Monday, November 16, 2009
Hey Family,
Its definitly winter here in portugal now. Over the couple of days it reallyhasn´t stopped raining which is bad because we haven´t stopped working either. This week we made a lot of really good progress. In the past two weeks we have recieved two referals that turned out to be two great families. One of the referals came from a member that has never given us a referal while i´ve been here but the family that she gave us is turning out great. We´ve been teaching this grandpa and his two grandsons for almost two weeks and the grandpa came to church yesterday so things are looking up. The other family we got was refered to us by a brazilian family. They invited us, two brazilian member couples, a brazilian return missionary, and this family to dinner last friday night and it went great. Thi family had lost a child a while back so the members asked us (Elder Silva) to talk about eternal families. Elder Silva´s message was great and the members afterward keep bearing testimony and sharing experiences. I wanted to bear my testimony too but i couldn´t find room with all the members talking! It was a great visit and the family shows a lot of potencial. This week we also have a baptism planned for a little girl whose been taught by the missionaries for almost a year. She was almost baptized a few months ago but when the Elders asked the mom for permission she said no because her brother was an inactive member. So after that the Elders worked on reactivating the brother and finally got him active about the time i got here. Elder Davis was one ofthe Elders who taught her so he´s coming back to Cascais for a day to baptize her. Its funny though, becasue at the end of last transfer i told Elder Wilson that if one of us stayed we would have to find new people because none of our investigators were pregressing, but with Elder Silva we haven´t really had to work all that hard to find new people because the members are helping us so much. So life is good.
This week me and Elder Silva played some ping pong but things didn´t go so well. Elder Silva is what i would call a professional ping pong player because he makes people who play well, like the members here, look really bad. This is bad because i play terrible and i get really competitive. Well,to make a short story even shorter i lost...alot...and really angery and things were tense between us for a while but we sorted it out and we´re good now.
In other news, last week i had to go and start to renew my visa here so i got to see alot of people from the MTC. It was pretty fun to spend most of the day with them but we had to stand in lines all day wasn´t too exciting. Afterward they droped us off at one of the biggest shopping malls in portuagal so we could eat before going back to our areas and i got to eat lunch with Elder McLean and Elder Rich. President told us not to waste anytime becasue our companions had to stay in our areas with members until we got back but we sat and talked for a while and i dont feel like we wasted a minute. We ended up talking about our mission experiences so far and about how or views of the mission have changed alot since the MTC. I was suprised at how much we had all changed in such a short amount of time. When i got back to my area i went strait to my house because i figured Elder Silva would come back for dinner and get me. Unfortunatly he was waiting for a phone call to tell him that i got back. So, i got to the house at 5 o´clock and he got there at 8. By that time he had called the secretaries and the APs looking for me. So by the time he got home and found me the people inthe office thought i was lost in Lisbon somewhere. The next day i got a call from Elder Wilson asking me what happened because the APs had called him and told him that his greenie was never made it home the night before. By now i´m sure the whole mission thinks i got lost!
Yesterday i added another item to my list of foods that i´ve tried here in portugal. Everyweek we go to a big member family´s house and eat a big lunch after church and the food is usually really good. But this is also the house where i ate cow stomach and last week i ate shrimp (not little shrimp, the big kind with huge tenticals)there. This week though was different. At the end of church yesterday the members told me we would be eating "Arroz doPato". Being an american i had no idea what that was until i got to the house. Mikey could tell you and maybe he already has by now, but arroz dopato is "Duck Rice". I was a little nervous at first, never having eaten duck, but it turned out to be one of best things i´ve eaten since i´ve been here. During the meal one of the members asked me if i new what i was eating because i guess some Elders dont like duck. Almost everytime i eat there they like to tell me i can add one more exotic Portuguese dish to the list of things i´ve eaten on my mission.
Other than that, my week was pretty boring. Everything is going good here. I dont feel like my langauge is getting any better but i´m sure that will change when i get an american companion and i can see my progress. As for mypass i can get another one but doing that right now isn´t worth it so i haveto wait until next month. But at least i can get another one.
I found one last thing to ask to be put in my box, american, food measuring stuff.
Well, i´m still surviving and doing fine! Thanks for all of your prayers! I love you guys!
Élder Haws
Monday, November 23, 2009
Monday, November 9, 2009
Portugese 24/7
Hey Family,
There was a lot of news in this weeks set of emails. First i read that Dad got released and then i hear that he´s getting a new calling? Life must be crazing back in Idaho! Everything is still good here. But first before i go on, i need to apologize to Bentley for not saying Happy Birthday last week. Normally i write what i want to say in my planner before but last week i forgot to write in his birthday. But anyway, Happy Birthday Bentley!
