Tranquilo!!

Bueno,

    OK this week will be a shorter letter for lack of time but i`ll try to hit the important things. First of all my dog bite wound is healing up nicely with no ill effects or infections so no worries. We had a baptism this Saturday and we are hoping to maybe have another one this Saturday if not the next Saturday. We have about 8 baptisms planned out right now; we've just got to help the investigators out so that they stay strong. We`re working hard and i`m seeing the blessings, i feel good about it right now. Take care and love you!

 

Love,

Elder Pfister

No confíe en cualquier perro!!!!!

Q onda,

    So you guys already know (from Hermana Jaramillo via FB) that i´m in Arraijan now as DL. My comp is Nolan Villanueva from Peru. He has a good desires to work hard which is nice. He has 4 months in the mission. The ward is great, it´s really big, like 160 people every week. There are 6 missionaries in the word here, 2 elderes and 1 hermanas but i really like it so far. We have some good investigators that we have found, can´t really give details because i have so many new names and things going through my head that i can´t keep everything straight, but this Saturday we´re going to have a baptism. In this area there are alot of Kunas so i´m starting to learn more Kuna, super confusing dialect, but it´s kinda fun. This Sunday we were able to have 4 investigators in the meeting and the key has been because of the ward missionary leader in our area and he knows everyone in his neighborhood so he just takes us around to everyone to teach and we get in easy. I have lots of hopes for this change. 

     So i know you guys don´t like when i talk about the bad things that have happened to me but i had an experience that i just can´t keep from telling.... So on Tuesday night i was getting ready to leave Margarita and i was saying goodbye to all the members. We got to this one member place and their house has a little patio in front with a little cement wall like 2 feet tall and a dog that chills there protecting the house... you guessed it, another dog story. So this dog is a mean dog to people it doesn´t know and other dogs, but to missionaries, because we all dress the same, he likes us and especially me because i give him lots of attention and always played with him from day one. Anyway, we´re good buds and everything so when i got to the house he  jumped up on the cement wall with his front paws to great me and i started petting him and all good. So there we were waiting with the dog for the family to answer the door when all of the sudden another dog appeared from behind me and this dog that is my friend the dog went crazy and in the mad scramble, my friend the dog bit me hardcore.... [Long story short:  bad deep and bloody dog bite; visit to Doctor, treatment, and antibiotics for awhile].   But really, don´t freak out, i´m fine! I talked with President and Hermana Ward and the nurse and the mission doctor and it´s all good. Just an interesting way of ending my time in Margarita, Colon. 

    Back to spiritual things, We have this guy here in Arraijan that we found and are teaching named Mito who is an old pastor i guess. We taught him the first time, normal. But when we went back the second time we asked him if he had read and prayed and he said no that he hadn´t read anything but that he had prayed and he said that when he prayed he felt something super special that he had never felt before and even though he has been baptized in his church he felt that this church is the true church and that it´s where he needs to be. And even better he went to church on Sunday! We´re probably going to put a fecha with him this week. 

 

     We have some other good people but like i said, everything is a blur for me with so many new names and faces. And of course, more people who want to get baptized but need to get married... i feel like cupid marrying so many people here in Panama. 

     This week has a been a good one, getting adjusted to the new atmosphere and new people. Arraijan is a lot more chill than Colon. People say it´s getting a little dangerous but i feel way safer in the dangerous parts here than i did in the safe parts of Colon. I think i´m really going to like it here, just gotta make it work with my comp, but it´s a testimony builder that two people so different can unite for one cause and work in unity for one purpose. I know that this is the work of the Lord because i have seen so many lives blessed from it and i hope to bless lots of lives here in Arraijan with the good news of the Gospel. I hope you guys have a great week, don´t freak out about my story and take care! I love you!

Love,

Elder Pfister

No tengo mucho hoy!!

