A Scary Sabbath‎

Hey Family,

Hawsmo here, all safe and well. I am serving in the Concordia area of the Chapeco Zone. Chapeco is the furthest west zone here in the Florianopolis Mission. In our interviews/training with President Dansie last week he mentioned that by serving this far out west it means that he trusts us. If something goes wrong he can’t help and if we do something to embarrass the church we are on our own. Its kind of empowering, and yet a little intimidating. My district consists of me, my companion (Elder Martin, our district leader), and two Brazilian sisters serving in Xanxere. We will be taking the bus to Xanxere tomorrow morning to have a district meeting with the Sisters. Because of the inopportune bus times our bus will leave Concordia at 6:30 AM and we will return around 8 PM. But all is well when you are doing the work of the Lord. The rest of our zone has two other districts: One in Chapeco with 4 Elders (two zone leaders, one zone leader and one elder are Americans) and a district in the state north of us with 2 companionships of Elders (Elder Bateman, my companion from the MTC, is the only American in that district). All in all, our zone has 10 Elders, 2 Sisters, 8 Brazilians and 4 Americans.

Our location of residence is a somewhat run-down apartment on the fourth floor of a building in the middle of the city. We have a 4 burner-stove, oven, and an electric water-warming showerhead. We get to wash our clothes by hand. This is definitely a new experience for me. Our apartment lacks the finer things in life, but that’s okay because we’re never there.

The work this last week was pretty similar to last week. We found a couple families that really seem to want the Gospel. We found a couple that lost a daughter a couple months ago to cancer so we taught the Plan of Salvation to them and they were more than willing to let us set up another appointment to teach them. We found a young couple with a daughter that accepted all of our invitations and seem excited to learn more. But the heartbreak came with the other positive family we found last week. We taught a mother and her son last Tuesday when the Dad was working and they accepted the message. We went back for our second appointment on Friday and the mother met us at the door. She said her husband didn’t like them talking to us about religion and the rest of her family (including her uncle who is a Catholic priest) were incredibly upset with her welcoming the missionaries. After telling us that they couldn’t meet with us again, we talked for just a moment and found out that she read the parts of the Book of Mormon that we marked and got an answer that the Book of Mormon was true. We invited here to keep reading, even though we couldn’t visit her anymore. It broke our hearts to walk away from that house. I’ve only been in the field for a week and a half and it is already starting to hurt.

Church yesterday was a different pain for a different reason. We only have one branch in all of Concordia. That means around 50 active members in a city with a population over 60,000. About 5 minutes before sacrament meeting (the order of meetings here is the same as in our home ward, Priesthood/Relief Society, Sunday School, Sacrament) the lady who normal plays the piano/organ asked me to play for the meeting. I managed to play all the hymns with just the right hand. I wish I had had more notice so I could have worked up more than just 2 notes at a time. The real headache came halfway through Sunday School when Elder Martin informed me that none of the 3 speakers had shown up to church and the Branch President wanted me to give a short talk in Sacrament Meeting… in Portuguese. I was getting nervous jitters for the rest of Sunday School. When the time came I walked from my spot by the organ and managed to stumble through a 5-6 minute talk about scriptures and prophets. It was nerve racking, but I got a few sincere compliments from members after the meeting. Fortunately I didn’t end up preaching any false doctrine from the pulpit in broken Portuguese. While I was glad to have survived that incident, I wish I could understand and comprehend half as well as I speak, but I need patience. It will all come in time.

Even though I don’t understand too much spoken Portuguese, I have found my ways to get around it. When we are teaching a lesson Elder Martin explains that I don’t understand Portuguese very well so I am able to just chip in a few points in each lesson and not have to worry about responding to questions. As such, the people generally regard me as being really strange, because I’m an American in Brazil, who speaks decent Portuguese but doesn’t understand it. After the lesson I am able to carry on a pretty routine conversation. I stand up, their eyes get big and they start to ramble off in Portuguese. I respond with “Almost 2 meters” spoken in nearly flawless Portuguese. They throw a lot more Portuguese at me and I respond: “Yes, I like to play basketball”, again in perfect Portuguese. At about this point my companion takes over the post discussion conversation and we make our way to the door. I guess I should be thanking Dad, Mindy, Warren and Spencer. They always showed me off as a freak-show before the mission so I’m used to it now. Thanks.

