The Rains Came Down and the Floods Came Up But the Church on the Hill Stood Still‏

Hey Family,

Max Hall? What’s the big idea? Throwing five picks against Utah? I was starting to hope he would be our awesome “big play” quarterback. The biggest argument I’d ever heard against John Beck was the lack of difficult wins. Either the team was so bad we got blown out or we were so good we blew everyone out (until the Holy War of 2006… I was there). Here Max had gotten us a couple big wins in the 4th quarter and then comes to a screeching halt in Salt Lake. Oh well. Good bye BCS. Good bye Heisman. Good bye 4 offensive lineman. Better luck next year.

Life down here took a pretty big change on Saturday. A full week of rain culminated in some mudslides all over the state. Approximately 20 people died. Crazy. A couple members (and our golden investigator) got trapped on the freeway Saturday so they missed church on Sunday. That was a bummer. Life is good though. No missionaries were seriously hurt. The most damage this did to the mission might be delaying the actual transfers for 2 or 3 days because there are no roads into or out of some of the larger cities. Either way I’ll be staying here in Joinville until New Years. January 7 will be the next transfer and anything can happen before then.

I got my packages last week. I was actually curious if I could open them or not, but Mom said I could. I’ll probably just search out decorations and the Christmas tie. Another elder from Joinville mentioned that he wanted a Christmas tie to use for the holidays so depending on what I get I might send him a little present. Most of the stuff I’ll probably wait to open.

Christmas call? We’re actually supposed to start planning that now. A member has invited us to spend Christmas with them, but I think the other elders will end up using the house phone for the call. If we want, we’ll have more freedom using the cell phone again. We will be getting new phones in a couple weeks, which means the phone should be in good condition. I don’t know how the other phone calls had been for you guys, but I didn’t have a whole lot of trouble. Just let me know what you guys prefer. So far we don’t have anything huge planned for Christmas. It appears as if the president might command us to hold a zone meeting, but we’ll see how that goes. Just figure out when you guys can or cannot call and we’ll work out a time.

Congrats Jenny. Both for the birthday and for the boy. Hey Wo. Have a happy birthday this week. I was trying to work in a baptism down here to celebrate for you but it looks like we’ll have to wait a couple weeks. Sorry. Thanks to everyone for the prayers, letters, and overall concern.

Trying to dry my shoes,

Elder Haws(mo)

Open House and Cleaning House‏

Hey Family,

I hope everyone is doing well back home. Joinville is still an interesting city. We had a relatively dry week up until Saturday. Saturday was the official Dedication Day of our new chapel here in the Itaum Ward. Temperatures were around 100 Fahrenheit, but with good old fashioned humidity. Yesterday the rain came back down and everything came back to normal. Shoes are wet, clothes don’t dry, but at least no one is dying of dehydration. We got the opportunity to work giving tours at the open house for the chapel this last weekend. Not as many people showed up as we might have hoped, but it was still a great experience.

Last week we had the great honor of receiving a member of the area presidency. The zone conference was awesome. We laughed, we felt the spirit, we left uplifted. I don’t believe anybody cried, but I’m not too worried about it. The most eventful part of the week was the actual preparation for the conference. A couple days before the conference an assistant gave us a call and told us that Elder Ellis “might” be coming to visit our house. We all suddenly had a great urge to clean house. We always clean up our own messes and don’t let anything get horrible, but when “the prophet’s eyes” are coming to town cleaning must be done. The greatest task I personally encountered was scrubbing the bathroom. It was a very humbling experience, especially knowing that no one had seriously performed such a task in a very long time. And when I say long time, I mean before Homely’s mission. I was on my hands and knees for a couple hours on two different days scrubbing every tile. My certainly didn’t thank me the next morning, but the approving thumbs up from President and Sister Queiroz almost made it worth it. Our new task is keeping the house spotless. Elder Ellis said the only thing wrong with our house was the fact that the mattresses are a little old and too thin. We have received authorization to go price shopping for new mattresses. That would be great… if we had time to do price shopping. With a brand new chapel we are now feeling the obligation of wearing out the new baptismal font.

Just to make matters more interesting, we got a surprise visit the night before the conference. Everything was spotless and ready for the cleaning inspection when a few more elders showed up to sleep at our house. Our house is definitely the closest to the bus station, but that’s still no excuse for 10 extra missionaries to sleep in a freshly cleaned house the night before a general authority visit. More work, stress, and hurrying to throw everyone out of the house early to clean up and be to conference on time. It just so happens that 6 of those elders missed their buses home the next day so we had to go pick them up the next night at the bus station to let them sleep at our house again. Oh well. It worked out in the end and BYU still won.

It’s the last week of the transfer. I’m sending home photos of my two companions this transfer. I worked with Elder Rocha for 12 days in Rio Tavares before coming to work with Elder Hill in Joinville for the rest of the transfer. Time to finish strong!

Contemplating the Maximum Duration of Rainstorm,
Elder Haws(mo)

Another Wet Week in Joinville‏

Hey Family,

Life keeps going, and the rain keeps falling. Joinville is an incredible city. 2 days have a hot, blazing sun, 2 days have cloud cover which turns the city into a giant oven, and the other three days have pouring rain. No matter what Mother Nature decides to throw at us, we come home wet. But that’s ok. There is always work to be done, and rumor has it (October) showers bring (November) blessings. I’ve definitely got my fingers crossed. We can use a little heavenly help in our little corner of the mission.

