Free Falling‏

Hey Family,

This week was a bit crazy here in Setúbal but luckly we survived. We worked really hard, but that wasn´t what made it tough. It was that fact thateverything fell through.

We started the week well. We had a good P-day that we spent with the Elders from the other side of Setúbal which went pretty well. We ate some Brazilian food, which was amazing (mikey probably ate well on his mission), then went and got some Ice cream. It was kind of a good bye celebration because the greenie from the other dupla was leaving to go white wash somewhere else. It was pretty fun and i almost got "beijinhos" from a female investigator so i count the day as a success. But from there on out the week has its ups and downs. We had plans to mark a lot of people for baptism but some how everything fell through. And when i say everything i mean EVERYTHING.

We had planned on marking a husband of a member this week, whos name is Mario, who we have been teaching ever since we got here. He always says he doesnt feel ready for baptism (if you haven´t noticed, i hear that alot), buthe is. We were going to have a FHE with his wife´s sister´s family, who are members, but unfortunalty, they didnt let us teach the lesson so he didnt get marked. We then re-marked with them for Saturday night, when we had already planned to visit a member family, but decided it would be better to move the members to another day. The problem was we forgot to unmark with the members until they called an hour before the scheduled appointment and said the couldn´t meet with us. That wasn´t too bad because we hadn´t planned on teaching them that night. But before i could put the phone back in my pocket, we got another call from Sandra, Mario´s wife, saying they cant meet with us either. Needless to say, i almost threw myself down the stairs of the apartment building we were knocking. But seriously, we had been fasting and i was pretty dehydrated and i tripped on the stairs right after those phone calls. I would have tubbled down a flight or two if i hadn´t caught myself. It was funny because me and Elder Dalton were both laughing and talking about how we were going to jump the top of the stairs to thje bottom of the building to kill or selves(jokingly) when i slipped.We also wanted to mark a little brazilian girl for baptism but our lesson with her fell through too. Then we planned on marking her during church, but she still hadn´t prayed or read from the Book of Mormon. I wanted to mark her anyway but i got a really weird feeling so i didnt. I dont know if it was the spirit or me just being nervous but it just didnt feel right. So along with all of that, plus fasting, this week was a bit tough on us but we´ll rebound and do better this week.

On other news, the language is good. We went on a division with our ward mission leader about a week ago and afterward he told me that i spoke too fast. I dont know if thats good or bad but he told me a couple of times thati need to slow down. He told me that to improve my already "Muito Bom"protuguese, i could slow down and see a lot of improvement. He also said that i taught with the right spirit a some other things but that i jsut need toslow down.

We´re also helping a member with his english class homework, and in fact, we just came from helping him this morning. He´s a big guy from Cape Verde who going back to school and is taking english classes. He also makes the missionaries a special caked every week. Its really interesting trying to teach someone english, but to be honest, i think portuguese is a lot harder to learn.

So is Mikey officially dating someone now? Because if he is i´m going to need some proof that this girls exists.

Tell Warren that all the kids in Portugal are talking about the Prince of Persia Movie but that i still haven´t gotten a ctritic from him yet.

And the peictures i sent home last week are of: Elder Jones (left side, red head, light suit, no longer missionary) Me (Middle, Brown haired, brown suit, fortunatly still a missionary- for at least one more year) Elder Dalton (Right side, dark hair, dark suit, recently became a missionary)

But in food news, last sunday i ate something new. I´ll give you guys a hint: Its Mom´s favorite character from "Bambie", and Dad hit one with the Cutlass. Yes, thats right, I ate rabbit. Or as the portuguese say, "Coelho". It was good but didnt have much flavor or meat. It reminded me of chicken but the dish we had was re-heated in the microwave so i dont know if that affected anything or not. It was pretty funny because we heard one of the members in the house say it was going to be the first time they every ate rabbit so me and Elder Dalton were pretty excited. But then we she put a plate down in front of us we realized it was left overs. We didnt think too much about so we just started eatting but it wasn´t long before Elder Dalton found a large bone on his plate that didnt have any meat on it. He wasnted to figure out what it was so he started moving it around on his plate until he found something that looked like teeth. At about that time i looked overand started laughing while i said, "Dude, you got the head!". It was pretty funny beacause after that, Elder Dalton had a hard time eating because he felt the rabbit was watching him.

Well, I think thats it for news here in Portugal. I hope everybody is doing well and enjoying life. Fiquem Bem! Eu Amo vocês!

Élder Haws