Other random information: I have been informed that there are approximately 140 missionaries in my mission with around 100 of them being natives. I will have real numbers for you in the future. I can send letters within Brazil for 1 centavo, or .5 cents. Yes, 20 letters for 10 cents. However, it costs me 40 American cents to send a letter to the US in a month, or 80 American cents for 2 weeks. At interviews I received 2 letters from Dad, and a letter from Janessa Hansen and another from Adrienne Love.

Life is good, I’m enjoying the work, everything is fine, I love you all, and stop worrying about me.

The tallest member of the Concordia Branch,
Elder Haws(mo)

At home in Concordia‎

Hey Family,

Life in Brasil is crazy. The MTC was often boring and uneventful, but the mission field isn't. My companion, Elder Martin, is a great guy. He's from up North in Joao Pessoa and has 11 months in the field, 6 weeks in Concordia. Traveling here was crazy. Wednesday we had a big meeting in Floripa with all the incoming, outgoing, being transfered, and "about to train" elders. That took about four hours and then it was time to bus across the country... we thought. It turns out that an Elder from Draper, Utah had had come complications with renewing his visa so he had to go to a Federal building for a few hours to do some paperwork or something. I don't know specifics, I just know we were sitting around waiting to leave for another hour and a half. Then we were off. It was a 12 hour busride across the country to Chapeco, the headquarters off our zone. We stayed the night there and got to Concordia around noon on Thursday.

The busride across the country was really interesting. It was late into the evening and raining, so I couldn't see a whole lot outside, but our little bus was eventful. All of the bags didn't fit in below the bus so half the seats were taken up by luggage. We all took turns standing for the first 4-5 hours until we dropped off some elders. Along the way I found out that we could watch any Disney movie on P-Day, or long bus transfers. As such we watched Mulan, National Treasue, Chronicles of Narnia, and Pirates II. I'm not exactly sure if all of those are Disney but they were all cleared by zone leaders. Speaking of being cleared by Zone Leaders, my companion and I get to watch the new Harry Potter today.

My trip to Concordia consisted of 14 total hours by bus, and Elder Martin did 28 by bus to come to Floripa to get me and come back. Because of so much time traveling, and me not being here, we only had four days to meet the week's goals. Don't worry, we made it. I couldn't speak the language to well but I still made 10 street contacts everyday. It's crazy, but people will actually stop anad talk to us in the street. I didn't think that would ever happen. When it was my turn I would greet people, explain that we were missionaries, tell them we had a message, and then let Elder Martin answer questions and take addresses.

I was shocked when I got here. In the CTM I understood most of what everyone said to me, even on the streets proselyting. When President Dansie taught us on Tuesday it was completely in Porrtugese and I was fine. But Thursday I discovered a new accent here in Western Santa Catarina. I was struggling to understand anything those first couple days. Finally yesterday I started to catch on and can carry on conversations with most kids we meet. Things are looking up.

Thursday are first lesson was with Jean and Orlando (14-ish and 11-ish). They are great kids who the missionaries have been teaching for about a month. We taught them and the spirit was really strong. They agreed to prepare to be baptized on August 11. It was great. We taught them again on Friday and have an appointment to go back this week. Most everybody has been receptive to us.

Yesterday before, during, and after church it was raining HARD. After church we grabbed our umbrellas, that we bought saturday, and set off up a hill to an appointment. This was the second time I had helped teach this family. They always have friends and family over and this time there was a little boy about 2 years old that was upset and crying. After helping Elder Martin teach about faith I grabbed a little red ball and played with the little guy for the rest of the lesson. I didn't get to teach anymore, but the little guy stopped crying and everyone else could focus on the lesson. Unfortunately, he nearly started crying again when we left.

Spencer's friend told you right, Concordia is a huge city spred out on and with mountains and hills. It seems as if our apartment is directly in the bottom of the valley because we have to walk up hills and stairs to get anywhere. I enjoy it but Elder Martin has been doing it for 7 weeks now and hates it. Saturday afternoon we walked for an hour up a steep hill with plenty of turns and street crossings to get to one appointment. the hill really reminded me of parts of Palisades. When you combine all the hills in Concordia, with the hard rain we got yesterday you get... FLOOD! The entire down town of the city was flooded last night, MACK trucks has their wheels completely covered in water. This morning everyone was sweeping and mopping their front rooms. It was unluck any rain I have ever experienced.

