Well this transfer will be 7 weeks long instead of just 6. It stared a week early because of Christmas. So next Monday we all find out about transfers and then do whatever we need to on Tuesday for it. Elder Phillipy only has five 6 weeks left including this one that just started, so I'll probably be getting a different companion bu nobody knows for sure. It is whatever the Mission president feels inspired to do!
Not a lot happened this week. Jennifer cut us, she doesn't want to only pray to God, she likes praying to Mary also. None of our investigators are progressing because they won't read the Book of Mormon, but we planned this week really well and think we can get them to make specific goals instead of just accepting the invite to read. It did rain on three days that we thought it wouldn't and so didn't take rain jackets or an umbrella. Speaking of which, the mission president and his wife were in Bauru last week and she stole my my umbrella. (yes stole, took without asking :O) and I have no idea where it ended up so I, once again, don't have an umbrella. So those three days I got soaked. When we were coming home on Thursday, it started to rain and within 10 seconds was the hardest rain I've seen in my life. The drops were huge! We ran the last couple blocks to the bust stop which was partially covered but then it stated to be windy too and it didn't help much. Next the gutter got full and the whole road was covered with water and looked like a river but then it decided the road was too small for it and stared taking over the sidewalk too! Waterproof shoes only work if the water can't go over the top. Once that happens, it would be better if they weren't water proof because all they do is keep all the water in and make your shoes weigh a ton!
I hope this next week goes better, we just need to find new people to teach. We can easily keep all the ones we teach right now and add probably 20 more if it ever stops raining so we have a chance to meet them.
My Portuguese is definitely improving! I can almost always understand people but still have a hard time getting my point across, its much harder to speak than understand! For me at least. I'm out of time. Hope you all are doing well!
Tchau,
Elder Haws
Monday, January 28, 2013
Thursday, January 24, 2013
Week 12: End of Tranfser 1
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| Tyler with his Stake President, Pres. Maughan, after being set apart as a missionary! |
Tchau
Elder Haws
Monday, January 14, 2013
Week 11
Ola!!
I can't believe I've already been in the field for a whole month! This past week flew past so fast! I think it was because we planned better. We always had the whole next day planned out and didn't have gaps like we did last week; with a few hours here and there without appointments. We had soo many people that were going to go to church but then fell through. Out of 16, only 2 came! It was Jose Carlos and his wife. He's the guy who has his own Prayer House and stuff. It's kinda weird to teach him because he always goes off and random streams of yelling that gets very un-doctrinal like how Jesus is the size of two suns and stuff. But he is slowly starting to understand better.
I was nervous for the first time on Sunday! I honestly haven't been nervous for anything I've done so far on the mission until we got to church and then the bishop said I had to give a small thought and testimony in sacrament meeting! It I could have know before hand I could have figured out how to say what I wanted in Portuguese! But I didn't have time. It went well though and everybody understood me. One of the hard things about being in a less touristy city like this, is that nobody can understand your accent. It's hard to say everything exactly like they do and they've never heard an American speaking Portuguese before.
Sundays are always really long days, we have have to wake up extra early and ride the bus across the city to get everybody who said they would go to church. Half the time you have to wake them up and then go to other houses while they get ready, and then come back to get them for reals. We try and get some of the members of the ward with cars to help us by meeting us there to pick them up but it is really hard because only a few members in the ward have them. And then ride back across town to get to the church by 8:30! Yesterday was particularly hard because it rained all day and some of the people said they weren't coming anymore because it was raining so hard (naturally it wasn't the exact person who was suppose to come to church who said they weren't coming anymore, but a family who did it for them).
I found out why nobody can say my name here! They don't have the letter: W! They think it's two weird Ls or something. We just tell them to say Halls, like the throat drop because that's about as close as they can get. Or we write Ras on a paper and then they can say it right.
We met a lot of new people this week but I don't have time to write about them :/ next week!
Hope you all have a great week!
