{MiSSioN AccOMpLiSHeD}

Dearest Henrie family,

I have loved the mission Panamà! It has been the greatest experience of my life. I`ve worked and I`ve obeyed. I love the people. I love the culture. I feel Panamanian. Haha I`ll miss being a missionary but I`m excited for everything! The experiences I`ve had really have changed me.

I have been having good experiences up until now and I hope they continue. I feel at peace with God. Before coming out into the mission I worried about a lot of things, but I feel like now I can acheive whatever goal I set to myself. Thank you. Thank you all for helping me serve! I love you.
Mission accomplished.
Elder Henrie

Hi mom,

Well, i guess that`s it! Haha I`m really excited for everything...super excited to see all of you! This week has been incredible. I don`t think i`ve worked so hard in my life. On Wednesday night we decided to just work thorugh dinner until nine...we were by a the member`s house that was going to give us dinner at 8 30 and i asked them if I could use the bathroom. He asked if we were going to eat but we told him we were going to work another half hour. After a few rejections we found Marielis. She just lost her grandma, has lost of family problems, and her husband left her alone to raise her child. She accepted a baptismal date the next day with her mom and they`re doing great! a GREAT experience for the last week of the mission...

And saturday afternoon we prayed that someone would give us food, we were going to the bus stop and we stopped to sing a hymn to a member family at about 8 45 pm...the sister there asked us if we had eaten dinner! That was definitely a prayer answered.

Just one of thousands of experiences that I`ll treasure forever. I`m going to miss Panamà. Hopefully I will be able to return someday to walk the streets I contacted, if not, I`ll at least take a lot of memories with me.

haha i guess I kind of am inactive in that singles ward...I haven`t gone for 2 years! Tell `em I`m doing well ;)

You`ve told me to keep the faith mom, I have. It`s been tough and I`ve loved every minute!
Love,
Your son

Marshman,
I love you little bro! It`s kind of ironic that you can date girls right now and I still can`t hahaha Marsh you`re a great example to me. I`m glad you`re happy in your life and preparing for the mish. I am soooo happy now! Obey God, try and make others happy, and you`ll be happy!

The church is true. The most important thing I`ve really learned...well, that i`ve really felt...on the mission is that the Atonement is real. Christ came to the earth and suffered for us. He came and lived and taught us how we can have peace. I know that He is the perfect example. He`s been a good brother to me here on the mission, just like you, J-Dub, and James. And of course, Lib has been a great sister.
I love you man! ¡Hasta pronto!
Elder Bro

{100 PerCeNT WoRTH iT!}}

Henries,

I´m happy :) there is a promise in Preach my Gospel from the first presidency that says that as we serve as missionaries, we will experience more happiness than we have ever felt before. It´s true! Yesterday Janeth and Olinda were confirmed members of the Church. Janeth brought a Columbian friend to church and is already immersed in the ward with all the members (especially the columbian members). Olinda seems so much more peaceful. She was so nervous before her baptism but now she seems so happy.

On saturday we interviewed a family that had just left the temple from receiving their endowments. My companion had baptized them about a year back. It was a beautiful interview and they expressed a lot of gratitude to the missionaries. This has been a cool project for me...interviewing recent converts about their feelings towards the church. They usually say similar things about the missionaries that taught them, they talk about their faces, their love, they way they act...it makes me realize how much people really are watching our every move.

It´s tough to know that I´ll longer be a full time missionary in a few days...but I am SO happy that I made the decision to serve the Lord for two years. I didn´t know how hard it would be. I had NO idea! Haha every single tough day has made me stronger. Every fallen baptismal date, investigators standing us up, climbing hills, getting lost and sweating until 9 pm has been 100 percent WORTH it!

We are going to Chorrera today to pick up my reemplacement...while we´re there we´re going to interview the Remice family! Today hasn´t really been a preparation day haha we´ve had to do a lot of emergency changes because there were a few missionaries who messed up this week...oops. That makes four emergency changes this change...interesting.

I am now a happy person. I´m a happy missionary. I´m in love with Panama...not looking forward to freezing cold weather. Now I feel cold here at night just because I´m not sweating. And I hate the air conditioning in the mission office already haha.

It´s been a fantastic week! I love you all and I´m SUPER excited to see you soon!

Mucho love,

Elder Henrie

{i'LL Do My BeST tO CoME HomE ExhAUsteD}

Great news fam!

