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