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