad the other way. good thing you figured out how to get in touch. and good thing her daughter speaks English! Her daughter is super cool. She said that she wants to help us as a member and be apart of our lessons which is super cool because lessons with a member present are one of the best ways for investigators to feel the spirit, which is the way for conversion to happen. 
• On Fast Sunday me and my companion fasted, I chewed gum to not feel super hungry. Everyone told me it wasn't fasting because of the gum.  They said it was the sugar in the gum. I've never heard that before in my life. 
• During church on Sunday there was a crazy huge thunderstorm. And the thunderstorms here are insane.  Every time the thunder cracked the person bearing their testimony had to wait for it to stop before they could continue.  There was one point were the lightning was so close I could here it sizzle after it hit and the thunder followed it almost at the same time, it was crazy!! 
• Remember that ear infection I had in the MTC? I still have something wrong with my ear. It still hurts and pops all the time. I think I need to get it checked again. 
• The bishop here wants me to teach him English. He is always talking to me in broken English, which is harder to understand than Spanish, and always asks me how to say things. My comp has been the same way lately. He asks me how to say things in English, and when I tell him he remembers what I say every time. He knows lots of English sayings like "you want take a shower" or "I need to use the bathroom" or "I have hungry" and "Are you okay" He says those all the time but I tried to say one of them to him once and he had no idea what was happening. Lots of people here try to talk English and it is so hard to understand them. and they always want me to speak English to them but they don't understand me so usually I stick to my broken Spanish. 
• And last but not least I want to say thanks for that gringo package you sent me. the things in it are really useful. Melatonin in there is the greatest. I use the lotion as shaving cream because shaving cream here is ridiculously expensive.  The cheapest they have is 4 dollars for the stuff we can buy at the dollar store. I also still have the candy from it, I eat like one a day. and the water bottle is very useful for making chicha. which here means juice and any other Spanish country means alcohol. fun fact. 

Anyways that's it for the week. pretty fun and pretty packed with lots of work!!   Love you, Jayden

Week 12 (July 31, 2016)

Wow what a week. Changes are tomorrow and I'm fairly sure I wont be changed, which is fine. We have a few investigators we are working with so it will be good to see what we can make of that. We had another lesson with our investigator from Florida, he was born in Florida but grew up in LA. He was in prison for 22 years. He now works in panama telling people how to manage their money. which is a good job and he makes good money but he says he prefers to live with his people, which really just means he likes all of his gang member friends that live near him. He believes in Joseph Smith and said he wants to read the Book of Mormon again. He also told us he believes that Satan gave Moses the 10 commandments which doesn't really make sense to me but whatever. 

We have 2 new investigators as well. We taught them lesson one and they are excited to learn more. Turns out we taught one of their daughters before and randomly contacted her mom and set up a lesson having no idea what was going on. pretty cool. 

We had two investigators show up to church, they live together but aren't married which is the only thing holding them back from baptism tough, but they seem happy to be married. the husband just needs a divorce first, which is pretty hard in panama. 

I got a good computer today as well so here are a few pictures of things. I eat these banana things here. they are so good! i made them in our tiny crap house, which I kind of love now. I also make a ton of oatmeal here, like at least once a day. usually for dinner. 

Also attached is a photo of my scriptures. I taped a picture of the family on the cover. I like having it there. Reminds me why I'm here, to help people have eternal families just like we can have. Its pretty great! 

One night we had a sleepover for our meeting in that area the next morning. We played a game of cards called chancho. its like spoons but the last person to grab a spoon gets a letter. First person to spell chancho loses. So I lost one of the games we played and had to drink a smoothie. Here are the contents: vinegar, mango, peanut butter, protein powder, moldy rice, ketchup, sour cream, noni (a fruit here that tastes absolutely horrible and clears out your system), water, milk, and I believe there was some sort of old meat in there. but yeah it did come out my nose. 

That's all this week, love you all.

Jayden

Week 11 (July 25, 2016)

Sorry for the delay in this weeks post, we were at Lake Powell trying to enjoy ourselves without Jayden :(  , check back later today or tomorrow for this weeks letter. (Gary)

Okay so all of the computers here are trash!! they don't let me put photos on. luckily I can send them over WiFi! Here are some explanations of some photo's i am sending.

Okay so we don't eat Popsicle's here which is sad but some people do make these things called "duros" which essentially is some water and flavoring in a small bag and they freeze it and sell it for 25 cents. I buy them like everyday. so good! The best is pineapple but I have also had koolaid

with milk and cherry and some grape as well. and mango, not as good as it sounds.

The money here. they use the dollar but they have different change. so here is a picture of a dime.

Here is a house we eat at once a week. there is no glass in those windows as well as no tile on the floor. just cement. they are one of my favorite places to eat at. 

Fig bars. dad said the mission would change me and I figured it would. I just didn't expect it to change me into dad. I eat lots of oatmeal and wake up early and go to bed early and eat milky ways and I feel like I'm turning into dad. not really complaining I just feel to young for that to happen right now. 

 

We had  mouse problem in our house. I found out when I saw a mouse running along my desk while I was studying. a few mouse traps later we got him. it was great! me and my comp were both freaking out. I told my comp I was going to eat it and he almost died. then he told me I had to repent for killing a creature of god! I told him that Nephi didn't repent for killing Laban so I didn't have to repent for that. it was pretty funny. me and my comp have been getting along pretty great the last week. 

 

I'm not even a little jealous of you going to Powell because I got to go to the ocean today. It was freaking sweet! We were in the city to donate blood for a lady in our ward with her husband but we didn't have our passports so we couldn't. So after he donated we went to the water and the threw rocks in the ocean. It was fun. I took a few pics of the city but it was really far away and is a little hard to see. And yes I am definitely wearing my flip flops in those pics! they are the greatest thing I brought to panama! 

 

Other questions to answer. Asthma is not a problem here. I have been doing great at all times of the day and even while running around for soccer. 

I'm not sure if I told you or not but I did get the package you sent. It was great. I already ate all the food! so good! and much needed!  

Another highlight of our week, we visited a less active girl in our ward, and we talked to her about the importance of going to church. I asked if she had been baptized, knowing the answer was yes. Then I asked how she could renew her baptismal covenants, she answered the sacrament. then I asked where she could get the sacrament. Church. And guess who went to church that Sunday. she did. and she stayed for all three hours. 

Another highlight is I found a new investigator. he is from Florida. he speaks English. he spent 22 years in prison reading every religious book he could find, including the Book of Mormon. He totally believes all of it. He basically taught me lesson one about the restoration. So hopefully we can go back and teach lesson 2. I have however heard that he doesn't hold commitments tho and the last missionaries dropped him. hopefully I can work him a little better and get him to come to church and hold up to commitments. 

That's about it for the week. Nothing super interesting so hopefully some pictures will do! Love you all and miss you all as well!! 

Elder Hamblin