Week 73

Elder Helms is from Virginia, though he has lived in tons of different places int he U.S. because of his dad. His dad is a chaplin for the government, so he does some sort of religious something with the military, I guess.

Maringá is nice because there are a lot of trees. It's a pretty rich city, I think it's the richest in all of southern Brazil per capita. Our area is way on the edge of the city and just has houses in it! It's really weird to have just houses and houses! normally there are tons of bars and randoms stores all over the place.

 

 

 

 

 

The Church!

Elder Helms has 5 months on the mission. He just got done being trained by Elder Baker, who is still living in the same house he just went to the other half of the ward and is in Mandacaru. While Elder Helms and I are Mandacaru B. We live with Elder Baker and Elder Bispo who are the zone leaders. this zone is a lot smaller than Bauru and only has 1 district for the whole zone! There are six companionships here.

Inside the church

 

 

 

 

 

 

Our ward recently left the stake center where they were meeting inthe center of the city and has a place rented thats a lot closer to where everybody lives.

Big trees that provide shade! I've never had an trees
like this before in any area!

I'm still a little bummed that I left Bauru because we were really starting to baptize a lot there, but Maringá is supposed to be a great place as well. It did rain for the first three days I was here! Yesterday it was a little drizzly at times and today is looking like the first day that will be a nice sunny day (by nice I mean only about 90 degrees, which before was suuper hot to me, but now its comfortable). I think it got down to about 70 last night because of all the rain we´ve had and I was really cold!

Well things are going fine here, I need to get to know the members so we can start working better with them. This week we only had 1 lesson with member... really bad!! I´ll send you our zone letter, we´re having a competition for the whole transfer and Elder Helms and I are currently in 4th place :(  We´ll do better this next week!

Also I finished reading the Book of Mormon for the second time in portuguese this week! That was

A tarantula! It was already dead but its the first one I´ve seen here!

pretty cool and I´ve already started my third and I understand so much more now, I think it's Heavenly Father rewarding me for having read it and because of my effort I'm blessed with much more understanding as I read now.

Thanks for all the love and support!

Elder Haws

Week 72: Transferred!!

Felipe is the guy on the left, he is our ward mission leader.
Everton, his cousin, is the one on the right.

This week was great and a super quick one once again! Everton was baptized on Saturday at about 3:30 cause everybody showed up late at the stake center. But Everton had his interview about 20 minutes before the baptism and passed, just like we knew he would. He was confirmed on Sunday as well by a member of the ward here. There were about 30 people there; probably 10 or so of them were from other cities near by.

Im getting tranferred!! Im going to a city called Maringá. It´s just a little south of Londrina. All of my areas are still going to be really near all the others. I´ll be with Elder Helms, I dont know who he is, yet. I´ll let you know next week when I´ve already been living with him for almost a week and actually meet him and get to know him real well, ALL IN ONE WEEK! haha the mission is crazy.

Three transfers is the longest I've been witha companion. i´ve never stayed in an area for more than three transfers. My new area is called Mandacarú B, which means there are two companionships in the same ward.

I'm pretty sad to be leaving the area. I really really wanted to stay. We´re finally having success in the area after such a slow start. Elder morgan and I also became really good friends. Luckily he is staying and will be able to let me know when our investigators get baptized!

Looking at the website, it looks like Elder Helms just got done being trained, so this will be his 3rd transfer and my 12th! That makes it seem like I´ve been ont the mission for forever!

Im finally going to be senior comp. it took a while but I guess the Lord has his purposes for it, I'm not upset by it.

Thanks for all your lopve and prayers. I love you all. I'm so greatful for the opportunity that I have to be a missionary. I know that its coming to a close really soon, in like 7 months and I'm trying to take full advantage of every opportunity that I have while I'm here because I know I cant do this again.

Com muita água,

Élder Haws!

Week 71

Eduardo and Adrian

Update on the baptism from this week: I already emailed photos of the two from two weeks ago now and also the one that we had on this Saturday and confirmed yesterday. Eduardo and Adrian are the first two. Gabriel is the other photo. He´s 18 and lives just above the chapel (three houses). Everton didnt end up getting baptized this week but we remarked his baptism for this saturday in 6 days. He went to FSY (the same thing as EFY but they changed the name a little bit, and this was the first time they ever had FSY here in Brazil) and he came back super excited. All the youth in our ward are super excited and all shared their testimonies this Sunday. Its was soooo cool to see some of them who never had a testimony before and they get up there and talk about how they felt the spirit while they were there and they want to help get people to join the church and how they want to serve missions and everything. The parents were all crying seeing their children up at the pulpit and saying all this. It was a good Sunday. Plus this Sunday I got to confirm Gabriel. I dont remember if I´ve actually confirmed somebody before, but as I was confirming him I got an impression to tell him something along the lines of how he´d be a good example for his family and stuff. so I said it but then I waited for what would come next and it was the same thing! So I said basically the same thing but in a different way to try and say what i was supposed to say. Afterwards I got the SAME impression again and I was surprised! I guess I'm not good at discerning exactly what I'm supposed to say during a blessing! After the third time of the same idea coming to my head I said the same idea but tried to do it in a different way once again and then ended the blessing.

