Week 2 In Panama

This week was all about the buses!  On Tuesday we woke up at 2 in the morning and caught a bus to Panama City because I had to go to immigrations and be legal or something.  Everyone kept telling us "I promise this isn't normal" but we waited in the basement of the immigrations building with about 40 other missionaries from 7 in the morning until about 10 o'clock that night.  At that point it was too late to come back to Santiago so we had a sleepover at the apartment of the sisters that live in that area. Then on Friday we woke up again to catch the 3 o'clock bus to Panama because it was my companion's turn to go to immigrations, but this time we were only there for a few hours and we actually got to come home and do work in our area!  It is kind of a blessing that this is an 8 week transfer because our first 2 weeks were a lot of planning and establishing goals and now we have a full 6 weeks to really get to work and have success in Santiago!  

My favorite part so far about missionary work here in Panama is contacting people (it was probably the scariest part for me in California), everyone is really kind and willing to talk to us, even if we can't speak very well!  I think most people just talk to us because we are American but hey they are talking to us!!

Funnest part of the week- the ward Christmas party which was supposed to start at 8 in the morning but didn't actually start until 3 in the afternoon.  The ward made a whole bunch of food and took it to a pretty poor part of town and threw a big Christmas party for all the people who lived in that neighborhood and they had a piñata!  I thought I knew how piñatas worked but you have no idea until youve seen 30 Panamanian kids going at it....best part is there weren't even any tears, they all just took the cuts and bruises like champs.

Merry Christmas!!  The gospel is true and Christ is La Davida, what more can I say?  Love you all and I will talk to you soon!!

Hermana Smith