Just a side note, I recieved mom's letters when I was in the MTC. Either dad or the mail system is cheating me because for my 62 days in the MTC I only got 17 letters from Dad (2 more were here in Floripa). Wo, ME, and Moose all told me they got letters everyday. WHAT THE DEAL? ;) All is well. No worries. Wednesday we have interviews in Chapeco so I will get to recieve any mail that has come for me. After that I will have to wait a month until Zone Conference to get anymore. All in all I recieved around 30 letters in the MTC which was good enough for third place in my district. Besides the letters from family (mom, dad, jenny, mindy) I got 7 letters from friends: Kari Green(BYU), Adrienne Love(Fiddler on the Roof), Britnee Searle(Forever), Janessa Hansen(IFHS), Jessie Wright(IFHS), Kendra Crandall(IFHS and BYU) and Brock Huber. Elder Huber live on my floor at BYU, was on our intramural basketball team, and will be entering the Brasil MTC on route to the Florianopolis Mission in about 2 weeks.

Brasil is awesome. I love you all, and stop worrying about me.

Concordia's Best Wishes,

Elder Haws(mo)

about Concordia . . .

I know a little of Concordia. That is a mean place to start off right out of the MTC. First it's one of the furthest areas from the mission, and it has the most hills. In fact in certain areas of that city they don't have roads, per se. They have stair cases with houses built off the side. And the houses there have staircase addresses as opposed to street addresses.

I myself never served there, but it was in one of my districts. So I did several splits there. Most of our district meetings were held there. As I recall correctly it normally took us an hour to get between cities via the bus--and they were crappy buses. But if you missed the right bus it would take closer to two or three hours, because it went on a very round-about loop. Also I think there was a total of four buses daily that would pass between the city where I was working and Concordia.

Its awesome though that he's there. He'll get into shape quickly, get off all that MTC fat. While I was there, it was still a branch, but they did have their own ward house. There wasn't an official stake in that area yet either, it was still a mission district. So all the local congregations were branches, despite their size.

Now if the area boundaries are still set up as they were 5 years ago when I was there, he has a very unique oportunity. In one of the local cities close to Concordia, and I forgot the name of the city, he will find the oldest congregation of saints in Brazil, or rather, when the church first arrived in Brazil, via a family of German immigrants at the end of the 1800's begining of 1900's it was in that city where it started.

So in the way of Church History in Brazil your brother is serving in one of the richest, and yet, slowest growing areas of the country.

Hopefully things have turned around since then.

-JP (a friend of Spencer's who served in the Brazil, Florianpolis Mission several years ago.)

Concordia

Go here to see pictures of Mikey's first area.

from Sis. Dansie

Dear Brother Haws,

I do not think there will be a problem with the package. The office is at the same place, it is above the church. You enter the office on a different street than you enter the church, so the post office recently asked to change the address. I do not think there will be a problem, and we will watch for the package.

I also wanted to tell you that both President and I was impressed with Elder Haws Portuguese. He speaks very well, and seems confident. These young elders learn so quickly, I've been here two years and still struggle with this language. But it's a wonderful place to serve and know Elder Haws will love it.

Love,
Sister Dansie

Elder Haws‎

Dear parents of Elder Haws,

It was a pleasure to meet with your son and welcome him to the best mission in the world—Brazil Florianopolis Mission! This mission includes the entire state of Santa Catarina and a small portion of Parana. Because of Santa Catarina’s southern location, the winter months are cold especially in the western part of the state.

A map of the location of your son’s first missionary assignment is enclosed. We anticipate this map will assist you in following your son’s progress in various assignments throughout his mission. We encourage parents to write their missionary at least once a week. This may be done by letter addressed to the mission office or through the pouch service, or to your missionary’s area of assignment. You may also correspond with your missionary by e-mail. Each missionary is assigned an e-mail address and is able to send to and receive letters from his immediate family. Because of time restrictions and access to a computer, missionaries are restricted to sending one e-mail message a week to parents. A copy of this message may be sent by the missionary to other immediate family members. Each missionary is restricted to 40 minutes on the internet per week. Because of this limitation, missionaries are asked to read messages from their parents first and if there is time remaining on their 40 minutes allotment, they may read messages received from other immediate family members. For this reason, we encourage other family members and friends to correspond with the missionary through written letters. The best way to send packages is through the mission office address listed below. These will be distributed when we visit the individually zones.

