Departing and Arriving

Our students have been wonderful in their love as we were leaving.  Each branch held an activity in our honor.  All week before our "surprise" party in Aguadulce I was wishing that we could find time and patience to do a slide show to honor them.  When we arrived, here it was!  The sister that is such a wonderful primary teacher had gotten pictures as we made cookies with her family and created it.

Sister Chevita did her own party for us in her home at our last lesson.  Even though she worked hard, she didn't  earn her piano, but she wasn't bitter.  She came with us and helped us clean and move in.  What a blessing.

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The last Sunday, we had an activity for the young girls in the branch.  They looked at our pictures, we ate, and we made cookies with Layne and Dorrie's last bag of m&m's. We had a great time.  

This is the banner our students created.  The M and N are interchanged in English and Spanish often (at least here in Panama) so we are Watsoms. No importa.

In Chitre, Vanessa and her Uncle danced for us.  Mayra, our friend and student and Relief Society President and her daughter made a wonderful program with quotes, and each student played.  Javi played the guitar and I got to sing with him our Help Me Teach With Inspiration.  Great fun and wonderful spirit.  Two of the more advanced students played a duet, even.

Our last pose in front of the church with Jorge Luis.  This family was one of the only 15 who attended church the Sunday following our farewell party.  Somehow the members don't attend church following an activity.  I don't know if it's economic or what.

Vanessa and her uncle danced the typical dance together for our farewell in Chitre.    Mayra and her daughter prepared a program with lovely quotes and each of our students played.  Javi invited me to sing with him (he is our only guitar student) and we did Help Me Teach With Inspiration.  Two of the more advanced students played a duet.  They served dinner and we felt LOVED!

We found this huge butterfly in the church.  Sister Chevita says they attack sugar cane in their larva stage.  I imagine they could do damage. 

Here you can see the real size.

A new fruit.  I can't even remember it's name.  It wasn't a favorite.

Here it is open.  It wasn't very sweet and had an avocado texture.  Maybe I should have tried it blended with ice, sugar, and milk, but I gave it to the neighbor.




Sister Savedra is struggling with cancer, so we tried to visit as often as we could.  They treated us to pipa, a small coconut that people drink the juice. 




Another take.


And another.  The meat has a slimy texture, and Rod slipped me his to help him out.  He often helps me out when I have too much rice.

We have a brook that runs UNDER our house.  It babbles wonderfully all day long.  We've turned the house into a studio apartment and are only using the oven upstairs for storage.  It will work fine. Our view is of trees and bananas and the bridge.  I'm going to enjoy that.  Our landlord asked us to compost!  Yeah!!

It is marvelous to go to church in a chapel again and feel part of a going concern.  I had never realized how hard people have to struggle to get a branch really going.  The members are talking of home teaching and there is a large youth group.  We met with the branch president, President Rodriguez, and his wife who helped us organize a list of more than 20 students .  Another branch has 5 who want to meet between seminary and school, so we'll have an early day Friday, but we don't have to travel far.
 
We also traveled to Volcan, about 45 minutes and met with the wife of the branch president and the missionaries.  The Young Women's president will help organize there, and we'll return Thursday.  I wanted to wash our clothes, but Rod was anxious to get things going, and he was right, of course.

Three of our Aguadulce students have called just to see how we are doing and two from Chitre and one from Penonome.  The members are AWESOME!  The gospel is true.  The Savior does love us.

Moving Parties, from cookies to black beans

Mayra is from Guatemala.  She has spent a lot of time with us and we've cooked a bit.  When we arrived she was cooking black beans, Guatemala style.  She taught Rod, and here they are.


She has a great way to cut cabbage.  Here it is.

As we are leaving families who have become dear to us, we are trying to spend a little time together.  The Diaz family invited us for lunch and to make snickerdoodles.

It was fun.  I wanted the children to have a chance to do, but their mom said they had to watch and learn.  Sad for me, but what do you do in another woman's kitchen with another woman's children.?

Their grandpa wanted me to take a photo of his truck which had made the trip from the U.S. to Panama.

I climbed in back with the kids.  I have great memories of pick-up rides when I was a child. (Some not so great as well).

