An Unanswered Question‏

Hey Family,

Another 6 weeks have already passed by here in Imbituba. You always look forward to the transfer with mixed emotions. It’s not easy to leave behind a ward that you love, a companion that you get along with, or investigators that are startin to give you hope. On the other hand, you get kind of excited at the opportunities that await. New companions to meet, new families to find, new wards to get to know, and new baptismal fonts to try out. Needless to say, the phone call from the Zone Leaders on Sunday night is a joyfully miserable thing. “Pack your bags” or “make yourself comfortable”, either one holds the best of one world, and the worst of the other. There doesn’t seem to be anyway to please both the wullingness to stay, and the desire to jump into the unknown. The results of last night’s phone call...

This last week was a little bit different than what I’ve gotten used to here in Imbituba. Tuesday I went to Laguna to do a Division/Split with Elder Schioser, my current District Leader. He is from Sao Paulo, goes home in May, he’s for the most part a happy person, and he’s fat. This kid is enormous. His snoring at night is rumored to be worse than my own. It’s hard to believe, but I think it might be possible. I got back to Imbituba on Wednesday, did some good old fashioned preaching on Wednesday and Thursday, but Friday showed a curveball that almost sent us into the dirt. We had scheduled with our Ward Mission Leader to help him put the roof on his house. With the contruction style he’s doing, that means a LOT of concrete. We showed up at 7:15 am, expecting to help him and the rest of the ward start and finish the “lage” before having lunch (BRAZILIAN BARBECUE) and heading home to get ready to work. As luck would have it, he wasn’t anywhere near ready to start work on the roof. Our group ended up doing the prep work until lunch. After lunch we helped them to get set up to work, but decided that if we left when we had planned, they would never get done. As it turns out, there’s no way they could have. Elder C. Silva worked using the wheelbarrow to haul the cement to the different parts of the roof. I had the privelige of running with 2 buckets from the pile of gravel to the mixer, back to the pile of sand and to the mixer, back to the pile of gravel, rinse and repeat. I was throwing buckets, shoveling sand and gravel, hauling enormous tubs of water, catching flying buckets, telling jokes, randomly yelling at members in English, and even spent the last 30 minutes babysitting the stake president’s 4 year old son. At times people on the street would just stop and stare at me. It was great. The stake president, who speaks english, started calling me the “American Machine”, and decided that I didn’t get tired because I’m really just a child. Good fun. Proselyting didn’t happen until 8 o’clock, but we definately did our good turn for the day.

Sad news. I loaned my camera to an inactive member to take a picture of the sunrise on the each for me. He informs me that he took some awesome photos, but when his father brought me the camera, the memory card didn’t have any pictures on it. I have started to think that he developed some of the photos or made a CD and accidently “wiped” the memory card clean. I’m going to go and talk to him this week to see what he has so that I can salvage some of the pictures that I didn’t send home. It’s not a BIG deal, just a little sad that most of those pictures are lost.

In an attempt to save my own mortal life, I will let you know that in fact... I am getting transfered this week. After almost 3 months, it’s already time to pack my bags and head off to a new land, a new home, and a new set of circumstances. Elder C. Silva will be staying here in Imbituba with another elder who started his mission in Concordia, Elder Melo. My new companion will be Elder Lacerdes(?). He’s a cool kid I met in January when I got transfered to Imbituba and he was just arriving in the mission. He REALLY wants to learn and English and seems to have met one of my friends in the MTC. Next week I’ll be sure to get you some more info on the companion. Just one more quiestion: “Where am I going?”. That is a great question.

Hiding From My Mother’s Wrath,
Elder Haws(mo)