October 4, 2010
This week I got to know my area a little better. We actually have two areas. Rio Claro is our official area, but we also work in Puerto Jimenez, two days out of the week. Here in Rio Claro there is a branch. Puerto Jimenez is a Group. Here in Rio Claro there is a nice church building, with air conditioning to meet in. The branch president is Presidente Cruz. And guess what. He is the same Cruz, that was bishop of the ward in my first area, Moravia. It's pretty crazy that I might finish the mission, with the same ward/branch leader as I started the mission. Also in this branch is the brother and son of the family Marin in Tres Rios, as well as Yesenia and her family, who are related to Xinia and Saylen from Cariari. I actually met Yesenia in Cariari about a year ago. It was crazy seeing these people again. The president of the group in Puerto Jimenez is Presidente Conejo. The church meetings in Puerto Jimenez are in our new house there. So we have two areas, two houses, etc. and its pretty sweet. The problem is that these two areas are 3 1/2 hours apart by bus. We would be able to go in between each area in 40 minutes if we could take a boat, but since we can't do that as missionaries, we have to take the three hour bus ride around the bay or gulf thing that divides the areas, to get to the other side, and to the other area. Its pretty exciting stuff. This week I basically got to know a little bit about each area and about the zone, but there is still more to learn.
This weekend we had bad luck with Conference. We went to Ciudad Neilly (city) (my ex-comp Elder Perez's area) where I did a baptismal interview for Crispiliano (Who technically lives in Panama, but I guess the closest church is here). We were planning on watching Conference on the computer in the secretaries office, but no matter what we did, there was no signal, and the Internet didn't work. That night we returned to Rio Claro, and we watched the Sacerdocio (Priesthood) Session, which was amazing. Yesterday morning we went to find someone to take to the conference, and it looked like we didn't have any one to take, because right now we have basically no investigators, but we were able to invite a woman named Gina, who my comp had taught once before, and she came to conference. We watched the whole Sunday morning session without problems, but we missed most of the afternoon session, because it started to rain really hard and the signal wasn't getting through. Although I missed most of conference, what we saw was really special, and made me meditate a lot about the future.
Elder Tobler