I´m reading 2 Nephi right now...Isaiah chapters...and i´m actually enjoying it! Haha normally it´s a sleeper, but in the footnotes in 2 Nephi 12 it says that the reader should compare it with the bible. Makes it interesting. Other than that breakthrough, this week has been really great! I visited probably the gnarliest area i´ve been in in my time here in Panama. It´s called Samaria, in San Miguelito. In EVERY lesson we taught that day...either someone in the family had been killed recently, or someone was in jail. It was a big wake up call to how safe the areas we live in really are. One of the coolest guys we met was Victor. It was one of those "where to go now" moments. We were just walking on a sidewalk and we saw Victor in his front door reading a book. We asked him what he was reading and it was some book about communication with spirits in the afterlife. Obviously a good conversation-starter. We discovered that his mom had died just a few days earlier and that he was looking for answers. He had TONS of questions so we let the Book of Mormon do its job. We had him read in 2 Nephi 2. Without us saying anything, he would read a verse, ponder for a minute, and then he would start to explain it to himself, and then us, and then his wife. He repeated the process with several verses, each time asking another question that we answered with another verse in the chapter. I had never seen anyone so thrilled about the plan of salvation and the clear message that the Book of Mormon delivers with respect to that plan. We´ll see if he progresses!

At night we went to visit one of their investigators but she wasn´t there so we started to talk to her friend, an older lady named Gloria who has been a member for about 20 years. She seems really bitter because one of her sons was killed by maliantes (gangsters) and her other son ran away from home 2 months ago and is lost in drugs. NOTHING that we said seemed to help. The scriptures we shared, our testimonies, nothing got through. I asked her if she believes in God and she said simply, "sometimes". We left the lesson feeling a little defeated and I felt like the time we had spent there wasn´t really going to change anything. The next day we were going back to San Miguelito because President Ward had interviews with the zone and we wanted to film them to make a video for transfers. We went there in bus (but we had to take two buses). We got up on the second bus and, sure enough, there was Gloria, heading to her house in Samaria. She was talking to someone so I didn´t sit by her right away, but when the spot next to her was free I went and sat by her. I don´t really remember everything I said. I just remember that I showed her a picture of my family and promised her that going to the temple would bring her happiness and answers. I remember seeing her smile and that was probably one of the sweetest smiles I´ve seen in a long time. As I got off the bus I felt like she had felt something good that she hadn´t felt when we were in the lesson with her. I felt like she had felt God´s spirit and that she felt happy.

Those were some great experiences of the week. And yesterday was the baptism! Olinda was super nervous because she´s afraid of water...but everything went well. Janeth asked me to baptize her, which was definitely an honor for me. She really has changed because of the Gospel. The best lesson i´ve ever had with Elder Ortega was with Janeth this week. We were at her work (a beauty salon) teaching her about tithing. She got kind of emocional...she lives in humble cimcumstances...and i remember how good I felt when she started talking about gratitude. She said that she´s grateful for everything she has. I wrote down one thing she said, "estás en el piso, pero tienes un techo"...you´re on the floor, but you´ve got a roof. Even if they don´t have a bed to sleep on, they have a roof to cover them. It really helped me to recognize the blessings that God gives me daily. We have food, shelter, clothing, really everything we need. Not everyone here gets to eat three meals a day.

That reminds me of another experience that we had in Samaria. We got there in the morning and the elders there didn´t have time to advise the sister that they eat lunch with that four of us would be eating there. When we got there...she was kind of surprised. But she looked at the pot the she had made rice in and realized that she had made way too much for just two missionaries. Without even knowing that four of us were going to be there, she prepared more than enough food for all of us to eat. Small miracles are the best ones, no?

I love you all family! There are still people to help here in Panama for these next couple of weeks...i´ll do my best to get home exhausted :)

Thanks for everything!

Elder Henrie

Dad!

Thanks for the message about the scriptures..that will be nice for you to teach the book of mormon next year. You learn a lot by teaching others. Sometimes I forget about the small and simple things and get to focused on things that seem like a big deal but really aren´t going to help me progress. I had a good talk with president ward this week. I have always had certain things on my mind about forgiveness and president ward just seems to know exactly what to say to help me feel good. Even though sometimes he tells me something I already know, it just seems to come from the Spirit and I can really understand it.

The same happens with what you and mom teach me. The simple things that I´ve learned from my family have really pushed me to do better on the mission. The phrase "keep the faith" is pretty well engraved in my mind now and i´m doing my best to do so.

Love you dad, hope you have a great week!

Love,

Elder Henrie

{This Week Has BeeN CrAZY!}

Hello fam!

