Worth the Weight‏

Hey Family,

Sorry i´m writing this letter so late but the Indian huy who runs the internet shop here was being a punk this morning and wouldn´t open shop for us. Then we had a district P-day activity near Lisbon so we had to leave before doing email. So hopefully this email is worth the wait.

This week unfortunatly, was a another tough week. It started out normal but got bad around thursday. And as some of you may know, thursday was my 1 year mark for being in the mission(i´m not trunkey). The week hadn´t really gone as planned because we didnt have a whole lot of set appointments so everything was kind of on the fly. We were doing alright, that is until we got...the phone call.

Our thursday had been going pretty normal, with nothing really out of the ordinary when we got a call from our district leader asking us why we still haven´t baptized, even though we have 10 people in church every week. He said the assistents had called him and sounded upset but reassured us that HE knew we were working as hard as we could. We told him as best as we could what had been going on, like we had done many times before, then we went back to work. At the time we were knocking doors because we had some extra time before our next appointment so a few minutes after that phone call we started heading to our investigators house. But on the way, we got one more phone call, but this time is was from the man himself...President Torgan. He waisted no time in getting to the point and right away asked me, "Elder Haws, what are your problems?" A little freaked out i just started going through everything that had been going on in our area over the past couple of weeks and i tried to explain why we weren´t having success. He paused for a moment, then hung up. Thats when i freaked out a little more, almost like Jim carry in that scene from liar liar when he cuts off the Judge on the phone. Then, two minutes later he calls back and continues with his questions. Then, after talking to me for a while, he asks to tlak to Elder Dalton and asks him the same stuff. At first i thought it was because he thought i was lying because he called our district leader, then me, and now my junior comp so i figured maybe he thought i wasn´t telling the truth. then after saying similar things to Elder Dalton he wanted to talk to me and he asked me more questions about the things we had been doing in our area, then talked to Elder Dalton again. He pretty much told us to work with the members more and also to improve our companion study(has suffered lately). Then he told us to repent and improve, then sent a "hug" over the phone and without saying more, hung up. Just like that, out of nowwhere we got "faca" straight from the mission president for about 30 to 40 minutes, while standing outside an investigators house. Afterward we felt really down, and to make things worse, our appointment with our investigators fell through too. After that we headed home to eat dinner and it was a long, silent walk back home. Later Elder Dalton said that the "faca" we had just gotten was an answer to his prayers because he had been praying to recieve an answer as to why we haven´t had success here. After i learned that, i frankly told him to stop praying for answers.

He also called our Bishop this week too and talked to him and said that he needed to help us with these people in church but even with his help, nothing happened. This is bad because tomorrow we have zone conference with president torgan so i could be a LONG day tomorow. So please pray that he will be gently with us tomorow.

In other news, we didnt baptize or mark anyone for baptism this week, but we plan to this week so hopefully things will go alright. But i´m not too worried about it. I´m just praying that all these bapstims we are planning on having are worth the weight of all this pressure.

And in terms of the language, a member talked to me and said that he heard a rumor that i speak really fast portuguese, and then told me the same thing the other member had told me. So i guess i´m doing ok with the language, but i guess i really need to slow down.

And tell Mikey that no matter how many times he says he´s not dating anybody, we all know different. I´m in Portugal and i can see that fool is tripping for this girl.

I also have a question for dad: is Tony Parker French? me and Elder Dalton had a debate and i want to sheck to see if Dalton is right.

Well, i think thats about it for news for this week. There wasn´t a whole lot to say but i´m sure that next week there will be more to talk about. Thanks for everything. Eu amo vocês!

Fiquem bem!
Élder Haws