This week was really good. We taught a lot of lessons here and we´re finding a lot of new people which is really what this area needs. It seems like the Elders here have been teaching the same investigators for a long time now,some for years. Most of these people just like having the Elders over but never fulfill commitments. But because they´ll talk to us and let us teach them the Elders kept going back. But with Elder Silva its different. If people dont change, we find new people.
This week was probably our last week of english classes. I´m not sure if i told you but we teach english classes once a week, or we did. Normally it was one of the older american Elders that taught it but now it just me and Silva and he doesn´t speak english and i dont speak portuguese. So a member has taught the class the last two weeks but this week he said would be hislast so we´ll have to stop giving the classes. But last week the students were learning the ABCs so the member was teaching them the ABC song. Then afterward they had me sing it so they could hear how it went. They ended up liking it so much that they recorded my singing on their phones so they could listen to it out of class and practice. It was a little embarrassing but really funny at the same time.
Last week we also had zone conference with one of the area presidency members of the Western Eurpoe area. He´s a german guy so the whole whenever he spoke (which was most of the time) it was in english. It was a really good conference because he adressed a lot of the problems that i have been having with President Torgans plans. But when he first sstarted to speak i was worried because he backed President Torgan one hundred percent, which is good, but it didn´t help the way i felt. He talked about how he knew President Torgan was asking us to reach for the stars but that he said he would rather have us try and overstep our potencial than always live beneath it. That helped me feel a little better but then later, all my prayers were answered. Normally, President Torgan will tell us that when we dont have baptisms its because we dont have faith and that we need to repent. When the topic of faith came up in the conference Elder Kopisckey(spelled wrong) said that we should never say we didn´t baptize because we didn´t have faith. He even said, "I forbid it!" This was the hardest part of President Torgan´s plan to accept and it felt good to hear that the reason i didn´t baptize every week was because i was unworthy. I felt bad that PResident Torgan was a little wrong but now i´m feeling pretty relieved. And then after the conference i walked over to Elder Wilson with a big smile on my face,remembering our one week baptism failure. We talked about how we knew that we had done everything we could but we felt bad because we felt like we had no faith. But after that conference it felt like a weight had been lifted off our shoulders. It felt great!
Sorry mom, but i forgot to tell you that we got another phone from the office a few days after Edlr Wilson left, but this week i lost my pass that lets me ride all the buses and trains for free. I dont know if i can get another one but if i cant, money´s going to be tight for awhile so please pray for me! The list for the package seems right except for the rain coat but other than that it sounds perfect. And if you guys could send me some recipes for rice and pasta that would be great too because that stuff is super cheap and i can get it EVERYWHERE. And with a naitve companion i have discovered the wonder of european cheese. So Mom, you were right, its sooo good! As to news with my finger its exactly the same but i forgot to ice it.I talked to Elder McLean about my finger and he said he had the same thing happen to so i´m still hopping its a dislocation. It doesn´t look bad its just a little fat at the joint. Oh, and tell Nick and Mikey to stay away from girls because i dont want to be getting wedding invitations in the mail!
And this week i talked with Elder Davis a few times on the phone because he may come back and baptize one of our investigatirs. He also gave his last testimony in zone conference and told me that he used me in his testimony.
Well, its still all portuguese all the time here and i´m still improving.Thanks for all the prayers and love! Amo-lhes!
Élder Haws
There was a lot of news in this weeks set of emails. First i read that Dad got released and then i hear that he´s getting a new calling? Life must be crazing back in Idaho! Everything is still good here. But first before i go on, i need to apologize to Bentley for not saying Happy Birthday last week. Normally i write what i want to say in my planner before but last week i forgot to write in his birthday. But anyway, Happy Birthday Bentley!
This week was really good. We taught a lot of lessons here and we´re finding a lot of new people which is really what this area needs. It seems like the Elders here have been teaching the same investigators for a long time now,some for years. Most of these people just like having the Elders over but never fulfill commitments. But because they´ll talk to us and let us teach them the Elders kept going back. But with Elder Silva its different. If people dont change, we find new people.
This week was probably our last week of english classes. I´m not sure if i told you but we teach english classes once a week, or we did. Normally it was one of the older american Elders that taught it but now it just me and Silva and he doesn´t speak english and i dont speak portuguese. So a member has taught the class the last two weeks but this week he said would be hislast so we´ll have to stop giving the classes. But last week the students were learning the ABCs so the member was teaching them the ABC song. Then afterward they had me sing it so they could hear how it went. They ended up liking it so much that they recorded my singing on their phones so they could listen to it out of class and practice. It was a little embarrassing but really funny at the same time.
