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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