Katie's Mission Blog: February 6, 2024-February 12, 2024-Week 40-San Miguelito

Letter to everyone:

What's up!! I hope everything is going so well for you all. We are just working our little tails off, and right now we are having some difficulties with friends who can progress towards baptism. But, the Lord sends some challenges every now and then to teach us, and sometimes it's our turn to plant and other times to harvest. But this week I hit halfway on the mission. NINE WHOLE MONTHS LET'S GO! Basically it feels like a blip and eternity at the same time. I feel ever more grateful everyday to be a missionary. Best. Decision. Eva!!!

But here's three kinda random stories from the week...

1. One day an hermana texts us and is like "so y'all eat fish" and that's really broad. Of course I am never going to say no to someone who is going to cook for us, so we are like, "yeah of course we eat whatever". We show up to dinner and she serves us the largest bowl of mixed random seafood chowder. I tried very hard to eat it and enjoy it, but it was like someone threw up ocean: squid, octopus, crab, fish, lobster, the likes. Whoops. Still grateful, but my stomach was not.

2. We were reteaching our recent concerts the 10 commandments. We read over the first and second one, and their son just called them out and was like "that rosary, your virgin Mary, your statues, and all your photos gotta go. You're breaking the commandments". Mercedes full heartedly agreed, and started taking EVERYTHING down. I love their humility to accept and to change and repent. We need to be more like them and repent JOYFULLY! Today we printed out photos of Christ to put up in their house.

3. The ZLs in our zone gave a good capacitación (training) this week in our zone conference we have every week. They talked about lasting conversion. They talked about how we meet ex missionaries who come back, and become inactive, and how the things we do in the mission will translate to our conversion after. Do we support our leadership? Do we let doubts linger? Do we truly read the scriptures and pray everyday? Do we fulfill our callings? Do we live the commandments with exactitude? This made me think of how I am going to stay converted my whole life! Because people who fall away often are convinced the church was true, but have allowed Satan to enter into their lives, and stop doing the things to stay converted -- or to act on their testimonies. So after my mission I always want to go out with the missionaries, read my scriptures, journal, pray out loud and consult the Lord first, go to the temple, always go to church and take the sacrament, continue to practice hymns on the piano, listen to church music, etc.

4. Whoops I said 3 but here's a fourth. Sunday, I was sitting on the stand playing piano (like every other Sunday in panama), and I was a little discouraged because none of our friends came. But, slowly they started trickling in, until 8 came! It reminded me of my favorite talk: Sunday Will Come by Elder Wirthlin. At the death of Christ, His followers felt lost and without a guide. They were in darkness. Sometimes we feel like this, our lives are clouded over and the going gets rough. SUNDAY. ALWAYS. COMES! Hold on.

Have a great week everyone!! Hug the people you love!!

Ps I am done being hermana Christensen. I am now hermana Chris. The Panamanians cannot handle it.

Letter to family:

Happy p-day!! I do not know how much time I will have to talk or write or anything today, because after 9 months I am finally going to the canal with part of my district!! So I am happy and excited to go and see if it lives up to the hype -- supposedly it is alright and the movie they show is spectacular. We had to have some members do some google searches to help us know the best way to get there and the best hours because one of the craziest parts of being a missionary is that we don't have google. Literally we go to chrome and it redirects us to the church website. Oh how I miss google and normal transport, but I do love Panama!

But, I wrote a little note every day to remember what I wanted to tell you guys and I am typing on my cute little key board my mom sent me (shout out to her, she's the goat). I feel like a little secretary sitting at my desk right now.

