Familia!!!
Well thank you all for all of the support and love, it´s been nice and talking to you all last week was a big boost for me and a good way to get the mission started. So here it is, I arrived Monday night and we spent the night in the Assistants house. There were twenty of us in the same small grubby house it was hot and needless to say I didn't get hardly any sleep. Tuesday was a very very long day because we had to do a lot of things with customs and getting settled in to live here for two years. In honesty i don't know everything that happened because the people here are sooooooo hard to understand. But we went to the temple and had Subway and took some pictures.
So meeting the mission president and his wife. The Wards are awesome people. I´m very blessed to have .Pres. Ward always has a smile on his face and is a very upbeat person. So my first companion is Elder Barrera, he is a native from Mexico and he is awesome. he only has four months in the mission and so between the two of us we have 6 months total as missionaries. It´s crazy we are very young but I think it´s good because we have a lot of enthusiasm for the work and so we've had good success already.
Yeah mom that guy you´re talking about is a man that lives in our area he can speak English so I had a good talk with him and he was so excited to let me know how good of friends he is with the Duffins!!
Ok so Spanish....wow the people here speak so so so so so fast it is literally insane. I can literally understand mas o menos 25% of the conversations we have! haha But it´s really fun and i´m not too worried about it I´m sure that will just come with time. But I´ve been pleasantly surprised how well I can speak my mind and yes it´s slow and stumbles at times but overall I feel like I´m doing really well.
Wednesday was when I met my companion and that night we had two lessons with investigators. The familia martinez and hermano martinez and they both went sooooo well. We taught the plan of salvation to the family and how they can live together forever and they loved it. There are seven of them and a lot of small kids but they all listened intently the whole time it was a miracle! We´re visiting them this week and are going to talk about church, baptism and the book of Mormon.
Ok Hermano Martinez he is an evangelist but really wants to change his life and so this was his second lesson and we taught the book of Mormon and how through it, and sincere prayer he can change and receive answers to his questions it was awesome!! The only bad part is that his wife doesn't want anything to do with us....But it´s ok hopefully she´ll change her mind!
The other days we tracted and our area is HUGE. So we knocked doors for a couple of hours and honestly had good success. We found a couple new families to teach and this week had something like 120 contacts which was cool. We have mas o menos 20 new investigators which is FREAKING AWESOME.
So for me wow Panama is hot...yesterday it was about 98 degrees with 80% humidity haha unbelievable. the thing that´s funny is literally all the people wear pants like it´s not a big deal. But I am literally sweating every single second Í´m here. Our house is actually the nicest in the mission and has two floors four bedrooms and only us two. It definitely is not the US here though and the bathroom is very small and kind of grimy and even though it´s really hot the lack of hot water for a shower is something that will take some getting used to. Our neighborhood and area is actually one of the more rich areas of the mission and if you talk to the Duffins I´m sure that they´ll be able to tell you all about it.
Sorry this email is really scatterbrained and random and probably not very informative but they will get better. I´ll start taking notes so I know what to tell you at the end of the week.
But know that I love you so much and am so grateful for you and all your prayers and can hardly believe all of the marriages that are happening in our extended family!!!!!!! Ah I´m bummed to be missing them and will need to have some pictures sent to me!!
All my love,
Elder Hawks
ps. my new address (the one that´s the most secure)
Elder Hawks
Misión Panamá
Carrasquilla
Entrega General 0834
Panamá, Republica de Panamá
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