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)