This week we did divisions in my old area, La Cabima! I worked with a missionary named Elder Girón from Perú. It was a great experience. When we were walking on the streets there, I remembered something my MTC teacher, brother Crapo, said about how the streets that we walk on in the mission will be sacred to us. I saw investigators that I had taught, people on the street that I recognized, and I saw a lot of the members. We got there tuesday in the morning to a funeral that we didn´t know about. A little girl (the niece of one of our recent converts) had passed away the week before. She was only five years old. A really cute girl named Molly that I remember playing with when we visited that members house. It was pretty sad.

After that we went to work. One of the best experiences I had there was seeing a lady that we had taught there. Her name is Mary Canto, her son is Anel. Her husband had passed away while I was serving there so we had a reunion in her neighbor´s house to share a message. We also gave her a blessing of comfort. Turns out that about a month ago she got baptized! And her 17 year old son, Anel, is now preparing to serve a mission (when I was there, he was about to graduate from the catechesis for his first communion in the Catholic Church). She gave us dinner and told me about the blessing that we had given her. She said that since that time she had felt much more peaceful and now she seems SO much happier than when I last saw her! It was a miracle to me to see the change that has occurred in her life. She´s a great person.

I also saw Juan Carlos Estrada (another convert from La Cabima) on saturday in his work. He works in our area in a security systems place. He seems to be struggling a bit because he is working so much, but I was so happy to see him. I hope he can get things straightened out to be able to go to church.

I was working on saturday with Elder Jarquín, from Nicaragua. This is his first change as a zone leader and he´s doing a great job. I learned a lot from him and we had a good experience getting SOAKED in a huge rainstorm. Haha on sunday all of the missionaries went to church with wet shoes! That night we taught Janet again. She´s amazing! We taught the law of chastity and the word of wisdom. She really understood that we must obey these laws out of love for God, not just because they are "rules". She is going to be a great member in the church...God has prepared her for it! This Sunday she and Olinda will both be getting baptized. I´m really excited for them. The members have been making them feel really welcome in the church. Our ward is really great!

This week has been so crazy! We´ve had stuff to do day and night here...but I am really enjoying it. I am trying to focus on the most important things here in the mission. I am really excited for these next few weeks! I know that there are lots of good experiences waiting for me. One thing that we are doing this change is interviewing a bunch of recent converts about their conversion and making a short movie for the mission...we are going to interview Janet the day of her baptism! I think that will be a spiritual moment for her.

Well family, I love you all! Thank you for all the love!

Elder Henrie

Mom!

6:49 pm eh? haha it still doesn´t really feel like the mission is coming to a close. I feel like I am just going to have changes again and go to a different area. New companion, new people, new ward, etc. Lately I´ve been thinking about my priorities...ever since Elder Ian Ardern gave his talk about Time in this life, it´s made me think about the importance of getting priorities set. Thinking about it, the top priority is simply living the Gospel, after that all the other priorities just fall into place, seeing as how everything else that is important in life really just has to do with living God´s plan to the fullest. One of the scriptures that I liked most this week is in Nefi 5. Nefi and his people, after building a temple, being industrious, and working with their hands, are described as living "after the manner of happiness." (2 Nefi 5:27) It is such a simple scripture but it describes the result of understanding and living God´s laws.

That´s really the path that I want to follow for the rest of my life. I know it´s going to be tough, but I´ve been sweating and walking in the rain for 23 months, so I think I can do it :)

I love you mom! Thanks for taking care of our family!

I love you,

Elder Henrie

{I aM EnJoyING iT A LoT}

Hey mom!

Sorry about the pictures...my camera card has a virus so i can´t use it in the office computers...they all got infected a couple of weeks ago and sister ward just fixed them all. So hopefully we´ll have time to go to some internet place to send pictures...if not, just know that that´s why i haven´t sent any :)

Conference was AWESOME! I read a talk message by Elder Uctdorf about preparing for conference and it talked about preparing questions to receive revelation during conference. All of the questions that I had written down were answered! When Elder Scott started the conference...I felt a really peaceful feeling that everything that would be said was true and that it came from God. I was still waiting for an answer to one of my questions when Elder Cook stood up in the last session...his talk answered very clearly what I had been thinking about.

During conference sessions on Sunday sister ward invited Janet and her two kids to go eat lunch at her house...it turned into a big group of missionaries and investigators and I think it was a really good experience. (and the food was delicious) We met with Janet this week and she told us that she believes everything we teach and that she wished she would have found the church earlier in her life! She´s pretty much ready for baptism. She has honestly been one of the best investigators that I´ve had. And her twin kids are incredible. Their names are Ángel David and Sara...really cute kids and they love church!

