Week 34

Hey Family!

Woah..I'm in Brazil and speaking Portuguese! And have been here for 8 months!! That still seems crazy to me! Good news! I got the package!! IT got here monday and the lady called us saying she had a paper so we could go pick it up from the correios. So we went there on Tuesday after we got back to Cambe from our district meeting. It only cost 60% to get it! :/ which was 76.50! so..i paid it! TThe insoles seem to be helping a lot! Elder Abreu also enjoyed the pop rocks! I gave some to a little girl, I think she's five, a granddaughter of a recent convert and she cried! So that didn't go exactly as I was hoping, but oh well!

It's a small world! We were going through a list of names that we have a nd met a kid named Enzo. he's pretty cool and we've taught him twice this past week. He knows Joey Burt from when he served here! It's weird to think that in a small-ish city in Brazil I can bump into people that know the same people as me from Logan!
I can't believe it's been a week since I last emailed, It feels like it's been a year!

The world wide training thing wsa awesome! We went to the stake center in Londrina to watch it. It's crazy to think that missionaries will be chatting with people online to teach the gospel too. I don't think any of the things will change here in Brazil though, at least not for a really long time. Computers are way more expensive here and stuff but...we'll see what happens!

The training that they gave there was really good too! I thought it was kind of funny the way President Packer gavehis training on teaching though. He basically juast said 'do it' just decide to teach and do it! At lesat that's what I understood of it all because it was only in Portuguese here.

This week was incredibly long! Probably because it rained all week and we have no way to dry our clothes after we wash them except for a clothes line. Clothelines don't work when it is raining. So it's always frustrating when that happens but maybe this week it'll clear up.

We taught a lot of lessons this week and worked really hard to get people to church. But nobody goes to church when it rains. Plus it was really cold so there were even less people than during a regular rainy Sunday! We only got 1 person to church and the other 9 that committed were either
'not home' or straight up told us that they weren't going anymore cause it was cold and rainy and we couldn't convince them to come!

We have quite a few young men that we are teaching right now that are definitely candidates for baptism here in two weeks! They ahve to go to church at least once and then after the second time they can be baptized.

I love you all and you're always in my prayers!

Elder Haws

Week 33

Hello Family!!!

Another week! We're already half-way through the transfer!
Teaching English to Elder Abreu is pretty fun. He never remebers to say the 'r' right though! I think its because he has such a strong northern accent and doesn't even say his r's in Portuguese either!

We had a baptism on Saturday!! And a confirmation on Sunday! Her name is Amanda and she's the granddaughter of one of the longest time members of the area, Natal. Most of her family was already members but she never had been baptized or really gone to any church.

I'll try to send pictures afterwards.

We had a surprise zone conference on Thursday. It was half the length of a regular conference, only from 7:30 til about 2 and had five zones there. About half the mission. 91 companionships! It was super great! I love zone conferences. It was in Ward 1 building in Londrina where there's an institute and everything. It's the biggest chapel around here. It was our last conference with President Tavares because he leaves at the end of the month and President Genaro will come in June.

Oh! Father's and Mother's day...I have no idea if they exist here, I imagine they do though because they DO have children's day! And this past week was dia de namorados! Which is Valentines Day.

I hope hyou have a great week!

Com Amor,
Elder Haws

Week 32

Ola Familia!

I'm missing you all a lot right now. This week was suuper long and really hot, except for the mornings are really cold. They're actually about 15 which isn't cold but I've become a whimp here. My feet are a bit better after a week with running shoes on but still hurting. I'm excited to try the insoles and hoping they're gonna work great.

Nothing much to tell about this week. We only got three people to church, even though we had about 10 who committed.We worked all through church until sacrament meeting to get them there. We had Geronimo (Jeronimo?) who is one of our new investigators there. He is addicted to cigerettes and coffee but we're helping him to stop. He's pretty committed. He already stopped drinking acohol a long time ago. He looks about 40 but we found out he's 60 as we walked to church with him.

Amanda went again and she's going to be baptized this weekend. She's planning on Sunday but we're going to talk to her tomorrow when we go there if it can be Saturday so she can be confirmed on Sunday. It's way better to do it that way, less time for stuff to happen and them end up not getting confirmed, which happens quite a bit here.

I had a picture to send but I think I left my cable here int he LAN House last week and its not here anymore so I can't connect my camera to the computer.

You should all send more letters, more often, they get here fast!!
Love you lots. Stay safe ad know how much I care about each of you.

Com Amor
Elder Haws

Week 31

Helloooo!

Glad you all had a good week. My week was a roller coaster which is upsetting. I like when everything is just fine and the week goes by normally, not having really crappy days and then good and all craziness.

We baptized gabriel! He had the bishop actually baptize him There were so many people there! Usually there's five or six people at each baptism but there was at least 20 there! Cause he's been waiting to get baptized for a long time and had already been going to church for a few months so everybody new him.

A missionary just got back here in this ward. I think he was serving in Sao Paulo so we're going to talk to him and get him to help us out we need to have a lot more lessons with members. We're lucky to get 3 in a week here and we're suppose to have 15-20!

My feet have been hurting lately so I finally called the mission doctor once I realized it wasn't just soreness and wouldn't go away. He said I've got Plantat Fisciitis, which is pretty common for missionaries to get. It's when the tendons on the bottom of your feet begin to tear from over use. So I have permission to use my tennis shoes that I brough cause they ahve better arch support and should help my feet heal as I do some different excercises and ice my feet at night. It's only been three days that I've used the shoes but it's already helped a lot.

It was raining on Sunday and so we only had two of our investigators at church which was a bummer. But we've made the 16 as a baptismal date for one of them. Her name is Amanda and she's 17 and her grandpa is a member of the ward here. His name is Natal and he really really likes to talk for a looong time haha. The only problem with teaching Amanda is that it takes an hour to walk to her house. She couldn't live further away and still be in Cambe. She lives on the last street before the nothingness that stretches until Riviera and Londrina. And since she lives so far away we can only teach 1 or 2 days per week cause it uses so much of our day to get there.


This is the coke factory that we walk past on our way to Amanda's house! Too bad we're not allowed to drink Coke...

Wendrel is our other investigator that was at churhc. We haven't marked a date with him yet because we won't go there until tonight. He lives on the opposite side of teh city from Amanda. On the other side where the nothingness stretches until I don't know what. His house is also an hour long walk from our house. We're not doing very well at working in a specific area. BUT...we're baptizing peopel so that is okay.

We also got two kids. Gabriel and Rian to stop drinking coffee and their dad Edgar too. And we're going to try and naptize them this Sunday! THe kids that is, the dad needs to actually marry his "wife" before he could be baptized. And..that's what's happening here in Cambe!

"I love you" is "Eu te amo" or "Eu amo voce"

Eu Amo Voces
Tchau

Elder Haws