Hola,

   Well there´s not that much to say after our Skype session, the only new news i have is that i have been told that I will be moved this week with the changes for sure. I feel very good about my work in Margarita -Colon. When i got sent here, everyone told me it was a dead area but i think we´ve revived it alot. Now, I´m ready to move on to a new area with new people and things to do and see. I always get nervous for changes, mostly with nerves about my new companion because it´s the part that affects me and the work the most until the next change. Anyway, in my next letter i´ll let ya know what´s up. By the way i got an email from Mckay Lefler, so we´re now in communication. 

    Yulma didn´t get baptized this weekend but she´ll be baptized the 25th, the day after she gets married.  I'm happy for her and sorry I will miss it.

    Well, i´ll have a better letter next week... if they don´t send me to San Blas,  haha. Take care!

Love,

Elder Pfister

 

A few notes from the Skype call:

-Panama has had rolling blackouts from a severe drought that has degraded their hydoelectric power capabilities.  The rainy season has finally started there so maybe the blackouts will stop soon.  The government mandated that A.C. be turned off in many offices.  Most LDS churches in Panama don't have A.C., but the Stake Centers do have A.C.

-Elder Pfister and Elder Collier estimate that they walk about 10 miles each day as bus service is spotty and they have a big area to cover.

-The Church recently reduced the amount of money per missionary from $240 to $220/month, and stopped paying their "lunch" ladies in the Panama mission, who had gotten some money each month for serving the missionaries a lunch 5 days a week.

-The Panama mission is opening a number of new areas, with a large influx of sister missionaries.  

 

 

 

Bueno pero feo!!

Hola chicos,

     This week was a solid week as the work goes, but yet again Sunday was a disappointment (few investigators)... but oh well we have some good things setting up with the work we did this week. We went out on splits with lots of members to the lessons and in route they showed us where alot of less active members live, and we´ve been visiting them to try to reactivate them -  and plus less actives seem to always have a kid or husband or someone that is a member that we can teach, and they usually are more positive because they have family that are members. 

     On a positive note we´re going to have two more baptisms this Saturday. Y_____a is finally getting married this week sometime, we find out the fecha today, and E_____l is also getting baptized. I´ve really enjoyed teaching Ez_____l because he´s really excited about getting baptized. Alot of the time with our investigators we have to kinda fight to get citas (appointments) and push them along, but with him he is always asking when we are going to teach him again and he always says, "We´re still on for Saturday right?", instead of us always having to say, "you still planning on getting baptized right", haha. It´s really great to teach someone so excited to be baptized. 

     Anyway so i just decided i´ll write a shorter letter today, and just catch you up on Skype call on Mother's Day. Can you guys do it at 4:30 my time on Sunday? i hope so haha i´ll probably call you sometime this week to confirm. 

    Well, that wraps things up then... I know that this is the work of the Lord and that it´s progressing quickly. I´m loving the mission, and i´m kinda sad that my time here seems to be going so fast.  Also this is probably my last week here in Colon; i think changes will be the 15th of  May. Love you - take care!

Love,

Elder Pfister

Esta sweeeet acá!

Q paso

     Things here got alot better this week for us. We didn´t have a ton of people in church this week, but we have some new positive people and fechas so we should be baptizing some people these next few weeks. The changes for the mission are going to be the week after Mother´s day so i still have a little time left to work here. I really don´t want to leave Colon, but the more time that i´m here the harder it is going to be to leave so it´s probably better that they change me soon. It´d be awesome to go to San Blas but i doubt it, i feel like it´s too late in my mission now, unless i die in San Blas, o sea, end my mission there. 

    

      So the best news is that we put a fecha con E_______l after teaching him yesterday. The fechas is por the 11th of mayo, but he could be baptized today. He´s been to church like 5 times.  Anyway he´s cool it´s great because we´re baptizing more priesthood which is what this branch needs badly. If we could baptize more priesthood and the branch paid their tithing we would be a ward.

