San Blas Islands Week #9

Haley must be very busy or didn't catch a boat again or something because this very short letter is from last week and didn't write this week. Either that or she fell through the toilet seat and drown! 

August 21, 2017

Noegambi Family! (Still don't know what this means exactly - Hello or something similar I'm sure)

Monday we were on a different Island, Nargana. We got stuck there because our panga left us, so we had to find a member and sleep in their house. It was worth it cuz they have hamburgers on their island, so we ate a ton of those.

Then this week was cool! We had Culture Week, so all the Cunas dressed up in their Cuna outfits, even the little kids and did dances and dramas and stuff. It was sooo cute! Also they did a lot of dancing, but Cuna dancing. I love how they dance! Mom you can probs look up a video of Cuna Dansa.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6cKJmLMVYJs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8HM7iq3mvP0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=245mCAr1HH4

Also we had baptism of Abinadi, and it was cool!

This week we are in Plyon Chico having District Metting with the whole Zone. So that's why we are writing.

I GOT THE PACKAGE WITH THE BIRTHDAY BALLOONS!!!! (sent in April!) WOOOHOOO!!!  iT WAS SO cute and i love the pizza socks haha! ALso I got a letter from Rockforsd that he sent in August!

No time, but I love you all!

Hna Hallsted

Mom's Questions

Do the Cunas know about the eclipse?

everyone here knows! They all think its the end of the world for the US hahaha, oh cunas

Does your apartment/house have a shower? How do you get any warm water? we can boil water if we want to, but we just get it out of the well or bathe in the river. well thats if we want to go all the way to the river which is in the jungle, and we have to get there in a kayak and then hike a mile. Oh cool story about the river, there's a mereman who lives in it and protects our island from bad spirits and crocodiles and sharks and stuff.

I heard there is a lot of lice there? Have you seen that? every single person has lice on the island. I still havent gotten it, but who knows how long my luck will last!

How is the weather there? Is it still chilly sometimes? Does is rain as much as Panama did? its super cold in the morning, and suuuuper hot in the day if it doesn't rain. Oh and when it rains, it's the heaviest rain i've ever seen. It rains like every two days.

Where exactly in Mexico is Hermana Canedo from??

Hna Candeo is from Oaxaca (like gwahaca), from Puerto Escondido is the city. Her moms facebook is Leticia Perez Ruiz, but she doesn't speak English haha! But you should totally write her, im sure she would love it! Her sister could try to translate. Her dad knows English, but they're divorced, so that might not work out.

Is the Cuna language at all like Spanish??

Cuna is absolutely nothing like Spanish. To start there are only 15 letters in the Cuna Alphabet, 3 different ways to count, and three different ways to speak depending on how spiritual it is. Really, its not that hard. Its a simple ancient language, but still a lot to learn!

San Blas Islands Week #7 “Talent night, flight plans, and baptisms”

Hey Fam!

I’m on Nargana again, different island because we still don’t have internet! We had changes (transfers) today, but we have no idea, we assume nobody had service or minutes to call, so we just assumed we are still together! haha! I’m glad because I love Hermana Canedo and I want the rest of my mission together! But we’ll see haha! Soooo Alaska sounds super cool! I wanna go there too! Let’s go after I get back! Well, not right after cuz I really really want to come back to Panama and show you guys all my mission. Can we do that please?? Maybe after Christmas?

Biggest news.... I GOT MY ITINERARY!!!!! I’m coming home 21 Dec at 7:08 PM!!!! Too soon, la verdad! I’m pretty sad about it. I legit almost cried when I saw it. I love you all, but I don’t want to come home yet! I’ll be quite sure to make to most of my time here. Only 3 changes left! ugh, time goes by wayyy too fast!

These past couple weeks have been great! I’ll just go ahead and share some highlights.

We've had baptisms of Yamileth, the cutest little girl in the world, also the best mormon we have. Allen, funny story with Allen, we are teaching him and his dad, and his dad told us Allen was 9 and gave us his birthday and everything, but then his mom came back from Panama, and she told us that he is 7... Soooo we may have accidentally baptized a 7 yr old, can you believe it?! We're still not sure yet, but still crazy. Birthdays in the cuna world don’t really matter, so normally people aren’t sure how old they are, so when we called President, he just laughed and told us it happens all the time out here. Haha, still so embarrassing…

Annnd Giovani. This is one of my favorite baptisms of all time. Giovani used to be one of the most annoying people I have ever met. He doesn’t speak much Spanish, and would swear in English every time he saw us. Well, we got him to come to Seminary one day and talked about a knowing Jesus Christ. We talked about how eternal life is coming to know God and Jesus, and asked the kids if they knew Jesus. Giovani told us that he didn't know Jesus, because he can’t read the bible. From that day on, he completely changed! He comes to seminary everyday and always wants to say the prayer and try to answer questions! It was

just amazing to see how the Gospel really changes lives! His baptism was awesome, and he kept telling me "hermana, yo bautiso como Jesus, si hermana?". It was so cute! (Google Translate: Sister, I am baptized as Jesus, yes sister)

Other cool stuff:

Last week we came to Nargana again for a seminary seminar with all the other teachers from the other islands. It was really great to learn how to teach seminary cuz we really don’t know what we are doing haha! Also it was suuuuper great cuz we got to stay in a crappy hotel and got to sleep in beds! I'll be honest I llooooove my hammock, but it was nice spreading my body out how I wanted. I was super sore in the morning though haha!

Alllsoooo we had the first ever Talent Night here in Ticantiki! It was super successful and not at the same time. Everybody did cool things like sing and dance, and the gay community took it away. There are 4 gays on our Island, all mormon, and all supppper hilarious! I love them. They put together the funniest acts in the world and sang the funniest songs, but then Remy (my bff) did a dance that wasn’t all too clean.  We also had a lot of kids and the moms were offended that we were playing pop music in the church and cuz Remy's dancing was honestly inappropriate for children. Of course, we weren’t expecting that, but then we had to announce that we would only have appropriate dancing and music, and poor Remy was so embarrassed!

Also it was Canedo's birthday!!!! We cracked eggs on her head and I threw her a little surprise party in the church! It was great!

Allllllsooo the best ever! We used to have about 30 people in church, but this Sunday we had 74!!!! There weren’t enough chairs so everyone was sitting on laps, and there wasn’t room inside, so people were outside around the doors and windows. The youth class was so packed we had to go outside! It was soooo great to see the fruit of our efforts! I am one happy missionary this week haha!

Anyway, that's a rough draft of things!  Love you all sooo much!

Hna Hallsted

Answers to Questions:

All baptisms are in the ocean. Yep, the same place we do our business…