*Last email from Portugal*

Hey Family,

I´m here in the mission office and i just got out of my final interview with President Torgan and i´m feeling pretty weird. Its just started to hit me right now that i´m going home, and i dont know what to make of it. I´m sure it will be a hard transition, as i have already begun to feel, but i know i´ll get through it alright. I feel good because i´m coming off the best week i´ve ever had in Évora. We found six new investigators, had an investogator in church, and taught more lessons to investigators than we ever have. So right now i´m feeling pretty good. The members were also really sad to see me leave. One lady almost cried every time i saw her so i guess i had a positive effect of the branch. I got the pictures you sent and got them delivered so no worries there.Well, I dont have much else to say so i better get going. I´ll be seeing you all soon. Eu amo vocês! Até já!

Com amor,
Élder Haws.

Word

*another "to keep" email from Greg

Hey man! Here is the bolo recipe and I think you said you wanted the Santarem Zone names...? If it's not what you wanted, just let me know and I'll send you whatever it was.

I had to translate it into English cuz I can't do the accents and that might be a bit confusing...

Ingredients:
1 Yogurt - 125g

3 Eggs - Separated

2 Yogurt cups of sugar - 250g

2 Yogurt cups of flour - 250g

1 Yogurt cup of oil - 125g (not azeite)

1 teaspoon of baking powder

Mix all the ingredients minus the egg whites in a bowl.

Whip the egg whites until they are fluffy and fold them in. Don't stir them in because they will just go flat and the cake will be gross.

Put everything in a greased cake tin.

Bake at 180 Celcius for about 45 minutes.

Santarem Zone Names!

Fernandes - Climbing Goose

Nixon - Mounting Buffalo

Haws - Lonely Bear

Bradshaw - Lazy Horse

Johnson - Scarlet Skunk

Tracy - Squatting Rat

Sagebin - Dancing Toad

Jardim - Dead Beaver

Bennett - Peeping Bird

Thaut - Pooping Bull

Barbosa - Raging Lamb

Porter - Silent Chicken

Fat Scale

Fluffy

Flubby

Chubby

Chunky

Fat

DANG!!!

If there's anything else, just let me know!

Dakota

You are an all-star‏ (by Dad)

*One of the emails that Greg sent home because he wants to keep them.

Hey Big Guy!

I wrote this little ditty a 9 years ago to cheer you up after a tough all-star baseball game, but I didn’t give it to you. But like they say “Better late than never.” I think Mindy can relate to this too.

All-star sounds great! But it isn’t always a reward. Expectations are high! Just because you got a hit 2 out of 3 times in your league everyone expects those same stats in the All-star tournaments. But we forget our All-stars are playing other all-stars and it isn’t possible to accomplish the same numbers as you did in the regular season. That doesn’t make you lesser player it’s just the game is played on a higher level now. Now you are facing a pitcher who throws harder than anything you’ve faced all year. and finally when this monster has finished throwing what looks like aspirin tablets at you they replace him with someone who throws harder and if you can believe it even uglier. We haven’t even mentioned this is your third game today in 95 degree heat on a field of dirt that reflects the sun back at you giving you a double dose of heat. That alone would be enough, but now we add those parents from the opposing team who for some reason feel they know all about you and proceed to tell everyone in the loudest voice that you aren’t going to swing and if you did you wouldn’t be able to hit it anyway. There are also other comments about your body shape and size, which doesn’t seem right coming from a women who will need the help of 2 very strong men to get her bottom out of that lawn chair that is near collapse anyway. But at least you have your fans to cheer you on. Your Father is right there against the fence behind you reminding you to keep your bat still, your weight on your back foot, your elbow up, your eyes on the ball, knees bent, chin tucked, and don’t forget to hit it a mile. Your Mother is of course there too under her umbrella wondering why the coach chose such a dreadful color for the uniforms. Doesn’t he know orange doesn’t go with your eyes or complexion? And how is she ever going to get the mustard stain out of that white jersey. And if you slide again on the grass you’ll have to scrub those grass stains yourself. Well now you step to the plate and the umpire says, “this is my world and if you even look like you don’t agree with my calls I’ll feed you to the large lady in the lawn chair and from the size of her mouth she could eat you in one bite.” So you stand there all alone except for the umpire who woke up on the wrong side of the world this morning, a pitcher who threw four pitches in warm ups over everyone’s head and poked a large hole in the backstop. And we haven’t even mentioned the catcher crouching right behind you spitting what you can only hope are sunflower seeds on your new cleats. Not to mention he smells like his uniform had been stuffed in his shoes between games. You look at your third base coach and he’s flashing you signs you don’t understand and you look at your first base coach for help and he isn’t looking at you because that angle would ruin his tan. So you take a deep breath and get in the stance that 3 coaches and your father have independently developed for you that make it impossible to swing let alone see the pitcher with both eyes. Now all you have to do is hit a small ball coming at you at the speed of light from a rather large boy whose two eyes never seem to be looking in the same direction. As he delivers the first pitch you hear the large lady yell that your team should be sponsored by Kentucky Fried Chicken with players like you. Your father is screaming to “don’t step in the bucket”, the third base coach is screaming “watch the changeup.” The first base coach is screaming at someone who has put up an umbrella and is blocking his rays. Your Mother is yelling at you because your shirt isn’t perfectly tucked. The catcher doesn’t say a word but some awful noise and smell is coming from his direction. Here’s the pitch should you swing? Is it a strike? Is it a curve? Is it a fastball or changeup? Is it too high or low? Is your stance right? Yes! It is perfect! And you start your swing but hold up because the ball is already on the way back to the pitcher for the second pitch. Isn’t this fun?

