My first attempt at sending pictures!

1. Me with my trainer, Hermana Rodriguez, when we got assigned.

2. My district family from the CCM! I'm pretty much obsessed with them. Hermana King, the little one under me has a better version of this picture but I'll have to wait until after the mission to get it. They're all amazing! Hermana Okura is the Hawaiian one, Elder Montoya is above her. Hermana Bloomfield is the blonde, Hermana Weatherhead is the one making a funny face and my companion, Hermana Caldwell is behind us in the teal shirt. Elder Adlard (he's from Kamas!) is the blonde next to Hermana King and Elder Dodge (he was working at Sammy's when we celebrated my mission call) is on the end with the blue tie. The bottom row (from the left) is Elder Hutchings, Elder Goodman, and Elder Davis. They're the best!

3. Hermana Okura, Hermana Caldwell, me, Hermana Brewer, and Hermana King in the MTC. Hermana Brewer was my companion in the MTC and I love her!! Hermana Caldwell was in a trio with us for part of the time. I promise they're all really cute, we just like making silly faces.

Ok that's all for now. Test run complete. Love you all!

Hermana Dance

Hello from Volcan! A day of sunshine :)

I don't have much time because this internet is super slow and I've been trying to attach pictures. We'll see how it ends up. I want to send them all to you but I discovered that if I try to attach more than three they all get deleted and it starts over. Wahmp wahhh. Three will have to do for now.

Thanks for your awesome emails mom and dad. I always learn from you and feel uplifted after hearing from you :) I wrote down the scriptures and I plan to look them up today and study more about faith, agency, and baptisms.

Thats awesome you got to set apart a couple from Latvia to be senior missionaries! How is the rest of the mission going?

Candida got baptized Saturday! It was a crazy day and we were running around all day doing errands and getting things ready but it finally came together. She looked so beautiful in her white clothes! And the Spirit was strong when they performed the ordinance. Lots of members came to support her but we need to work on teaching them to come in Sunday clothes...most of them (even the speakers) were in jeans and sports clothes. She said she felt good and was glad she got baptized. We still need to teach her a lot and help her get used to the culture of the church but I think she will do well :)

Things are going well. We have lots of people to teach and they're progressing but we still need to work harder to get them to come to church. Random stories from this week:

Saturday we ended up at a birthday party for a little girl who we didn't even know. We met her mom once and she invited us to the party and when we came with the Zone leaders (they were in our area waiting to interview someone) they were all excited and gave us all tons of food. People are so friendly and hospitable here-that would never happen in the U.S., haha. People are always giving us food and if we contact them at the tiendas they buy us snacks and juice half the time. It's different but a very good quality they have.

Ahh ok I'm out of time sorry this is so short but I love you all and I know the church is true. This is a great work!

Love,

Hermana Dance

Oops

So one of the downers of not speaking very much Spanish is that I never know what's going on. I thought we were leaving to go to the grocery store but then we ended up coming to use the internet so I don't have my camera to send you all pictures. Sorry, next week for sure!

Today has been good. Last Pday was crazy because we just rode on buses all day to meet up with our zone/district so we didn't get much time for anything else but today we got to clean our house really well and study longer, etc. It was more relaxing and one room at a time I'm slowly tackling the bugs and dust and ickies of the house. Elders used to live here up until 4 transfers ago and they didn't do a very good job of taking care of it and the sisters before us didn't try too hard to repair any of the damage so it's slowly coming together. Last week I cleaned out the whole fridge and almost all the cupboards and found lots of spiders, bug nests and cockroaches-eek. Mom remember when we helped you clean everything in the mission apartment when you moved in? It's like that but ten times worse. But it's getting better and I'm getting used to living with bugs :)

Mission life is an adjustment. (I'm not sure if I spelled that right. It's funny how my Spanish isn't really getting any better but my English is slowly getting worse...haha) So much can happen in one week that I don't even know where to start. Thank you for your support and prayers. I've definitely felt them this week as I've been trying to get used to this lifestyle, stop thinking about home/myself, learn Spanish and become a missionary. Sometimes when I've felt blobby and Debbie-Downer I've said a prayer and then we teach a really spiritual lesson and I catch a glimpse of how lucky I am to be here. It's a roller coaster but a blessing.

This month we're studying faith as a mission and I've been trying to better understand the relationship between us having faith that with the Lord's help we can find and baptize people and the personal agency of those individual people. We can have tons of faith but faith doesn't override a person's agency, so how does our faith that we can make a difference in this work create baptisms? I don't know if that made sense, I hope it did. If you all have any insight I would appreciate it.

We have a baptism on Saturday for Candida, a 16 year old girl from a humble indigenous family. She's very quiet but she's starting to open up to us and we can see that she's growing. Her parents can't get baptized because her dad has two senoras and they all live together in the same house. He would have to boot out half of his family if they were to get baptized. But I think her younger siblings will get baptized and we're working hard to get them involved and help them become truly converted.

