Snail Mail - July 19

Greg’s Snail mail Letter of July 19, 2009
Dear Family,
This weekend has been pretty good. Yesterday we had a pretty good day. At gym we played softball at the field and I played pretty well. I hit the ball into the outfield every time so I’m improving. My fielding wasn’t so good but I’ll work on that next week. In class we had our own “sacred grove” experience where we went out side and prayed and studied for an hour. It was really good and I really felt the Spirit. Yesterday we had the District opposite us come and talk to us in Portuguese. It was fun but it made me feel kind of down because they spoke a lot better than I could. I could understand almost everything they said but I couldn’t respond as quickly as I would have liked. I felt bad for a while but after my “sacred grove” experience I felt much better. It just gave me some more motivation to study harder. The rest of the day was good and I was able to get a lot of language study in. This week was also the first week where me and Elder McLean had a lot of zone leader tasks. Every week we have to pick prayers, pianists, choristers, hymns, and spiritual thoughts for our Sunday meetings. We were able to get all that done last night and everything went smoothly today. We woke up and went to breakfast early because we had to go meet with the branch presidency this morning so we could give them the program for our meetings and talk with them about our zone. Then we went to Sacrament meeting (where we sat on the stand as ZLs) and then to leadership training and then back to priesthood meeting, where me and Elder McLean sat on the stand again for the first part of the meeting and then shared a thought and read from the Missionary Handbook. After that we went to the rest of our meetings. After our District meeting we had interviews with Brother Hodges. He’s the second counselor in our Branch presidency and he’s not going to be here next week so this was kind of like our farewell interview. I’ve hardly every talked to him except in interviews but he always seems to know what to talk to me about. Take for example earlier today in our leadership meeting, we were talking about how to be good leaders and we had just read about how we shouldn’t have unrighteous dominion over others. HE then used me and Elder McLean as an example and talked about how because McLean was a District leader before becoming a zone leader and I hadn’t he might think that he was better than me sub-consciously and then demonstrated that with the way he acts and the body language he uses. It was just an example but I had been worrying about that. I had worried that I wasn’t as good but hearing it made me feel much better. I don’t know how to explain it but I almost felt as if I was just McLean’s helper rather than his companion. But after hearing that I felt much better. Then during my interview with him he talked to me about my mission. He said he guessed that I came from a successful missionary family and that I was insecure and that I was worried that I wouldn’t live up to those expectations and be as successful. He told me to relax and just to do my best and will be a great missionary. He also told me that he thought I was going to be one of the really excellent missionaries to come through the MTC. I had also been thinking that the only reason I was chosen to be a zone leader was because I was McLean’s companion and because they wanted him to be zone leader. He told me that that wasn’t the case and that I have special things that I can bring and help others with. He also said that I have a lot more to offer and that I’m, more prepared and that I’m going to be a better missionary than I think. The whole interview was great and it made me feel a lot better and made me more excited to serve. The rest of the day was really good. The other councilor in our branch presidency said I spoke Portuguese very well and jokingly said we could leave for the mission field now and be just fine. We’ve also been playing basketball (real basketball) in gym now since Tuesday and people still think I am a “baller.” Other than that not much has happened. Life is good and I’m getting excited to head to the field. I won’t ever be ready to leave but I still can’t wait to go! Tell everyone I love them! Thanks for all the prayers and love. I love you guys!
Elder Haws