Week 48

So last Saturday we ate at a Chinese restaurant. one of the fortune cookies said "If you focus too much on learning the tricks of the trade, you may never learn the trade." they then said, "does anyone understand this." I said that I did. They asked me to explain, and I told them that the reason those things sound the way they do is because it is very hard to put it into words. This morning I did. I even made a huge comparison with missionary work.

If a missionary focuses so much on being able to respond to any question, or knowing exactly how to explain something so it is impossible to understand, or just having all these different things to say that are magically able to help them, then ultimately, the missionary will forget about the whole reason he is there teaching that person: to help them be baptized and endure to the end.

So in the mission we become accustomed to coincidences. It happens all the time. In reality, what is happening is that God is placing these people right in our path. Everything seems to happen just perfect. Well, on certain days they do. Then on other days, everything just does not work, not a single person is home. But just yesterday, while we were planning, a certain person came to mind. Nothing out of the ordinary. but then I thought, "he is actually going to be home tomorrow at that time." Sure enough, when we stopped by he was home and we set up an appointment. Now this person is a less active, but the fact of the matter is that these coincidences happen almost every day. We know where to go, and what to do. Now, that does not mean we get baptisms all the time, but it does mean we are doing the Lord’s work.



On Saturday, about 3 or 4 zones helped out in doing service for a triathlon. There were around 60-70 missionaries. We had to be there at 5 so that meant we had to wake up at 3:30 to get ready and pick up other elders. It was a ton of fun. We helped set up. We helped show the runners and bikers where their route was, and then we helped clean up. While we were standing at every intersection making sure they went the right way, we were cheering them all on. My companion was leaning against the car just whistling. I was jumping up and down, screaming, whistling, and doing other things. I was practically hyperventilating myself for 3 hours straight. After all that, we were pooped. We both got less than 3 hours of sleep because we could not manage to fall asleep the night before.

So apparently, the Chinese people in Panama are about as bad as the Mexicans in Arizona. The Chinese people all cram into tight spaces to smuggle themselves into Panama.

So on Sunday, our car was perfectly clean. We went home for lunch and at the end of lunch we came out to find that a squad of birds bombed our car. There was bird poo all over it.