Lost in Lisbon‏

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