Holy Cow!‎

Hey Family,

Hawsmo here. Safe and sound after 20 hours of bus rides, broken up by a Zone Conference and an unexpected sleep-over. We left Concordia at 4:30 Sunday night and bussed for 2 hours to Chapeco. We arrived at around 6:30 and just did contacts for the Elders there until 9. It was three hours until the missionary bus would come so we had some sit-down, relax time while the Chapeco Elders slept. I ended up talking with Elder Bateman (my companion from the MTC) for most of that time. He is serving in Pato Branco, one of the two cities in Parana that are in our mission. It was fun to relax and swap 4 weeks of stories with each other. Despite his area being over 8 hours from mine, in a different state, we have had a lot of similar experiences. Our bus left from Chapeco at midnight, and after picking up missionaries in 5 different cities along the way, we arrived in Lages for Zone Conference at 8 AM. This Zone Conference is for the 3 Zones inland, not on the coast. Namely Chapeco, Lages, and Ipomeia. After stories, lessons, trainings, a tiny lunch, more training, testimonies, and junior companions talking while a leadership meeting went on we loaded the buses and headed home. President Dansie always refers to us as the “Great and Noble ones”. This time he made a remark that because all the new elders in the western zones were tall, and all the ones who are going home next transfer are short, we were gaining the Greats (which also means big ones in Portuguese) and losing the Nobles. Everyone got a laugh out of that one. I had the privilege of opening 12 letters and a package on the bus home. The camera got here safe and sound. I’ve had contacts in since 6:30AM Sunday morning (3:30 in Idaho, I think) so I haven’t checked on the glasses yet. We got off the bus at Xanxere on the way back to catch an earlier bus to Concordia, and found out that the bus was full. After a few minutes of my companion’s “controlled panic”, the Sisters called a family from their branch and we stayed the night at their house before catching a bus home a 6:15 this morning. A little late getting home, but safe.

As far as work was concerned, our week was a little short this week. We only got to teach one lesson after church on Sunday before heading to Chapeco, and Thursday we didn’t get to work at all. We caught the bus at 6:30AM to Xanxere and remained there all day. Elder Martin did a baptismal interview with a teenage boy in the morning, before heading to a family’s house for lunch. The mother in this family is learning English so she talked to me the entire time. A bunch of Portuguese to help me practice, and bits and parts in English to answer some of her questions about grammar and rules. She wasn’t too thrilled when I told her English lacked 100% rules for the stuff she didn’t understand, but all went well. The afternoon was a thoroughly enjoyable District Meeting. We were going to catch the bus back to Concordia at 5, but we got invited to attend a youth activity that night so we stayed. They were going to show a film to young boys who were going to be receiving the priesthood sometime in the next couple months. They couldn’t get the projector screen to come down so I got to spend about 20 minutes playing basketball with nine 11-year old boys in a sand pit. Dribbling was nearly impossible so the game quickly became “American Football-Basketball”, with no dribbling, just running, passing and shooting. It was fun. The little guys would rattle off enormous sentences to me in Portuguese before remembering that I was just learning. Most of them did a great job of simplifying sentences for me.

Now to address the title of my email. Last week, just 7 hours after sending you the email, we went to teach a 2nd lesson (Plan of Salvation) to an investigator family. When we taught them the week before they thought it was a shame that we only got fed my members at lunch and had to provide our own dinner so they offered to cook us one. It was great. They barbecued for us. The memorable part of the evening was when they passed a plate to us and invited us to try a different kind of meat. After chewing a piece for nearly two minutes and swallowing I went back for another piece to be polite. This meat was REALLY chewy, and didn’t taste like much besides the little seasoning on it. About 10 minutes later they told my companion that it was cow udder. Definitely a new experience for me. Didn’t see that one coming.

Here comes my weekly request (we might have to make this a recurring program): Becky’s cousin’s husband and Spencer’s buddy from the Football Team both served in here in the Florianopolis mission. Could I get their last names, and if possible, a list of areas they served in? People have a habit of remembering American missionaries, but not always hometowns, or last names. It would just be fun to have.

Thanks for the package, the letters, and the prayers. Keep ‘em coming.

Life is good, the mission is coming along, and everything is fine, so stop worrying about me.

I love you all.

The largest of the new Great and Noble Ones in Santa Catarina,

Elder Haws(mo)