Panama! (week 8)

Hey fam and everyone, thank u for all of your emails. Wow this week was soo nuts but now that i’m writing this email i’m forgetting so much of this week already haha. Super crazy here and the language is rough so i pray that catches on soon. the investigators are awesome though…all super nice and most of the time they will help me.  I still get made fun of alllll of the time but that’s chill…really not that big of a deal.  it’s suuuper humbling though and its so crazy how much u have to rely on god and just beg u can pick up the language so u can communicate. its frustrating sometimes with a latino companion too because we don’t understand each other…still great though but it takes a ton of patience.  The language is by far the biggest issue right now.  Life is good though, super hard but good. Crazy times!  we got two baptismal dates this week so that’s awesome…baptism dates are for the 25th of the month.  we are teaching a ton of investigators and walk everywhere to meet with them…super draining and soo frustrating with the language.  i have a quick story but probably don’t show the kids the whole thing. so we met a member at a chino and she bought us maltas. She was from the D.R. and was super funny but a total nut…in her fifties probably. So we reluctantly go to her house which is literally a shack and she’s a straight horder. Crap everywhere it was soo gross. but me and my companion are laughing the whole time because she’s a nut…all of a sudden she starts slapping chicken feet on the stove and i almost thru up just watching it.  I was laughing with my comp about it when she wasn’t looking, but i had a bad attitude about the situation cus we were supposed to be doing cosechas (certain type of tracting we do).  so then she starts talking to us more about her life. she grew up in the dominican republic and when she was 14 she was raped by a bunch of policemen.  she ended up getting pregnant at FOURTEEN and having TWINS…one was black and one was white.  from the time they were born they were always fighting and never once got along.  she ended up working on a boat and making a little money, then got in a car accident, and got injured bad enough to lose her job. She was broke and had to move to panama.  Here in panama she barely scraped by begging and trying to feed her kids. She ended up having two more kids and was homeless with her kids her whole life.  the kids are all older now and her daughter has cancer and the other son lost his job.  tons more has happened to her but basically she’s had the saddest life ever.  I’m crying just writing about her.  after she told us those stories, suddenly the chicken feet she gave us started to taste a little bit better and my troubles seemed a little less.  My judgment of her went down 100,000 percent and all i wanted to do was help her and give her all the money i had in my wallet.  moral of the story…never judge anyone no matter what because we have no clue what people are going through…always feel blessed for what u have.  our struggles may be hard but the rest of the world’s struggles are 2,000 times harder.  So that’s all i have for now because I’m kinda out of time…sorry that story was a little longer than i wanted it to be.  It’s SUPER crazy and awesome down here and i’m loving every minute of it, even though its by far the roughest thing i have ever done.  i have a bunch of pics and i will send them all out.  Love you all, Elder Call

first morn waking up in panama. took the pic from the hotel in the city. wow has my life changed since that day

snip bit of our crib, thats the kitchen lol prob the best part of the crib 

just a  pic of me bein a man of the jungle

my comp, me plantin yuka with a kuna, they are everywhere, majorty of the people i am with are kuna in my area. super awesome i loove them. they love all gringos but thats a story for another day 

e today on pday with the bucket and a tupper wear. we dont have running water like half the time so we have to shower with the bucket lol it sucks. gets so hot we have to air out with the fan lol