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 

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