I’m sorry I’m 9 years late with this but missionary work can be the same way. Everyone wants to help and they mean well. Satan has lots of helpers in lawn chairs. But you have to do what you do best and only listen to your coach (your Mission President) and the team owner (Heavenly Father).The Spirit will tell you when to swing. You aren’t going to hit every pitch, but when you do connect there isn’t a feeling like it. And don’t worry about me I’m there for you too, if the sun is just right. We love you and are very proud of you. So get back in the box and enjoy the last few innings you have left.

Love and handshakes,

Your #1 fan (That would be me “Dad”)

Life Goes On‏

Hey Family,

Are you guys trunkey or something? Every email talked about me coming home but the way i see it, i still got quite a bit of time here before i have to go. But anyway...

This week ran pretty well, even though we did run into some things that were a little unexpected. And when i say things i mean interviews with president Torgan. The last time that the Elders from this district got interviewed, PT (President Torgan) showed up at their houses and gave them surprise interviews. He did that because they were fubecas but we were sure if he was going to do the same thing or not because interviews were supposed to be last Wednsday. But thankfully there were no surprises and we got to have our interviews just like everybody else. The meeting we had to go along with our interviews was great and it left me wishing that PT would have given that training at the beginning of my mission. But other than that, the interviews session didnt quite go as i thought it would. I expected that because it was my second to last interview, PT would tell me that i was doing a good job and that i was a good missionary. But he neither said anything to affirm that, or deny it so it left me feeling a little confused. I say that because i was hoping that as the mission president he could help me resolve some of the doubts i had about being a good missionary. And as mom said, i hate regrets. So i was basically hoping that he would help me get rid of those regrets, but unfortunately, left much to be questioned. But it was still one of the best interviews of my mission and probably my life. It was almost as if he knew everything that had happened on my mission and told me things about myself that i didnt think he knew. But in the end i left the meeting confused and more than a little disappointed, but after talking to Elder Smith about his and my interviews i felt a lot better. But i´m starting to wonder if what i heard from PT last week is a foreshadowing of what i´ll hear next week. Who knows, but in either case i´m not going to worry about it. I´ve worked hard my entire mission and done my best, thats all i ever wanted. So, i guess i have no worries then.

Other that our week didnt go so well, we didnt teach many lessons and our investigators have seemed to start disappearing one by one. We got to talk to alot of them but they were always busy or leaving town so the only chance we have to talk to them is this week so we´ll see what happens. This week should be alot better so we have high hopes.

We also got to talk to Linda again and we had a really good lesson with her. Elder Smith felt really good about her being our miracle baptism for this week, but it turns out that the job that she miraculously found(after we prayed that she would find work) makes her work on Sundays. She really wanted to go but her work wouldn´t let her. She even said that she was waiting for a call from another person about a job and said that if she got the other job, she would go to church. But in the end she had to work so it didnt work out. But we´re praying that something miraculous happens this week so i can leave on a good note. Hopefully something happens.

Dont worry about the gift for John. Seeing as how this is my last P-day i´ll be going around and getting stuff anyway, so i´ll pick something special our for him too. It´ll probably be around 25€ or $30 to $35 so if you want, you could put that on my card. If not, no worries.

And seeing as how this is my last P-day i wont be able to do Internet next P-day because we have to be at the Mission Office at 2:00 for my last interview. I might be able to check my email in the office, but i dont want to make any promises.

I´ll also be forwarding a few emails that i want to keep so dont be alarmed or delete them! Thanks!