Tchau
Elder Haws
I can't believe I've already been in the field for a whole month! This past week flew past so fast! I think it was because we planned better. We always had the whole next day planned out and didn't have gaps like we did last week; with a few hours here and there without appointments. We had soo many people that were going to go to church but then fell through. Out of 16, only 2 came! It was Jose Carlos and his wife. He's the guy who has his own Prayer House and stuff. It's kinda weird to teach him because he always goes off and random streams of yelling that gets very un-doctrinal like how Jesus is the size of two suns and stuff. But he is slowly starting to understand better.I was nervous for the first time on Sunday! I honestly haven't been nervous for anything I've done so far on the mission until we got to church and then the bishop said I had to give a small thought and testimony in sacrament meeting! It I could have know before hand I could have figured out how to say what I wanted in Portuguese! But I didn't have time. It went well though and everybody understood me. One of the hard things about being in a less touristy city like this, is that nobody can understand your accent. It's hard to say everything exactly like they do and they've never heard an American speaking Portuguese before.
Sundays are always really long days, we have have to wake up extra early and ride the bus across the city to get everybody who said they would go to church. Half the time you have to wake them up and then go to other houses while they get ready, and then come back to get them for reals. We try and get some of the members of the ward with cars to help us by meeting us there to pick them up but it is really hard because only a few members in the ward have them. And then ride back across town to get to the church by 8:30! Yesterday was particularly hard because it rained all day and some of the people said they weren't coming anymore because it was raining so hard (naturally it wasn't the exact person who was suppose to come to church who said they weren't coming anymore, but a family who did it for them).I found out why nobody can say my name here! They don't have the letter: W! They think it's two weird Ls or something. We just tell them to say Halls, like the throat drop because that's about as close as they can get. Or we write Ras on a paper and then they can say it right.
We met a lot of new people this week but I don't have time to write about them :/ next week!
Hope you all have a great week!
Tchau
Elder Haws
Monday, January 7, 2013
Week 10
Oi!! (Hi!!)
I can't believe it's already half-way through the first transfer! Some days are great and others are terrible. But even 50 bad days are worth it if you have 1 good day after! Brazilians are crazy. The guy Jose Carlos that we are trying to teach (he wants to start his own church) decided to bring a few of the neighborhood kids to his house and we taught them yesterday. It made my day go from downright terrible, to amazing! They are Taina, this girl who's 22ish, with corn rows and probably 6 feet tall, which if very unusual here. Bruno, who is really fat and says he is a homo even though he doesn't want to be. And Carol, who just kinda sat there and listened to everything. They are great people and want to change but said they didn't know how. They committed to start praying every day and we have an appointment with them again on Wednesday! Afterwards, Jose Carlos said that he wants to fill his garage with people for us to teach and said to be there at 5 on Wednesday before our appointment with the other three. Its so weird but so awesome at the same time.I can see it going really well or really horrible..i guess I'll have to let you know next week!
We finally got somebody to go to church with us! The chapel is such a long way away from their houses that it's hard to get them to come. We got him and started walking to the bus stop and then found out he had a car! We asked why he didn't say anything about it before. He said: "You guys said you'd pick me up and then we would ride the bus, I thought you wouldn't want a car!" So we went back to his house and drove to the other member's house who we were helping get to church and then made it at like 8:40! Church starts at 8:30 and if we rode the bus we would have gotten there at like 9:15 or 9:30. He seemed to like it but took off right after. It was over so we could ask him too much about it that day. Oh this is Everton, BTW, who we found out is actually Everson. It's amazing the things you can learn about a person when they home for a second time. This was the second time we saw him since the day we met him because of the rain. We also learned he has two kids with possibly two different women but we aren't sure yet.
We also had a weird experience with Jennifer who was so hammered on Wednesday night that she opened the front door and slammed her bottle of wine or whatever on the floor and it shattered all over the place and then she started yelling about how this guy was calling her a liar. After she calmed down a bit, she looked at us and asked us why were in her dream at 6 o'clock that morning. She said we were telling her that she could do it. We asked her what she meant, what we were saying she could do, but she couldn't really give a straight answer, it was something about her changing her life. It's kind of cool because she actually called us over, she was the one who initiated conversation with the missionaries a few weeks ago, so we know that she actually does want to change. Because of all that we couldn't give a lesson that night so we went back on Saturday and we realized that even though she is crazy, she has such a good person inside. The only problem is that it is deep. Really deep inside. But I'm so excited for her and her husband/boyfriend, people don't usually get legally married here. His name is Lazoro and he reads the Book of Mormon and understands sooo well! It's so awesome but he has to change before he can get baptized-either split with Jennifer or get married, whatever he feels is right, even though he has two kids with her (aged 8 and 10) so we know what we want him to do but that's not our place to say.