Last week we also had zone conference with one of the area presidency members of the Western Eurpoe area. He´s a german guy so the whole whenever he spoke (which was most of the time) it was in english. It was a really good conference because he adressed a lot of the problems that i have been having with President Torgans plans. But when he first sstarted to speak i was worried because he backed President Torgan one hundred percent, which is good, but it didn´t help the way i felt. He talked about how he knew President Torgan was asking us to reach for the stars but that he said he would rather have us try and overstep our potencial than always live beneath it. That helped me feel a little better but then later, all my prayers were answered. Normally, President Torgan will tell us that when we dont have baptisms its because we dont have faith and that we need to repent. When the topic of faith came up in the conference Elder Kopisckey(spelled wrong) said that we should never say we didn´t baptize because we didn´t have faith. He even said, "I forbid it!" This was the hardest part of President Torgan´s plan to accept and it felt good to hear that the reason i didn´t baptize every week was because i was unworthy. I felt bad that PResident Torgan was a little wrong but now i´m feeling pretty relieved. And then after the conference i walked over to Elder Wilson with a big smile on my face,remembering our one week baptism failure. We talked about how we knew that we had done everything we could but we felt bad because we felt like we had no faith. But after that conference it felt like a weight had been lifted off our shoulders. It felt great!
Sorry mom, but i forgot to tell you that we got another phone from the office a few days after Edlr Wilson left, but this week i lost my pass that lets me ride all the buses and trains for free. I dont know if i can get another one but if i cant, money´s going to be tight for awhile so please pray for me! The list for the package seems right except for the rain coat but other than that it sounds perfect. And if you guys could send me some recipes for rice and pasta that would be great too because that stuff is super cheap and i can get it EVERYWHERE. And with a naitve companion i have discovered the wonder of european cheese. So Mom, you were right, its sooo good! As to news with my finger its exactly the same but i forgot to ice it.I talked to Elder McLean about my finger and he said he had the same thing happen to so i´m still hopping its a dislocation. It doesn´t look bad its just a little fat at the joint. Oh, and tell Nick and Mikey to stay away from girls because i dont want to be getting wedding invitations in the mail!
And this week i talked with Elder Davis a few times on the phone because he may come back and baptize one of our investigatirs. He also gave his last testimony in zone conference and told me that he used me in his testimony.
Well, its still all portuguese all the time here and i´m still improving.Thanks for all the prayers and love! Amo-lhes!
Élder Haws
Monday, November 2, 2009
The Native
Hey Family,
As always thanks for all the E-mails. This week we had transfers but they were a little different than usual. Normally transfer happen the day after P-day because thats when new missionaries come in from the MTC but ealry this transfer President Torgan switched P-day. Because of that, no one new when we were going to hear about transfers and me and Elder Wilson didn´t know if we would ever hear about transfers because we didn´t have a phone.So we just figuered that transfers would be the dame day as they always were, which was thursday. But as always, we were wrong. After P-day, Elder Wislon and I returned to our Apartment to find our Ward mission leader and his younger brother sitting outside our house. They didn´t say much of anything and just dialed a number on the cell phone and handed it to Elder Wilson. I thought something happened and we were going to be yelled at by someone. It turned out that the APs had to call our ward mission leader to tell us about trnasfers. The next day, Elder Wilson would have to leave the house at 8:30 in the morning and travel to one of the most northern areas of the mission to be the new Zone leader there, while the Zone Leader he was replacing was going to come to be district leader here in Cascais and to be my new companion. This came as a bit of a shock because we didn´t expect anyone to leave until thurdsay so that night Elder Wilson spent most of his time packing. I on the other hand spent most my time trying to not have a nervous breakdown because my new companion was going to be Elder Silva, a native. That by itself scared me but then Elder Wilson said that he didn´t speak a whole lot of english and that just made it worse. But i made it through that night and the next day and now i´m wondering why i worried so much.
Elder Silva was born in Mozambique, a country in southern Africa, and eventually moved to portugal. Before the Mission he played academic soccor(which i think is a big deal) for Quimbra(probably not spelled right).It turns out that Elder Wilson was wrong about his english. He´s actually learned alot of english on the mission and probably speaks better english than i do portuguese. But i dont know for sure. As far as i can tell, his two favorite english words are "freak" and "trippin" which just happen to be my favorite english words too so right off the bat i new we would get along.He´s a great missionary and contacts a ton of people, and he´s good at it too. He also pushes me a lot harder than Elder Wilson did. Most of the time Elder Wilson would do all the contacts and most of the lessons but now, with Elder Silva, i do a lot more. He will stop people and the street and say hi to them and then turn and smile at me, meaning that i had to do the contact.Also in lessons, he will just turn to me and expect me to take over.Sometimes when we arrive at a house he will turn to me and ask me what i´m going to teach. I even taught a whole/very short lesson almost completly by myself. So as you can tell these past few days have taken some adjustment but i´m doing great. Elder Silva is hilarious and we´re working hard and having a good time. He´s been here less than a week and has already boosted our number of lessons and marked an investigator for baptism. So i´m going to be learing alot form him over these next six weeks.
