25 de julio

I finally got my camera fixed, so I will be able to send some pictures now. I plug my camera into some sketchy computers so sometimes some viruses get passed through. Now that I am back in the city with nice computers that have antivirus, it was immediately rejected. Now it is all clean. One virus was titled "lumixitup" which I thought was pretty clever.

I got to meet one of my favorite artists here this week, Japonnesse. His producer is a member, so one day when we went over to eat at his house, he was over there. I snapped a photo with him and got his autograph. I sent a picture of him. He is the guy with a gold tooth. waaay cool.

The national crises that everyone is talking about right now is that the price of rice might go up and bread is being sold by weight now. Everyone is in a panic because that is all they eat. A 1 cent different in the price would probably mean like $15,000 dollars difference in budgeted food cost. Not really, but we eat a lot of rice here.

The famous (or infamous) diablo rojos are slowly being replaced by Metro Bus here. I for one am a huge fan, but again more drama from everyone. For one they are air conditioned, cleaner, safer, more reliable,...etc. I could keep going. I count it as progress for Panama.

Up until now in my mission I have not really been exposed to strange foods, but all of that is changing now. I am not sure why. I would have thought that the farther away from the city I got, the weirder the food would become. Not so. This week I ate chicken feet, cow tongue, pig and cow tail, and turtle eggs. I felt like Brian from the book Hatchet when he has to eat turtle eggs. It was so strange to be eating chicken feet. yikes!

My campanion Elder Sanchez is the district leader here so sometimes we travel to other areas to do baptismal interviews. Friday we went to Vera Cruz to interview some people that are getting baptized. I was thoroughly impressed with how beautiful it is. The air was so fresh compared to the city, and I commented on how quiet it was. I was just about to finish that comment when we heard some gunshots. haha. Still is reminded me a lot of Chorrera in appearance. My companion said it is a lot like the interior.

I hope everyone has a good week.

Love,

Elder Whiting