Well, it feels pretty weird, but i guess this is probably that last time i´m going to typing this. I cant believe that the mission went by so fast. People always say that but you dont believe it till you´re done. Its kind of cliché but these really have been the best 2 years of my life and i´m already missing them. But life goes on. I love you guys and i´ll see you in a week! Eu amo vocês!

Com amor,

Élder Haws

Shut Down!‏

Hey Family,

This week ran alot better than last week, partially because i got my allergies under control, but we also got some good work done so things are looking up.

We kept working with the people that we have found since i´ve been here but none of them seem to be progressing. That family i told you guys about a few weeks ago has been our focus lately but they dont seem to have have much of a desire to do anything other than blame God for all their problems. But this week we had a great lesson with them where we talked about the plan of salvation and tried to resolve some of their doubts. The lesson ran really well and the spirit was there, but they did the same thing they always do and blamed God for all their problems and said there was no Resurrection. Normally that wouldnt bother me, but this time it kind of ticked me off. I didnt yell at them or argue with them, but i somehow found the exact words that i needed to answer their questions. Every time they would bring up a doubt or a question i either found a scripture in the bible or thought of an analogy to help them see why we believe the way we do. In Elder Smith´s words, "We shut´em down!". It was a really good lesson but we were worried that they would be mad at us for showing them how they could be wrong but when we saw them on the street later they were more than happy to see us. But in the end they didnt do anything. They didnt come to church so we´re going to visit them one more time and if they dont do anything we´ll have to drop them. Its kind of sad, but as the Portuguese say, "Tem que ser".

I also realized this week that all of our other investigators are college students. There´s a really popular college here so alot of the people we talk to are young people. We´re teaching about 6 to 7 students right now and they all seem really great but they haven´t done much of anything either so we´ll see if that changes this week or not.

But one of the many highlights this week was Linda. She´s a lady we found near the end of the week when things weren´t running quite like they should. All of our plans had fallen through and we had resorted to knocking doors, and that unfortunately happened during the hottest part of the day. We both didnt want to be knocking doors but one particular door a small Portuguese woman invited us in to say a prayer with her. she explained to us that she had just gotten out of the hospital from having 3 surgeries and had just found out that her ditches for the third surgery had just become infected. She then told us about her life, that just happened to be full of problems. At first i started to become disheartened because everyone that i have talked to in this area that has had problems in their life has hated God, but to my surprise, she didn´t. In fact, she told us about her problems and did it with a smile. When we asked her how she could be so positive about all of it she said that she knew life wasn´t perfect and that someone had to suffer and that she wouldnt let those things get in the way of her faith. She also explained that she had already heard about our church and already likes it. So we talk to her for a bit and are planning on heading back this week. Hopefully something good will happen with her this week. But even if it doesnt, it was good enough just to know that there´s someone in this city that knows and has taught me how to handle adversity.

But in other news, I bought some expensive allergy medicine last week to kill my allergies and it worked. Its basically the same medication that you guys had sent me, but only bigger(twice the dosage). And we still dont have flees and we have no intention of going back to that house because we dropped that investigator.

I also pulled out €20 last week because our financial Secretaries didnt get our money put in on time. Sorry.

I was glad to hear that Dad killed the poles. They´re actually having re-elections here in Portugal because the government is so messed up, so if dad wants he can run here too. He be a shoe-in if he ran for prime minister.

Well, I think thats it for news. Thanks for all the prayers and love! Eu amo vocês!

Com amor,

Élder Haws

Dying Slowly‏

Hey Family,

I made it through another alergy filled week but its P-day so at least i´ll have a fw hours today to take a break.

This week was pretty normal in terms of Évora. We tried to talk to José a bunch of times but it never seemed to work out. On Monday we went to his house and talked to the lady that lives there. He lives in the up stairs part of an inactive members house, so we decided to stop by and see if we could be there waiting for him when he got home from work. Normally the inactive member lady doesnt let the Elders in the house but over the past two weeks she started to change her mind and now invites us in immediatly so she can talk to us. She did exactly that last monday buit when José got home he said hi to us then went up stairs and never came back down. So that was a bust, and to add to that, we discovered that the inactive member lady´s dog has flees that got on us and followed us home. As soon as we got home we stuck all our clothes in bags and put them outside and then took showers to try and get them off us. And so far, we have yet to get any flee bites. We´ve seen one or two in the house but we killed them so we think we´re clean. But pray for us anyway! But anyway, back to José, we went by his ghouse on Saturday night and told the member lady to tell him we were waiting to talk to him in the chapel and then waited there for almost an hour when he never showed up. So we´ve pretty much decided we´re going to drop him because hes started to avoid us. We also talked to Elena and her mom again but nothing really has changed there. They´re still not wanting to do anything so i´m not sure how long we´re going to be teaching them. So in terms of missionary work this week wasnt the best, but me and Elder Smith worked hard and we feel good about the work we did.