The people here are really friendly and it's easy to contact people and get into houses but it's hard to get people to act by coming to church, reading the Book of Mormon, etc. We have a lot of work to do!

Oh, before I forget. I guess the postal service or the government or some sort of Big Brother figure doesn't allow any food to be shipped into the country. If anyone sends it, they take all the edible stuffs out of your package and leave a little note saying it's been removed. So if you were thinking about sending candy or any kind of food, please don't waste your money. I guess I won't be eating much American candy for a while... But it's ok because I've already gotten attached to these bland yet strangely addicting fried banana chip things. And they're only $.30, wahoo!
Welp, I'm out of time but I love you guys and I know this church is true! I'm praying for you all :)

Love,

Hermana Dance

Hebrews 11-the first 2 or 3 where it talks about faithfully running the race which is set before you and about how in the moment we don't take joy in our afflictions but later we're grateful for them. Sorry, I don't have my scriptures. Love you!

Yaaayyyy Panama

It's been a while but I can finally write you all an email. The schedule's been a little weird this week because of different meetings we've had and our zone leaders had so I get to write you all today but I think normally you'll hear from me on Tuesdays. Monday is our Pday but we have to use the internet as a district/zone on Tuesdays when we have district meeting to keep each other in line and make sure we only use 30 minutes. I thought we'd get an hour out here but I guess the mission rule is 30 minutes. Ah well, such is life.

Next week when I don't have so much to catch up on I'll attempt to send some pictures. This time using the internet passes so fast though! Thanks everyone for your letters and emails-it's great to hear from you!

My first area is called Volcan and it's in the mountains an hour or two from the Costa Rican border. God is kind to me and it's a huge blessing for me to be here in Volcan because it's in the mountains so it's not boiling hot like everywhere else in Panama. I've been wearing jackets every other day because it rains all day and we were actually pretty cold by the time we got home. But I feel very lucky to be here.

There's a member family from America living here and they gave me the URL to a website where they keep a bunch of photos of the area and the missionaries so you all can see what it's like: www.flickr.com/photos/young-in-panama

I hope it works because it's beautiful here and it'd be nice if you could see what it's like. We had lots of orientations and meetings on Tuesday and Wednesday, and then once I got put with my trainer on Wednesday we had a 10 hour bus trip to get to Volcan from the city. We stayed overnight with some sisters in David, and then continued the next morning. Overall it was a long first couple of days but I'm glad to be settling in.

My trainer is from Honduras and her name is Hna Rodriguez. I'm learning a lot from her about the doctrine, how to be a good teacher, etc. She goes home in September so we think I'm probably going to "kill" her or in other words, be her last companion. She's nice but I feel kind of lonely sometimes because I've discovered that I only speak church Spanish and not regular life Spanish so it's kind of hard for us to get to know each other. Plus everyone else around has different accents, and it's usually hard to hear them over the rain and they talk super fast so most of the time I only have a very broad idea of what's going on and I don't feel very useful. I want to be a tool in the Lord's hands but I feel very ineffective a lot of the time. But I'm studying and learning more Spanish every day and with time and faith I know it will get better.

The members and nice but there are only one or two really strong families. The branch attendance is usually around 30-50 so we definitely have work to do. We have lots of investigators and people to teach, and lots of walking from appointment to appointment. The people are very friendly on the streets and life is much slower here than in the city or the U.S.

I feel like a lost puppy because I just follow my companion around and do what she does and I don't know where anything is or how to do anything still. But she is patient and I am learning. I'm still trying to understand the importance of this work and to come to feel like the sons of Mosiah did where they couldn't bear the thought of any soul perishing.

I've been studying faith more because I know I need to increase my faith-faith that I can learn, faith that people will be receptive and that some have been prepared, faith that they'll progress and be baptized and that I can help them do that. I know that I have faith, but it definitely needs to be strengthened. I've been studying it a little bit in the scriptures and I keep reading dad's zone conference talk about faith-it's great.

Today I read Jarom and Omni because I'm slowly reading through the whole Book of Mormon in Spanish. This time I was struck by how around 200 years of history was covered by 6 or 7 people in only 4 pages. A lot of the writers in these two books just said something like "I'm writing to obey the commandments of my father, but I don't have anything else to add. All the prophecies are already written." It seems to me like they didn't do their best. Yes, they were obedient to the commandments and that's awesome, but they didn't do all they could have to write in the record. It's like me and my mission. Yes, I obeyed and came on a mission when I felt like the Lord asked me to. But merely obeying isn't enough. I have to obey and give my very best, my whole heart, might, mind and strength and give my soul as an offering to the Lord (end of Omni somewhere....verse 26 maybe? I don't have my scriptures out sorry). So I'm going to try to do that every day, even when it's raining all day and it's hard and everyone thinks we're crazy and our investigators don't come to church. Welp, these are my thoughts and now I'm out of time. I'll try sending pictures next time :) Love you all!

Love,

Hermana Dance

Omni 1:26-yup, I found it.