Apostle Visit! 1-21-13

The fam we live with is just a g'mom, mom and daughter. They´re pretty great. We saw Elder Christofferson and all. We all shook his hand and he said all of our names as we went by. His Spanish is amazing! Soooo beautiful. I want Spanish like that.... one day, maybe if I´m diligent. He was amazing and we had 4 other general authorities with us. plus! he went to one area in Panama to talk to the people and guess where he went..... that´s right... my stake. God has blessed me so much to let me be in this area right now and with this comp. This is like the best time I´ve ever had in my mish. I know hard times will come... so I´m just enjoying my time as it lasts. I´m gaining more hope about going to San Blas.  Woohoo! We are getting like 100 new mish in the next year! It´s like doubling our mish. Right now we have like 30 something sisters... we´re going to have like 70-80! we´re going to be 1/3rd of the mish! SO exciting.
Love you all!
Hna Schumacher

Not too sure what they are doing, but this is during a Mission President visit to their area. Subway was on the menu though!

Mish Work and Life 1-14-13

This week was a little less exciting. We have some amazing investigators. Maria is a lady who went to church the Sunday after we started visiting her. It took one visit and she's come both these weeks! she's amazing. She's all set to get bap this month! And she invited all these 17 to 19 year old boys that are friends of her son to come listen to us. It's awesome. We taught them the word of wisdom this week. sooooo great. They confessed to drinking and all and wow. They were just so honest and awesome and maria is such a strong women and loves the word of God. Also, when we asked for references from her, she just walked outside and yelled over at her neighbor who was sitting outside and was like hey! listen to these muchachas. listen to la palabra! haha. She cracks me up. I love her. I love these people.

So Elder Christofferson is coming this week to Panama. He's speaking to us mish on like sat and my stake on Sunday. We're stoked. Should be great. I hope so. Seeing an apostle here is way cooler than any other time in my life cause like..... um well like I'm teaching the importance of apostles and prophets in the church of Jesus Christ and one is going to come talk to us! How cool is that! haha.

Sooooo. I saw a huge cockroach in the kitchen this morning.... that was fun and I'm enjoying watching the process of decay of dead dogs along our path every day and talking birds are pretty fun. Especially ones that sing about Jesus in evangelical praises. Note to family.... the praying Mantis here are AMAZING and huge and very bright yellow. Takes me back to good old times.... and even if I don't love Chihuahuas... puppy Chihuahuas are sooooo much fun and tiny! those are my animal stories of the day....

so yeah, peace out home flies! love you!

hna. shumachair

Catching Papayas¨ the name of our b rated band. 1-7-13

(Warning: In Sasha style, some parts are, well, gross!)

So I decided I could make a good living catching papayas here in Panama. I´m tall and I never miss (knock on wood).

I could do well as a dead animal picker-upper. I always notice the dead frogs, mice, dogs, birds on the street cause I walk looking down. (needless to mention the situation with the kittens and puppies in my first area) my comp is starting a foto collection of dead animals; it´s pretty ¨classy´´.

Summer is kicking in, I´m as red tanned as I´ve ever been before. do we have native american blood, cause that would make sense (sorry, if that sounds racist, latinos are super easy going about calling people black, fula (white), chino, fat, skinny... it´s norm, but in the states we always tiptoe around this kind of stuff. (Just a culture note.) so one of our investigators has a fantastic herb garden. well, an everything garden. I LOVE plants (I think I give thanks to my mom for that) so she gave me a branch of her aloe plant to rub the goo all over my face and body. it´s pretty awesome. haha