I noticed everybody mentioned my alergies in their emails so i guess i should mention them in mine as well. Last week when i talked to you guys on the phone i didnt think they could have gotten much worse...but i was wrong. I not only have a stuffyy and runny nose with a really annoying cough, but now i when i try to go to sleep at night i have a hard time breathing because my airways kind of close off. I dont want to worry anbody but i dont really know what to do. If any body has any ideas i´d love to hear them. I´ll check my email again tonight to see if anybody thought of something. But if you guys cant, dont worry about it, yours prayers will be enough. Oh, and stop worrying.

You can also tell Mindy that i tried eating the garlic cloves and it didnt go well, but Elder Smith got a really funny video to send home to his family because if it.

And i still haven´t found anything for John but i´ll keep looking. I´ve got something in mind, but i´m not sure if its good enough. We´ll see.

I also wanted to check and see if you guys already sent those pictures or not. Just wondering.

Well, i thin thats it for news. Thanks for all the love and support! Eu amo vocês!

Com amor,

Élder Haws

Throwing It Down

Hey Family,

It was great talking to you guys yesterday, but now it seems weird that i get to email today, but i´m not complaining.

This week was a pretty normal week for us. We spent most of the week trying to find some new people to teach because the people we had been teaching just seemed to have disappeared. We talked to José yesterday in the street but he seemed a lot different than he normally is, so we´re a little worried about him. But we set an appointment up for Saturday so hopefully we´ll know more about whats going on with him then. The famiyl we taught and had a miralce with(Elena and Zinda) turned out to be somewhat of a bust. We went by and talked to Elena, and she seemed pretty much the same as always. We talked to her for a while but it wasnt long before we realized that she wasn´t an elect. She talked about how she´s a philosophy major and how she has alot of doubts about religion and has few certainties about anything(i hate Philosophy). She also complained about how bad her life is and pretty much blamed God for it all. At this point in my mission i feel i can say i love the people, but when they start saying thinjgs like that i kind of lose my patience. I know that sounds funny because as a kid i whinned, pouted, and pitted myself too(thanks mom, dad and family for YOUR patience), but something about it ticks me off. So when she let me talk i "threw it down" as stated by Elder Smith. I wasnt mean or angry when i spoke, but i tried to get the point across. And i dont remember alot of what i said, but i remember that i just started talking and things started coming to mind. I talked alot about how God is our Heavnly Father and how we dont need to doubt anything, especially his love for us, because he knows us and wants to help us get answers to our questions. I also told her that i´ve had trials in my life, but that i never let those things cause me to question my faith. So i talked about that kind of stuff for a while, and when i was done, she had nothing else to say. So we said a prayer and invited her to church then left. As we were walking away Elder Smith was jumping up and down because he said the spirit was super strong in the lesson, but i was so tired from having to get up at 5:30 in the moring to go to Lisbon and back that i didnt pick up on it. We felt good about what we said but i just hope that something happens that opens her heart up.

But in happier news, our relief Society President didnt go inactive like she said she was going to. When she found out that the Stake president was coming to the branch next month to handle the problems with the crazy guy she decided to stay. She said she was going to leave because he had hinted to an inactive member that he was planning on killing all the members in the church here in Évora. She also was really frustrated because that same guy would scare people away from the church as soon as she would reactivate them. But now things seem to have cooled off. When we ate lunch with her this week she told us that she was really grateful that we called President Torgan and got things moving in the right direction. She told me last week that when i got here she felt that i would help change the branch, and then told me that i had done just that. But really i didnt do anything. I just called president Torgan because the Zone Leaders suggested that i do. But i didnt have the heart to tell her that, plus i dont think she would have accpeted that answer. But to be honest, it felt really good to finally be able to say that i had a large imapact in some way on someones life. Even if it was the Lord that did all the work.

But to the other news...

I got the Email from MIndy, and it looks like you guys got the right picture. But if you guys could develop two copies of it and send it to the following address as soon as possible, that would be great...

Élder Haws

Travessa do Tavolante, 22

7000-636 Évora

Portugal

I also got the info on the stuff Jenny wants me to get so i´ll be looking into that.

And thanks for the Pioneer stuff mom, its perfect!

Well, i think thats it for news. Thanks for all the love and prayers! Eu amo vocês!

Com amor,

The non-trunkey Élder Haws