Temple Lights

This year we met at the temple to celebrate Christmas and Evelyn's birthday. The lights were pretty for sure, and I was prepared with my mini-tripod to take pictures. Check out the pictures, the group shot turned out especially well.

From Temple Lights

From Temple Lights

From Temple Lights

Panama Trip Slideshow

I promise you all that this will be the final post for Panama that I will make. I found out a way to embed slideshows, so I figured that I would just post all the pictures as a nice slideshow. Well let me know what you think.

Panama Summary

Well I was told that this blog has some dedicated readers who wanted to know how things turned out in Panama. Well it was a very good experience. It was nice to see how so many people have been progressing in the church and families are growing and ejoying the gospel. Others aren't progressing quite as much, but I think that their testimony is still there. The Panama Temple is quite a sight. It is small as temples go (the baptismal font takes up almost half the temple), but it is pretty and it will be a huge blessing to the faithful members in Panama. There was a video before the open house that gave a brief history of the church in Panama, and it was a pretty rocky history. The church began when some military personel lived in the Canal Zone and built the first church where the temple now stands and another in the city. The missonaries were removed from Panama when Noriega took over and Panamanians took over the missionary work. Those missonaries are now the majority of the bishops and stake presidents in Panama today. Panama now has about 40,000 members.


San Blas was a lot of fun too. I got to talk to the missionaries on one of the islands and give them a lot of advice on how to teach the Cunas. I advised them that they should give a lot of service and prove to the people that they genuinely loved them and cared about them so that they could effectively teach them. I was amazed at how much of the language came back to me, while I was there. It is such a beautiful place. If anyone ever wants to go visit let me know and I would love to be your tour guide!

Pictures

1-3 Panama City Temple (with Calixto)

4 I took some rub on tatoos and they were a hit with adults and kids alike (Magdiel - Calixtos grandson)

5 Calixto and Rosilda at Family Night (They were sealed in the Costa Rica temple)

6-7 San Ignacio de Tupile, this is the island I served on (pic taken from plane, the star is where I lived)

8 The missionaries from Playon Chico (a different island) and a former missionary and his wife (also there for the temple open house)

9 Me with some kids after playing on the beach and collecting starfish (after the pictures we threw them back in the water)

10 Sea turtle and grilled bananas with lime and chile and a corn and sugar cane drink (this is a fancy meal for the Cunas)

11 A pretty flower (tutu in Cuna)

12 The guys from Bugsu Gunki Galu in the house that I lived in when I was a missionary out there

Templo de Panamá

Tonight I went to the Panama Temple. Wow, it is so beautiful. Mom and Dad you remember where it was going to be built right? It is near the canal on the top of the hill, and it is surrounded by jungle. That jungle is protected because it is necessary for the water shed for the canal. So it will stay a very beautiful place. There were so many people there. It is amazing to think that when I was here they announced it. Enjoy the pictures. I will go again next week to see it again during the day, and hopefully get in contact with some of my converts so they can come too. Tomorrow to Kuna Yala (San Blas), so I won't be able to post while I am out there.

Days gone by

Yeah I know it´s been a while, well my days have been more full and I haven´t had the same amount of access to the internet these last few days but I´ll try to remember everything. One thing I forgot to talk about was the stake conference we had about 2 weeks ago, it was pretty cool because I got there really early because Alex was singing in the stake choir and they were practicing before it started, well as people walked in apparently they recognized me from behind and would tap me on the shoulder and we would hug like old friends that hadn´t seen eachother in a long time, it was really cool because it just kept happening and each time it just seemed to get better. It was also really cool because my mission president was there and he went up and sat down behind the pulpit, and I hadn´t even realized he was there or would be there, then he looked up there and he was looking right at me and a huge smile flashed accross his face, so we both got up and started walking towards each other and we met in the aisle and he wrapped me up in a huge bear hug (for those who don´t know my mission president he is like 6´7") then his wife came up behind me and then she gave me a hug too. As Ryan would say they were emotional times for all of us. It was kind of funny because Sister Aidukaitis then said, "I recognized you from behind as I was walking in, and thought why is President giving Elder Heward a hug? Then I remembered that you had already served your mission." They then invited me over to lunch on Wednesday at their home. It was really fun to be able to see some of the Elders I have served with, Elder Gonçalves who I was really close with was there and so it was really fun to see him too.

