Week 41:
This Sunday we confirmed Luan! We also had three other investigators at church and are hoping to baptize at least two people next week!! This is the last week of being a missionary for Elder Havili and so we're going to work exactly the same as always (because we always work hard) to baptize before he goes home! Also Beatriz, Evelyn and Lane went back to Sao Paulo this morning and so we stopped by (in reality we went to talk to Eriton, who is planning on being baptized this next week if he can stop smoking) and said bye to them and it was really awkward cause they were crying and super sad. Elder Havili will probably be talking with them on FB here in less than two weeks though.
We also got attacked by a very large goat in a field this week. It was about 7 o'clock and dark already but we heard it running for us so I just froze and was ready to jump to either side depending on where it went. I think and I won't tell too much of the story so that Elder Havili can keep a little of his pride :) He was scared pretty good though!
We have word from Sister Genaro that we are finally getting a washing machine so we don't have to wash our clothes in little buckets anymore but...we don't know when it will get here. Seeing how it took 5 weeks to have her autorize it..maybe actually getting one will take a while too!
Next week we have stake conference in Marilia so it will probably be hard to get investigators there but we'll see how it goes. Anyway, everything is going great here and I can't believe I've been here 10 already!
I love you all and pray for you always!
Com muita agua
Elder Haws
Week 42: Transfers
So Elder Havili will be going home today to Seattle! Actually he goes to Londrina for two days first but he's no longer my companion! It was a really great transfer and I'm sad to have a new comp but I know he's really cool too! His name is Elder Halpin and he's from Utah-Salt Lake-ish! I'll find out the real city when I talk to him tomorrow. Right now I'm in Marilia with the Zone Leaders and Elder Havili and I'll stay with them over night until Elder Halpin gets here tomorrow.
We did get a washing machine finally!! It's so nice! Well the machine is actually pretty crappy but it's nice to not wash my clothes in a bucket anymore! Plus Elder Havili is leaving so I took the 1 kind of solf matress in the house and I won't have to use the super hard one anymore :)
We had a baptism all set up for Saturday but then he smoked one more time and so we were going to delay it until Sunday night but then he smoked a lot and we're going to try again this week with him. He's really having a hard time stopping smoking-prayers for him would really help. His name is Eriton. He's stopped drinkking alcohol and coffee and everything but just can't quit with cigerettes yet!
The stake conference went really well. President and Sister Genaro spoke and everybody likes them a lot. Also, our bishop from Ourinhos spoke and gave a really good talk too.
I don't want to complain a lot in theis letter but just know I'm sooo glad the sisters here leaving from our district and there are new ones. They were soooo disobedient and were so rude to Elder Havili, I couldn't believe it. It's good that there are only going to be two of us staying in the district and the rest are all in different places.
I hope you all have a great week and, as always, I'm excited to hear from you all next week!
Com muita augua
Elder Haws
Monday, August 19, 2013
Tuesday, August 6, 2013
Week 40
Elder Haws didn't have a lot to share-he was mostly answering our family email but I did extract a couple things he said:
We did baptize a guy named Luan yesterday! He is the boyfriend of one of the daugters in the family of recent converts! We are really working with them a lot.
I love you all a lot and miss you tons. I had a dream last night that I was home and I was 100% convinced it was real even though it didn't exactly make sense why I only remembered 9ish months of my mission and then I woke up and realized it was just a dream. It's been a long time since I had a dream like that! Maybe it has something to do with the fact that Elder Havili will be home pretty soon.
Anyway, have a great week!
Love Elder Haws
We did baptize a guy named Luan yesterday! He is the boyfriend of one of the daugters in the family of recent converts! We are really working with them a lot.
I love you all a lot and miss you tons. I had a dream last night that I was home and I was 100% convinced it was real even though it didn't exactly make sense why I only remembered 9ish months of my mission and then I woke up and realized it was just a dream. It's been a long time since I had a dream like that! Maybe it has something to do with the fact that Elder Havili will be home pretty soon.
Anyway, have a great week!
Love Elder Haws
Friday, August 2, 2013
Week 39: Three!
