{wE've Had A LitTLe MoRe tiMe tO WoRk}

Alright y´all!

This week has been nuts. Week of changes...meaning zero sleep. Elder Poli went home on Thursday morning. It was good seeing such a good friend finish his mission so strong. I was thinking today about when I lived with him, Elder Stoddard, and Elder Monroy in Alcalde Diaz...had to be the most obedient house i´ve ever lived in. And we had a ton of fun with them. I´ll definitely miss those that left this change. Yesterday we didn´t go to our sacrament meeting because we were asked to speak on missionary work in San Miguelito. That was a nice opporunity and I feel like the wards there are really excited and the missionaries are doing great things.

Unfortunately we didn´t have investigators in church yesterday...we´re still fighting for that. But I had some good experiences with a new elder named Elder Slater in Guadalupe. He got here last week and we did divisions with them because my comp had been in that area before and he wanted them to know some investigators. We got rejected a lot during the day and then it started raining. Kind of jokingly I told elder Slater that we had to be rejected all day before God would guide us to a family. And that is how it went down :) all day we didn´t really have any success. We had found a really cool guy Adán that was willing to listen to us. Then, along comes his brother before leaving to work. "hey guys what are you reading?"..."the book of mormon"..."yeah?..." and then he went off. He started talking about how the bible contains all truth and there´s no need for another book, and that the only prophets that God called had written everything that needed to be written in the bible. Before he could get to far we just stopped him and testified about the book of mormon. A nice testimony moment but we didn´t get the chance to teach Adán.

Later on we decided to go to one more street. The last street we went in to contact we found an awesome family! There were about seven young men living there...and they all had lots of good questions. It was fun to be with a new missionary and watch him try so hard to speak the language.

Learning a language is tough. I still pray for the gift of tongues to really try to make better my accent. I notice that when i do pray for that gift people tell me that I speak well...and when I don´t they sometimes say "what?" or i´ll make mistakes when I get tired haha it´s an interesting process.

I´ve been excited because we´ve had a little more time to work this week. We were contacting in these two buildings called Chucunaque...old, run-down, 15 story buildings that DON´T have elevators. It´s fun hiking up those stairs. But there definitely are a lot of good people there. We found a good family a couple days ago and we´re going to meet with them this Tuesday, the Martinez family. They have family members who are members of the church and they know a little bit about the BofM. Good fam.

I love you all! The church is super true! I´m learning a ton here in the office. It´s been a huge blessing to learn how to be organized...more or less, and to learn how to plan better. And i´m almost done with the Book of Mormon again! I have learned lots of new things about studying this time around.

Mucho love,

Elder Henrie

ps dad i reread my goals like you said i should...that really helped me realize that i am doing what I felt like i needed to do. It´s good to remind yourself of goals and I felt really good with the goals i had put and the ones that I have now :)

Dear mom,

Yeah Stan Harding! Really nice guy. We have met quite a few folks from the US that come to visit. I really like that aspect of our ward. There are people from Colombia, Mexico, Peru, Guatemala, Venezuela, and of course, Panama. Really diverse ward. I hope little James is happy and chubby. I have been praying for him and for all of you. I am grateful for a good family. It´s pretty rare to have a good family here in Panama. It´s not easy. In our area there are some places full of crime...and it´s sad to see little innocent kids running around in places like that knowing what they are being taught by those around them.

The mission is great mom! I learned this week that I need to be content with the assignments that God gives me. I think I would have liked to finish in an area fully focused on that area and those investigators...but I read in Alma 29 and that helped me recognize what are the things that I really should desire.

I love you mom!

Elder Henrie