Tracting time in our own area changes every week. We try to do divisions at least twice a week and a lot of times we do the office stuff at hours that don´t interfere with our work schedule. We are able to work in our own area about as much as other missionaries if we plan our time well...like Elder Ardern said, we have to be masters of time. I liked that talk a lot and I feel like it helps me understand that there really is time to do everything that God wants us to do.

Honestly I have no idea about school...it would be good to know how far in advance you have to sign up. If you do register me, sign me up for the football team...looks like they´re doing well :)

Thanks for teaching me what I have needed to know here in Panama. I am enjoying it a lot and I feel like God is pleased with the changes that so many people have made here in Panama! I am excited to see more changes and have more experiences with the Spirit. I hope all is well and that Dad can get feeling better. I´ll be sure to pray for him!

Mucho love,

Elder Henrie

{TheY ArE SupER ExciTED AbOuT MissIONaRY WoRK}

Henries!

Week 1 of a new change. We are teaching a really cool columbian lady named Janet...she´s a reference from Sister Ward...she accepted a baptismal date for the 15 of october! She´s so awesome...today we visited her and she asked what she needed to do to get prepared for baptism. We also have an investigator named Olinda who will be baptized on the 15th as well.

We are looking for a family that can progress this change. Sorry it´s so late writing to you all. We had to move some missionaries today and then we went to teach some appointments and came to the office to do the number reports of the week. So it´s been kind of a crazy day.

The mission is going so well. I feel like it´s all coming together. Everything i´ve been needing to learn in these years here on the mission is coming together. I feel really great and peaceful about everything. I LOVE our investigators and our area! They are so incredible. Unfortunately we don´t get to know the members as well because there is less time for activities and service in our own area but I really love the members in our ward. They are super excited about missionary work.

I am really excited for Will! He´s going to have a great time on his mission!

I love you all!

Elder Henrie

ps i´m sorry it´s so short...I promise i´ll give a more full report next week on everything that´s going on...but we need to go home now haha

{ThE PlAN oF SaLVaTioN}

Fam!

We´ve finished week six of the change, meaning this week starts a new change. I´m excited for this change...general conference, we have some possible good baptisms, and Elder Ortega and I will be comps for six more weeks. This past week four missionaries were sent home. We went to the airport to take two of them, and one of the missionaries there, that i´ve known since my second area, came up to me and just started sobbing. He felt terrible and uncertain about everything that was going to happen. I read this morning something that Joseph Smith said about hell, that the suffering of the wicked is knowing that they won´t obtain the glory that they could have otherwise enjoyed. I think that is what happens sometimes to missionaries. Sometimes they lose sight of their potential and don´t obtain the blessings that God wants them to have.

But the mission looks really good now and we´re ready for changes. The missionaries really are working hard and we are seeing lots of success in the mission. I love it here! The panamanians are awesome. We had a talent show in our ward last week and the members did some really funny acts. One of the members, from Mexico, worked in the circus several years ago, so he had some really funny talents. He had a "knife throwing" act that had everyone laughing. It was a really good night.

Yesterday morning we went to look for investigators for church, but unfortunately there was no water in the city so none of our investigators could shower and they really didn´t want to go to church like that. But I did! :) It was a good day in church...Elder Laidler´s last day. It´s crazy that he´s going home already. He´s been a good missionary here.

Well family I love you a lot! GO UTES!

Elder Henrie

Hey mom,

Sounds like there´s been some tough situations. I´m really excited for Jeremy! Korea! That´s going to be a very interesting mission. I feel like this time the changes in the mission have been much easier...maybe it´s just because i´m getting used to the organization of everything. President told me that this is what happens every time, by the time the elders in the office get the hang of things, he has to kick them out and bring new ones in haha. But I guess that´s how life is.

I´ve been really interested this week in studying the plan of salvation. I´m not sure what but I´ve come up with lots of questions in my studies. I feel like having questions is always good to learn. And I really do keep learning. The problem can be that sometimes we don´t have much time to study but I fit it in wherever I can. I really don´t doubt. I have no doubts about the plan of salvation. Every day I understand it better. Before the mission I always thought of it as God´s way of comforting us and giving us hope for the next life. But it´s really a lot more than that. In God´s plan we learn who we really are and who we have to become. And He shows us how to do it.

I´m grateful for the Gospel. I hope that more people here can accept it. Kenny is doing really well. He has to be my all time favorite investigator. He has so many good questions and really wants to do what God wants.

I love you mom!

Elder Henrie