General Authorities and Yogurt

Hey Family,

We survived another week here in São Domingos and a visit from Elder Teixeira so things are still looking up.

The highlight of this week ofcourse was the visit from Elder Teixeira that we had on wednsday. I thought there would be a chance that he would give us faca but it turned out that he gave us exactly the oppposite. He spent most of the time talking about the experiences that he had while he served his mission here. As a matter of fact, the first story he told was about his first area Lagos, which happend to be part of my second area Portimão. He told alot of really great stories about succesful missionaires and the importance of serving an honorable mission. He also told us stories about certain missionaries that he had in his mission when he was a mission president in Brazil. He spent a lot of time praising president and sister Torgan. He said that president Torgan is the "giant" of missionary work and he also told us stories of how president Torgan took Brazilian political figures to temple open houses and openly shared the gospel while he was serving in the brazilian government. President Teixeira and his wife also said that if they had one more child that was of age to serve a mission, they would pray that they would come serve with president Torgan because "there is no other mission president like president Torgan". It was a really good conference and afterward, Elder Teixeira interviewed alot of the missionaries that were there. I never got interviewed, which i see as a good thing because i probably would have been too nervous to say anything.

The rest of the week went really slow. Nothing really seemed to happen in our area and we didnt really teach all that many lessons. We had two investigators in church this week, the little kid from last week, and a new lady. This new lady has been an investigator for a while but has never come to church because her husband pretty much hates us. We we teach her, we have to go over to her house when hes not there and she can only come to church when he leaves the house on sunday. For that reason, shes never come to church because he normally stays home on sundays. But this week she walked in right before sacrament meeting because her husband left the house and she decided to take the oppurtunity to come to church. We still havent taught the little kid yet but we still have high hopes for him. Everytime we try to talk to him he seems a little less interessed but we still have faith it will turn out ok. I also got frustrated with the zone leaders this week adn we had a couple of arguments but were good now. We were just tlaking about my area and i pretty much just vented my frustration on the ZLs. Then last night, one of them sat me down and we talked about what we think i should do about this area. He gave me some good ideas so we´ll see anything changes here in a few weeks.

In other news, I can add one more item to the list of "Food I Never Imagined I Would Eat". I say that because last sunday we had bar-b-qued sardines at a members house. I didnt think i would like them but they turned out to be preety good. It was still kind of weird because they cook the entire fish...and then you eat THE ENTIRE FISH. I didnt like the thought of eating the fishs eyes and lungs and stuff, so i just ate from the tail to about the head and called it good. It tasted pretty good, but i wasn´t a fan of the scales and spines. The members seemed pretty impressed though because some of them had never seen american misisonaries, or missionaries for that matter, eat sardines. And as a side thought, since i had to eat fish agan, tell Mindy shes not praying hard enough!

But this week, me and Elder Bradshaw(or as the portuguese say, "Bradshó") had a more plesant food encounter that involved cake and yogurt. So yesterday we went to our recent converts house, who just happens to have a brother who was baptized recently too. So we went over to their house and they showed us how to make a yogurt cake which was amazing. Fun, Fun,

Well, i better get going. I pray for mom this week so that she can survive girls camp. Eu amo vocês!

Élder Haws

P.S. my bites were probably spider bites and they are pretty much gone now.