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 

Week 7 (June, 28, 2016...First week in the Field)
Sorry it was delayed his Pday was put off a day so we should start being more regular on the posts at the beginning of each week. (Gary)

Temple Trip

Jayden's Companion is in the middle

New Back Pack....Thought it looked a little "Dora the Explorer" until i saw the Nike Logo on the bottom!

The Bedroom / Living Area

The rest of the living area

Umm...The Closet??

Jayden Letter

Okay! This place is wild! Its absolutely incredible!! I'll give you the day by day rundown. 

Tuesday- so after we got to Atlanta we had lunch at Arbys and just chilled for a bit. flight to panama was fine. just 3 hours. When we got to panama we got through customs just fine at around 10. We met the Assistant to the President, then we went to a hotel for the night. I included a picture. It was probably the nicest hotel i have ever stayed in in my life. Holiday in, but incredible. Its super hot and super humid here so we turned the thermostat all the way down. Felt so great!! The humidity is honestly insane here! Literally hit me like a wall when we left the airport. 

Wednesday- woke up at 6 and went to the lobby for breakfast. Eggs and rice and some sort of meat. It was good. Then we went on a walk around the city to get our pictures taken at a store for some reason. then we went on another walk to the church to meet our companions and the president and to get an overview of Panama. The president was way cool. but he went home this morning. We haven't met the new president yet. My companion is Elder G (left name out). He is from Honduras and doesn't speak any English. Sometimes makes things really hard. The area we are assigned is San Miguelito. Or Little Saint Michael. We took my luggage for a 20 minute train ride then a 20 minute bus ride then a 10 minute walk and finally we were at our apartment. It is tiny. We live in a shack attached to the bishops house. I put a picture of that there too. We have a nice assortment of bugs down here. My favorite are the roaches.They are pretty big here. like 3 inches long. We don't have them in our apartment but i saw one in another elders house. There are also lizards that just chill wherever they want. Like i saw one in a members house just chilling on the wall. No big deal. After we went to the apartment we got on another bus and went to the church for a zone conference. church is pretty far away. a bus, a train, and a 10 minute walk. All in the nice humid heat. I love it. then we went home for bed. I don't have a pillow, or any blankets. All we packed were sheets. So that night i slept on my sheet with my delta blanket i took from the plane, and used my towel as a pillow. We have 3 fans in our room tho so that makes it nice to sleep. 

Thursday- Apparently San Miguelito is the sketchy part of Panama. I haven't seen anything crazy yet but we went for a walk out contacting and my comp would tell me places that we couldn't go, which was like half our area. And its really hard to understand my comp because he is a native speaker and i speak like no Spanish. But we went to a members home and they are basically our parents out here in the mission. They are super cool. they feed us like 3 times a week,  They live right on the border of a sketchy area tho. its weird. i love going to their house tho. they feed us lots of good food, and rice. pretty much all we eat here is rice.

Friday- we met with a couple less active and non active members. Nobody in panama goes to church. Like nobody. we have one investigator. we didn't meet with a single investigator because all we meet with is the less actives. It is unreal. 

Saturday we did the same as Friday.

Sunday- we went to church. nobody was there. I had to get up and bear my testimony in front of all the people, which is like 35 people. that wasn't terrible, although i still don't speak very great. I then went to my gospel principles class. My comp taught it. the class had me and one other person in it. pretty great. Then we had priesthood. I have no idea what happens in any of these classes but I'm going to make the  assumption they are talking about the gospel. Then Sunday we went to a members hour for lunch, Went to our parents house so i could get a haircut from them, it looks great, i look like a true Panamanian. then we went back to the same members house for desert and a spiritual thought. it was good. I gave the thought and talked about the book of Mormon. 

Monday- Monday was our pre-Pday because today was Pday but we spent most of it at the temple. so we went shopping. i bought a new backpack for my stuff because my little side bag is nice and might get stolen. so my backpack looks tiny and wont get touched. and all i ever have is my scriptures anyway. 

Today- woke up early and went to the temple. Had to do a session in Spanish. that was super hard. everything was Spanish. Pretty much had no idea what was going on the whole time. And taco bell for lunch. that was about it. 

Week 6  (June 21, 2016)

Well its here, Jayden leaves for Panama today.  Bitter sweet as a parent knowing your son is leaving and doing whats right, making something of himself and serving others but leaving nonetheless and not being able to see him or talk to him again for quite some time. 

We were fortunate to talk to him today while he was waiting at the airport thanks to Grandma Margaret and her postponing her retirement until He officially left, thanks Grandma, it was also nice that she could spend some time with him and let us know how he looked and matured in the short time he was at the MTC.

Now we just wait to hear he has made it safe and sound.  Of course, he wanted to know how the NBA Finals went, and how the Dodgers were doing.  He wasn't happy the Warriors lost to Cleveland.

His Siblings were very excited to talk with him and tell him goodbye.

More later.........(Gary)

Week 5

Well, no photo's this week.  For those that know Jayden well know that he is painfully harsh on electronics.  We were blessed to receive a package in the mail yesterday from him with his broken camera that he dropped.  Needless to say it will be another week or more before we get anymore photo's. (Gary)

Today is my last p-day in the CCM. (MTC in Spanish) My time here has been great and i have learned so much! Sorry about the camera. One of the people i handed it to dropped it and something happened with the lens. The mail room closed like 3 minutes after i got there so i had to do it really fast. I didn't think it would get to you so fast so i didn't worry about sending a note home i figured i would just email you about it. I guess the US mail system isn't as terrible as i thought. I'm not sure exactly what to do about the situation either. i just figured i would send it home and have you figure it out. Dad you are usually pretty good at fixing things so i wasn't sure if you could fix that or not. 