Just to fill in any gaps. I’m still in Joinville, in the Itaum Ward. Itaum is a word in a “native” language that means iron. The four gringos are now thinking of printing up some shirts with the name Iron Men. What do you guys think? Itaum is the largest ward in the Joinville Stake, which so happens to be the largest stake in the mission. We just got a brand new chapel built on top of a hill across the street from our house. The open house will be Thursday and Friday which means we’ll probably stop knocking doors and hang out looking for referrals. Everyone in the neighborhood is talking about the new “Mormon Temple” so hopefully we’ll get plenty of leads. The dedication and cultural show will be on Saturday. Unfortunately we’ll be wearing suits for an extra day, but at least we’ll be able to have part in the festivities. For the past 15 months the stake has been renting a bus to take the members, missionaries, and investigators to the neighboring ward. It just so happens that the other ward is Boa Vista, the area where Elder Bateman is currently serving and where my buddy Elder Huber started his mission. Up until the bus trip to church this ward was one of the highest baptizing wards in the states, but has had problems with the current situation. Every member in the ward seems interested in getting back up to the former state of glory. We’re more than willing to help them out a little bit.

Our little gringo situation got a little worse this past week. Tuesday night I got a phone call from the assistants telling us to be at the bus station at 10:30 pm. I thought it was a little weird, but I played along. Elder Hill and I got there and, much to our surprise, Elder Wright got off the bus. Elder Wright was my second companion and is serving as assistant to the president (at least until he goes home Thanksgiving Day). He ended up staying and working with a couple of the “white washed” companionships for a day. I’m not sure if we use the same term back home, but in this mission whenever a companionship gets transferred to a new area where neither was serving beforehand, we call it a whitewash. We had 15 in the mission last month, so a couple of them have been getting extra help. Elder Wright served here in Itaum when I was down in Navegantes so we went to visit some of his old investigators. At one particular house we had a great lesson. He had baptized the wife and 14 year-old daughter but the father couldn’t give up smoking so he couldn’t get baptized. Elder hill and I had visited him a couple times but we didn’t have any success in getting him to give up the cigarettes (even though we did take his pack away the first time we visited him). Elder Wright threw in a bunch of different techniques that appear to have worked. Burning, guilt tripping, and priesthood blessings got him to agree stop smoking and get baptized next week. I’ll be sure to keep you posted.

Thursday will be the grand conference with Elder Ellis. Everyone is a little nervous because the last time part of the area presidency came to visit there was a lot of burning and repentance involved during the following weeks. Don’t worry; I was still in the MTC when that happened.

2 more weeks and then it’ll be transfer time again. We’ve got the 4 of us who arrived and practically the same time so anything could happen. I just hope the rain gets transferred to another city.

The chapel is ready, the rain drops are heavy, and I’m fine so stop worrying about me.

Thankful for Umbrellas,
Elder Haws(mo)

4 in a Row!

Hey Family,

I hate curveballs. I love the fact that my Tigers and Couagrs came out with the victories this last weekend. Sometimes I wory about my boys. I had a fun debate with Elder Bateman yesterday decidedig what would be the best case scenario for a 1-loss BYU team. We both agreed that it will be nearly impossible to get back to a BCS bowl game, but we still need Utah to be a big team when we beat them... at Rice-Eccles. We were debating whether Utah or TCU needs to win when they match up with each other. A definitive answer was not reached, but either way we have our hopes set on next year.

Joinville is coming along pretty well. We’ve been knocking a LOT of doors and no one seems to like really tall guys. We did splits last week and Elder Stokes got in a couple of houses in my area. When I came back for the second visit one lady got scared and told me to get away. Fun times. Don’t worry. That sort of thing doesn’t happen a lot. As far as our house is concerned, what happens is a huge mess and a lot of English. It’s relaxing for us but the leaders probably don’t like it all that much. By the way, our Zone Conference will be next week. Elder Ellis from the area presidency is coming. The pressure is on for everyone to look good. We’re suddenly in a mad chase to fin a dry cleaner and get some shoes fixed. Wish us luck!

Wow. Outside of Utah and Idaho there appears to be a system of “short-time” missionaries. They come a serve one or two months when we’re short on missionaries. One of these short-timers went home early to finish his actual mission papers, so we had a lone elder in the area that touches ours. Luckily, we had another missionary sitting around in a threesome so we got him here quick. Unfortunately, it wasn’t instant. As such, I had to pack my bags and go live and work with the other elder for a day. In doing so I attended my 4th different ward in 4 Sundays. Is that a Haws family record? If not, I’ll try to get a fifth in this weekend. (Agronomica OCT-12, Rio Tavares OCT-19, Itaum OCT-26, Itinga NOV-2). While I was gone the other three worked together in our ward. Everyone was taken by surprise. Oh well. I’m back in my own area today.

Just to answer Mom’s question: No. I wasn’t demoted to junior for blocking the president’s shot too many times. The only thing that’s really ben changing lately is the scenery. Hopefully it’ll stay pretty constant for the next couple weeks. I hate packing my bags.

We played soccer for P-day (again), it hasn’t rained today (yet), and I’m fine so stop worrying about me.

Unpacking my bags (with much prayer and fasting),
Elder Haws(mo)