8th Week's P-day email from Panama

Hola mi familia que está en muchas partes del mundo,

This week has gone by really fast, and I feel like I may struggle with things to write, but here goes.

We had our first English class, which we didn't really plan much, just went and printed out little papelitos that said like "Do you want to learn English", free! haha, with directions to the capilla and what not. We're gonna do them every Saturday at 2 in the afternoon. So we handed out like 90 of them the day before the day of the class, so that it would be fresh in the people's minds. And guess how many people showed up? 30? 40? 50 perhaps? nope, 4 hahaha. 4 kids from the ages of 8 to 14 haha. It was such a failure, but those 4 kids came ready to work and learn with their notebooks and positive attitudes :P I enjoyed it. Fun teaching English. We just went over a few common questions and how to say things, pronuncing numbers and colors and what not. We think we're gonna have the classes be like an hour long each time, not too long, and those kids are excited to come back again this week. So we'll see if they tell more people about it or not, and we'll hand out more flyers this week too. But one kid, the oldest one, 14, said that he wanted to learn English, and he's also seen us walking around before and wants to do what we do as misioneros, haha, so theres a baptism! Haha I dont know, were gonna find out how to get to his house and go teach him and his family. Apparently it's a big family, so that would be so awesome.

So we were contacting more this week, and came across a lady that made me really laugh. She said in Spanish "Oh, I never close the door on people that make the sacrifice to preach the good word of God...but I'm busy right now, sorry..." slams door, ahaha. I was just thinking, wow, que basura. And people are usually generally kind to us, even if they clearly are stuck in their catholic beliefs and aren't willing to change, theyll usually just say good bye and have a nice day, which is a little bit nicer.

Well I also have another thing to tell you, I have a newfound hatred for dogs. Every single person who lives in Panama has at the least one perro, that barks like crazy and gnashes its teeth at you when you walk by. I've never been much of a dog person anyway, but these perritos here drive me nuts, cuz they all bark in unison like a symphony of dogs, it's terrible!

So one thing I did this week was I finshed the New Testament, woot! That was so cool. Revelations at the end is crazy, really needs to be read seriously with all the doctrine it contains. It explains ALOT of stuff that is going to happen for the 2nd coming. But now I was thinking, what should I do for my personal study? And I decided on the Doctrine and Covenants, and I'll see how long that takes me to finish. But I'm really proud of myself. I love the scriptures, and I have learned so much from both the Book of Mormon and the Bible.

Well everyone, thank you very much for your letters that you sent me, especially you, Nana. I got 5 from you this past week all at once haha, and I'm sending one off to you tomorrow.

One thing I did this week also was I bought a bunch of good ol American food like Poptarts and granola bars haha. 'Ive been searching for Poptarts since I got here, and I stumbled across one lone box in a grocery store, and it was like a beacon from heaven, haha, I was so excited. Elder Aguilar had a craving for his Mexican food, so naturally we made tacos, haha. They were good, I'm gonna send pictures home to my mom so you guys can see them. Who says that misioneros cant cook?? :P

So I found out that of all the missionaries that are here in Panama, we only have 7 Mexicans, and somehow we have 3 of them in our zone, haha. So last week and whenever we're all together, they have their little Mexican group. It's pretty funny, and they use their Mexican slang.

Last week's p-day was fun, did some of my first site-seeing. Went to a place called Panamá Viejo, which has something to do with an old prison during the 1500's and pirates or something haha. We went to a tiny little beach as a zone and played frisbee and took pictures, pretty sweet.

Still working hard, trying to find more people to teach, getting better and better at Spanish, and I still haven't gotten lost in out area yet, woo! Hope all is well back home, you are all great, glad we can be connected through this blog.

2 scriptures for you all again, one funny one and one really cool one that I found in my reading this week. Funny: 1 Kings 17:3, and the good one about the love of Heavenly Father is D&C 6:16.

Have a wonderful week all ya´ll wherever you are. Pretty soon is this big event here called Carnaval, that supposedly is pretty nuts, lots of people drinking and partying, so I'll be sure to include how crazy people are when that happens haha! Love you all