Week 43: Oi!

This past week has been crazy! The first week after getting a new comp always is!! Elder Halpin is from Holladay, Utah! We get along great! I always seem to get really good comps. He hasn't had the same luck with companions!

This past week we met an American here! He's from Indiana and speaks English fluently because he moved here...not that long ago. I think he first came when he was 18 but I think he went back. He's probably about 24 years old. We taught him and his girlfriend..in English! I couldn't even do the first vision part because I never learned it in English! He understands Portuguese pretty well but isn't that good at speaking it. Which is crazy cause he's been here for like two years and I speak way better! The gift of tongues is real! So it was really weird teaching in English for the first time ever but it went really well! Not to bash on Brazil or Brazilians but he is a far more complicated person-in a good way. He understood things on a whole new level. Logically as well as spiritually. His girlfriend (actually fiance) also speaks English fluently. They really liked the lesson about the restoration and then we also taught the word of Wisdom, the law of Chastity and asked them to be baptized and they both to be baptized and they both agreed to everything. They do like to drink alcohol and coffee and he smokes weed but they're going to try to live all the commandments we taught them. We didn't set an exact date with them though because they aren't married and living together and it's a pretty complicated situation but he (his name is Andrew) went to church yesterday already and they are both coming this next week! One part of the lesson was really funny-he compared the church and the plan of God and everything to Star Wars and was kinda convinced George Lucas was a Mormon. There really are a lot of similarities!

This past week it's been over 90 everyday and with the humidity and having to walk out in the sun it's been really hot! I got way tanner because of it too! There was even a lady at an ice cream shop that mentions that we had become brown because of this past week!

We pass by this ice cream shop every time we go to a bairro called Itamaraty. It's a good hour walk from our house! But we're usually even further away and it takes about 1 1/2 hours to walk there. So I buy a milk shake (it's only 2.70 for 500ml! What a deal!) and then it's gone by the time we actually get all the way to the house where our investigator lives. We walked there the other night and I got my shake and then we went to this guys house at the very end of the bairro. After walking for almost 2 hours to get there to our appointment they had promised to make, they weren't home!! So we headed back towards our house and I had to buy myself a second milkshake to make myself feel a little better about waking all the way there for nothing!

Eriton wasn't baptized and hasn't stopped smoking and is fleeing from us a little bit, which is really sad. But we've got other good possibilities now for baptism here shortly!

Elder Haws

Week 41-42: Transfers

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

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

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

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

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 :)

Elder Havili

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.

Augusto and his family in Cambe the day I left

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

Week 36

Hello!!



HERBIE!!!

We have President Genaro as our mission President now! We had another zone conference in Londrina that was super great! He emphasized that Brazilians need to learn English because God chose it as the language of the restoration! I had never heard it said in that way before and thought that was neat. He's super excited and animated about the work here. We broke the record for most baptisms in the mission tis past month! We got 168!! Our goal was 200.

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'm really not excited to pack up again and then unpack the next day in another city but...that's the life of a missionary!
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.