Everything else is really good too. I cant believe that i´ve been a set apart missionary for 5 months now. It´s crazy! And now that i´m serving with a native companion my language should get a lot better too. When the members here first met him they turned to me and said, "Elder Haws, you´re going to speak VERY well!" I already feel like my confidence and ability to speak and understand have improved and its only been six days. He understands english pretty well but i still find myself speaking mostly portuguese to him and i´m not sure why.
Tell Jenny thanks for the pictures! Everybody looked great in their costumes but i most say that Mikey had the best! And to be honest, i was actually going to ask that you send another camera card because none of the computers here are fast enough to upload pictures so thats a great idea Mom. And I think my finger still has some swelling because i still cant make a full fist but i´m going to ice it so more so it should be fine in a week or two.
So, life is still good here in Cascais. Tell every thanks for all the love and prayers! I love you guys!
Élder Haws
As always thanks for all the E-mails. This week we had transfers but they were a little different than usual. Normally transfer happen the day after P-day because thats when new missionaries come in from the MTC but ealry this transfer President Torgan switched P-day. Because of that, no one new when we were going to hear about transfers and me and Elder Wilson didn´t know if we would ever hear about transfers because we didn´t have a phone.So we just figuered that transfers would be the dame day as they always were, which was thursday. But as always, we were wrong. After P-day, Elder Wislon and I returned to our Apartment to find our Ward mission leader and his younger brother sitting outside our house. They didn´t say much of anything and just dialed a number on the cell phone and handed it to Elder Wilson. I thought something happened and we were going to be yelled at by someone. It turned out that the APs had to call our ward mission leader to tell us about trnasfers. The next day, Elder Wilson would have to leave the house at 8:30 in the morning and travel to one of the most northern areas of the mission to be the new Zone leader there, while the Zone Leader he was replacing was going to come to be district leader here in Cascais and to be my new companion. This came as a bit of a shock because we didn´t expect anyone to leave until thurdsay so that night Elder Wilson spent most of his time packing. I on the other hand spent most my time trying to not have a nervous breakdown because my new companion was going to be Elder Silva, a native. That by itself scared me but then Elder Wilson said that he didn´t speak a whole lot of english and that just made it worse. But i made it through that night and the next day and now i´m wondering why i worried so much.
Elder Silva was born in Mozambique, a country in southern Africa, and eventually moved to portugal. Before the Mission he played academic soccor(which i think is a big deal) for Quimbra(probably not spelled right).It turns out that Elder Wilson was wrong about his english. He´s actually learned alot of english on the mission and probably speaks better english than i do portuguese. But i dont know for sure. As far as i can tell, his two favorite english words are "freak" and "trippin" which just happen to be my favorite english words too so right off the bat i new we would get along.He´s a great missionary and contacts a ton of people, and he´s good at it too. He also pushes me a lot harder than Elder Wilson did. Most of the time Elder Wilson would do all the contacts and most of the lessons but now, with Elder Silva, i do a lot more. He will stop people and the street and say hi to them and then turn and smile at me, meaning that i had to do the contact.Also in lessons, he will just turn to me and expect me to take over.Sometimes when we arrive at a house he will turn to me and ask me what i´m going to teach. I even taught a whole/very short lesson almost completly by myself. So as you can tell these past few days have taken some adjustment but i´m doing great. Elder Silva is hilarious and we´re working hard and having a good time. He´s been here less than a week and has already boosted our number of lessons and marked an investigator for baptism. So i´m going to be learing alot form him over these next six weeks.
Everything else is really good too. I cant believe that i´ve been a set apart missionary for 5 months now. It´s crazy! And now that i´m serving with a native companion my language should get a lot better too. When the members here first met him they turned to me and said, "Elder Haws, you´re going to speak VERY well!" I already feel like my confidence and ability to speak and understand have improved and its only been six days. He understands english pretty well but i still find myself speaking mostly portuguese to him and i´m not sure why.
Tell Jenny thanks for the pictures! Everybody looked great in their costumes but i most say that Mikey had the best! And to be honest, i was actually going to ask that you send another camera card because none of the computers here are fast enough to upload pictures so thats a great idea Mom. And I think my finger still has some swelling because i still cant make a full fist but i´m going to ice it so more so it should be fine in a week or two.
So, life is still good here in Cascais. Tell every thanks for all the love and prayers! I love you guys!
Élder Haws
Monday, October 26, 2009
The Phone
Hey Family,
Thanks for all the advice and support in your emails. This week has been tough with the whole president Torgan thing but i keep telling myself and my companion that i wont worry about it. I just keep telling myself to do my best and thats seems to help alot. So thanks again.