Gabriel

So like I said Everton came back from FSY really excited and he´s going to be baptized thie next Saturday at 3 in the stake center. He invited all his friends from other cities to come to his baptism. It's going to be a really big meeting!

We had Sebastião and Conceicão at church yesterday and she really liked it. Sebastião is still a little bit harder to understand. I think he liked it but we havent had a chance to visit them since church. The thing that he needs the most is a friend.

I´ll have to let you know about my testimony building experience next week as well, I´ll take some time and write it all out and then type it to email to you next week. I´ve got a topics in my head such as exact obedience obedience and the power of prayer but to share specific examples I´ll need some time to think.

Well..... I dont have much else to say. this week went by really fast! J

Edler Morgan at the dentist...again!

ust like all the others.

This week we found out that almost nobody will be transferred this next transfer(next monday) only a few who will go home and a few who wil train. so it looks like Elder Morgan and I will be staying a fourth transfer together! Though we dont know for sure yet.

Until next week when i send you photos of Evertons baptism!

Elder Haws

Week 70

Hello-

 

So this weekend has been and is Carnival. Everything is closed and has been since Saturday at about noon. It´ll all open back up at about noon on Wednesday. We were really lucky to find a LAN house that is open today! Because of Carnival, the chrurch was practically empty yesterday! We had our four investigators there and there were probably 15, MAYBE 20 members. Plus all the youth went on a trip/camp thing out of the city for the week of Carnival like usual and so it was only older people.

 

We´ve been having difficulty with several of our investtigators lately. They were all becoming eternal investigators. One of them always has an excuse why they couldn't go to church that week. This last week one of them actually had a valid excuse though. They were at the bar, of course (everybody has a bar within like 100 feet of their house) and some sort of problem happened between a random person and the bar owner because he wasnt paying for his drinks. A friend/neighbor of our investigators went to help the bar owner get this guy out of the bar and he got stabbed by a big knife right in the hip! This all happened Saturday night. So our investigator took him to the hospital and were helping him out and that's why they didnt go to church!

 

Also, we thought that some of our investigators, this ´´couple´´, were boyfriend and girlfriend cause they look a lot different but live together and stuff. But when were found out they werent dating we were only a little surprised cause he acts kinda gay. Turns out that they are just tbest friends and he had family problems and needed help so she let him move in with her and her family. I dont think they can be baptized while he continues to live there but we´ll see if they ever actually go to church before we worry about that problem.

 

This week we baptized two of Guilherme´s cousins! Adrian and Eduardo! It was great! I don't have any photos to send because I dont have my camera.

 

This next week we already have two more baptisms marked. One of Saturday, Everton, who we´ve been tryingt o baptize for forever! The other is Gabriel. He lives just three houses away from the church and really is excited to be baptized. He already has invited a lot of people to come and see it!

 

On Sunday, it was pretty cool after church; we had THREE different people call us over to talk to them. One of them said that her mother in law does voodoo and took dirt from the cemetary into her house and apparently thats a really bad thing to do if you ´´cursed´´ it or whatever and so we walked back to the church while she drove near us (there was no man in the car and so we couldnt enter, luckily we were only leaving the church after the baptisms and were only about 2 blocks away) and talked with her and the bishop and stuff and then we gave her a blessing. She promised to go to church next week and we´re going to pass by this week to tell her about the restoration fo the gospel!

Plus there was a lady that lives in our area but went to the church in the center of the city and she really really liked it. We taught her and her husband. He´s got sooooooooooooo many doubts but she already went to the church and loved it and wants to go again in our ward and take him with so he can see what its like. He used to be Catholic but after doing a whole bunch of research he realizes how wrong the Catholic church is and also discovered that there are tons and tons of churches and he says that he lost all of is faith because so many people teach so many false things and false doctrine. I know that he´s going to love church next Sunday and we will be prepared with answers to every doubt that he has.

Lots of miracles this week and its easy to tell the the Lord repares people for us to teach. He is hastening His work!

And I think thats about all I have to share this week!

Love you all

Elder Haws