April 3, 2012

hey mom!

hey so i´ll just start with a few things in your letter. i´m super pumped for gage! and logan! and jake too! that´s so awesome! i hope logan learns some spanish so i can have someone to talk to haha! but no i didn´t see (elder) david archuleta! i was actually looking for him cause i thought he was going in sometime soon, so that is way sweet. i´ll talk some more about conference in a bit though :)

oh hey so i hope this doesn´t throw you off by me responding today instead of yesterday. we decided that we wanted to go to the temple today, but the temple is closed on monday´s so we changed pday to today. so we live about an hour from panamá, and then maybe 30 minutes more from the big bus station in albrook mall to the temple. and so we were supposed to meet, like my zone, at albrook at 8 30 in the morning, and then all of us go to the temple together. so yeah that was the plan, but of course it didn´t go that way. so me and my comp didn´t get there til about 9 30, for some reason the traffic was just horrible, so when we did get there, we just figured that they had already left. so we decided to just go, but we ended up being late for the session. it started at 11, but we got there like right at 11, so we just did initiatories. i´m not sure how much i can tell, but it was definitely a little different in spanish haha, but the temple is just beautiful, and it was still a super sweet experience. i really want to go again and actually do a session. so we wrapped up and now we´re back in albrook. but we came to find out that our zone never even made it to the temple. they didn´t get to albrook til about 10 30, so they just chilled here. so it was a kind of botched attempt to go to the temple, but it was still good :)

ah man so conference! let me tell you first off that i´ve never enjoyed and not-enjoyed conference so much haha! i´ve never really watched conference like i did with this one, and it was so awesome! i learned so much stuff! i wish i could sit and discuss it with you, but yeah basically all i can say is that it was the best conference ever! i thought it was kind of interesting how there were a decent amount of talks about how close it is to the second coming, and i mean no one knows, but when the apostles stress it you know it must be coming soon. and i´ve also been a big fan of being comforted lately haha, cheesy i know, but just little words of advice or counsel are good cause times are still tough. a couple lines put together from elder holland and president eyring, more or less said something like no matter how far away you are from home and family, or how far you´ve sunk, joy can be present 1000´s of miles away and you´re never far enough from both divine and family love. i really liked that. cause it does feel like i´m a world away at times, and there´s no one to talk to, but just to know i´m never quite alone is good. i also liked the bumper sticker president uchtdorf shared, the "don´t judge me because i sin differently than you" one haha, it´s true though, at least for me i can easily get mad because i see someone sin or do something stupid and think i would never do that, but then i look at myself and i have a thousand other things that i do wrong. and i thought elder anderson´s question of " what thinks Christ of me?" was super interesting too. i think i´ve actually been thinking of that a lot lately, just with all the things i do, what does Christ think of what i´m doing ya know? there really are a ton of other things i could say, but yeah it was just awesome! it was also super hard though cause i admitedly was homesick haha. not waking up to family or food or candy wasn´t very exciting, and then having to sleep on the cement that night cause the airmattress had a hole wasn´t my idea of fun haha. so there were times where it just wasn´t the same and i wanted to be home, but i learned a lot and i enjoyed it so it was ok :)

so some really interesting things happened this last week. so first of all, last wednesday i think it was, i woke up at about 2, and i just felt super sick. i got up to use the bathroom, and boy did i use it haha. but i also found out i had some super gross looking rash, and it itched like crazy. i tried to go back to bed, but it took me forever cause i itched so bad. when i finally did, i didn´t wake up til about 7 30, but the rash was gone and i felt fine. but at about 9 30, it all came back for some reason, but worse. the rash got super bad, and like covered my whole body. the nurse here told us to go get some antihistimine, but none of the pharmacy´s had any. so i thought i was gonna die, but i just went back to sleep while my comp looked around and made some calls. the weird thing was, i woke up at about 11 30, and it was all gone, like it never had happened. and it never came back. i really don´t know what happened, but it was weird haha.

and then i decided that everyone lied when they said march is the hottest month, cause it has been blistering these last few days. like it´s hot down here, but these last few days have been tons worse. i decided that either the clouds are alive and play cruel jokes on us, because there can be clouds in the whole sky, except for like a ring around the sun. either that, or the sun is so hot that it evaporates the already evaporated clouds. it´s that hot haha.

so a couple quick things. i had my first real coconut the other day. we went to this house that we had an appointment, but no one was there but the kid. so we were just chatting for a bit, and he was eating a coconut and asked if we wanted any. we said sure, so he just rips off his shirt and takes off his shoes and socks, and walks over to the coconut tree in their yard and just climbs up it with a machete in his mouth haha. so he just chops a couple down, and we just ate coconuts. truth be told, they´re not that good haha. they´re not bad i guess, but they´re not my favorite. but hey it was still cool! i also just finished Jesus the Christ, and that is a super sweet book. there´s so much stuff i never knew in there. i´ll probably start it again just cause there´s so much deep stuff in it. i definitely recommend that book.

not too much happened with me and my comp this week. things are still the same, not sure if they´ll ever change. that´s really bad i know, and i learned a lot of stuff in conference that i want to talk about with him, so we´ll see. everytime i talk to president he says i´ll be getting a new comp this change, and honestly i´ll welcome it. i need a comp that will just talk to me, let me teach sometimes, let me make mistakes, but then help me, but then someone i can just be friends with. so i´m hoping i´ve survived this test the Lord has given me and now he´ll give me someone i can work with haha.

but i think that´s about it. i´m always happy to hear how things are back at home, and it always sounds like things are good! maybe i should have left home sooner huh? :) nah but thanks for everything, thanks for the emails and prayers and support, i really appreciate it all! i hope everyone has an awesome week!

much love,

elder paskett