Then on Monday I ate lunch at a members home from my first area. She is so nice, it was remarkable because she remembered everything about me and my family, she said she was so sad that Mom couldn´t come because she thinks Mom is the prettiest lady she´s ever seen. She was telling her husband (who was baptized about a year after I left the area) that you wouldn´t ever be able to guess how old my mother was by looking at her. She also gave me a gift to give you you Mom so you´re pretty popular down here, just so you know. I also got to visit Júlios family, they were baptized the week before I arrived on the mission, so I got to teach them the new member discussions and we were pretty close. I don´t know if you remember that you sent me two of those CTR shirts but I gave one to Júlio and he showed me that he still has it. Then on Tuesday I visited a bunch of the people I taught in Valparaíso, it´s really fun to be able to sit with these people and not worry about having to run to another appointment.

Thursday I went to my Mission President´s house and ate lunch with them and Elder M. Silva, who had just finished his mission, and his father, who came to pick him up and visit his mission. They asked all the questions you would expect; about work, school, dating/marraige, etc. and it was really fun to talk about old times on the mission. Visiting them feels like visiting family, I honestly couldn´t imagine a better couple to preside over a mission, I love them.

After lunch Alex took me to Santo Antônio where I am now staying with Valmir and Shirley a couple that I baptized here. They have two little kids so its fun to play with them. One was born right after I left the mission and his name is Morôni they´re the cutest little kids. I went and visited a bunch of people here in Santo Antônio on Friday and then at night we went to Taguatinga (a big city nearby) and ate Rodízio de Pizza. It´s the same idea as the brazilian place we went to be before for my birthday except instead of meat it´s pizza. I had heard of them before but I never went to one on my mission because it was just kind of inconvenient, we didn´t have alot of time at night and that´s when they´re the most popular. So anyway it was even better than I could have imagined, the cool part is that they have this pasta bar kind of thing with a bunch of sauces and stuff to put into your pasta, and you choose the pasta and then all the stuff that goes into it and you put it into the pan yourself with the kinds of sauce you want. It´s like YC´s Mongolian grill but better. The rest of the time they´re bringing pizzas and lasagna and lasagna-like stuff to your table and asking if you´d like it (you know like the meat). It was pretty great.

Then on Saturday I went to Valparaíso just to eat lunch with a family that I hadn´t been able to see while I was there. It was really fun. I baptized on of the sisters in the family and alot of the others were already members. Her baptism was really cool because she had sisters come from all over Brasilia to see her baptism.

As for the temple dedication it was awesome! It was really emotional for me because it´s so hard for so many Brazilian members to go to the temple because of the distance so you start thinking about how much this is going to bless so many people. Unfortunately it won´t affect the members in my mission they will continue to have to travel about 12 hours by bus to get to the temple (they won´t be going to the new temple that was dedicated, it´s farther away). Elder Ellis, a member of the seventy spoke (he´s also visited our mission) and he talked about something that was really good, he talked about the temple being too close. He said most of the Brazilian members couldn´t even imagine a temple too close because so many live so far away, but he said the new temple in the area was going to be a cheallenge for the members there in Curitiba because now they would have this problem. They would be able to tell themselves the temple is so close I´ll go tomorrow, and then the next day they would say the same thing until month after month had passed by without going to the temple. It´s definitely true, we have that tendency. I remember when I got home from my mission I felt like the member in Arizona took the temple for granted, the members in Brasilia dreamed about having a temple here all the time, that was what the missionaries ate, drank, and slept. It was our goal to provide the fertile soil, we worked so hard for it. Then when I got home and saw that there are so many people who don´t go to the temple when It´s so close to us I was like this is crazy the members in Brasilia would do anything to have what we have. When I got home from my mission I went to the temple quite often, often more than once a week because I told myself I wouldn´t take it for granted. Well just like everyone else I slowly fell into the once a month or once every other month deal. He talked about making a plan with your family about how often you will go to the temple and so I´ve decided to do that, and get better about how often I go. Especially now that three new temples have been announced in Arizona. I think that is going to be awesome! I can´t wait. Tonight President Monson is making history he´ll be holding the first meeting ever from the President of the church here in Brasilia. I´m really hoping that tonight President Monson is going to announce a temple here in Brasilia. I think I would cry. We´ll see.