Santiago Week #7

Buenas familia,

Another week of miracles and adventures in Panama.  

Miracles- Hermana D. got confirmed yesterday and her blessing was beautiful!  She is already a prime member of the church- we got to the chapel yesterday and she was already there helping the priesthood set up chairs!  We also taught her about the temple and baptisms for the dead and she is already gathering names to take with her when the branch goes in March.  It makes me really happy to know that I will be in Panama a year from now and that I might get the chance to be there with her when she goes through the temple!

We had two of our most inactive of the inactives at church yesterday!!  One of them stood up in priesthood and told them that he wants to reactivate to set an example for his son which is amazing considering that my first week here he told us ¨I'm like Oliver Cowdery.  I know it's all true but I´m never coming back.¨ The other one is this great little hermana and we make american desserts with her every couple weeks and she has been a member for over 20 years but just isn't very excited about the gospel.  We found out that she never went to the temple, not even to do baptisms so we talked to her about that and now she is preparing to go with us in March as well!

We have started our English class and also a piano class and this week we had a ton more people show up and they were all our less actives/investigators.  The real miracle is that we can teach in Spanish without everyone getting up and walking out.

Tips for travelling to Panama- The bus drivers here dont have to have a special license.  They don't even have to pass the driving test, they just have to have a bus.  If you are looking for a good time, sit in the back of the bus- if you close your eyes you can't even tell that you aren't on the Indiana Jones ride at Disneyland.  If you love people, sit in the middle of the bus- you will really get to know the 40 people trying to squeeze into the center row.  If you want to be a diva you have to be the first one on the bus so you can sit in the passenger´s seat- air conditioning, a nice view, and leg room...but where´s the fun in that?  

Last week on divisions the sister training leader told me one of her goals was to contact a whole bus and I had that in the back of my head all week and I wanted to do it.  So on the way back from dinner one night I had the driver turn off the music and turn on the lights and I stood up in front of the whole bus and gave my little speech and ended by asking if anyone wanted to learn more/take a pass along card/have any references and you could have heard a pin drop....everyone on the bus just stared at me like I was speaking Chinese (my Spanish is not that bad) so I just smiled and awkwardly sat back down next to my companion who was hiding in her seat and about ready to die of embarrassment...it was bad but I was on a high the rest of the night because it made me feel so much like a real missionary!

Ok now for this stuff-  One of the elders asked me why I am obedient and it really made me think.  A big part of the reason that I want to be obedient (by the end, I hope the only reason) is that I love my Savior.  He said it Himself that if I love Him I will keep His commandments.  I am far from the perfectly obedient missionary but I like to think that I am trying my best to do everything that is asked of me and like with everything else in life, the best motivator is love.  I had been thinking of how I can be even more motivated by my love for the Savior when I read 3 Nephi 17 in my personal study one morning.  Holy Cow.  I dont know why I hadn't paid more attention to this chapter earlier but it hit my so hard this week.  It is all about the Savior´s ministry among the Nephites and in pretty much every verse you can just feel so strongly how much He loved them.  He healed them, He taught them, He blessed them, He prayed for them, and He wept, He wept, because He loved them so much and maybe more than any other time in my life I could feel that He loves me that much as well.  And I know that He loves each and every one of us that much and I know that He is praying for us and He wants to heal us.  So how could I not want to reciprocate that love and try my best to do everything I can to follow His commandments? I hope that as I learn more and grow more that I will be able to develop so much love for my Savior that that love is the motivation for every choice I make.  

Love love love,

Hermana Smith

Week 6 in Santiago

This week was one of the hardest but one of the best weeks in the mission so far!  Wouldn't you guess that some miracles happened.  We found a really awesome family who are prepared to hear the gospel, we had probably our best lesson ever as a companionship, Hermana D was BAPTIZED!!!, and we had 4 other investigators at her baptism!  I think I finally understand the scripture in Ether ¨And if men come unto me I will show unto them their weakness. I give unto men weakness that they may be humble; and my grace is sufficient for all men that humble themselves before me; for if they humble themselves before me, and have faith in me, then will I make weak things become strong unto them.¨  Right now I am spending pretty much 24/7 trying to come as close to Him as I possibly can and He is keeping His end of the promise by showing me my weaknesses.  So now I get to do my part and have enough faith to keep trying and one of these days I will be the missionary He wants me to become but until then I know that somehow even with all of my weaknesses we will continue to see lots of miracles in Santiago!!