      As for the D________s, we had a great lesson with them on Saturday and the spirit was strong and we brought up the tema of baptism and they avoided it. They say that they want to be baptized but that right now no. The mom isn´t sure when, the daughter wants to be baptized now and the aunt, someday. The problem that we recently found out is that they all want the dad to baptize them but he´s got WOW problems so now we gotta work through the hermanas to fix his life so that he can save theirs through baptism. I have hope that they will eventually be baptized, probably not in my time here and maybe not here in Panama, but they say that the church is stronger in the dominican republic and they said they are going to explore the church there so hopefully they get baptized there when they go back. They are an awesome family and they invited me to go hang out in their house in the DR so i´ll keep in touch with them and make sure they get baptized eventually, haha. 

      Y____a and her husband did their examenes so they are close to getting married, we are hoping that they get married this Friday and we have the baptisms unofficially planned for this Sunday so finally we´ll get that done too. She is really animated to get baptized so it´ll be great. 

   

     We found another hermana named M______e who has also been investigating the church for the last year or so and has already read the Book of Mormon twice and she really wants to be baptized but..... she is living with this guy who doesn´t want anything to do with the church and doesn´t want to get married either so she has to choose, leave him and get baptized or not. They have 13 years living together so i don´t understand why he doesn´t want to get married, it´s not really going to change that much just make their living together official with paperwork. Anyway we´re starting in on that process. 

  

     Also we found this old investigator named, J_____n, who is the companion of this lady who is a member but long story short... Juan wants to be baptized too but he´s married to another lady-  they are separated not divorced, so first we have to divorce the man, then marry them, then baptize him.... Long process especially here in Panama, like 3 or more months to divorce plus a few weeks to marry, but someone has to have the big picture in mind and start the process, so we will. 

    Hey so my compa gave me this idea to share pictures, as he uses SkyDrive from Microsoft to share photos and so i´m gonna try it out. You can put pictures up on your end and i´m going to put pictures up on my end and you can take them off and save them over there to have them. Let´s give it a try. 

     I don´t even know half the people that you say you meet on facebook but then again everyone puts weird names up so maybe i do know them i just don´t recognize their user name. Like this Etienne Lima i have no idea who that is, did she say where or how she met me?

    Hey thanks for the quote from Elder Holland, it´s a sweet one. That pretty much wraps up this week for me. We have lots of good hope for this week with the new investigators we have, the more we have the more likely that one turns out to be that golden investigator. I know that this is the Lord´s Church and His work because of all the great lessons we´ve been having, for example in the lesson with the Dominicans the spirit was so strong and i know that they felt it too, the spirit is the real teacher, it touches hearts. I love you guys! Soon we´ll be skyping again!

Love,

Elder Pfister

Mas o menos!

Buenas familia,

   Well this semana was kinda a bummer, we didn't make a lot of progress with some investigators but we did have a really nice baptism. S_____i the lady who we´ve been trying to get married finally got married last Monday and on Saturday she was baptized after two years of waiting. 

   So the girl S__i who´s mom told us not teach her, well, she´s way bummed too that we can't teach her, so we've thought about secretly teaching her.... maybe that's a bad idea but it was her idea, ha ha. I doubt she´ll be able to come to church or anything, but she has questions about the Church so we can at least help her out and then in 3 years she can make her own choice about getting baptized.

Yulma´s husband did his medical exams and she was going to do it today, so hopefully she did so that they can get married and baptized in the next week or so. I´ve become a pro at marrying people here in Colon. We also found this other lady that we need to get married because she already has a testimony of the Gospel, but her husband doesn´t want to get married because he says that she´s only getting married to get baptized and not for him, which is kinda right.  I think that reason to get married is ok because like it says in the Bible in Luke 8:37-39 you have to love God more than anything or anyone including your kids and wife, and when you do this you find your real life. 

    S_____i´s baptism this past week was sweet because of all the support she received from the branch members. We had a group night there in her house the night before her baptism and pretty much the whole branch showed up to congratulate her on her marriage and support her with the baptism. We had a nice lesson and then lots of food and they just stayed and talked.  It was really good because her husband who is not a member was there, and he was able to make some friends and feel the Spirit, he really enjoyed it I think. Then the same thing happened at her baptism,  we had good asistencia and they brought cake and all that. We weren´t able to confirm her because it was stake conference this last Sunday so we´ll do it next week. Speaking of baptisms, Nino (or Chantier) the guy I baptized in February got the Melchizedek Priesthood and got called to be the secretary of the ward a while ago and is trying to get a mission into his plans so he´s coming along really well. 

