My dear dear family! I hope all is well! It´s difficult to believe that yet another month has passed! I´m not sure exactly what happened to the month of November and it certainly doesn´t feel like December because the snow I´ve been praying for is yet to arrive ;) Perhaps the Lord is just teaching me patience :)
Well, this has been quite the week. To begin, on Wednesday my comp and I decided to go contacting after lunch. Our first contact . . . well, he actually contacted us. He was a young man named Julian who told us that he had recently converted to Christianity and was super enthusiastic about the Bible. I´m fairly certain that we covered every gospel topic while standing on the side of the road. And the funny thing is that he pretty much did all of the talking, it was difficult to get a word in. But I really enjoyed talking to him. I love the people that we meet here :) Then we decided to explore a new area that neither one of us had ever been in. I really like contacting that way because if I can get a little lost I tend to rely a little more on where the Spirit needs me to go rather than my own intuition :) Not to mention that it usually turns into an adventure haha. Well, we ended up turning down a little road . . . in which we encountered two dogs that I´m convinced were part bear. I was standing next to a door when one of the dogs jumped up against the fence and tried to eat me. In my panic to get away, I ended up leaning against another fence. Seconds later another bear, I mean dog, jumped against that fence and also tried to eat me. Needless to say, I jumped and ended up on the other side of the street. After recovering from my heart attack my comp and I headed to another house, laughing as usual :)
I believe I´ve mentioned that on almost every corner in Panamà there is a little store called a ´chino´ because it is always run by a Chinese family. Well, the ´´chinos´´ are notorious for being difficult to contact and not very receptive. So, our District Leader put a fun little goal for all of us to contact a chino. After my close encounter with the bears we headed to a chino. We began talking to the cashier. She looked as us with a confused look and told us that she doesn´t know any Spanish. We left a pamphlet with her and gave her our biggest smiles. . . .it´s the effort that counts right? About 1 minute after leaving the chino we were got in one of Panamà´s crazy rainstorm. We ran for shelter, but it only takes about 5 seconds to be completely soaked in these rainstorms. We waited it out for a while, but decided that we just needed to face it. I figured that we were already wet, so I decided to play around in the puddles/rivers on the side of the road. I may or may not have started splashing my comp who in return started splashing me as well. No harm done, we were already soaked :)
Now, for the spiritual side of things :) This week our entire zone had a ´´Noche Blanca´´. We all gathered together and had a total of 10 baptisms. President Carmack and his family were even able to attend. It was a beautiful experience. A young girl that we´ve been teaching, named Argelis, was able to be one of those that got baptized. While sitting there, I began to think a lot about the importance of enduring to the end. Baptism is an essential first step to living this gospel, but this gospel is not merely meant to be skimmed, or that is, lived only on the surface. This gospel is meant to become a life-style. We should accept it whole-heartedly and completely into our lives. It is then that it truly begins to enrich our lives and change us. This gospel is in the center of my life, it is a large part of who I am. I pray that each one who takes that essential step of baptism will truly accept this gospel into their lives and be able to see the blessings that their loving Heavenly Father has awaiting them. This is an eternal gospel, with promised and eternal blessings! Are we living for the eternities? I know that I want to live for the eternities because I know without a doubt that I can live with my Heavenly Father and my dear family FOREVER! Let us all make the effort to center our lives around those eternal promises! :)
I miss and love you all dearly!
I miss and love you all dearly!
Go forward with faith!
Hna Falslev :)
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