This week was pretty crazy. Everything was almost normal until wednsday rolled around. That morning Elder Wilson woke up very happy, which is strange because we were so depressed because we didnt have a baptism. But that morning he was happy and we went about our day like normal. We caught a bus up to teach a new investigator we had found the week before and we were having trouble finding his houose so after we got off the bus we decided to check our map and call him. The only problem was my companion didn´t have the phone. He had it on the bus but after he got off it dissapeared. I told him not to worry about and we keep working thinking that we would be able to call the bus company later to get the phone back that we thought we left on the bus. After we found and taught our investigator we used his phone to call ours. Somebody answered it, then hung up and turned the phone off. Not a good sign. After we left the investigator´s house, we went to the Bus company building and asked about the phone but it didn´t turn up. At that point Elder Wilson and I decided that the guy who smelled strongly of Marijauna who sat next to Elder Wislon on the bus took the phone when it fell out of his pocket. Over the past few days we have been calling the bus company just in case but it hasn´t turned up. So, we´ve gone almsot an entire week without contact with our leaders or invetigators so you can imagine the fun we had.
In other news... My finger is still getting better! I still cant bend it all the way and make a fist but almost all the pain is gone so thats good. This week i also had a member lady cut my hair because its expensive here and i cant speak well enough to tell someone how short to cut my hair. It came out really good. Its really short but its alot better than what i had before.This week the language got better too. There were times when i understood alot of what people said and my confidence in speaking is starting to grow so i´m prayinig that this progress keeps up.
Tell dad congrats on his teaching skills! And form Jenny´s pictures it looks like Mikey rented a Trombone from somewhere and is doing ok . Thats too bad about BYU but thats ok because i´m in portugal and no one here cares. Tell Nick hey for me and keep the H* girl away from him too.
This week is transfers again. I cant believe it that time already. We have now idea whats going to happen here but its very possible that me and Wilson could both leave because we´re not baptizing. So i dont know if i´ll still be in Cascais next week but i think theres still a good chance that i might stay. With the Whole President Torgan "Baptize Portugal" plan i´ve found a new use for one of my favorite songs from last transfer. "It wont be likt this for long" is now my out look on my mission because so far time has been flying and i only have two years to serve. So i´ve decided i cant focus and President Torgan and his telling me i need to repent and have faith because if i do, i wont be positive and enjoy my mission. So as you can probably guess, i´ve been humming that song alot latly.
Well, this week has been really good even though we didn´t have a baptism but thats ok. Right now my biggest priority is learning the langauge so later on in my mission i can baptize. It sounds like everybody is doing great. Tell Jenny thanks for the pictures and everyone else for the E-mails,support, and prayers. I love you guys!
Élder Haws
Monday, October 19, 2009
Bad Luck
Hey Family,
This week was really tough. Everywhere I went i seemed to have bad luck. It started last monday when we went to play basketball with some of the Elders form around the mission. I was pretty excited about it because i hadn´t played basketball in two months and everybody kept talking themselves up soi thought it was going to be fun. When we got there i talked with one of the Zone Leaders and we talked about how everyone that was going to play that day thought they were amazing while we kept telling each other we were terrible. When we got to the church in that area (Cacem) we started bar-b-quing and then started playing. After the first game the Zone leader i talked to turned to Elder Wilson and said i was a shooter. Then we didnt´play for a while but the next game i played in was bad. We got killed and to had to that i messed up my finger. I was playing defense and reached in to steal the ball but missed and hit the Elder and jammed my fingers really bad. I thought i was fine but when i looked down at the ring finger on my left hand the tip was bent in the wrong direction. I didnt touch it but a second later it popped back into place. It hurt a ton but i kept playing and finished the game. People there thought i was crazy. Later that day i looked at my finger and it was really swollen and purple so i got kind of worried so we made a make-shift splint out of stuff from my first aid kit(thanks mom). Then we waited a day and called the Mission President´s wife and talked to her about it. She said she did the same thing when she played vollyball and that i probably just dislocated it and that i would be back to normal in about a month. It already feels really good and i´m even typing with it right now so i´m fine. Dont worry.
