Doo wah diddy?

(late post from August 30)

Hola mi querida familia,

I´m trying that thing where I write to you all BEFORE I read the other emails so that you all get a fair share of what´s going on in the life of Sister Brewster and it´s not just two paragraphs of apologies for lack of time. !Está bien!

So the subject line for this letter comes from the fact that yesterday while we were eating at one of our member´s house, they showed me a book they have to learn English. There were two songs in the entire book that supposedly helped Spanish speakers learn English more easily: ¨California Dreamin´¨ from the Mamas and the Papas (I was so excited when I saw that) and ¨¨Doo Wah Diddy.¨ I thought that was an interesting selection. Try picturing Panamanians singing ¨Tha she was just a-walkeeng down tha street seengen DOO WAH DEEEDY DEEEDY DUM DEEEDY DOOO...¨ I just had to laugh. No wonder our language is hard for them! Oh, also, I got to teach the young women in our ward how to sing ¨The Climb¨ from Miley Cyrus because they want to sing it for one of the girls who´s leaving for her mission in a few weeks and needed my help with the pronunciation. I had to explain to them that Miley Cyrus speaks ¨bad English¨ (¨gonna¨ instead of ¨going to¨and all that) and then I helped them practice singing it. I felt weird and yet oddly proud of myself in that moment...
This past week was insanely packed with events. We had our first interviews with President Ward and let me just say right now that I LOVE him. I couldn´t be happier with another president! He´s so positive, upbeat and he absolutely adores the Hermanas--he´s got a soft spot for sister missionaries because his daughter served a mission. I honestly feel like between him and his wife, I´ve got parents in the mission (don´t worry Mom and Dad--you have not been replaced).

We had zone conference this week, too, where we get to sit in the freezing chapel for 8 hours and learn from all of the ZL´s and the president. The topic for this week was using the Book of Mormon and how we need to be looking for more opportunities to share it with people. I felt inspired by that and this weekend I gave away a copy of the Book of Mormon to a lady we contacted at a bus stop. We don´t generally hand out the books on the streets here but I felt like I needed to carry one with me that day and this lady that we talked to showed some genuine interest in the church, so I wrote a brief testimony on the inside cover and gave it to her with a promise that we were going to stop by her house later this week. We´ll see what happens.

The most important thing of note is Natasha´s baptism which was this Saturday. Even though all of our plans for the agenda fell through (our speaker got sick and the primary didn´t show up to sing their special number) it was still a special day. We bought a cake for her and lots of people showed up to support her. Pretty neat. She is now officially a member! I just hope she always stays strong.

Well I´ve given up trying to send pictures via internet because people tell me my card can get viruses if I use it here, so just expect some photos in the mail...soon :). Or, you know...surf the Internet. Someone´s probably already blogged all about this on a different missionary´s site. Nothing´s secret anymore.

I love you guys and I hope you´re all doing well. Happy 34th to Angie this week!!! I´ll be thinking of you.

Hasta la próxima,
Hna. Brewster