February 20, 2012

hey mom!
yeah things aren´t as bad as they were awhile ago. they definitely aren´t good yet, but not horrible.  things are still difficult, but i´m doing my best to work through them.  not a lot happened this week though so i´m afraid this might not be too interesting of a letter, but i´ll do my best :)
so basically this week all we did was contact, just go door to door and try to find people. contacting makes for some long days. it´s hard to not have any investigators, it feels like we´re not doing any good. and the people we do contact never want us to come back. of course they never say that to our faces, but you can just tell. we ask them if there´s a day we can come back and they just say well i´m usually here so we´ll just see. we can never set up another appointment. i guess there´s talk of closing down my area because it is so  hard and no work gets done. now i don´t know how true that is or when that would happen or anything, so i don´t know. but president told me a couple days ago that he won´t leave me here for more than 2 changes, so that´s good i guess. i´m guessing, that my companion will leave this next change, which is on like the 7th i think? and then i´ll get a new companion, who will be my trainer, but i´ll be training him on the area. but if my companion doesn´t leave this change, i´ll be here for at least 3 changes total, because i´ll have to train the next guy on the area. now maybe president would take us both out at the same time, but i doubt it.
but i mentioned president, he´s a really good guy. we had capitaciones on thursday, which is just a big meeting basically with like president and his wife and his assistants, and we just talked about stuff. it was good. that was where the subway came from. hermana ward likes to feed everyone subway, but for some reason she doesn´t like meat, it´s always just vegetables, so it´s not very interesting...haha. but we´re supposed to write president every week, and he´ll write back with just a little note, and that´s helpful. he says from what he saw in the meeting that my spanish is coming along, even though it still doesn´t feel like it. it´s hard, i feel like i haven´t learned anything and i should be so much better by now. i don´t know what to do, i feel like i work hard, i do my best to talk to people and  do spanish exercises in the little workbook, but i don´t feel like anything´s changed. oh well, i guess with more time maybe.
i should tell you about this big party they have down here though. so i think every year, panamá has this thing called carnivales. i´m not sure where or how it all works, but i´ve heard it´s comparable to mardi gras. so it started last friday, and ends on tuesday tomorrow, and more or less, for those few days, you can basically commit any sin you want without consequence. i guess on wednesday or something you have to buy a fish and give it as like a token of sorrow of all the things you´ve done, and then you´re forgiven. pretty weird stuff! so i hear that tomorrow we probably won´t do a lot, just cause tuesday is the worst day of the whole thing, but we´ll see how that goes.
with being sick, yeah i´m fine now. my body probably just needed some time to get used to the food. so i´m good now, even though the food still isn´t :)  i did buy some hair clippers, and they worked fine, i cut my hair today actually and it´s just great! :) i don´t really care too much right now, i´ve got hair just like trev though :)
well i think that´s about it. this week was fairly uneventful. and it´ll probably be the same this week too. when i was with elder whiting he said just work on learning spanish here, cause the people here never want to listen to anything, so who knows what´s best to do, but i guess i´ll just keep plugging along! i appreciate the thoughts and prayers, i need as much help as i can get! tell jed i say hi too, i don´t know the rest of that story, but i know how he feels! so thanks again for everything, i hope everything is well with everyone, and i´ll talk to you next week!
much love,
elder paskett