The other bad luck came at Interviews. As i may have told you, President Torgan very serious about baptism. He tells us that we should be baptizing every week and when we dont he comes down on us and tells us we dont have enough faith. I really have a hard time going with this plan because its really hard to baptize people and i also dont like feeling like a failure at the end of every week but this week he just told everyone that he doesn´t really care about baptizisms but doing the Lord´s will. He said that as long as we pray and find out the Lords will and do it thats whats important but he still really pushing baptism. I felt a little better after that but when he interviewed me and Elder Wilson on thursday night he said if we had enough faith we would find someone to baptize that weekend. The only probablem was we had no one marked for baptism. Both our interviews were good so we were really excited and motivated but as the days went along nothing happened. We did everything we could think of: fasted, prayed, had our members and other missionaries pray for us and worked really hard and nothing happened this weekend. We worked on three people we felt were the people we were supposed to work on and good things happened but no baptism.So today me and Elder Wilson feel pretty down and i´m not looking forward to my next interview with President Torgan. I just dont understand why President is pushing us so hard and i´m really finding it hard to go with him on this. But I´ll keep working so I´ll be alright.
In other news. I got the box this week and it was awesome ! The syrup and peanut butter and candy were a surprise but they´re amazing! Thanks for the recipes too. The only problem is we dont ever have a long time to cook except at nights but i´m still going to make very good use of these recipes so thank you soooo much! I also got a letter from Will this week and he sounded really excited to head out to the MTC. Thats crazy about Nick. He lost a TON of weight!
I also want to apologoze to mom because i forgot to wish her a happy Birthday last week. But Happy late Birthday mom! Also this week we ate at a members house that we hadn´t eaten at in a long time. The food we had was weird but my companion didn´t ask what it was until after we were done. I told him to never ask before we eat because i can eat it as long as i dont know what it is. Afterward i was informed that the very chewy meat that i had been eating was cow stomach! Apparently thats a regular dish up north near Porto. But the most surprising thing was i actually liked it! One of the member that made it for us also asked me to ask you to send beef jerky.He served with a lot of american companions when he served here in this mission (he´s form Porto) and feel in love with it. you dont have to send but i told him i would ask.
I also have a project for Mikey. If he has time i would like him to email me the lyrics to Kory Kumz´s first CD. I´ll have more requests for lyrics from the Liken movies but that will do for now.
Well, it sounds like everybody is doing well. Thanks for all the letters and emails! Keep praying for me and tell everyone i love them!
Élder Haws
This week was really tough. Everywhere I went i seemed to have bad luck. It started last monday when we went to play basketball with some of the Elders form around the mission. I was pretty excited about it because i hadn´t played basketball in two months and everybody kept talking themselves up soi thought it was going to be fun. When we got there i talked with one of the Zone Leaders and we talked about how everyone that was going to play that day thought they were amazing while we kept telling each other we were terrible. When we got to the church in that area (Cacem) we started bar-b-quing and then started playing. After the first game the Zone leader i talked to turned to Elder Wilson and said i was a shooter. Then we didnt´play for a while but the next game i played in was bad. We got killed and to had to that i messed up my finger. I was playing defense and reached in to steal the ball but missed and hit the Elder and jammed my fingers really bad. I thought i was fine but when i looked down at the ring finger on my left hand the tip was bent in the wrong direction. I didnt touch it but a second later it popped back into place. It hurt a ton but i kept playing and finished the game. People there thought i was crazy. Later that day i looked at my finger and it was really swollen and purple so i got kind of worried so we made a make-shift splint out of stuff from my first aid kit(thanks mom). Then we waited a day and called the Mission President´s wife and talked to her about it. She said she did the same thing when she played vollyball and that i probably just dislocated it and that i would be back to normal in about a month. It already feels really good and i´m even typing with it right now so i´m fine. Dont worry.
The other bad luck came at Interviews. As i may have told you, President Torgan very serious about baptism. He tells us that we should be baptizing every week and when we dont he comes down on us and tells us we dont have enough faith. I really have a hard time going with this plan because its really hard to baptize people and i also dont like feeling like a failure at the end of every week but this week he just told everyone that he doesn´t really care about baptizisms but doing the Lord´s will. He said that as long as we pray and find out the Lords will and do it thats whats important but he still really pushing baptism. I felt a little better after that but when he interviewed me and Elder Wilson on thursday night he said if we had enough faith we would find someone to baptize that weekend. The only probablem was we had no one marked for baptism. Both our interviews were good so we were really excited and motivated but as the days went along nothing happened. We did everything we could think of: fasted, prayed, had our members and other missionaries pray for us and worked really hard and nothing happened this weekend. We worked on three people we felt were the people we were supposed to work on and good things happened but no baptism.So today me and Elder Wilson feel pretty down and i´m not looking forward to my next interview with President Torgan. I just dont understand why President is pushing us so hard and i´m really finding it hard to go with him on this. But I´ll keep working so I´ll be alright.
In other news. I got the box this week and it was awesome ! The syrup and peanut butter and candy were a surprise but they´re amazing! Thanks for the recipes too. The only problem is we dont ever have a long time to cook except at nights but i´m still going to make very good use of these recipes so thank you soooo much! I also got a letter from Will this week and he sounded really excited to head out to the MTC. Thats crazy about Nick. He lost a TON of weight!
