Rod’s thoughts so far.  (Sorry this turned out so long)

Pleasant surprises:  It is NICE to be able to not have to put the soiled toilet paper in the garbage as we did in Guatemala.  Also, here we can drink the water, that is really an advantage.  The people live on a visibly higher standard of living – in Panama City there are many high rises – 90 stories, here in Aguadulce most people can afford a somewhat reasonable rental.

Concerns:  It is hot and I sweat a lot – more than others – I’m learning somewhat what Edyn’s experience was like in Recife.   At times, I need to wipe my hand, before I shake, so they don’t have to wipe theirs.  Luckily, we have some months to acclimatize before the hot (dry) season.  Language is coming, slowly for me.  Janell does well, is patient and almost always speaks Spanish, but they speak so fast!!!  It was refreshing to have the visiting authority be from Guatemala, I could almost understand him.  There doesn’t appear to be infrastructure similar to Fedex or the post office.  Street addresses appear meaningless.  Many members of record have just the street or the suburb for addresses – we’ll need to ask to find them.  I haven’t found out how to update addresses yet in the branch list – that needs to be a priority.

The Work:  The people are really friendly and quite open to improving their family lives and situation.  Tracting is even fun – not like in Germany.  People say hi on the street and can be engaged in a simple conversation with modest effort (easy for me to say since Janell carries the load).  The members of the church mostly live far from the building, more on the edges of town.  A couple have cars but many walk or take taxis which, while cheap, aren’t cheap for them.  We are meeting families that don’t attend much, but are well known to the members. These appear quite friendly and we are having some success with them.  We’ll try getting strong and weaker members together at group nights to see if we can get them to fellowship each other.   We are holding classes in English and piano, those are fun.  We believe we have a program that will work to help the Hispanic missionaries learn English.  We think a pilot will be fun and successful.

It seems that every day is an adventure or more.  We went to a district meeting in Chitre – 30 miles or so.  We walked to a very run down zoo with dying animals and paid $2 for it!  The walk was forever.  The signs for it started across the street from the elder’s apartment, so I thought it was just around the corner.  Hah!

 We did buy a monitor for our computer during lunch.  Before we left the store, the elders insisted we have a bag to cover it so we didn’t get held up.  So far we haven’t seen any of that.  Everything took longer than expected and it was dark by the time we were ready to go to the bus terminal – we had to drag people out to go – old folks need their sleep.  We decided to take a taxi and it turned out a very good idea – we got to the terminal just as the last bus was getting ready to pull out.  (Tender mercy) The driver claimed he had room for 4. The buses are Volkswagen buses that usually hold 15.  There are seats added on the sides after the space behind the driver is full.   I got in first and climbed to the back.  I sat down between two men, touching on each side.  I thought “All right, I can do this”, but then they said that Rod needed to join me!!  I put my arm around him and we cuddled tight.  Perhaps the most amazing thing to me was that the people were so gracious about it.  One mother had to hold her child on her lap to make it work for at least 45 minutes until someone got out.  We had 17 people in the bus.  I’m sure the driver was pleased.  It was late enough that we could open the windows and get air, thank Heaven.  Many of the buses have air, but this one didn’t.  We learned a bit about exerting our influence to leave sooner in the future.

Yesterday the zone came to our house for p-day.  I cleaned like mad until 10:00 (after all it was my p-day too)  Rod thinks I should study instead of clean but there is a certain level…..Elder Pena had said that we could cook in 20 minutes (for 13 people?  I don’t think so), but I didn’t know how far off he was.  They all arrived about 11.  The sisters had stayed up until 11:30 making raw tortillas in individual wrappers.  They all had to be cooked.  Elder Pena created a grill for the stove by borrowing a large piece of metal which they sanded to cleanliness.  We placed it on top of the burners of my new gas stove.  3 hours later I suppose some of you can guess the condition of my stove.  I had put the top to my pressure cooker on the side thinking that it would surely be safe there.  NOT!!!  I suppose it will never be the same.  During this time the electric lighter on the stove failed, so now we get to use matches all the time.  There is no such thing as telling someone something failed.

 Elder Pena made poposas.  The gringos shortened the name, of course.  It was round gobs of tortilla dough, flattened a bit, then one puts a hunk of refried beans and some cheese, enclose the whole thing in the dough, flatten it with oiled hands, and fry.  He had made a carrot and cabbage salad and they ate it a bit like pizzas with their hands.   I thought it tasted really good. 

Sister Kennedy made brownies (we burned them) and a cake mix.  We went about 4:00 to use the internet café.  They were to return later to eat the sweets and get their things.  We had a 6:00 appointment which we had told at least some of them.  We came back but they never returned.  We put a note on the door and left a key with the neighbors. When we came back 2 hours later, no one had returned.  I suppose sometime we’ll figure out how to get all returned.

I did tell them that we won’t do food again this way—sisters cooking for 4 hours after staying up late.

failed, so we had to wash hands outside.  One of the elders had the bad luck to have the outside turner for the barrel fail while he was washing his hands.  The toilet was plugged when Rod went in there—just not enough water to keep things working.  What a day!!

Rod spent his time working with one of the sisters on English.  We are trying to teach the gringos that this is the best opportunity their comps will ever have to learn English. Many of the English kids think the Hispanics don’t want to learn, but we believe they just don’t think it is possible.  If one is not immersed, has no MTC experience with the target language, all the books he has are in his own language, not in the target language, and no one speaks to him carefully in the target language, he may not believe it is possible to learn.  Rod has had good success himself in using ‘Preach my Gospel’ and ‘Predicad mi Evangelico’ side by side.  He wants to try it here with the Hispanics.    

We still don’t have internet.  We waited somewhat patiently after we visited the store to ask for service, we called to set up service (we thought), he came by and MADE AN APPOINTMENT to bring the service, and then waited all day yesterday.  When we finally called he said he was in the city and the company hadn’t authorized him to install service.  We went back to the store, they called him, and we set an appointment for Saturday.  Then this morning someone called to say they would come Thursday.

This time we have little hope, we are just resigned.  Hermana Ward said it took them 7 tries to cancel service at the mission home.  They were told after three or four tries that if they simply stopped paying, the company would ruin their credit in the whole country.

They finally had to say that they would need to cancel the 100 accounts that the missionaries had if they couldn’t have help.  That got someone’s attention.    We are certainly used to having businesses care more about serving us.

Here is our newest member of the family.  It was delicious, and I did eat the seeds as my mother taught me to scare off parasites.

This is our meeting with the area authority, President Falabela.  He did a great job.

This is my first piano class.  They were great.  We discovered that they know the tune to Yankee Doodle, but sing ¨Barney is a dinosaur that lives in our minds....

This is El Gallo who sings to us at 4 a.m. each morning.  We feel like we live on the farm until the trucks go by.

Rod loves to work with the Latinos to learn English.  We think this is their best shot with their companion as a one-on-one tutor.  We want to work more with this.