We got our flight plans on Friday. I have to be at the MTC travel office at 4:50 am on Tuesday. We fly out to Georgia at 9:50. Then a layover there then a 3 hour flight to panama. I should be in panama by 9 on Tuesday night. Nothing to terrible to worry about. I already emailed grandma and told her the time i was flying out. I'm excited to see her. I'm so thankful that she waited to retire until after i left. It truly is a blessing to have her work there. 

Lately my Spanish has been getting a lot better. Our teachers have been making us speak nothing but Spanish in the classroom and as hard as it is it is making me so much better. At first it was really hard to communicate and i was being very quiet but now I can pretty much talk about anything that i want. Speaking the language all the time is helping so much. My teacher always makes me read aloud in Spanish because i have the best Spanish accent in the class and i don't struggle as bad to read like the rest of  the class does. Also being able to roll my R's is great. I sound like i actually know what i'm talking about. Something that one of our teachers taught me is to say "ere con ere cigarro, ere con ere varill. Rapido caro los carros garguados, de azucar de ferrocarril." It doesn't mean anything but it helps me to speak with an accent and to roll my R's all the time. The only problem with that is when i roll my R's hard and say Perro. In Spanish Pero means "but" and Perro means dog. Kind of a huge difference between those words haha! Other than that Spanish is getting great. Me and my companion do lots of Spanish role play where one of us is an investigator and the other has to find out what they need and teach that principle of the gospel completely in Spanish. Its really fun and forces us to not only hear and understand the Spanish, but it makes both of us better at understanding each other. Sometimes i have a struggle understanding my companion. He doesn't conjugate his words very often, but he loves to talk all the time in Spanish. He says a lot more in every lesson than i do but my Spanish has better conjugations and i have a slight Spanish accent when i talk. 

I am so excited to go to panama in 6 days!! i cant handle the food here anymore!! i just need to get some organic real stuff!! everything we eat is so processed and gross. Almost all the meat we eat is turkey meat. Im pretty sure they tried passing off a turkey steak last week. No bueno. I have officially gained 10 pounds since getting here. Not playing basketball all the time really hurts. But my teacher said i will lose most of it in Panama just from sweating and walking and a major lack of eating. I will and do need to workout more in the mornings. I probably should have planned better for that. 

We were in a devotional on sunday and this guy was talking to us about when he first got on his mission. He said that his first apartment when he got there had tons of gray mold all over the walls. "dont have that in america!" He looked outside and it was pouring rain. His compainion told him it rained nearly everyday there in argentina.  When he went to sleep that night he lit one of those mosquito repelling candles. He woke up in the middle of the night and looked to see if the candle was still lit. He looked over and saw the flame had turned into just a small ember.  He went to relight the candle and when he stepped on the floor there were 2 feet of water. Apparently when it rained outside it rained inside too! Hence the mold and the moving candle!  He looked down at his watch, " wow! 2 more years!' 

That was probably the funniest joke i have heard in the MTC. Things here are pretty boring, so anytime something is generally funny we all laugh really hard. Or when we watch our movies on sunday nights. We watched the testament the other night, every time there was a joke or flirting or people kissing the place went nuts! everybody would be yelling "page 33!!!" white handbook, also know as the white bible, talks about opposite sex relationships and is definitely the most referenced page here in the MTC. We always yell at people about page 33. 

That's about all that's really happened here in the MTC. It should get a lot more interesting here in the next week though!! I love all of you!!! Hopefuly you aren't missing me too much haha!  Love you all!!!

Elder Hamblin

Week 4

Sorry for the late post, I was out of town all week and just got back up to date with life. (Gary)

Jayden and his Mission Zone President in the MTC

The fireside last night it was incredible. Elder Bednar is an incredible speaker. He talked about how the lord knows us one by one. Then we sang our one by one song. It was super spiritual. 

My Spanish is coming along so much better this week. I can speak pretty well. We are starting to really learn the hard parts of Spanish. There's a weird tense in Spanish that doesn't even exist in English. As well as two different ways to conjugate past tense. Its really hard to understand when to use each one, but i know how to use them. As for today I woke up at 9. It was so great to sleep in. I went on an exchange with one of my roommates while my companion woke up early and did laundry. stupid him. My laundry will be done in 30 minutes, as well as i slept in and went to the temple. So much better than the 30 minute nap he will take later today. We are also playing a zone kickball game. We do it every P-day. Its so much fun!! It reminds me of playing baseball!! I also play basketball everyday. We got a new 6 foot 9 kid in our zone who plays basketball for Weber state. Its fun to play against him. He surprisingly can shoot 3 pointers almost as well as i can. So it is much more competitive lately. I love it!!

Week 3 (June 1, 2016)

My stay in the MTC is officially halfway done! It feels like I have been here for an eternity but at the same time it feels like I just got here. On Sunday we were at choir practice and they broke the news to us that we would be singing a brand new song, written by Elder Bednar, and we would be singing it with his grandchildren. Then they told us that Elder Bednar would also be speaking that night. Its going to be so great. Elder Bednar is such a powerful teacher, especially when he talks to the missionaries. We have watched so many training videos here of his past talks. So I cant wait to see and hear from him live. 

Last Sunday I was also made the new zone leader. I used my power to make exchanges this morning and made an exchange so that I could sleep in an extra hour. It was well needed. I'm still tired tho. But that's why I'm emailing a bit later than usual. 

My time in the gym hasn't been as great lately, my friend who i played ball with everyday got shipped out to Sydney, Australia. Mandarin Chinese speaking. He was here for 9 weeks. I couldn't imagine eating the food here for 9 weeks.

Love you!! Elder Hamblin

Or Elder Guapo, as one of my teacher likes to call me.