Email we received from Bruce's Mission President's Wife, Hermana Carmack!

To Family Members of Our Newest Missionaries! 

We welcomed 21 new missionaries to the Panama Panama City Mission this past Tuesday -- 13 hermanas and 8 elders!  We currently have 264 missionaries and are one of very few missions in the church that has more sisters than elders. They received training Tuesday and yesterday and did a temple session together in the beautiful Panama Temple Tuesday night. I made dinner for the missionaries and they slept at the temple annex (Casa de Huespedes) Tuesday night. Transfers were yesterday morning and the missionaries met their trainers and took a bus out to their new areas. Elder Bitter will be trained by Elder Astudillo from the United States. He has been assigned to serve in the San Vicente 1 area of the Alcalde Diaz zone. (On a personal note, the airline lost one of Elder Bitter's suitcases, but they found it and he received it yesterday morning.) I have attached some photos of your missionary with their trainer, a group shot in front of the Panama Temple with all the new missionaries and one with new missionaries + trainers.

We were very impressed with how dedicated and prepared this new group of missionaries is. We know that they will do a terrific job building up the kingdom of God here in Panama. We will do our best to take great care of them. We have our own missionary son who has been serving in Denmark for less than 1 transfer so we know how you are feeling.

If you want to follow the mission blog, the address is sunshineinmysoulpanamamission.blogspot.com. I try to update it once a week with new photos. The p-day in our mission is on Mondays, so you should be getting your first email from your missionary then. If you wish to send letters or packages, the mailing address for the mission is:

Mision Panama

Carrasquilla Entrega General 0834

Panama

Republica de Panama

There is no delivery of mail in Panama because there is not really an address system. Mail has to be picked up at the post office. The office elders pick up the mail and it is distributed to zone leaders, district leaders or the missionaries themselves as soon as possible. It is typical for it to take 3-6 weeks for your missionary to receive mail.

You may be interested in joining an email group for mother's (and a few father's) of missionaries in the Panama and other Central American missions. It is not run by the church, but is a great resource to get questions answered by experienced moms. The website is ldsmissionarymoms.com. You sign up and they will automatically assign you to the correct group for your missionary's mission.

We are very blessed to be in Panama to help build up the Lord's kingdom. We thank you for sending us such prepared, worthy and dedicated missionaries. We pray that your family will be blessed while you have a missionary serving full-time for the Lord.

Best regards,

Hermana Carmack

(Mission President's wife)