Querido Irmaos e Irmas!
This week was a wild one! We went to yet another zone meeting on Tuesday, which meant that we lost part of our p-day because we had to walk to the bus station which takes about an hour and then ride a bus to Marilia that takes about an hour and a half and then walk to the zone leader's house to sleep on the ground because the meeting starts at 9. Normally it's not too big of a deal but after three weeks in a row it was upsetting. Anyway, the meeting was really cool because each of the companionships gave a training rather than the zone leaders (probably because they had already given the training from Leadership Training Meeting twice). We were assigned and taught about making contacts and talking to people. We made a nice lesson and did a cool training and finished with a sweet Nike swoosh. We asked if anybody knew the motto "Just do It," even though it was in English, the did! So it ended up working out nicely and we finished out training.
This week we had divisions with the zone leaders, partly because we had some baptismal interviews to be done, and all three interviews went great! They were all three baptized on Friday! It was so great to finally baptize people again, we hadn't baptized anyone here yet and were already halfway through the transfer!
Elder Havili only has three weeks left on his mission! It's pretty hard being the companion of somebody who is dying. It makes you want to go home with them too but at the same time not. And I'm super excited cause I still have over a year here.
Our washing machine is still broken and it's been a whole week of cold showers still. We haven't been able to get a new shower-head yet. Our ward mission leader tried to fix it for us but it broke the same day :( This past week was supposedly the coldest week of the year here. I even wore my sweater a few days! One big difference with houses here and houses in the U.S. is that when it's cold outside, it is the exact same temperature inside!
Our ward mission leader is super great and we even ate dinner one time this week because he needed to talk to us--we had, wouldn't ya guess, rice and beans with chicken! It was super typical but sitll good and it was weird to eat at night! It's been a few months since I've eaten dinner, I don't think I ever did in Cambe!
Well things are great here and I miss you all a lot but love hearing how you are doing! Have a great week and remember that miracles are real!
Com Amor,
Elder Haws
This week was a wild one! We went to yet another zone meeting on Tuesday, which meant that we lost part of our p-day because we had to walk to the bus station which takes about an hour and then ride a bus to Marilia that takes about an hour and a half and then walk to the zone leader's house to sleep on the ground because the meeting starts at 9. Normally it's not too big of a deal but after three weeks in a row it was upsetting. Anyway, the meeting was really cool because each of the companionships gave a training rather than the zone leaders (probably because they had already given the training from Leadership Training Meeting twice). We were assigned and taught about making contacts and talking to people. We made a nice lesson and did a cool training and finished with a sweet Nike swoosh. We asked if anybody knew the motto "Just do It," even though it was in English, the did! So it ended up working out nicely and we finished out training.
This week we had divisions with the zone leaders, partly because we had some baptismal interviews to be done, and all three interviews went great! They were all three baptized on Friday! It was so great to finally baptize people again, we hadn't baptized anyone here yet and were already halfway through the transfer!Elder Havili only has three weeks left on his mission! It's pretty hard being the companion of somebody who is dying. It makes you want to go home with them too but at the same time not. And I'm super excited cause I still have over a year here.
Our washing machine is still broken and it's been a whole week of cold showers still. We haven't been able to get a new shower-head yet. Our ward mission leader tried to fix it for us but it broke the same day :( This past week was supposedly the coldest week of the year here. I even wore my sweater a few days! One big difference with houses here and houses in the U.S. is that when it's cold outside, it is the exact same temperature inside!
Our ward mission leader is super great and we even ate dinner one time this week because he needed to talk to us--we had, wouldn't ya guess, rice and beans with chicken! It was super typical but sitll good and it was weird to eat at night! It's been a few months since I've eaten dinner, I don't think I ever did in Cambe!
Well things are great here and I miss you all a lot but love hearing how you are doing! Have a great week and remember that miracles are real!
Com Amor,
Elder Haws
Tuesday, July 23, 2013
Week 38
Elder Haws didn't have tons to say this week but here it is:
The house is...the same. The shower works most the time now, we don't know what happened but we're not complaining! Our washing machine is broken but we did have a guy come by about it. He told us he couldn't fix it but somebody else could. So basically he just didn't want to do it. Hopefully we can get it taken care of this week.
