Fevereiro!‏

Hey Family,

January is over! that means i´m one more month closer to spring here in Portugal. When i first got here i thought it would be great to see the winter here because it always rans and its cool but now i´m definitly ready for summer!

This week was really good for us here in Portimão. We started the week with a district meeting with our new zone leaders (our district is made up of us and the zone leaders) and it wen t pretty well. One of them has the same amount of time in the mission as me but is from Cabo Verde so he speaks perfectly. We came in at the same time so he always calls me his brother.He´s a six foot six inch black man so it must have looked funny with the two of us walking down the street together last week. And while we were walking down the street he he told me i spoke well and that i´m going to train next transfer but i´m almost certain he was joking because i dont think Heavenly Father would trust me with a "Greenie", at least not yet. It was also a really great week for lessons too. we taught 22, which is more lessons than i have every taught here in Portimão so things are starting to look.

We also found out that one of our investigators recieved a testimony of the church this week so hopefully we´ll have a baptism here soon. We´re all praying for her here because her husband still isn´t ready for baptism. He´s catholic so it´ll be tough but at the same time he´s brazilian so maybe we´ll get lucky. We also found out that next week we weill have zone conference on monday instead of P-day so i dont know when i´ll have time to E-mail next week. I dont imagine that President Torgan would keep us from e-mailing but dont be surprised if you dont get an email till tuesday or wednsday next week.

I also took the opportunity to weigh myself last week and i found out that i lost 10 pounds from the time i left the MTC. I weighed 195 (i was fat) and now i weigh between 180 and 185 (so i´m still fat). The scale also measured my height but i´m not sure how accurate it was because it said i was 5´9".

This week we also had a dinner appointment at a member´s house that was amazing. In fact, it was probably the best dinner appointment i have every had on my mission. The family we visisted is a portuguese family that lived in the U.S. for about ten years so everyone except for the youngest child speaks english. It was almost as if we took a trip to America for an hour and a half. It was great. They were actually baptized a long time ago by a missionary from Idaho and they went to Rick´s college so they know Idaho pretty well. We had a great time with them and shared a really good message and it ended up being one of the highlights of the week. This week we also tried to make those brownies you guys sent me but they didn´t turn out well.Our oven didnt work and we didn´t want to go to the church to use their oven like we normally do because it was Sunday so we decided to try and cook them on the stove. Obviously it didnt work but we enjoy eating the half cooked brownie batter!

By the way, who is Jon Shiply marrying and when did he get back from his mission?

Anyway, thats it for news here. Today we´re going to spend the day with the zone leaders and some other Elders so it should be fun. Thanks for all the emails, love, and support. I love you guys.

Élder Haws