I also want to apologoze to mom because i forgot to wish her a happy Birthday last week. But Happy late Birthday mom! Also this week we ate at a members house that we hadn´t eaten at in a long time. The food we had was weird but my companion didn´t ask what it was until after we were done. I told him to never ask before we eat because i can eat it as long as i dont know what it is. Afterward i was informed that the very chewy meat that i had been eating was cow stomach! Apparently thats a regular dish up north near Porto. But the most surprising thing was i actually liked it! One of the member that made it for us also asked me to ask you to send beef jerky.He served with a lot of american companions when he served here in this mission (he´s form Porto) and feel in love with it. you dont have to send but i told him i would ask.
I also have a project for Mikey. If he has time i would like him to email me the lyrics to Kory Kumz´s first CD. I´ll have more requests for lyrics from the Liken movies but that will do for now.
Well, it sounds like everybody is doing well. Thanks for all the letters and emails! Keep praying for me and tell everyone i love them!
Élder Haws
Monday, October 12, 2009
My First Skin Walker
Hey Family
Life´s good here in Portugal. This week we taught some really good lessons and got some good work done. Earlier last week we had FILLED our weekend with appointments but as any other missionary can tell you, almost every single one fell through. It was tough but we surrvived. Yesterday we also confirmed the lady we almost killed a week ago as a member of the church and this time everything went fine.
Mom was right about my rain jacket. Last week it rained really hard and the jacket really didn´t do anything. It works well against light rain but the heavy rain last week killed it so that other coat might be a good idea. That day it rained really hard we were working with the jovens and had met the mat the local Staples. When we got there it was just cloudy with no rain but when we came out of staples about sixty seconds later it was pooring outside. Our jovens wouldn´t leave Staples because it was raining so hard so we left them there and just keep working. Luckly the rained stopped not long afterward but i still got soaked.
The language was alot better this week. I´ve noticed that when my morning studies are good, I speak better portuguese. In fact, the other day, me and Elder Wilson had to go to another Area to do a baptismal interview for some other Elders because the Zone leaders couldn´t do it. When we got there, Elder Wilson went in to do the interview and i was left by myself with a brazilian Elder and an american who refuses to speak english. I was freaking out because i was sure i wouldn´t be able to comunicate and thought it would be really embarrassing but i talked with them the whole time and understood almost everything! It was so cool! The American is from Rigby and his last name is Hinckly. I dont think we know him though. Also, the brazilian Elders last companion was from IF, his name is Elder Craig. I dont think we know him either. Then, in some of our other lessons this week i´ve started to say more than just my testimony and i´ve started to ask really good questions to our investigators. I´m starting to become more confident but i still dont think i speak well. The real test will be in interviews this week because i think that President Torgan will do the entire interview in portuguese.This Friday i should get your package at interviews so i´m really excited.
Last week we had lunch with our Elders Qurom president for the first time in a long time. Almost every part of the meal was fish. Their were fillets, shrimp things, and cod fish balls. It was SO good! Fish is amazing! Also about a week ago, i got bit by a dog but i´m fine. The dog was about the size of Cloe so its teeth did´nt even get through my paints. Elder Davis would have called it a "Skin Walker". Also about two weeks ago, i almost got arrested. Here in portugal public transportation has tight security. One time when i was on a division with Elder Anson, we were riding a bus we watched a guy get a ticket because he had the wrong ticket and wouldn´t get off the bus. Well, the trains here are even worse. When we ride the trains we use a special ID to get the little gates to open for us so we can get onthe train. Well, one day i walke up to the side of one of these gates and used my ID and the get opened. The only problem was Elder Wilson wasn´t thinking and just walked through. This is a problem because you can only use your pass once over a period of time so now my pass wouldnt open the gate. So, Elder Wilson handed me his pass over the gate and i used it and got through. Then, as we were walking, one of the train-guard/cop guys came and yelled at us and made me go all the way back to the gate and scan my card again. The guy wasn´t happy and i was sure i was going to get a ticket or get arrested. After i scanned my card and he found out it worked he got after us and let us go. I thought i was going to kill Elder Wilson.
This week i kind of have some bad news. I´ve talked with some missionaries about shoes and i may have some problems with my shoes in the future. ElderDavis had a pair of Rockports just like mine but he said they only lasted six months because his toe came throught the top of his shoe. His toenail had worn it down and eventually the roof of the shoe gave out. So this weeki took a look at my shoes and sure enough, i felt the roof of my shoe and it was already worn down. I´m really mad because these shoes were $150 a pair and are supposed to last me my whole mission but now i´m praying they last me another transfer. If you guys have any ideas of what i can do to save my shoes let me know. The only thing i can think of is buying a 30 euro pari of shoes and wearing those till they die to try and help these shoes last longer but in the end i´m not sure how much that would help.