We had zone conference and it was all the same things as last time! We went to Assis twice for baptismal interviews, there are two duplas of sisteres there. We got the cousins of some recent converts to come to church and had five people there because our ward mission leader brought two of his neightbor kids with him.
There's a ton of work to be done here in Ourinhos and it's a lot further from Marilia than I realized when I finally saw a map. We're practically in Parana still! Right on the border of Sao Paulo and Parana.
I'm already out of time because I've had a lot of computer problems today and it's suuper slow, that I wasted time waiting for it to load.
Love you guys!
Tchau
Elder Haws
The house is...the same. The shower works most the time now, we don't know what happened but we're not complaining! Our washing machine is broken but we did have a guy come by about it. He told us he couldn't fix it but somebody else could. So basically he just didn't want to do it. Hopefully we can get it taken care of this week.
We had zone conference and it was all the same things as last time! We went to Assis twice for baptismal interviews, there are two duplas of sisteres there. We got the cousins of some recent converts to come to church and had five people there because our ward mission leader brought two of his neightbor kids with him.
There's a ton of work to be done here in Ourinhos and it's a lot further from Marilia than I realized when I finally saw a map. We're practically in Parana still! Right on the border of Sao Paulo and Parana.
I'm already out of time because I've had a lot of computer problems today and it's suuper slow, that I wasted time waiting for it to load.
Love you guys!
Tchau
Elder Haws
Monday, July 15, 2013
Week 37: Ourinhos
Hello!
Alright Ourinhos is a pretty small city, only 100,000 people but its really spread out. There's hardly any tall buildings here, just a few apartment buildings with maybe 20 floors. So we've been doing a lot of walking!!
Our house is huge. It has two rooms. A bedroom and a kitchen/dining/closet/living/study room. Oh and I guess there's three rooms cause there's a bathroom too. But as a trade off fo rbeing stmall, everything is really high quality! Except that the washing machine doesn't work, the shower head that is suppose to ehat the water is broken so it's always cold, as well as teh water tank on top of the house has hole in it and the whole house stinks like mold and its growing on some of the walls :)
Alright, I apologize for complaining but I had to get that out of my system! It's not so hard to deal with. Elder Havili is great!I forot to tell you last week but this will be his last transfer before he goes back to Seattle! His dad is Tongan and his mom is from the U.S. I have only taken one picture so far so I will try and do better this next week.
We're gonna have Zone conference tomorrow AGAIN!! Tha's three for me in three weeks! It's awesome! They hadn't done the conference in this zone yet (Zone: Marilia) and so I was at the one in Zone Tiradentes and get to be at this one too! Marilia is about an hour and twenty minute bus ride if we can catch the 7:00 bus at night, and during the day it's about a three hour bus ride at any other time. We've already had to go there for a zone meeting and during transfers and we'll go there tonight because we need to be at zone conference at 7:30 tomorrow morning.
We only had two people at church and that was pretty disappointing. If we don't have at least 8 we have to leave and invite people to come in. It's really unproductive to try and invite people to church cause when we tell that that it's happening right at that moment nobody wants to go. But Sunday night we talked to a family! It was the parents of a girl that works at a restaurant in the center of the city.The missionaries eat there a lot cause the member has an account there that it gets charged to whenever it's his day to give us lunch. The missionaries have never talked to them about the church until this past week when Elder Havili and I went there. The daughter ended up not being home but we taught both her parents and I thought it went really well.
Elder Havili and I get along really well and I like it here a lot too, just like all my areas so far! (except for the house..but we're working on getting these things fixed soon).
The first week after being transferred always passes sooo fast! I feel like so much has happened since last pday but at the same time it's mostly just riding busses and so I don't hae a lot to say about the work that has been happening.
That's all I've got today!
I know that this is the work of God. I know that He still revels His will through prophets in these later days and they will help us on our jouney back to Him. The Book of Mormon is a book of sacred scriptures that was protected by God and delivered to be translated by Joseph Smith! I'm so glad to have the Church and the Gospel in my life!