We are grateful to be in the service of the Lord and to be serving with such wonderful men and women of the Brazil Florianopolis Mission. We learn from them and they strengthen our testimony. We appreciate your support and prayers for your missionary and for us. Thank you for preparing a wonderful missionary and servant of our Lord and Savior.

Sincerely,


President LaMonte J. Dansie Sister Nancy Dansie

Mailing Address
Missão Brasil Florianópolis
Caixa Postal 361
Florianópolis – SC
88010-970

Pouch (letters only)
POB 30150
Salt Lake City, UT 84130-0150

Elder Haws Arrives in Florianopolis!‎

Dear Brother and Sister Haws,

You son arrived this morning in Florianopolis. The airport in Florianopolis is small, so the passengers descend directly onto the tarmac. I wanted to send you some photos of his “first steps” in Florianopolis. He was part of a large group of 13 elders. We have spent the day in training and felt a very strong spirit. The new missionaries will sleep in a hotel tonight. They will meet their trainers tomorrow at a transfer meeting and then will depart to their assigned areas.

With the recent events at the airport in Sao Paulo, I wanted to assure you that your son arrived safely. The office will be sending an "official" letter with more pictures within a couple of days. If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to write.

We look forward to serving with Elder Haws and know he will be a great missionary. We send our love to your family and know you will be blessed for your sacrifice in allowing your son to serve the Lord full time.
Love,
Sister Dansie

Tuesday, July 17, 200‎7

Hey Family,

(I was given a MUCH shorter time to email so its short PLUS the computer lost the email i just typed so I'm really short on time. Sorry)

It's been a long day already. Elder Pierringer and Elder Stosich left at 5AM so we got up bright and early to see them off. We left the MTC by bus at 6:15 to load a plane at 8:20. Or so we thought. The plane that was supposed to arrive in Florianopolis at 9:22 wasn't boarded until 9:15 and didn't leave the ground until 9:45. Nevertheless, Florianopolis is beautiful. I would go into more detail but I don't have much time.

After arriving and riding the bus into the city, we checked into a hotel where we will spend tonight. We have been at the Mission Home for 4 hours now, going through training. Tomorrow we will have another couple of hours of training before meeting our companions/traveling to our areas.

Henceforth: P-Day will be Monday, I will only get mail two times every transfer, and there is a new address to send packages to:

Elder Michael Kent Haws
Brazil Florianopolis Mission
Caixa Postal 361
Florianopolis-SC
88010-970

All letters need to be sent through pouch, just to simplify things. My first area will be out west in Concordia. My companion is a Native Brazilian from Joao Pessoa who, I am told by the Assistant to the President that trained him, speaks perfect English. Concordia is 9 hours away by car which means it will be an eternity by bus.

I love this place, everything is great, stop worrying about me.

The Biggest Greenie in Brazil,
Elder Haws(mo)

from Elder C*

Elder Haws was 2 weeks behind me in the CTM,

and he wanted me to send this photo of him,

since his camera is broken. He only has 1 week left.

He's a great Elder, and he'll do great in Florianopolis.

- from Elder C*

A couple pictures

Since my camera is unavailable I am stealing a couple pics from other elders.

Elder Stosich, Elder Bateman (my comp) Elder Pierringer,

Elder Festi, Elder Oliveira, and me

Elder Oliveira and Elder Festi were our first two roommates.

Elder R. Silva, Elder Stosich, and Elder Camargo.

Elder R Silva and Elder Camargo were our second set of roommates.

I'll get more pics to you next week.
Stop worrying about me!
Elder Haws(mo)

New Address, New Dreams, and New Fears

Hey Family,

8 weeks down. How crazy is that? It feels like its only been three and a half weeks. It is crazy to be experiencing things on God's time. Hours crawl by, days are running, and weeks never even happened. It is the most peculiar thing I have ever experienced. My journal entries keep getting shorter and shorter because every day is the same thing over and over again. This time next week I will be in Florianopolis. It was easy enough to settle into the routine here. Study, eat, study, eat, study, eat, study, sleep. I like having so much time to study, butit seems so unproductive when we can't apply anything that we spend HOURS on.That will be a nice change once I hit the field, but it will come with a brand new world of fears and challenges.