    E______l is still coming to church but he works so much we haven´t been able to get a lesson in. I think when we do teach him we´ll invite him to get baptized and he´ll accept. He´s come to alot of church activities and liked it all. 

    Haha that´s funny that Bishop Anderson used my dog attack story in his talk at ward conference.  So about missionaries emailing people other than family - I didn´t hear about being able to email friends and priesthood leaders, what´s that all about? We went to the temple yesterday by the way, that´s why i´m writing today.

    Other than that, we´ve just been contacting and looking for new people with not much luck, kinda a boring week as news goes, but we gotta just press on with faith that sooner or later the Lord will put someone in our path. And don´t worry, no incidents this week with dogs,  ha ha. I´ll just close by saying I know that this is the Lord´s work and whatever happens in life it´s for our benefit to either learn from or to prepare us for what´s coming up, so i have no doubt that the Lord is in control of it all. Take care everyone!

Love,

Elder Pfister

Adventuras!!!!

Q´ Lo Q´ Mae!
  
     Well this has been an interesting two weeks with some positive and not so positive things and a funny story but all in all i enjoyed the last 2 weeks.

     Starting with the story... Last week we got a reference from the sister missionaries for this guy who is supposedly really positive who lives way far away in this village called Piña (Pineapple, haha) which is located on the other side of the Canal in the middle of nowhere. So we call this guy named Vergara, and we set up an appointment for 4 o´clock in the afternoon on Thursday and that morning we called him to confirm and  he said that everything´s good so we headed off. We get to Colon and take another bus that takes us out there, after about 2 and a half hours on the bus, with it driving fast we get to Piña and get off. We find the local phone and call him to find out where he lives like he told us to do and this is our conversation...
    Us: ¨Hey Hermano we´re here in Piña, where do you want to meet us?¨
    Him ¨Oh elders... There´s a little problem, it´s that I´m in Colon right now. We´ll have to do it another day.¨
    Us ¨What? and you´re not coming home soon or anything? (Click.... phone call cut)................................. Crap. Now what?¨

So we decide to not waste this time so we go and work a little and check out the beach for a few minutes, then go get a drink and as we´re drinking the owner of the store asks what we´re doing here, and we explain that we´re missionaries and she says "well be really careful, because here there is a lot of crime and robbery. Do you have someone to stay with here"? We say no that we´re going back to Colon right now and she says "well you better run because i think that is the last bus over there" (like 100 yards away). So we say thanks and break out running towards the bus and it drives away but luckily someone saw us and stopped it and we were able to get on... all good, right?  Not quite.... We say we´re heading to Colon and the bus driver says "no you´re not, the last bus to colon left about 3 hours ago (before we had even arrived), there´s no more buses going there." So we get off and just think... What are we going to do now? We´re stuck here in this dangerous middle of nowhere fishing town with no bus and like 3 hours away from the next civilization when using a bus, so who knows how long it would be walking to get to Colon. We asked this one guy what we should do and he was like "well you better get started walking and ask for rides on the way and pray to God." So we did just that. It´s about 6 o´clock and we start walking home and everything goes well for the first hour then around 7 it gets pitch dark, we´re in the middle of the jungle on this little road completely alone with no lights or anything. We couldn't even see where the road turned and so we just walked on the yellow line in the middle. It was freaky! Anyway, we keep walking and we see this light and a house on this hill and think, we´re saved! We get to the gate and here come the dogs, lots of dogs barking and growling so we back away from the gate and the dogs, like 6 of them, stop at the gate but we realize there is no way we are getting to that house alive and it´s too far away to yell so we give up and keep walking, when all of a sudden the dogs crawl under the gate and start chasing us! We just turn around and start throwing all the rocks and garbage we can find at them and they finally give up but it was way scary because they were big dogs like Pit bulls and German Shepherds, the perfect guard dogs. Anyway, we keep up the trek, and it goes fine for a while, till yet again we hear barks and growls but this time there is no light near by and we can´t see anything. This time it was actually terrifying not being able to see the dogs coming, but hearing them get closer, so we just got on our hands and knees feeling around on the ground for more rocks, but we couldn´t find anything and the dogs were getting closer, so i just went off the road and found a banana tree and ripped off two branches, which aren´t too good as weapons because they are more like just big leaves, but we used them and just started swinging like demons, and after some close encounters where the dogs almost got our flesh, we were able to swing and run and get away from the scariest dog encounter i´ve ever had. After that we got into this part of the road where the moon shined pretty well so we spent some time to gather rocks and real sticks to defend ourselves. At this point we had decided that we were going to die if we kept going so we were going to get to the next house, call if they had a phone and if not, just sleep there with them if they seemed nice. So after like 3 hours of walking, praying and fighting off ferocious dogs, God sent us help. This bus for employees of the Canal Company passed and usually they aren´t allowed to pick up anyone, so it just passed us by without stopping, but then it finally stopped at the end of the road, and when we got on I asked why he stopped he said he looked back and saw that we were Mormon missionaries and he felt that he had to stop and help us. So he took us to the Canal and we got a taxi home safe. The bus driver said that we hadn´t made any real progress towards home, and that if we had walked the whole way it would´ve taken like 10 hours. So that was our adventure of the week, really scary, exciting, funny and testimony building, haha. But don´t worry Mom, we´re not going back there unless we go with a member who has a car to take us.