Tell Jenny thanks for all the photos! Her kids are growing up so fast! Especially Milo. That kid is getting big. It sounds like BYU is doing good but my Lions are struggling. At least some of there games are close and they seemed to stay pretty close to the Superbowel champs. It also sounds like Spencer´s going to have a long year since but hopefully something will click for the Bills later. But at least the Vikings are tearing it up.
Can you guys send me Will´s MTC Address and maybe his Email address too? i sent him a letter before his farewell but i´m not sure if he got it. Today me and Elder Wilson are headed up North to a Zone bar-B-que where i´ll get to play some basketball so today should be a really good day.
Well, I think thats it for news here in Portugal. Thanks for all the Emails and prayers. Tell Dad to keep up the good work at school! Tell everyone i love them!
Élder Haws
Monday, October 5, 2009
The Slam Dunk
Hey Family,
Week 2 of trnsfer 2 just ended and i´m stil alive. We had a crazy week last week between Zone Conference and General Conference. Last tuesday we jumped on a train really early in the morning to get into Lisbon on time to get us on the right bus that would drop us off near the mission office. There was almost nobody there when we showed up but eventually everybody got there. I thought that three Elders from my MTC district would all be there but one ended up going to the other Zone conference thats happening tomorow. It was a lot of fun to talk with the other two Elders though and there was also another Elder form the other MTC district there too. We had fun swapping mission stories and laughing but after the conference i felt really discouraged because i didn´t feel like i was doing as well with the language as everyone else. But that night i had some good experiences with talking with members so that helped and last night i was laughing and having fun with one of the jovens from our ward so i´m feel a little better. Elder Uctdorfs Talk in the priesthood session helped me a lot too. I liked how he said not to compare yourself to others and once i started thinking that way i felt better.
This week we learned in Zone conference about the new rules from president torgan. There are a lot of new phone rules because one Elder had a 200euro($300) phone bill. Tell Mom not to worry, if it was my companionship it wasn´t my fault because i never touch the phone. There are also a lot of new rules about divisions and leaving areas and stuff so the mission leadership Elders are having alot of fun now. President also said that we couldn´t leave our areas to watch conference and that IF we were to watch it it would have ot be with members or investigators. That made it fun for us because almost everyone with internet in our area wasn´t planning on staying homeand watching it so we had to find the few people who were. Fortunantly we say every talk in conference except for Richard G. Scott´s talk. I saw the first and last sessions in portuguese and the middle three in english. The portuguese was tough to follow but the English was awesome. I never realized how much i loved general conference until i was wacthing it in portuguese and dying inside because i couldn´t understand it. But we watched two sessions with an inactive member and he really seemed to like it so that was good.
last wendsday we also had a baptism! We really did do much to get the investigator ready for baptism because she was the friend of a memeber and she pretty much did everything. But the Baptismal service was interesting.The Talks were all good but when the bapstim came around it got tense. Elder Wilson was doing the Baptism and had practiced with the lady before but things didn´t go as planned. She got in the water just fine but when Elder Wilson put her under the water she took a HUGE gulp of water! She came up and started choking and everybody freaked out! She couldn´t breath for a awhile and i seriously thought she was going to die but the first thoughtthat ran through my head was, "If she dies, at least she´ll go to the Celestial Kingdom". After a while our Elders qurom president got her breathing and everything was alright. I ended up singning in a musical group later in the program and everybody eventually calmed down so it was ok.Afterward the Lady wnted to try again because she thought she could do better but we had to tell her that we couldn´t. It was a fun experience buti dont think Elder Wilson will be baptizing anyone anytime soon.
Last week after i got Mom´s email i went out to our HUGE shopping mail and bought a 5 euro rain jacket that should work. It rained today so i got to try it out and it works just fine. I got mike´s email it was really great so tell him thanks. I really hope i learn portuguese as well as he did because it looks like he learned REALLY well. I also wanted to ask if you guys could send my CTR ring to me in my next box too. Sorry for all the requests. I got all of dads letters at Zone Conference and since its a new set of Zones i´m now probably famous in both regions of portugal as the missionary who gets thousands of letters. And it you were wondering, it looks like letters take about seven days to get to the mission home so if packages are anything similar i should get the package on the 15th. The language is still really tough but my personal and language studies have really been bad lately so i klicked myself in the but and now i already feel like i´m doing better.
Well, it sounds like everybodys doing well there. Its turning into winter here so now theres thick fog and overcast skies all day. Its also way humid!I was reading letters on our patio and by the time i was done reading a letter the paper would be moist. Well, i better get back to work. Tell everyone i´m still alive and that i love them. GO LIONS!
Élder Haws
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