Katie's Mission Blog: August 22-August 28, 2023-Week 16-Guadalupe

Here is a funny story that started out my p-day today:

Alarm goes off at 6:30am per usual, I pray, make my bed, and go out in the kitchen and start washing some dishes we had left overnight. All the sudden I feel something crawling up my leg...actually two somethings. I am just thinking it's mosquitos or flies. But then I look down and low and behold it is two little, rice like LARVAE crawling up my leg. Hermana Hatch is in the bathroom and I am just standing there like "uhhhh no puede ser (this cannot be) happening. Its literally only 6:37am and this is the last thing I want to do". So, they are EVERYWHERE in our kitchen. Hermana Hacth is traumatized though since this has happened to her before and the PTSD is coming all back. But there's no time to waste and we check under the garbage can and they are feasting and multiplying and disrupting the peaceful morning we thought we would wake up to. We start sweeping them outside and stomping on them (the soles of my shoes are now covered in dead larvae) and pouring random cleaning solutions on them and in a few minutes I am going to mop and pray real hard to get rid of them. But yeah, we lack a few necessities here in Panama, but it's always fun and full of great surprises!

My other totally embarrassingly funny story is I am sitting on the bus late one night, so sweaty as always, and I'm like "okay just gotta talk to some more people and let everyone hear this message" and I try talking to this one lady who appears to be 6 months pregnant at least...well...she was not. And of course that was the first I asked her was "oh wow how many months along are you?". So, yep. All time low haha!

Today I am looking forward to playing basketball with some missionaries and some of our friends! Maybe basketball will lead to conversion. Preach my gospel literally says to "use your talents", so I am hopefully! After schooling some Panamanians today, I will let you know how it goes! But basketball really is one thing that I didn't think would have helped me for the mission but it has helped me so much. It gave a good mindset, the ability to endure, the capability to lead and get along with people who are not nice to you, and to know you are able to do much more than you are capable of.

Something that has been hard is getting people to come to church. I think that's a worldwide missionary problem haha, so I am glad I am not the only one. Practically no one has cars here and therefore they have to ride the busses to church, since taxis are too expensive. I think 5 people in my ward have cars. So, we invite, invite, invite, make fliers, arrange to go meet people up and travel with them, and all that jazz but it still is hard. And people here honestly live such sad lives. They literally wake up at 3am, travel to the city (with terrible traffic) work all day, travel home (with even worse traffic), sleep for three hours, and repeat. So I honestly don't blame people when they don't have time because working is a necessity and everyone lives paycheck to paycheck. We have two younger boys, ages 10 and 14, whose mom's are members of the church for a long time but have since gone inactive. The moms are really loving and are like "oh yeah I want my kids to baptized and go to church" but they don't come themselves and these kids don't have the means to go by themselves. Or we have this one golden lady we found whose brother is a bishop of another ward and she is very resistant to come to our ward, the ward boundaries she lives in. As the Panamanians would say "estamos en la lucha" (we are in the struggle). But I love these quotes from one of my favorite conference talks, called The Imperfect Harvest --

"As we accept the Savior’s invitation to come unto Him, we soon realize that our best is good enough and that the grace of a loving Savior will make up the difference in ways we cannot imagine."

"We must remember that whatever our best-but-imperfect offering is, the Savior can make it perfect."

and lastly relating to the story of Peter trying to walk on water...

"Oh, Peter, fear not and worry not. If you could see yourself as I see you, your doubt would fade and your faith increase. I love you, dear Peter; you got out of the boat. Your offering is acceptable, and even though you faltered, I will always be there to lift you from the depths, and your offering will be made perfect.”

All the Savior invites us to do is get out of the boat and to try! So try, sink, stumble, fall, but get back up again and again and again!

LILLY DAWN PETERSON LOOK WHAT I FOUND