We went to the São Paulo temple for the last time today. We were overloaded with missionaries on the bus. Rumor has it that in the next month or so the MTC will reach full capacity. When I got here they had only recieved American missionaries 5 of the previous 9 weeks, or something like that. And even then it was usually only one district. Since I've been here we've had at least two districts ever week, with each of the past 3 weeks bringing three districts. There are so many kids running around with dots. It makes my head spin. I can't believe what this place will be like in a month when Elder Huber (my friend fromBYU) shows up. But nevertheless, starting at 9 o'clock this morning: I am the king of the Castle. We are now the oldest district in the building and I have appointed myself king, big dawg, big man on campus, and just about every other title in the book despite disputes and lack of supporting facts.

I won't know if I can email other missionaries until next week, but I get the feeling I will be able to. Either way I would like to get Elder Shipley's email address if at all possible. I've got to find someway to communicate with him and mail across the Atlantic can't be the best way. Speaking of mail: please make sure the address on the blog is changed. Just put the pouch down. The mission home itself can be used for packages, but regular letters should probably come down through the pouch. That would probably make things easier for everybody.

Pray for me. I hit the streets of Santa Catarina within the next week. I'm excited, anxious, and a little worried. Despite what you may think, I'm doing fine, so stop worrying about me.

A week before the field and anxious to get going,
Elder Haws(mo)

Enjoy?

Hey Family,

Did you enjoy my other email? Irmã(sister) Melo told us we had to send a letter
to our families in Portugese this week. I hope that you guys will get to
understand that letter. Its probably grammatically incorrect. Sorry. Between
Italian and Spanish, Wo and Moose might be able to translate it. Throw in a
little bit of French and you should have it.

At this point the MTC is completely routine. I've run into Elder Baird quite a
few times this past week and he is enjoying his stay. My district is going
proselyting for the last time this Friday. Hopefully it will go better. We
taught TRC again this last weekend and did a lot better than last time. We are
starting to build up a little bit of hope for the mission.

Its crazy to believe I'll be in the field in two weeks. The oldest guys on our
floor left for Recife and Manaus this morning so we are officially the top dawgs
on the fourth floor. It is hard to comprehend that we are practically gone. It
doesn't seem as if we've been here long enough or know even close to as much as
we should.

Sorry this one is so short, but really, I already sent you an email this week.

I'm doing great, so stop worrying.
I love you all,
Elder Haws

Oi! Tudo Bem?

Queridos Pais,

Hoje eu preciso escrever uma carta para vocês em Português. Desfrutem!

Todas coises aqui são boas. Eu gosto do CTM muito. Meu distrito é legal. Eu
estou entendendo mais Português. Nós estamos preparando-nos para partir do CTM
em duas semanos. Nós estamos  muito animados para ir ao campo de missão.

Há quase 400 missionarios aqui agora. Meu distrito deve ajudar muito deles a
aprender o evangelho e a lingua portuguesa. Quase todos missionarios aqui falam
como gringos. Nós rimos deles freqüentemente.

Eu tive que fazer muitos amigos novos. Os missionarios aqui são ótimo. Eu
quero sair do CTM, mas não quero deixar estes missionarios. Como está Elder
Burton? Ele tem algum conselho para mim?
Eu gosto de Brazil mas tenho saudades das batatas de Idaho. As batatas do Brazil
não são boas. É estranho estudar todo dia. Eu não espero para entrar no
campo. Eu preciso de luz solar, ar fresco, e um oportunidade para mover-me
realmente.

Eu encontrei Élder Wallace duas semanos atras. Ele é de Texas, mas, ele é
muito semelhante à mim. Ele foi o primeiro trombeta na banda de música na
escola secundária dele. Ele joga basquete e ouve Kry Kunz e Jim Brickman, o que
mais, Élder Wallace toca músicas deles no Piano. É um prazer para conhecer
ele.

Brazil está no inverno, mas é muito quente. Eu não vou ver neve estes
próximos dois anos. Greg deve enviar me muitos desenhos de penguins.

Tenham um ótima semano!
Tchau
Elder Haws(mo)