    Now getting to real missionary work, S_____i is finally getting married today at 2 pm, so she is going to get baptized this Saturday, finally!! She´s been trying to get married for over two years now and it´s finally coming true. Also Yulma the other lady we were helping to get married has gotten a renewed interest in getting married and baptized, so we're working with her again.
   
    The D________s came to church again and the wife said that she was dropping coffee and that she wants to plan a temple trip to the visitor center, which i took as she is getting ready to get baptized!! She still says it´s not her time but she´s getting there slowly but surely.
 
   This one night when we were walking home from dinner this girl in the street called us over and when we went over she explained how she wanted to learn more, so we gave her a little folleto and said we´d come back the next day. When we got there she had read the folleto and answered her own questions about it o sea, she is really positive. Then her dad came out and started talking to us and explained how he´s a preacher for a church and he started tearing down the Book of Mormon and the Church, and normally i´m not one for Bible bashing, but he made me kinda angry so i just threw out a few scriptures and tore down his argument haha and he just stood there in silence because he had no idea what to say, and then we just left because we didn´t want to argue. A few days later we went back to talk to the girl, and while talking to her, her mom came out and said how she doesn´t want us to preach to the daughter because she wants her daughter to follow the traditions in her church and that we can´t come back. And that was right after the girl said she was looking for a church of peace that focused on families, which is exactly what our Church teaches and provides, so that was a super bummer, but we hope we planted the seed with her.

    We have another really positive new investigator named Ezequiel who is the friend of this ward member who brought him to the General Conference and he liked it alot so she brought him to church this week and we were talking to him and he seems really positive. We have an appointment with him this week so we´ll see how it goes but i have high hopes.

   Also we found this Colombian lady who is our neighbor who happens to be the sister-in-law of this member and this member is the son of our cook Noris, haha, it is a small world. Anyway when we talked to her, she had alot of really good questions about religion and she is looking for the true church sincerely; well she found it, she just doesn´t realize it yet haha.

   For conference i was able to watch all of Saturday and Priesthood sessions in English, but on Sunday we had investigators to go get, so we missed some talks.  All of Sunday sessions were in Spanish. And to answer your question, the subtitles for the music are in English even here in Panama, haha.

    Well, that´s what´s going on in my life right now. With some luck we should have some good baptisms this month. Even though we´ve had some rough days of pure contacting without any lessons, the blessing are coming into view. Love you guys tons! Take Care!
Love,
Elder Pfister