Adventure in Panama!

We had the awesome experience of taking our grandparents and parents to see some cool things around the city when they came to visit! Here we are at the Miraflores Locks on the Panama Canal. Absolutely incredible the engineering behind moving these thousand-ton cargo ships from one ocean to the other. I LOVE PANAMA!

Training the English Teachers! We had the awesome experience for the last few weeks of our internship to train the teachers of the English Connect program in the country. The trainings were great and we feel that the program is going to continue to progress and members will continue to become proficient in their English abilities! I have come to love the teachers of English connect in Panama. They are 100% service volunteers, they receive no payment and sometimes their job is tiring because students fail to keep commitments and many are absent from class. Despite this, they are always there ready to teach their classes each week. I was grateful that I could take a minute to give them thanks for the awesome work they do.

We had the amazing experience of meeting a wonderful family during our stay in Boquete, Panamá. The way it turned out was definitely by divine design. As my brother and I walked towards the Rio Caldera hoping to find a place to wade, we debated which way we should go to find the best spot. Trusting Google maps, we walked towards a place it said there was a bridge. Upon arriving, we noticed a small trail going up the mountain slope that ran alongside the river. It was intriguing for some reason, and I now know that it was the Spirit that prompted us to take that route. We climbed up the path and realized that it led to a small Ngobe indian village. Tiny heads of children poked out from above and they surely must have been wondering what two tall, white people were doing invading their village! We made it up and said hello to a young mother washing outside. She told us the trail didn't continue past the village and ended there. As we turned to go back down the mountain, I felt stro...

Wow! We are having the time of our lives here in Panamá! And we're super tired at the moment, but I will take just a few minutes to update our blog. It's been crazy these past 3 weeks. We have been able to present the Church's new program of EnglishConnect to 11 new wards/branches in the David stake and Chitre district here in the western part of Panamá. This has equated to lots of bus travel, nights in hotel and the house of Hermana Felicita Landero the mother of our supervisor Rixela. It's been a ride and I'm so grateful to God for helping and inspiring us. Sometimes I worry that there won't be much interest in the program and we will be wasting our time, but that is never the case! In every ward/branch we've been to, there have always been hermanos interested and excited to learn more English and better their lives! We have also been blessed to find hermanos that are willing to be teachers. It's a crazy commitment but for these people the cost is ne...

Another awesome week in Panama! This week we began three big projects that will help with the self-reliance program here in Panama.  The first initiative are classes that we will be providing for the English Connect teachers throughout the country. The English Connect program is going very well here, however in our visits we've realized that some of the teachers are not following the manual in certain aspects. So we are currently planning a training that we can give to all the teachers and help improve the quality of the classes.  The second project we are planning are firesides for the YSA here in Panama. There is a huge need to disperse information about the Perpetual Education fund and the BYU Pathway program to the YSA because many of them do not know about these useful resources they have. We will be conducting activities for the YSA to help them understand these things.  The last project is a database of jobs available in Panama City. Our manager, Rixela, nee...

 Does this need a caption? :D  A typical bus. They call them the Diablos Rojos (Red Devils)  Our awesome friend Laura who made us this delicious pasta casserole!  Morning run view  Beautiful Panamá City Temple  English Class!  This is our Panamán little brother Cochi in his legit Star wars themed room. He's awesome!  Hermana Yolanda. She cleans in the church area office. jajajajaj  Barrio San Miguelito, Ciudad de Panamá Bike ride at dusk in the city