February 13, 2012

hey mom!
well i´ll start by saying this week was just a tiny bit better. i wouldn´t say good by any means, but it was tolerable. i think the Lord let me be down long enough, and maybe is starting to pick me up. so things are still hard, but i didn´t completely hate this week.
ok, where to begin? really not a lot happened. probably the coolest thing that happened was divisions. so i´m not sure how often, but every so often you basically just switch companions for the day. you do the same work and whatnot, just with a different companion. so wednesday we had divisions, and my companion left to another area and i stayed in my area with a new companion, elder gutierrez. but we had to take a bus for like an hour to drop off my companion in the new area, and then we had to take the bus back to my area, so we wasted a lot of time on the bus. and money too, well only like 1.50 but still :) so we had two appointments that day, and they went fine. but we didn´t really teach much. so i still don´t understand anything, so i can´t really just start teaching, so i usually let my companion start it off. and i guess with the first one we did teach, just cause it was a mom with her two kids, but the next appointment had teenage girls and so my companion didn´t really try anything...which isn´t just his fault, i probably should have started a lesson or something, but yeah i don´t feel confident enough with my spanish yet so yeah. so he basically just chatted with them for like an hour, with one tiny little spiritual thought, and then we left. but after that he didn´t want to do anything, so we didn´t. he wanted to walk to this lake, so we did and kinda just chilled for a bit. so that day was basically a waste.
and then thursday came, and it was back to normal. well again we had to take the bus to drop off my new companion and go get my trainer. so there was another couple hours gone. and thursday was fine i guess, just working, nothing really happened. but then that night the zone leaders called and said they wanted to do divisions again, and so the next day, friday, another bus for an hour, drop off my companion, get a new one, come back, and go to work. but this time i had another gringo, elder whiting, and he has 17 months so he knows spanish and how to teach and whatnot, so it was fine. but i wasn´t so sure if it was a good idea to have two gringos preaching to all of panamá, but it turned out ok haha. but we didn´t have any appointments that day, so we just did door contacting. and it went pretty well. the first half anyway. we went to this one little area to start, and not too far in we found this family, and we had a good lesson with them about families and stuff, and it sounded like they were pretty interested. we have another appointment with them tomorrow, on tuesday, so we´ll see how that goes. but after a couple hours we left that area and went somewhere else, and for some reason the people just changed. all of them either didn´t want to listen, or just wanted to argue, or just give us their beliefs and wouldn´t let us teach anything. i´m sorry, but some of the beliefs of these people i just don´t understand. one guy was like yelling at us, quoting scripture, telling us how the trinity is all the same person, but all the scriptures he was saying pointed to how they´re separate. elder whiting got really frustrated cause no one would let us in, so it was an interesting day.
saturday was back to normal again, after more buses to get my companion. so the reason we take so many buses is cause we´re on the outskirts of the zone, and we have the biggest area, so everyone else is more up by colón, but we´re like an hour away, so we have to take buses everywhere. and the little dollar here and there adds up surprisingly. but i really hate those buses, they cram as many people as can stand in them, and they´re just normal school buses, so it´s just not good. but we did have a funny little experience yesterday. so we were just contacting, and out of nowhere this drunk dude came up to us and started asking all these questions. i didn´t understand everything, but he started asking as about like animals, and then he started screaming all these animal sounds. and he was saying how these little frogs make duck sounds and all this weird stuff. and then he basically attacked this dog nearby, i really thought the dog was gonna go nuts on the guy, cause the dog looked ready to kill him, but the guy just left and the dog didn´t do anything so it was weird. maybe it was just funny to be there, but it was exciting to watch haha.
but yeah anyway this week was better. i still don´t know what´s going on half the time, and it´s really frustrating, but it´ll come i guess. i just don´t know what else to do. i don´t know how to learn spanish since my companion doesn´t really help, and books only help so much. so i get frustrated cause i want to talk, i hate not being able to joke or teach or just talk with people, but oh well, it´s all good :)
well i think that´s about it. still just trying to work and do what i can. it´s hard for sure, but gotta endure right? so i´m sure i´ll survive, i just won´t be completely happy through it all :) so until next week,
much love,
elder paskett

January 30, 2012

January 30, 2012

well hello from panama!

so i´ll just start with how last week went.  so we ended up getting to panama at like 10 30 at night, and so we got through customs and whatnot and the mission president, president ward was outside waiting with his assistants.  so we say a quick hello and go to the assistant´s house for the night. ok, so it´s a tiny little house, i would say about the size of our provo house in total, just one floor though. so it´s small, but then we had literally over 20 elders in the house, so there was basically nowhere to sleep. mind you it´s like 11 now, so there´s no way to figure anything out. there were like 10 mattresses just sitting there, so i ended up just pulling one down and put it on top of everyone´s bags and slept there. and no one went to bed til like 12 30 so that was bad. but oh well, so that´s monday. 

tuesday was basically just an orientation thing. we went to president´s house and talked about mostly just how the mission works, things like we get a debit card with some of the money that we pay each month, and we´re supposed to live off 100 bucks on the first of the month, and then we get 70 more on the 15th. we also had to go do like immigration things that everyone does, so that was fun. and basically that was it for tuesday, just an orientation, make sure we´re good kind of thing.  so then again we had to sleep at that little house, but with about 10 more elders. so a ton of us just took the beds outside and slept outside, which was much better.

