You learn something new every day. And this week I learned that adding a calender widget to your homescreen of how many days you have been on the mission and how many days you have left makes the time pass by reeeeally slow
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Some happenings:
-ran away from the lady that chases people down in the shopping center
-got randomly checked in the subway if I had a legal ID right after getting it- milagro
-next door neighbors blast music from 1-10 pm every day and they played Riannah yesterday 
-intercambio with hma hatch 
we talked religion heck yeah
we talked religion heck yeah Some thoughts:
I listened to a talk yesterday by John Bytheway called "Be thou an example of the believers," and in it he quotes Paul Harvey and old radio host or something? Who was describing youth of the church and said,
"Each face mirrored a sort of sublime assurance- their eyes had not been darkened by constant compromises with conscious"
which i lowkey got goosebumps when he said that, because its true- the church preaches a higher way of living that influences youth and adults to not lower or compromise their standards, whether its the substances we absorb, what we say or do, or who we surround ourselves with, we always try to look at it with an eternal perspective and how it will affect us later in life
If I remember by the time I get to the bottom of this email i'll add the link to the talk
My parents are super into studying the church and history and stories and doctrine, which means us kids had to listen to their thoughts on it every night at scriptures. Because of this i thought I knew my stuff when it came to church history or teachings, but another thing i have learned is I literally know nothing
So I have been trying to put more work into personally studying doctrine, and this week i read a story about how the church was founded in American Samoa (shoutout sister youd). Basically two young men elder Kimo Pelio and Samuela Manoa from Hawaii in the 1800's traveled there being told others would soon join them, but then a bunch of stuff happened and they ended up preaching the gospel just the two of them in American samoa for the rest of their lives and never saw Hawaii again- they just made families and lives for themselves after thinking the mothership had forgotten about them. It's really interesting i'll also add the link to that
Hearing stories of missionaries past really helps me appreciate my circumstances
We were in a lesson this week with my new favorite person: Sarah. She is 14 years old and we found her because we were teaching her friend when she asked if she could join the lesson. At the end when we asked if there were any questions, she went way off topic and asked where we go when we die
Well do we have an answer for you
We have gone back to her house a few times and every time she sees us she runs out and gives us a big tight hug which if you know panamanians they usually just do a cute peck on the cheek type hug. When we taught her we might have accidentally been there for too long because she just had question after question. She also brought out her brother and sister and they all were so invested. Near the end she tried asking us something but we must not have understood correctly because she put in her translator, "does God love us?"
There's a lot of questions I have about the church (I have a literal list of all my questions/dudas in my phone) but one thing i really have felt so powerfully this week is that God and Jesus Christ do love us. Jesus sacreficed his life for us. We can be forgiven for all our mistakes because he loves us. God created the plan of salvation for us. We were all sent to this earth because God loves us. I have felt it here and i felt it before the mish
John 15:13- "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends"
Love you all!
Hma wride
Prayers:
Yisel, Gabriel, Genesis , Joanna, Merian, Luis, Gregory, Aaron, Migdalia, Yuri, Matilde, Carlos, Reyna, Josue, Otilia, abrego family, riccardo, flor, milagros, marlim, josemar, maco, digna, danieth, roberto, nayeli, dayla, sarah, luca, morgan
American Samoa church history-
"Be thou an example of the believers" by John bytheway-
Photos-
Finally saw a very tiny cute alligator thing- this pic is for you hma Fernando
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