Murphy's Law and Other Panama Adventures: Pioneer School, "Official Documents" & License Plates....

Panama Letter for August 2013

I have created a new Blog for our Panama Adventures. ALL OF THE LETTERS and new pictures and photos not sent before or seen by most of you, all is available on the Blog. For those of you with computer experience, perhaps you can help others that do not have such technical knowledge. The new blog has links on the side for each of the former letters that were written over the past year and a half.

Go to: 3murfs.blogspot.com

Look for : Murphy's Law and Other Panama Adventures.


This is a geologic oddity. It is lava flow that hardened in to 5 and 6 sided "shafts" of stone. This can only be seen a few places in the world.

This is really what the cliff looks like. Untouched by humans.


And it is one of THE favorite "repel" rock climbing spots here in Boquete

Less than 1/2 mile down the same road is this cliff, easily over 200 feet high. Still lava here, but it formed differently coming out of the ground....... This is a GIRL climbing this cliff !! She's got guts !!

She had to come down and try from another approach. This way was apparently too hard. There is a spotter on the ground that you cannot see between the bushes and the cliff.

Time flies no matter where you serve.

Boquete English Congregation is hosting the pioneer school this year. A privilege and a responsibility. Today, (Aug 12), is the first day of school for nearly 50 students. So we are feeding the 50+- on Wednesdays, while the other congregations take a share the other 4 days of the week.

I don't think I have ever seen so many donuts in one location except at the bakery !!

Aside from donuts and the supply of good food going to the school they will also hopefully have coffee for the mornings by the end of this week.

The brothers got a good deal on enough coffee for 2 weeks and as a show of good will the proprietor also added for free a 70 cup coffee maker. But so far for Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday it has produced no coffee.

The first day it gave brown water. The water was not hot enough to brew the grounds. The second day they plugged the machine into a different outlet hoping that maybe that would solve the problem. The little bit of water that was being sprinkled over the grounds was useless. Last night with volt meter and tools in hand the brothers tried to see if they could fix the problem.... As it turns out the electric jmetal junction box in the wall of the kingdom hall has bare (un-insulated) wires inside that were shorting out. There was not enough power going to the coffee machine to run it at all. So as a temp. measure the wires have been taped and rejoined.

Today the coffee machine did not work at all.

Pioneer school without coffee. Difficult to contemplate, at least for me.

But perhaps I will get to go next year, coffee or no coffee, Jehovah willing.

Boquete, (the congregation/town), was also the host to its first, and second, Spanish District Assembly at the Gymnasio on the other side of Bajo Boquete. That also gives great hopes for us to have an English Assembly at some point in the future.

And for those of you that plan to come and also will own a car or other vehicle, here are just some of the highlights that you might expect.

Because we are cheap and did not want to pay the extra 100 dollars or so to have someone do it for us. In one of last years posts, probably around July of last year, we went to David to get our plates transferred from Veraguas Province to Chiriqui Province. We paid about $90 dollars to get our plates.

Possibly because our spanish was non-existant last year we did not understand that this was only good for one year and that we would need to do the same thing every year. We mistakenly thought that once you have plates....you have plates. NOT SO !!

So this year we find out that we have to go through the same hassle as last year.

As a consolation prize we found out that Pete and Buffy had to do it all over again this year too, because they did not know that it was only good for one year and that the title was a separate item. They are separate items that do not travel together. The title remains in the Provence of origin unless you pay extra to get it transferred. Pete and Buffy are both fluent in Spanish, and they are going through the same hassle as we are. So now maybe I don't feel quite so stupid.

In our efforts to get our new plate we had to get our “inspection” again. Check out the letter for July last year (on the Blog) to see what that is like......

And we had to go get our “proof of residence”. That is not the same as being “a resident, or pensionado”. There is no legal status with this, just a piece of paper that states that you live (in our case) in Alto Boquete. To prove that we brought along 6 months of cable bills.

Last year we went to Bajo Boquete for this piece of paper.

This year we were told that there is a new office in Alto Boquete that does that and we could not get it in Bajo anymore, but must go find the office in Alto.

So instructions to the new office are as follows: Go down the Boquete Highway until you see the Ivan Tienda (grocer). It is on the right side of the road, back off the road, directly across from the Ivan's.

We have just in the last 2 weeks remapped and re-censused this territory and side of the road. There were NO government offices there. But we will go look again. We asked at the Ivan's where this officina was? They tried to send us back to Bajo, no such thing up here in Alto they said........

Sure enough we found it, the next day...... at last. A little white casita with bars on the windows, a flag pole in the front yard holding a limp, and very wet flag and a piece of printer paper in the window that says, “Horarios de Operacion” (Hours of Operation) 9am to 3:30pm. No other signs.

We arrived at Lunch time (naturally) and there was no one about to ask, so we went back the next day.

Sure enough !! This IS a government office !!!

We explained to the girl at the desk what we needed. Yes, no problem. Come back tomorrow at 10am and we can pay 3 dollars then. She will have our “paper” ready.

10 am, sorry, not ready. Can you come back at 2pm? Ok. But we had no (legal) car and no ride and didn't feel up to trying to catch a taxi. So Monday morning we went again. (Remember we started this story on Tuesday and it is now the following Monday morning)

As we are waiting in line, there is one person ahead of us, I noticed that she (the office girl) was writing out a long letter of some kind. Pages and Pages of something that she is hand writing.....