Ok what was fun this week-

- we hiked a mountain this morning and it was freaking awesome!!  I am exhausted but I had forgotten how much I miss mountains and hiking!

-this super cute dog followed us for 3 HOURS while we worked in this area and finally we had to trick him and hide so he would go back to his own house and stop following us. but for real look how cute he is.

-made up 2 new contacting games:

1. people sell these things called duros out of their houses (they are like popsicles in a bag....but way better) and they are only like 15 cents so if we see a sign for duros we buy one and contact the person in the house, so far we have 3 new investigators from duro-contacting.

2. so I am white. which means that we get a lot of whistles and calls and this tssst sound all the time.  sometimes it's men but a lot of times it's just teenagers so if we feel like it's safe, we walk right up to them and contact them.  This week we passed a house with about 6 teenage boys and they were yelling oh my gosh and hello baby so we walked up to the house and all but one of them ran to the back and hid.  We started talking with the one who stayed and slowly they all came back out (obviously super embarrassed) and we gave them a foyeto and invited them to the soccer activity. 

-most commonly used phrase ¨I'm white, get over it!¨ 

-I hit my 5 month mark tomorrow!

Panama is beautiful and I love it here and one day soon I am going to be so tan that no one can even tell that I´m not latina.  Hermana D is amazing and now I have a recent convert!  Until next week,

Hermana Smith

 

Santiago Week 5

This week was a roller coaster for sure.  We had a zone meeting on Tuesday and it was really good but I kind of realized how we are so inexperienced and don't know how to speak or teach or anything. And I was kind of freaking out but then that same day we had a lesson with Hermana D, our investigator who is getting baptized on Saturday, and it went great!  I still think that it's a little bit nuts that they just put two gringos together and let us loose on Santiago but I also know that as long as we are being obedient and doing as much as we can with what we know, that God is going to help us be successful.  Hermana D doesn't need super experienced flawless teachers, she already has a testimony, she just needed someone to introduce her to the Book of Mormon and organize her baptism for her and we know enough vocabulary to do that!  It is still hard sometimes but it is pushing me to rely on the Lord and realize that any of the success we are having has nothing to do with us or our abilities, it's all Him.

We had some fun at the tree burning party and we taught our first English class!  English class is super fun and it has been an awesome way to contact people and get them to the church!  Plus we take any excuse to be inside the church because, you know, air conditioning.

Funnies-  So to knock at someones door you stand outside and yell buenas.  So the other day we were going to visit a potential and we yell buenas really loud and wait to see if anyone is home and we hear someone yell buenas back and we are like great they are home so we wait for someone to come out and nothing so we yell it again and someone yells it back but no one comes out and we are so confused so we yell it one more time and then realize that no one is home, it's just the parrot in the backyard talking back to us!

Super hot, no scary bugs this week, my tan line is killer, no scary dogs this week, our elders are pretty cool,  everything is good in Santiago!

Love you tons,

Hermana Smith

Week 4 in Santiago

P-day already? The weeks are flying by! Things are really good here and I am starting to feel at home here in Santiago.  On Christmas you asked me for "only in Panama" things and I thought of a couple.  The first one- grapenut ice cream.  For real.  I don't know who thought that was a good idea but they love it here…it's hard to find any other kind of ice cream.  2nd- "pritty." It basically means cool or something like that I'm not even sure but everything here is pritty.  

Ok so this week: On Tuesday we got to help paint a member's house and we were there all day moving stuff out, cleaning the walls, and painting the inside bright purple because that's what color the 5 year old picked out.

On Wednesday I woke up and my companion couldn't talk...there was literally no noise coming out of her mouth so we called the nurses and went on an adventure to the clinic and I had to do all of the talking and it got a little intense at times when he started talking medical but we made it out alive, with only a little case of strep throat and got the right medicine and went back home.  We had a whole day planned but we werent allowed to leave the apartment until she wasn't contagious anymore so she slept it off all day and I got in some really good hours of personal study and attacked the area book which hadnt been touched in who knows how long.  So we didn't get to go out for New Years but we did hear a lot of really loud fireworks and I saw a couple burning men out the window (New Years tradition in Panama is everyone makes these stuffed dummies out of who knows what and they burn them on New Years.  We were so confused when all these giant dolls started showing up outside of people's houses last week.)  So yay 2015!!