Elder Haws
Alright Ourinhos is a pretty small city, only 100,000 people but its really spread out. There's hardly any tall buildings here, just a few apartment buildings with maybe 20 floors. So we've been doing a lot of walking!!
Our house is huge. It has two rooms. A bedroom and a kitchen/dining/closet/living/study room. Oh and I guess there's three rooms cause there's a bathroom too. But as a trade off fo rbeing stmall, everything is really high quality! Except that the washing machine doesn't work, the shower head that is suppose to ehat the water is broken so it's always cold, as well as teh water tank on top of the house has hole in it and the whole house stinks like mold and its growing on some of the walls :)
 |
| Elder Havili |
We're gonna have Zone conference tomorrow AGAIN!! Tha's three for me in three weeks! It's awesome! They hadn't done the conference in this zone yet (Zone: Marilia) and so I was at the one in Zone Tiradentes and get to be at this one too! Marilia is about an hour and twenty minute bus ride if we can catch the 7:00 bus at night, and during the day it's about a three hour bus ride at any other time. We've already had to go there for a zone meeting and during transfers and we'll go there tonight because we need to be at zone conference at 7:30 tomorrow morning.
We only had two people at church and that was pretty disappointing. If we don't have at least 8 we have to leave and invite people to come in. It's really unproductive to try and invite people to church cause when we tell that that it's happening right at that moment nobody wants to go. But Sunday night we talked to a family! It was the parents of a girl that works at a restaurant in the center of the city.The missionaries eat there a lot cause the member has an account there that it gets charged to whenever it's his day to give us lunch. The missionaries have never talked to them about the church until this past week when Elder Havili and I went there. The daughter ended up not being home but we taught both her parents and I thought it went really well.
 |
| Augusto and his family in Cambe the day I left |
The first week after being transferred always passes sooo fast! I feel like so much has happened since last pday but at the same time it's mostly just riding busses and so I don't hae a lot to say about the work that has been happening.
That's all I've got today!
I know that this is the work of God. I know that He still revels His will through prophets in these later days and they will help us on our jouney back to Him. The Book of Mormon is a book of sacred scriptures that was protected by God and delivered to be translated by Joseph Smith! I'm so glad to have the Church and the Gospel in my life!
Elder Haws
Tuesday, July 9, 2013
Week 36
Hello!!
 |
| HERBIE!!! |
President Genaro raised the goal for coming months to 231 and eventually wants upwards of 4 to 5 hundred! I gotta admit...I'm lacking faith in his vision of 500 right now, but maybe in a year we can get there!
I don't really have a lot else to say here about Cambe. Except that I'm leaving! I'm going to Marilia. It's a city back in Sao Paulo again. Not quite as far away as Bauru is though. My companion will be Elder Havili. he's from...i'll give you two guesses! If you guessed Brazil, you were wrong. But from good 'ole Washington again! That makes three from Washington for me! I already know Elder Havili a little from when I was in Bauru-he was in a city nearby and I saw him 3-4 times. I'll send you a picture next week!
 |
|
This is a box of cereal that is basically cocoa puffs. Elder Haws and Elder Abreu each got a toy in their box! |
I really liked Cambe and wanted to stay, but that's why I got transferred!
There are some pictures below:
Until next week!!
Elder Haws
 |
| "This one shows that I´m super qualified as a missionary and have done lots of training! :)" -Elder Haws |
 |
| Again sorry this one will not let me format it!! This is Ginga a fruit that grows in a pod on trees. |
Monday, July 1, 2013
Week 35: Rain
Hello!!
After 8 days of raining we finally saw the sun again on Thrusday! but...then it rained again that night and has been raining ever since!
Every week I'm getting tested; and I'm sad when I fail!