The shower electrocutes you here. They don't have water heaters but just use a shower head that can heat it up a bit really fast and if you touch it in the wrong spot it shocks your hand. Also one time the water wasn't falling in droplets but was a continuous stream and I kinda felt like I was getting shocked...nothing too strong but I definitely felt it. It makes me worried but I haven't heard any stories and all other missionaries say it's normal. So I guess it's just suppose to help us wake up or something?? haha
The picture is of me punching open my first coconut for some coconut water!
Well that's pretty much how my week went! Hope you're all doing well!
Tchau,
Elder Haws
I can't believe it's already half-way through the first transfer! Some days are great and others are terrible. But even 50 bad days are worth it if you have 1 good day after! Brazilians are crazy. The guy Jose Carlos that we are trying to teach (he wants to start his own church) decided to bring a few of the neighborhood kids to his house and we taught them yesterday. It made my day go from downright terrible, to amazing! They are Taina, this girl who's 22ish, with corn rows and probably 6 feet tall, which if very unusual here. Bruno, who is really fat and says he is a homo even though he doesn't want to be. And Carol, who just kinda sat there and listened to everything. They are great people and want to change but said they didn't know how. They committed to start praying every day and we have an appointment with them again on Wednesday! Afterwards, Jose Carlos said that he wants to fill his garage with people for us to teach and said to be there at 5 on Wednesday before our appointment with the other three. Its so weird but so awesome at the same time.I can see it going really well or really horrible..i guess I'll have to let you know next week!
We finally got somebody to go to church with us! The chapel is such a long way away from their houses that it's hard to get them to come. We got him and started walking to the bus stop and then found out he had a car! We asked why he didn't say anything about it before. He said: "You guys said you'd pick me up and then we would ride the bus, I thought you wouldn't want a car!" So we went back to his house and drove to the other member's house who we were helping get to church and then made it at like 8:40! Church starts at 8:30 and if we rode the bus we would have gotten there at like 9:15 or 9:30. He seemed to like it but took off right after. It was over so we could ask him too much about it that day. Oh this is Everton, BTW, who we found out is actually Everson. It's amazing the things you can learn about a person when they home for a second time. This was the second time we saw him since the day we met him because of the rain. We also learned he has two kids with possibly two different women but we aren't sure yet.
We also had a weird experience with Jennifer who was so hammered on Wednesday night that she opened the front door and slammed her bottle of wine or whatever on the floor and it shattered all over the place and then she started yelling about how this guy was calling her a liar. After she calmed down a bit, she looked at us and asked us why were in her dream at 6 o'clock that morning. She said we were telling her that she could do it. We asked her what she meant, what we were saying she could do, but she couldn't really give a straight answer, it was something about her changing her life. It's kind of cool because she actually called us over, she was the one who initiated conversation with the missionaries a few weeks ago, so we know that she actually does want to change. Because of all that we couldn't give a lesson that night so we went back on Saturday and we realized that even though she is crazy, she has such a good person inside. The only problem is that it is deep. Really deep inside. But I'm so excited for her and her husband/boyfriend, people don't usually get legally married here. His name is Lazoro and he reads the Book of Mormon and understands sooo well! It's so awesome but he has to change before he can get baptized-either split with Jennifer or get married, whatever he feels is right, even though he has two kids with her (aged 8 and 10) so we know what we want him to do but that's not our place to say.
The shower electrocutes you here. They don't have water heaters but just use a shower head that can heat it up a bit really fast and if you touch it in the wrong spot it shocks your hand. Also one time the water wasn't falling in droplets but was a continuous stream and I kinda felt like I was getting shocked...nothing too strong but I definitely felt it. It makes me worried but I haven't heard any stories and all other missionaries say it's normal. So I guess it's just suppose to help us wake up or something?? haha
The picture is of me punching open my first coconut for some coconut water!
Well that's pretty much how my week went! Hope you're all doing well!
Tchau,
Elder Haws
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