so, I have tons to write... but have no energy whatsoever. I just want to go sleep for days. This morning we got up at 5 to go to the temple. I didn´t feel well but I headed out. well, it got worse on the diablo rojo (crazy school bus) to panama. I about threw up! so the bus ride sucked. I jumped out of my seat to race to the front of the bus and handed my money to my comp. I DID NOT want to throw up out the window... which about happened. I rushed to the bathroom in the transit center in Albrook and I´ll just let you imagine. But I wanted to go to the temple with my zone, so off we went. Waiting at the temple, I asked the elders from our ward to give me a blessing. Elder Castillo gave me a great blessing. I´m so grateful for the Priesthood, the authority and power of God. Not feeling tons better, I entered the temple session that was PACKED. they added 11 extra chairs in the room. I felt crappy, but kept feeling better and better. I know that the Lord blessed me. I know that he knows me. When I left the temple, once again, I felt terrible as we walked to the bottom of the hill to catch a bus. well... while walking with the whole zone I stepped off the path and puked.... in front of everyone. it was really dumb. luckily my comp knows me well enough to ward off the zone and tell them to stop gathering around and watching.... ummm... duh! haha but they just all wanted to help I´m sure.... remember the time I got sick with my mom of the mish (1st companion).... well, one of the mish was worried that I hadn´t gone to the clinic or taken anything.... But I´m more of the person to just hide out by myself until it passes.... unless it gets bad... then, yes mom, yes dad... Ill do something about it. and plus my comp is the nurse. no worries I´m so grateful that the Lord blessed me with health while I was in the temple and everything was all clear on the buses. he knows what we want. he knows what we need. He knows what we can handle. He knows that we need hard experiences to grow and learn and trust in Him. So now I´m just supper week and thirsty.... hopefully I get back from the internet cafe all clear. love you all... and I hope you enjoy my Panamanian TMI experiences... I tried to edit it. really I did.

I´m SO happy. the happiest I´ve ever been on my mish. Hna Cooper is amazing! We love being together and we are learning an incredible amount from this time that we have together. She is going to be an even more incredible mish by the end of her time.  We are learning about going for it and what it means to have faith.
I so excited to be here every day. Even when I'm sick. Even when I´m dying of heat. Even when the dirt road seems to go nowhere. I´m loving my mish.
Love you all!!!
Hna Schumacher

The little things in life make us happy! 12-31-12

We worked sooooo hard this week. We are on fire! We work awesome together and the Lord blessed us more than we hoped for. We have a family that is prolly going to get married to get baptized! I´m so excited. we´ll both be here for the baptism cause this is a 9 week change. SOO exciting!

------Yesterday in church The Lord assured us that we are doing something right here in our area.  He blessed us with a 35 person higher attendance in church of menos activos and 7 investigators! It was amazing and over whelming! Church was work! We were running around trying to greet and take care of EVERYONE. It was amazing... I think I already wrote that, but it was! We were so happy. What joy is given us as we work in la obra del Señor!

While I was sitting in church next to an investigating 80 year old man who is fantastic, I wrote this in my journal: Ive never been so sure that I´m supposed to be where I´m at. It´s like a place in this seat in this time was carved out just for me. There´s no where else I am needed more in the whole world! If I came on my mission just to point at which word and line we´re on in the hymn to this old man in church today, I´m satisfied. I am perfectly happy and nothing in the world matters more that this.¨ 

I love this work. I love this people. I love this area. I love my comp. I love my God.----------

Transfers and Christmas Eve 12-24-2012

Sis Mish and their beautiful Christmas Tree

SO... so leaving my area was hard. I´m now in Arraijan (ar-ray-han, accent on the han). Caceres, or Nuevo Chorrillo, if you can find that. I´m super close to where I was, but it´s way different. I´m with another GRINGA! can you believe it. I was pretty upset for about 5 minutes and then I got over myself. She´s Hna. Cooper. She´s the new nurse. She´s from Minnesota. She has one less transfer than I do! so we´re both new in the mish! crazy right! Pres Ward always talks about some of the weird companionships that he´s prompted to put together... I´m pretty sure we´re one of them now.... She´s way cool. I love her already.

My comp and I love our Christmas tree that grandma sent me, with lights and everything! It was amazing! I loved it. and I found ornaments in my house to put on it! My comp has a ton of Christmas music too. It almost feels like Christmas  and since she´s the nurse, we´re heading to Panama tonight to eat Christmas eve dinner with pres and sister ward! They had just invited all elders and Hermana Ward was like, it´s all boys, we need some girls, so she was like, lets call the sisters! So we are going :) I´m pretty happy about that....

Christmas Eve Dinner with Senior Mish and ???