Our turn.

She grabs a pen and fresh paper and begins to hand-write our “OFFICIAL” document of residency.

She has a computer on her desk, but NO PRINTER !!.

This is our "OFFICIAL" Document for proof that we live in Alto Boquete. She really has very neat writing. I wonder if that was part of the requirements for getting the job?

Every document that goes through her office is hand written. No matter how many pages long. She spends much of her day copying from the computer screen long legal documents needed for each person that comes into her office. And she is working alone. She has NO helper.

COMPLETELY AMAZING !!

We found out in our efforts this year that it is possible to get our plates sent to Dolega instead of David. Much closer for us mile wise.

So our next stop is the Government offices in Dolega. They have copy machines !! Yeah !! And shock of shocks we are in, done, and out in just over 30 minutes !!! The plates will arrive (supposedly) next Wednesday.

We have not started researching on what we have to do to get our “title” transferred, but it waits until we have the new plates in hand. Then you can start the steps for that. Maybe by next year we will have this down to a science.

Here are a few pictures of the 2 story KH completed last month in Bajo Boquete. There is now a finished fence in front where you see the car. There is NO parking space, but few of the friends have cars anyway. Everyone walks.

For the handicapped there is a closed circuit tv room downstairs. Providing for the handicapped is a new concept in Panama.

This is quite a set of stairs. You have to be healthy to get up them !!

This is the main auditorium upstairs. Next letter I will include some finished photos of the hall as it looks now.

On a spiritual note: A sister visiting here from a small Spanish group that has started in the town of Cuesta Piedra on one of the roads to Volcan (town of), reported that for Memorial they had 11 publishers and 119 present for observance of Christ's Death.

Jim has also been able to start a new study with a Spanish man named Abdiel. Our car group was trying to locate a call of mine that had moved and so we checked next door to see if the neighbor knew where he went. No. So Jim made the presentation to the neighbor with the Truth Tract.

His response was immediate. I have wanted to know about all these questions!! Yes I would love to study the bible, but can we do it next week? God must have sent you because he knew I needed you this week. My Brother just died. I am burying him this week.

We went back on the Monday arranged and had a fabulous study. He was relieved to know that his brother is only sleeping and that the dead do not suffer and that despite what the preacher had said only 7 days previous, there is NO HELL. After reading scriptures about how long man was meant to live, and John 11 about the hope of the resurrection we left him feeling much better. We have been able to call on him only one other time. He has been too busy to take time out of work, but we will not give up.

This is now the 21 of Aug...... We (Boquete Congregation) have been up to our necks and collective crock- pots, cooking for the pioneer school. We needed to provide mid-morning break food for Monday. Our day to feed the school this week was Tuesday (Aug20), and today (Wednesday)we got to go in service with the students in the school.. This is actually the 3^rd time for us to go in service with them. Last Tuesday we were all assigned so that each group of students had at least ONE LOCAL with them so that they wouldn't end up lost forever. Last Friday we kept those same groups and followed up on calls and endeavored to start studies. And today we kept (for the most part) the same groups and the “LOCAL” got to get all the calls that the car group started, including studies. So I have 3 new calls. We feed again this Friday and the Brothers have decided that we all need a much needed break and we will be ordering Pizza. Friday/Saturday everyone goes home to there various parts of the country.....Bocas del Toro, Almirante, Colon, David, Bugaba, Volcan, Changuinola, El Espino and many more. It has been a great 2 weeks, but very busy.

Our current Elder Body. Max on the far right has had to return to Texas.... We miss him a lot.

Oh yes, and lest I forget.... did we get our “Plate” for the car yet? No................of course not.

But the good news is the Dolega Office called me and told me that they needed 15 dollars more for the courier so that he/she could go to La Mesa to get the Plates.

How is this good news you ask?

Well, for starters, the whole conversation was in Spanish and I UNDERSTOOD THE WOMAN !!!!

Apparently I made her nervous though and she said, “Hold on a minute” and I heard her go through the office asking random people were they able to speak English. Who I ended up with I have no idea, but a random stranger proceeded to repeat what I had already understood. That was OK. So I told “random stranger”, thank you, I actually did understand the lady, but thank you very much. (Got to brag a little there). Got handed back to the Office Lady and I guess she assumed that no more was needed and never came back on the phone. So I listened for 2 or 3 minutes to “Spanish in the office”,..... and understood the majority !!! Yeah !!! (this all happened Monday this week)

We went down and payed our 15 and perhaps by Friday this week we will have our Plate. Anyone for a wager?

I can now tell the Spanish that I talk like a 2 year old. I have lots of words but can't get them to come out. They seem to get a big kick out of this.

OK, so this post I am including as many pictures of scenery in our territory as I can.


Swimming hole in Caldera- Much hotter in this part of our territory, so the water REALLY feels good to get into.

This road is NOT all that unusual for our service day.

Waterfalls, rivers, etc. And will include some of our local “wildlife” to.

Green Grass Snake we found along the side of the road. Very much alive.

We let him live because we don't think it's poisonous. And NO, its not me holding the snake.........this time.

Unusual moth on our window.

Same moth. It decided it liked my finger. Awesome looking !!!

This guy earns his keep. He eats any bug that moves !!! Gecko.

And the Picture just below is of a giant Lizard Sunning himself on a rock in town. I disturbed his nap, but he was quite patient with me while I did my photo shoot.