Finally we get a smile from Abdelito.  Usually he tries to be cool.

Kevin, on the other hand, just has a great joy in life and loves to laugh.


Javi is the district Young Men's president.  He knew some guitar before, but he has learned a bit from me and now is enrolled with a real teacher.  His goal is to offer classes to the youth in his branch and to use he music in his family home evenings.  I taught him Help Me Teach With Inspiration, and he says it has become his new favorite hymn.  I loved sharing with him.

A young girl who spent time with us when we first came and then left for another life style called us the other day to ask us to come by.  She said things had been hard and she was interested in coming back.  We went by and offered to give her a ride to church on Sunday.  When we arrived she wasn't there or awake at least.  I took Damaris home after sacrament meeting and Rod suggested I stop by again.  She was there and willing to get dressed and come with me.  It took her awhile and I was doubting my inspiration, but when we walked into the church and all 5 of the young women came running to give her a hug, it was a wonderful sight.  As I was waiting for her the thought went through my mind from Elder Maxwell, that 'people come from an increasingly long distance to enjoy the gospel, and too often they are reaching to enter a lifeboat and those inside, instead of helping them in, hit them over the head with the oars'.  These young women were following the Savior.


New House pictures.  In case anyone is interested in viewing the new house, we're trying the video approach.  One more week here and our rent more than doubles and we start anew.

Today, two of our adult students (with whom we have worked very hard) told us that they would like us to take the pianos they've earned and use them with other youth in our new area.  The Harman fund is out of funds at present, so this will help us.  It was touching to have them offer. People are GOOD!!! --as is the Lord.  We're glad to be here in the ups and downs of missionary work.

Stomp rockets, Family Home Evening and sugar cane harvest

 Two grown men and a stomp rocket!  This stadium had a roof that we could stand under.  If I jumped high and came down hard with both feet, I could make the rocket hit the roof.  It's kind of fun to have a goal and reach it.

 Kevin Diaz is one of my favorite kids here.  He waits for us to come, comes out smiling to help us bring things in, and helps us into the car when we're done, then the family stands and waves us out of sight.  We were just celebrating being together.  Today Rod and I went to their house for dinner and to make snickerdoodles.  It was a fun day.  I didn't communicate well, because I brought fish for everyone and she'd already cooked a whole dinner.  Wow! how do I miss so much?

 We gave them a Family Home Evening manual and had  the first one to show them how.  This is the grandmother being the "Tree of life, from Lehi's dream in the Book of Mormon.  Our stomp rocket turned into the iron rod. 

A new fruit.  This one is a cereza which I always thought was the word for cherries.  This fruit has the three seeds inside it and is pretty sour.
Here is a quote I'm using. "Don't weep because it is over, Rejoice because it happened."  "No lloren porque se ha terminado, Alégrense porque sucedió." (Guess who said it.  Answer at end of blog.)  It is my feelings upon leaving this area.  We all knew it wouldn't be forever, and I wouldn't want it to be because I miss my family, but it has been good, and we have people to love that we didn't know before.  I love the Savior.  He has truly blessed my life.

 I decided that since I had little else this week, this might be the week to share the sugar cane harvest.  Notice above, the ash that falls (for about 5 months) from burning the leaves on the cane fields.

 This field is across a 4 lane from us and was the best picture we got, but there would be big plumes of dark smoke frequently over about a 40 mile stretch of highway.  They sometimes irrigate so they use flat land for the sugar cane.

 These are two of the harvesters.  They seem to windrow and then use these to lift into field transports drawn by tractor.  We didn't see it, but it appears they often take the cane to loading yards for placing in trucks.  (We would see the field transports on the highways at time heading to common destinations.)  Sometimes trucks are directly loaded.


The video was taken of a crew gathering cane (missed by initial harvest) into piles for eventual loading onto trucks.  We had pulled off to the side of the 4 lane (pan-american highway), but they were working in the center on the drainage system, so had blocked off one of the lanes.  We are listening to conference, but you will note that we get advised to move on and not be a menace to other travelers.  We don't count this one as one of the 9 times we were stopped by traffic police for violations, as we were already stopped.  No tickets yet.