Such as this past week: on Sunday (yesterday) we had a list of 11 people who said they would go to church. So we woke up early and started walking to every single house and...like usual most of them were not there. I was getting a bit upset. But after every house, I was still okay because I knew we for sure had the last two people who would for sure go. Gabriel and his little brother Mateus. We talked to them Saturday night at 8 to double check that they were planning on going still. They said they would and we planned to stop by there at 8:50 and get to church at 9 cause they live really close. We went to every single house on the list and nobody was home or they had decided not to go anymore. Wehn we finally got to Gabriel and Mateus' I htought "at the very least we'll have these two!" Their mom came out and said that they didn't want to go anymore and had left for their aunt's hous. One last night and the other that morning...I was super upset!! After all that work and a whole week of talking to people, we had zero people to take to church! Church is really important! If they don't go tot church they can't be baptized and that means we have zero possibilities this next week.
So I got upset and I know I shouldn't get mad cause it drives away the spirit.
And so after all this, we show up at church and 1 of the people we had gone to pick up had already gone to the church!! Her husband and grandson didn't go but she did! (Unfortunately she can't be baptized cause she isn't married) so I was a little bit happier but not much. We didn't get to church until about 10:45 cause we had no reason to be there without investigators. We also got asked about the other couple that was there. We weren't aware of another couple. We had probably four or five people say, "who is the other couple that are investigating today?" so we went to talk to them and it turns out they were wanting to visit the church on another day but it was closed. So they saw the sign that says the meetings are at 9 on Sundays and they came back to make a visit and know what's it's like! We got their address and we scheduled a visit at their house on Tuesday at 4! We're gonna see how they liked it and talk about the restoration and baptism and stuff!! I'm super excited for it!
People don't do that here. Nobody just wants to pay a visit and will return a second time on a Sunday, early in the morning, to know about a church here! It's a miracle here in Cambe!
And so...after all this, I wanted to be mad at myself for getting mad but that wouldn't be productive and also wouldn't show that I'm learning anything. So I got a little sad that I had gotten mad and know I'm going to do a lot better in the future. We weren't taking investigators to church but He had already sent two to the church and were already there enjoying it while I was getting mad walking on the street!
And other than that...it rained sooo hard as we were walking home last night. I could wring out my garments when I got home! Soaked to the bone! I have a cool video but it's too big to email and so you'll have to wait a year and half to see it!
Well that's all I have this week! Love you all!!
Tchau
Elder Haws
After 8 days of raining we finally saw the sun again on Thrusday! but...then it rained again that night and has been raining ever since!
Every week I'm getting tested; and I'm sad when I fail!
Such as this past week: on Sunday (yesterday) we had a list of 11 people who said they would go to church. So we woke up early and started walking to every single house and...like usual most of them were not there. I was getting a bit upset. But after every house, I was still okay because I knew we for sure had the last two people who would for sure go. Gabriel and his little brother Mateus. We talked to them Saturday night at 8 to double check that they were planning on going still. They said they would and we planned to stop by there at 8:50 and get to church at 9 cause they live really close. We went to every single house on the list and nobody was home or they had decided not to go anymore. Wehn we finally got to Gabriel and Mateus' I htought "at the very least we'll have these two!" Their mom came out and said that they didn't want to go anymore and had left for their aunt's hous. One last night and the other that morning...I was super upset!! After all that work and a whole week of talking to people, we had zero people to take to church! Church is really important! If they don't go tot church they can't be baptized and that means we have zero possibilities this next week.So I got upset and I know I shouldn't get mad cause it drives away the spirit.
 |
| The best pizza he's eaten in Brazil! |
 |
| Not sure what these masks are for... they are kind of creepy though! |
And so...after all this, I wanted to be mad at myself for getting mad but that wouldn't be productive and also wouldn't show that I'm learning anything. So I got a little sad that I had gotten mad and know I'm going to do a lot better in the future. We weren't taking investigators to church but He had already sent two to the church and were already there enjoying it while I was getting mad walking on the street!
 |
| I cannot get this picture to go the other direction! I'm sorry.. |
And other than that...it rained sooo hard as we were walking home last night. I could wring out my garments when I got home! Soaked to the bone! I have a cool video but it's too big to email and so you'll have to wait a year and half to see it!
Well that's all I have this week! Love you all!!
Tchau
Elder Haws
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)