Overall, we are in the find grind right now. We have like no friends progressing towards baptism. Which is honestly pretty weird. Because the last two transfers it was just raining down baptisms, but now people are putting limits on themselves and allowing Satan to tell them they aren't ready and others just aren't married. But, they are all reading the Book of Mormon. So! Good news -- they will eventually be baptized (I mean most likely). We have this one family who is really good, the parents aren't married and the kids say they need more time, but the ward has just taken them in as their own. The one son, Gabriel, is really quite intelligent and just wants to follow God. We have another really good lady, named Marilyn. Her husband, Luis, served a mission in Honduras and we always bring members with us to visit with them. We asked her to read the Book of Mormon for at least five minutes a day, ands he promised to read for fifteen. The problems are she is not married and she doesn't feel like she has received an answer or not if she should be baptized. As for me, I am much better than last week. Really if I and doing my part, that is all God asks of me. I often ask "what more could I have done for my vineyard?" and really there isn't so much more I could do. I am doing the things. I could defintley walk with more faith and more joy, so I am working towards that. I have found my new favorite snack is saltine crackers. I have a favorite brand and eat them about everyday.

Tuesday --

So we went out to the farthest part of our area that we know how to get to, our area is huge! It goes all the way out to Colon, which is far, a whole other province away. We go out there to visit a reference from a member, that we tried to visit the Wednesday before, but the member wasn't at the house to go visit his friend. So, we replanned for Tuesday, and it turns out his friend is someone we contacted and shared with the week before when the member canceled and who we were going to drop. lol. So, we told the member we only had 15 minutes to make it short, because his friend is way evangelico and just thinks anyone who says Jesus is the Christ is going to be saved. 50 minutes later...And the hard part about this area is if you don't leave by a certain time, it takes forever to get home. That's one reason why we were trying to teach for 15 minutes. Subsequently, we ended up waiting 1 hour for a bus and got home 2 hours later. Welp. That's Chilibre for ya. We also visited someone but they had a lot of dogs. I kept walking and was like "God will protect me" but then Hermana Jackson countered "thats what hermana Strickland thought". She is infamously famous for getting bitten by a dog and having to go home but she ended up being able to come back. Luckily, we did not get bitten.

Wednesday --

We did a CPEC this morning, basically we show up at the door of the hermanas at 6:30, plan with them, make them breakfast, study, and see how they are doing. We did it in Ciudad Bolivar, with Hermana Drew and Hermana Linares. Hermana Jackson put on her favorite song on my speaker, Balled of a Moonchild. Very interesting. It is on the LDS music app and it always makes me laugh. Give it a listen. Later, a member fed us sopa de mariscos, or basically mixed seafood soup. Yep. Smelled like a marina. I did not eat very much. And she was watching me the whole time. It was not my jam. But she didn't seem too mad at me. I just did not feel like vomiting that night. She is notoriously a little scathing with ungrateful missionaries, and I really was trying but first off it was a huge bowl of soup, and second off, it was mystery sea food and yeah. Hermana Jackson though pounded it and loved it. After, we went to this hermana who is coming back to church, turns out she is actually the cousin of a member who is my friend in Guadalupe, my last area. Her mom isn't a member, so we have been teaching her. She also has a car and always drives us back to our house or to our next visit. But, she has been driving for three months and Garret has quite the upper hand on her. She is a little scary to drive with. She cannot reverse either and so every time she does I just take the wheel and tell her to step on the gas. But it was really funny because to say backup is "tirar en reverso" and Hermana Jackson was confused and just translated it to "throwing it back", two very very different things. We got home, alive, and with Hawaiian style empanadas.

