December 31, 2012

hey mom!

 

still no sign of those packages. i don´t know when mail comes here, and i don´t know if they´ve even found them yet, but i´m sure sometime in the future they´ll get here :) i´m excited you´ve got some good snow lately. if anything it´s just getting hotter here. supposedly the rain usually stops in mid december, so that means just straight sun, which means it´s really hot. i remember when i first came it was during the dry season and it was hot. but everyone says the rain has still been coming and so that means there´s no sign of it stopping. we did have a pretty good storm the other day. the weird thing is is it always seems to rain when we´re out on the street and never at night or in the morning while we´re in the house. and i just don´t like the rain at all. i really don´t like being soaked all day, but oh well, only 11 more months of that :)

 

speaking of seeing people less "korean" or "panamanian," there´s the story of "corn flakes" between all the missionaries. it goes a little something like this...so before your mission, your favorite cereal is frosted flakes. you have frosted flakes every morning with ice cold milk and you love it. but when you get to your mission, you find out they don´t have any frosted flakes, only corn flakes. and at first you just have corn flakes, all you can think about are the frosted flakes you left behind and how bad corn flakes are. but after 6 months of corn flakes, you still don´t like them, but you´ll eat them and be more or less ok with it. after 1 year you actually kinda like corn flakes, and enjoy eating them, but you still have flashes of frosted flakes so they´re not your favorite. after 1 year and 6 months you really do like corn flakes, it´s almost your favorite cereal and you have it a lot. with that good cold milk it´s an enjoyable meal. finally after 2 years you just love corn flakes, you have 2 or 3 bowls every morning and it´s like all you want. but when you go back home, your mom comes back from the store and she had bought frosted flakes, and at first you´re kinda mad cause you really wanted corn flakes, you don´t even want to eat frosted flakes. but your mom just says sorry that´s what i bought so eat it. so you mumble and grumble but decide to eat it anyway, and after that first bite just a flow of memories come back and you remember how much you loved frosted flakes, and it just changes your world. and that´s the corn flake story, and it really does kinda coincide with panamanians and i would imagine koreans too haha :)

 

so you asked how the work is different here. well, to be honest this week probably isn´t a good gauge of how the work here goes. with christmas and talking with families and all that stuff we were actually a little unproductive. it was kind of a long week. the area we have is actually really big, but there´s not too many people cause the houses are bigger too with lawns and whatnot, and there´s lots of just open space. so we have to do a lot of walking, and it´s mostly just knocking on doors. well not really knocking, more just standing outside and yelling hi until someone comes out, but you get what i mean :) panamá has never really been a baptizing mission, in all it´s history it´s never really baptized a lot. the goal this year was 1300 baptisms, and i think we had like 1250 or something like that, which is actually the most in one year, but it´s really not that many compared with other central american missions. like our goal each month is to have one baptism for each missionary each month, so theoretically about 200 baptisms each month, but it just doesn´t happen like that. like in nicaragua they have baptisms like each week, and that´s just what they´re supposed to do, but for whatever reason it just doesn´t happen here. i don´t really know why, be it the people or the missionaries or what. the church is the same wherever you go, but the people aren´t. there´s not that many just "good" members. i think this is the first time i´ve actually been in a ward in my mission, and it´s a lot better, but still tough. at least in all my other areas it was hard to work with members, partly just cause there weren´t that many, and they just weren´t very dedicated. so it´s tough, but we keep working.

 

this week really was pretty hard though. i really didn´t want to have changes, and i´m still not sure why i did, but me and my comp just aren´t getting along very well. well no we get along fine well, but he just has no desire to do anything. all he wants to do is just stay in members houses and chill with them. it´s hard to get him to do a lot. i´m all alone when i´m trying to contact cause he doesn´t want to. yesterday i got kind of fed up with it cause he was doing some dumb things. so we went to lunch, and when we left we had a long way to walk, but he wanted to go the other way because he wanted to change his shoes first. he has clothes he only wears on sunday, and i decided he´s kind of a girl. i mean we´re missionaries, we walk for a living, but he has shoes that apparently you can´t walk in. but whatever. so we got there late to our lesson, and as i was trying to see if they were there he just goes and sits on the curb in the street. i could only imagine what the people inside were thinking, seeing me on the porch and my comp sitting out on the street. so it´s no wonder no one came out, if they were even there. so we left and went to contact for a bit, but it wasn´t very good. so i contacted this house, and she wasn´t very positive, just saying she was busy and maybe another day, so i was just saying bye and stuff, and when i turned around, my comp wasn´t even there. i walked around this bush and he was already half way down the street walking away. i don´t know when he left, but judging by how far he was he must have left in the middle of the contact, and i got kinda mad. i asked him what he was doing, and he just said he could see she wasn´t positive so he just left. it was all i could do to just not scream at him. i tried asking what was up and why he doesn´t want to do anything but he just wouldn´t talk. it´s difficult because this is a two person job, and it´s not very easy or even possible with just one. so i don´t know what to do. it´s hard. we do have this one family that we want to get sealed, but upon talking with them we found that the husband did a few things and so we don´t know if it´s possible, or at least in the near future. so we don´t really have anyone right now, and it´s hard. the area has people i´m sure, but we aren´t finding them.

 

so this week wasn´t really that good, not really anything positive happened. i´m hoping this week goes better since there´s no holidays and it should just be a normal week, but i guess we´ll see. sorry it´s not the best letter, hopefully the next one will be better! :) i hope you have a great week, good luck with your new class, talk to you next week!

 

much love,

 

elder paskett