 We picked up a cane that fell off a truck 8-10 feet long and a bit sooty.   It is pretty stiff -- useful for sword fights (in dirty clothes).

 This was very disappointing -- not very sweet.

 Tough to bite into and unsatisfactory, maybe green it is better.

 Most trucks aren't loaded so carefully by hand, but this one looked like someone aligned each cane, placing to maximize space.

 Here are some empty field transports, looks like they are built locally, perhaps on the large farm.  We estimated that they must have been harvesting 20-40,000 acres for this one factory.

 Here is hand harvesting on the burned over field, that which was missed by the mechanized crew.  The machetes must be pretty sharp and the cane is tough.

This guy has been in the soot a bit much for me.

Here is a shot ready to grow again.  The first fields to be harvested were already 2-3 feet high when the last ones finished.

Answer:  Dr Seuss

Lizards and a concert

 I tried twice to move these two photos to the bottom of the blog but they wouldn't go.  Maybe it's because they might be top interest to some of the kids.  We were teaching in Penonome and an older brother called us over to see a "Teeny" iguana.  I didn't think it particularly tiny, but it was compared to the 3 foot one that ran across the road when I was driving.

Rod, always interested, put his thumb down.  You can see the size, but the iguana wasn't a bit afraid.  He licked the thumb twice -- and then BIT!!   I wish I'd had a video.  It was like the mouse in our apartment incident with Apryl.

This is our new house in Concepcion.  It is at least twice as big as we need if not more with two baths and 3 bedrooms.  Someone had walled up the closet.  We asked to have it restored.  Hope we don't find an awful reason for it to have been walled up.  It has glass sliding windows which I don't like nearly as well as the roller ones.  I'll have to buy drapes.

Everett had 2 of these sticks.  I don't know why I hadn't thought of lumi sticks before.  I'm going to get a set and carry them with us.  We had a lot of fun. 

Last night we went for our lesson with Leydis and Eric but with a twist.  They invited the ex branch president who doesn't come any more for a concert.  When I'd told him that the kids could play he seemed very pleased.  I made pumpkin bread (it failed again) and took lemonade (way too much lemon and it was bitter).  It turned out that our guest didn't come, but the kids played all their hymns (it took over an hour) as we sang together.  It was a wonderful evening.  This is their final bow.

The family together after the concert.

I took a family home from church and Rod was in the chapel teaching Elder del Angel.  Rod discovered a simple method to teach chords and they were having a grand time.  We're not allowed to teach missionaries, but we made a half hour exception.

We haven't connected again with Emma, so no news there.  Our Tuesday appointment with the family around the corner found the husband absent and the wife uninterested.  We had the guitar and sang a bit.  She took down the words to Count Your Blessings in shorthand.  That was fun to watch.  Then I taught her two guitar chords.  We left, and as we left we had to walk through tall grass.  We've made it a habit to stamp our feet after that, because we're so afraid of the chiggers (whose bites we now have again, so with good reason).  I started to stamp, and Rod said "Quit it.  She has read the bible and may know about 'shaking off the dust of your feet'.  I can't imagine ever doing that, but I need to make one more visit to make sure we didn't leave that impression.

On our trip to Concepcion we were stopped 4 times by police.  Two were just routine stops for drugs, the other two weren't.  One was for passing on a bridge.  The bridge was at the bottom of a hill and both sides had dotted yellow.  The bridge paint was so faded you couldn't tell, but apparently there is a rule that you can't pass on a bridge.  Another American who lives here and spoke fluent Spanish was stopped just in front of us for the same infraction.  He argued.  For a while we wondered if we wouldn't be better off without his help, but he eventually got us both off.

The second time was our first encounter with a corrupt policeman, but I didn't realize it until after the encounter.  He said something like "What are we going to have to do so that you don't get a ticket?"  By this time I was tired of it so I said quite forcefully,  "I'd like to know, too, because we are trying to be the most obedient possible and follow the laws.  If there are laws we need to know about I would appreciate it if you would teach us so we can obey."  By this time I suspect he was hearing his mother's voice in the back of his head, and he just waved us on through.  In retrospect I've tried to think what I would have done.  Our friend told us that it is illegal to ask or to pay bribes, so I don't know.