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