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