Super cool to think that I will spend all of 2015 as a missionary and it has already started off with some super awesome miracles!  Miracles for this week- 

1.  So Hermana Duvy is the greatest investigator ever and yesterday she came to church without us having to pick her up.  In our lesson with her on Sunday she asked if we needed to be baptized more than once and we were a little nervous how she would take it cause she is already baptized Catholic but we answered that we only need to be baptized once if it is done by the right authority and then she said oh you mean the priesthood? And then basically taught us a lesson about priesthood authority and told us that she really feels like getting baptized on the 17th is the right thing....she is a miracle.

2. We have this crazy investigator who is like the best member in our branch except he isn't a member.  He hasn't been able to get baptized because he isn't married to his girlfriend but he can't marry her because he is married to this random woman in the United States.  So this week he found some old papers from 2005 and I guess a divorce was filed but it didn't look like it was ever finalized so we tried to call on Friday but the office was already closed.  Yesterday we fasted with him that everything would go smoothly this morning when we called and you know what?!  HE'S BEEN DIVORCED SINCE 2007!  We had a little dance party in the internet cafe and we are so pumped to start planning this wedding and get him baptized!!!  Miracled.  Also fasting totally works.

3.  We were taking a taxi to a new investigator's house and we started chatting with the driver and it turns out that his sister is a member so he didn't even make us pay.  Miracled.

Love you all so much and hope you have an amazing week!!  Feliz año!!!

-Hermana Smith

Christmas in Panama

I was super worried that I wouldn't have anything to email home about because I talked to you on Thursday but we had some awesome Christmas week miracles.  First was that I got to talk to you!!  It was so so good to see everyone's face and hear your voices!   The rest of Christmas went pretty chill- We went to an old folks place with the young single adults and gave out presents and then we went and did some caroling visits for the rest of the day. 
On Friday we were supposed to go paint a members house but we weren't sure what time and we didn't have any minutes left on our phone so at 7:30 in the morning we go outside in our painting clothes to walk to the chino on the corner and we see some white people across the street so naturally we walked really closely behind them to see if they were speaking english and one of them starts pointing to the church so we yelled and ran to go talk to them and it was a member from Michigan who is here visiting his brother and sister-in-law.  We showed them around the church and started talking with the sister-in-law who is Columbian and very Catholic but she had a ton of questions for us and we exchanged numbers and we have an appointment to talk to her again!  It was the most random timing that we would be outside right as they got there but maybe not so random I guess.  

Then yesterday we had another miracle- we walked to go pick up one of our investigators for church and not only was she there, she was standing outside waiting for us!  She loved church and told us how great she thought it was that she got to participate and share her testimony in the classes!  I had a pretty awkward spanish moment with her- she asked me where the sanitorio was and she was saying something about urinar and I was like um I dont know what that is and I definitely dont know if we have one here or not and she just kept saying those words over and over again and so I told my comp to go find the elders who speak spanish and I was trying to figure out what she was talking about...a confession booth, an altar, anything that might have been in her old church (urinar in panamanian spanish sounds a lot like orar (to pray))...and then I realized she had to pee so I go ´oh you need a baño!´ and she just stares at me like I'm crazy.  But she is an awesome investigator- she has already read through 2 Nephi in the Book of Mormon and she loves church and all the good stuff so we are really excited to keep watching her progress!

This week I was reading in the Book of Mormon in Alma and this one verse just really caught my attention.  I don't have my scriptures in english but it says ¨Y acontecio que los hijos de Alma salieron entre el pueblo para declararle la palabra.  Y el mismo Alma no pudo descansar, y tambien salio¨ ["And now it came to pass that the sons of Alma did go forth among the people, to declare the word unto them. And Alma, also, himself, could not rest, and he also went forth." Alma 43:1] and that kept me really motivated this week because I love thinking about all of my friends who are out doing the same thing I am doing and all of the people that I love who have served and now it's my turn!!  Sometimes it still takes me by surprise that I am out here doing this but I want to be like Alma and be so dedicated to this work that I cant rest!  Love you all and miss you tons! 

-Hermana Smith