Learning as I Go...‏

Hey Family,

Thanks for all the emails and prayers this week. I can tell you they really helped out. And i also need to say "Desculpa!" if i freaked you guys out with my email last week. I was way stressed out but now i think i´m getting used to it!

This week to be honest, wasn´t a whole lot better but i feel better about how it went.

It started strange because on monday, we spent our P-day with the other Elders of Setúbal so we didn´t get to email till late in the afternoon. Setúbal is full of members of the church so there are two wards and there used to be 3 companionships too. Everything west of the train tracks(if you have a map) is the other Elders area and ward. Everything else is ours. The area is beautiful and even has two castles so P-days will be fun. But anyway, back to the inmportant stuff.

After our P-day we had to go visit a member who is out of his mind crazy. Most Elders say the following to describe him, "There aren´t words to describe this man...enough said!" He used to be a drug addict but some how got baptized and now bugs the Elders constantly. Hes a really nice guy but is really annoying. We have to go visit him every once in a while because we´re the only friends he has and also, if we dont, he comes to our house to talk to US. I was a little worried at first about talking to him but hes a nice guy, just really, really, strange.

Then we spent the rest of the week trying to contact the people the members wanted us to. We did alright but so far we haven´t had much success yet. We´ve also been knocking alot of doors and we found alot of people who seem to have some interest but we haven´t been able to talk to some of these people because they´re never home when they say they will be. But we have found a really nice brazilian lady whos likes talking to us. Shes moving to a different house so we told her we could help her out but at the same time, invited her to talk the missionary lessons. we´ve talk her twice and shes pretty open, like most brazillians here, but there are a few probalems. She works on Sundays and cant swap days with anyone because she has some kind of contract thats supper strict about that. She also cant and wont read the Book of Mormon because she gets sleepy when she reads. And since she doesn´t like feeling sleepy, she wont even open the book. When we found that out i felt kind of crushed because she was the only person we had that MIGHT progress but any hopes of that, at least in the near future, were shot. But i did have a really cool experience in one of the lessons we had with her.

We had already taught her the first lesson about the restoration so we decided we would go and explain a little more about the Book ok Mormon. So we went there and read the introduction with her and talked about it a little and the plan was then to share our favorite scriptures with her. Thats when something interesting happened. Throughout my time here in Setúbal i´ve been really stressed because the other Elders before baptized all their investigators and left us with nothing. i´ve also been praying that the Lord would show us some light or some kind of hope that the future would be better while at the same time wondering why i was here. Me, having been junior companion my entire mission, never having been a great leader in the mission or had one of my baptism stories published throughout the mission, was sent to an area and was now expected to do everything my other companions had done. Needless to say i felt a little beat up(for more info see my last email). But i was also thinking about why we hadn´t seen any success yet. We were doing all we could and working as hard as we could but we couldn´t see anything coming from our work. Then, in this lesson with that woman, i started to talk about how the Book of Mormon not only has the answers to our spiritual problems and questions, but also to our worldy ones too. She has had a lot of questions about the things that have happened in her life and that are happening right now so i thought that would be good. It didnt know where i was going with this thought but i kept going anyway.Then i started to transition to a scripture that i hadn´t planned on sharing, but had suddenly come to mind. It was the one in Mosiah 24 that talks about when the people of Alma were in bondage and how they did everything right, but were stil punished. It also talks about how they prayed for help from the Lord and i related it to how me and Elder Dalton were struglingn with white washing and how we were doing everything right. Then i read the Lords answer to the people´s prayers in verses 13 and 14 and i found the answer that i wanted. After i read the scriptures i stopped for a second. I was trying to help this woman learn about the importance of the Book of Mormon but at the same time, i recieved an answer to the question that i had. I apologized and explained that the scritpure probably meant more to me than to her or my companion. It was amazing that the answer that i needed to hear came from a scritpure that i hadn´t planned on sharing.

The rest of the week past quick, but with alot of knocking doors.

Then on Saturday, I made my cake adn it turned out ok. Everything went great until i realized that we didnt have a can opener, so i couldnt open the can of condensed milk. So being the smart guy i am, i took a pair of large sisscors and started to smack the top of the can with them, hoping to poke a hole in the top. Than plan didnt work. Then i went on the plan B. I some how found a hammer and a bunch of nails in of house so i started to punch hole in the top of the can with the nails but that didnt work either. Then i tried poking smaller holes around the sides of the lid so i could smack the top with the hammer and pop it off but, unfortunalty, that only made a bigger mess. Frustrated, i threw the can away and went to plan C, which consisted of going to the store and buying a easy open can of condensed milk, and canned whipped cream(poor planning on my part didnt leave enough time to make the instant stuff you guys sent). After that it all went great and i took pictures of the finished project. later that day we visited some members, who, when the foudn out, sang happy birthday to me and than gave us cake to eat. Then, yesterday, we went to another members house who gives us cake every sunday so you can imagine i´m all caked out.

The weekend went pretty well and this week looks like it could be a little better so we´ll see how it goes. I´ve also decided on a new song to describe my time her in Setúbal. I´m not sure of the name but it goes a little like this...

"Life´s a dance you learn as you go,
sometimes you lead, sometimes you follow.
Don´t worry bout what you dont know,
Life´s a dance you learn as you go"

In my mind i switch the word "life" with "The Mission".

Well, i´m out of time so i guess i better go. Thanks for everything! Eu amo-os!

Com Amor,
Élder Haws

P.S. Stop worrying about me.