We do it all!!

One of the things I love about the Gospel of Jesus Christ is that you can use and develop all your talents.  I have had many callings over the years to do things I didn't necessarily think I was good at, but I learned to do them.  I even have had the opportunity to discover talents I didn't know I had.

This is so true here our first month in Santiago.  These are some of  the things we are doing:

• We teach non members about the church.
• We have visited members who are strong and try to encourage them and tell them they are doing a great job.
• I have worked with people to find names of their ancestors and get them ready for the temple
• I have made chocolate chip cookies and brownies for Family Home Evenings and some branch activities
• We are starting an English class next week which will run 6 weeks.  We will have others after that.
• We are starting a literacy class for some youth who have a hard time with school
• We have been teaching some classes on strengthening your marriage for some couples who are having some struggles
• We are teaching a couple a Temple Prep class in their home so they can progress more as a family and get ready to go to the temple
• We are saving our coins to help a family get married
• Everyone we visit we share a scripture and have prayer. 
• Mark and I are both teaching Sunday School classes on Sunday, sometimes more.
• We encourage all our families to read the scriptures and to pray.  Individually and as families.

These are just a few things that we do.  Some we feel more comfortable with than others.  

I love it when we go out to visit people and there is a beautiful spirit and we feel we have been instruments in the Lord's hands to bless some of His children.  That's the best thing we do.

The two youth are members of our church.  This is a great family.  The father loves to read.  He has bookshelves in his home, which we don't see too often.  Very nice family.  This was the wife that told Mark if he didn't eat what he was offered he may not be offered food again.  I love her.  She's very traditional (told me they don't eat at fast food places).  At the party she fed us a delicious pork and rice dish.  This is at the father's birthday party.  We had a great time.

We had to go to Panama City this past week.  We went over Monday afternoon and had dinner with the office couple (on the right).  We went to Benihanas. We had an early morning appointment to get our government ID called a cedula on Tuesday morning.  We are now officially here.  They ask for your ID for everything.  If you buy something with a credit card they want it.  They often have road checks where they ask for your ID.  On Tuesday afternoon we went to dinner with our mission president and his wife (on the left) and the office couple.  We went to a Mexican restaurant.

Our wonderful mission president, President Carmack, finishes at the end of June.  The office couple finish in August.  We will miss them.  They do so much work.  The office couple, The Brinkmans are fantastic.  She is the mission nurse.  She's had to deal with Zika, rabies bites, etc.

The mission president has a heavy load.  They supervise and organize 200 missionaries from all over Latin america and the states.  The president is the ecclesiastical leader for 4 districts across Panama. He has responsibility over buildings and leadership in the districts.  He's also involved in the youth from Panama getting ready to go on missions.  Mission presidents leave their jobs, maybe not to go back to, for 3 years.  They do have living expenses while they're here.

I've always said you couldn't pay me to do the work I volunteer to do in the church.  Mark and I are paying our way to do this wonderful mission.  The church did pay for our trip down and will pay when we go home.  It is worth every penny!

Here's the poster we had made to hang outside the church for the English class we are going to teach.

Mark just got back from a service project in Chitre.  They did work at a public school.