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)