Thursday --

We had district council and it was normal. An elder in our district went home, so we aren't really too sure what happened. I think he has just been having hard times in the mission. An hermana made chocolate poop cookies, the one with oats, and they were SO good. Us with the ZL gave a "training" idk what it is called in English, like we do every week. The ZLs shared something really good about obedience in the mission and how that translates to life after and our lasting conversion. They shared the many ways people say they have fallen away from the church herein Panama -- leadership, not getting the girl, not having a calling, laziness, jobs, distractions, law of chastity, etc. They shared how those are the same things we do in the mission to be obedient -- not supporting our leaders and president or the APs, flirting, being mad that they don't have a leadership calling, not doing their studies, looking at social media, etc. It made me realize just how careful we need to be with our conversion. I like these four guiding questions that have helped me think of my conversion: 1. What would you do if you had more faith? 2. What am i doing that i should stop doing to impede the spirit? 3. What should i start doing to have the spirit in my life? 4. Am i careful or casual?. Some things I thought of that I want to do to stay converted is to go out with the missionaries always, read my scriptures and pray everyday, go to church every Sunday even on vacations to take the sacrament, accept any calling, go to the temple weekly (let's hope I always live near one). Then i had an exchange with Hermana Garay, from Peru. I went to her area in Cabima. It is a really good area, medium affluent with TONS of members. If I went to that area I would be pretty excited because there is a lot of untouched good stuff that they aren't really working with, especially part member families and lessons with members. Hermana Garay is really nice. We came in the same day so we have the same time. They have a lot of good friends right now, so it was nice to be able to teach people who were actually progressing because we are still in the fight to find good friends who will keep their commitments. It is always fun to have a full Spanish day too, and I would like to be with a Latina just to learn more and they just can teach so much better a lot of times. We had dinner with the elders of their ward, since they ward share. It was practically a double date essentially. The hermana left the house and we just ate and hung out. But it was pretty fun, I like to be with other missionaries and we don't really have lots of chances to be together and just hang out. The elders had the goal to contact every living thing that walked and were running from place to place talking with everyone, in kinda a sketchy part where everyone was smoking weed. This week is kinda nuts in Panama because people are celebrating Carnival. Carnival is basically as the Panamanians describe it as "an excuse to sin and drink and throw water everywhere". But everyone in the interior, especially in Chitre, are just partying so hard. Its even a government holiday. So this week has been full of drunk people. Very drunk.

Friday --

Well Garret sent me a text today and it was really funny and it made me laugh very much "Peyton said that you were hot all your wildest dreams have come true". I am glad that at least Peyton thinks I am hot. He and all the Panamanians.

Saturday --

The coolest part of today was that we were visiting our recent converts, Reymundo and Mercedes and teaching their son too (who we have since dropped as you will read further in the email). We were teaching the 10 commandments, and we read the first one and their son is like-- "well all those photos we have in the house need to be taken down". They literally have such catholic photos in their house, rosary, a virgin Mary, the works. It was so neat to see the humility of them and they literally went in the house and started taking down EVERYTHING. So today we are going to print pictures for them and put church photos in their house. I love being with them and seeing how they really have just given it all to the Lord and are so converted, even though they really know so little. Every time we visit them, she reminds us she has not drank coffee and that they read a page of the book of mormon everyday. I love my converts!!

Sunday --

As always we went and looked for our friends. Yet again, none that we looked for came. But 8 others did come!! Marilyn and the family and other people who can't progress because they aren't married, but at least they are coming to church. We went to look for Reymundo, the son of Reymundo and Mercedes, and he knows he is supposed to go to church and do all the things but he just won't!! We get there and he is getting ready to go to work and we read Mosiah 2:41 and promise so many blessings will come. We asked him what would happen if he didn't go to work and he said "no pasa nada". And then we asked what would happen if he didn't go do church "pasa mucho". We were like EXACTLY! And he still didn't come. Then, he proceeded to call me "su reina" (his queen). Which then I was a little upset, and was like "no me llame su reina, soy Hermana Christensen un representante de Jesucristo." But I feel that if someone called Jesus Christ some title lower than His potential and who he was, He would have done the same. Still, I need to work on being better at seeing people as God sees them. I like to imagine people in temple white. It helps a lot. As I was sitting in church, we had like no friends there at the start, but then slowly they came in. I just thought of the quote "Sunday will come" from the talk by Elder Wirthlin. Like waiting for the resurrection of Jesus Christ and with grief and despair in His loss, He came back. Even with all the hard days, Sunday will come. So I know slowly our area will pick up, and maybe it will feel so very long and painful to find knew people, but eventually we will see the fruits from our labors. We visited Andrés today, and recent converts by far are my favorite part of the mission. They give me hope that there are chosen people!!

Cute pictures in the Diablo rojo