so it´s wednesday, and we get up and go the church in panama city where we´re gonna get assigned trainers and everyone else has transfers and whatnot. so we go there and we´re in this little room, and president is interviewing everyone, so we mostly just waited.  then everyone comes and we all go to the chapel where we get assigned. so they go through everyone one by one, all the new missionaries anyway. and so it gets to me and my trainer´s name is elder oliva. he´s from honduras, and doesn´t speak hardly any english. which is good and bad. it´s good cause i´m forced to learn spanish even faster, but hard cause i can´t really ask him questions. it´s definitely a challenge.  so anyway, we get assigned our areas and stuff as well, and i´m in buena vista? you can probably look up the city colon, and we´re about an hour´s busride away from colon, maybe 45 minutes from panama city. so we get to our house, and it´s way smaller than the other house. it´s got a tiny little front room, with just enough space for two desks, a half size fridge, and a sink. there´s a bedroom with two beds and a dresser. and then there´s a bathroom with a toilet and a shower. so let me start with the water situation. more or less, we don´t have water, or rather we only have water sometimes, and i don´t know why. randomly we just have water, and so we have to fill up a ton of water bottles cause we never know when the water will shut off. and so to shower, we have a giant 50 gallon tub filled with water, with a little plastic container to pour water on ourselves. i´ll need to figure out how to send pictures, i´ll try today and see, but it might need to be next week. so to finish up wednesday, we had a visit at 6 that we had to go to, and that was good i guess. obviously i didn´t do like anything cause i can´t say anything, but it was interesting.

so it´s thursday, and thursday was just a normal day. we did studies and whatnot in the morning, and then went out tracting. ok, so i think this area is like the biggest in panama, and there´s not really a ton of houses, but they´re spread out everywhere so we have to walk forever. and the homes are basically just cinderblock and either a dirt or cement floor with a currogated metal ceiling, so not very nice. and there´s no doors, so to see if anyone´s home you just stand outside and yell  buenas!  and the people will come out and you just start talking. it´s interesting. and friday and saturday went the same, so that´s basically how it goes, you scream at people to come out, and you talk to them, and sometimes they´ll let you share the message. but the people are really nice, probably just cause they are so poor so they have to be humble. but ok, so just yesterday we met two people that more or less said they hate gringos. i´m not able to understand everything, but i know the word gringos and can tell the tone of people, and afterward my companion just laughs at me, so it´s weird. i don´t get it. and one guy was like offended that we think the first vision happened to a "gringo" but oh well. it´s all good. it´s fun. i get stared at a lot, cause i really am the only white person for like a hundred miles, so it´s interesting.

so i´m having a pretty tough time with the food here. ok, so everyone feeds us, so it´s terrible. the members cook us lunch and dinner more or less every day, and you have to eat it all, so it´s not good. it´s mostly just white rice and chicken, which is ok i guess, but then they throw in weird stuff and to be honest, i don´t know what it is. so i do my very best, i try to drown everything in ketchup or hotsauce if i can, but i´ve had to hold my gag reflex a ton. so that´s another challenge to overcome i guess.

ok so i need to tell you about the transportation.  so we ride these things called "diablo rojo" which just means "red devil" and they really are from the devil. they blast this gross music, all the women here are dressed poorly,  but anyway i really just feel like crap on those buses. and everything is far away so we have to ride them for a long time, and it´s just not good. i try to recite stuff in spanish that i know or not think of anything or something, but it´s difficult for sure

with the spanish, i really don´t know if i´m ever gonna learn it. i know i´ve only been here a week, but it doesn´t feel like i´ve learned anything. i basically have to speak it all the time, cause i haven´t met anyone here that can speak good english, so my brain hurts just all the time. it´s horrible in lessons, cause everyone speaks super fast and half the time takes off letters of their words, so i can´t catch anything. my companion basically has to tell me when and what to talk about so it´s not good. i want to talk, and i want to help out in the lessons more, but i can´t. and the thing is i don´t think my comp really gets it. i don´t know, it´s just hard.

with the weather, it´s definitely hot, but it´s actually not as bad as i thought it would be. i´ve never seen it go above 85, which is still hot with the humidity, but i´m not dying. maybe it´s cause i just don´t care if i sweat cause everyone does, so i´m just not thinking about it. but yeah it´s not too bad. i haven´t seen it rain yet, so we´ll see how that goes i guess.

well, i think that´s basically it. sorry it´s kind of a negative letter haha, i hope they get better! but it´s been a bit of a rough transition. so my pday´s on monday obviously, so i´ll write then. oh and i forgot to bring the address, but i´ll be sure to bring it next week. anyway, gotta run, hope everyone´s doing good!

much love,

elder paskett