Cake

Hey Family,

Life in Joaçaba keeps on coming. To answer your question Mom: Yes it stopped raining; no it’s not cool and fresh. My companion, Elder West, is not an ENORMOUS kid. 6’0” 170 lbs. Everyday by lunch he looks like he’s melting. This last week we were up over 100 degrees with far too much humidity. That wouldn’t have been so bad if we didn’t do 4 hours of service at the Branch President’s house. Elder West was helping the President Edilar break up the rock bed underneath the house using a variety of hammers, chisels, and a jack hammer. I went solo with a pick axe, a shovel and a wheel barrow to level out the top of a hill to park his car. I wish I could send pictures but I can’t seem to find my card reader after the last transfer. Basically President Edilar’s house is built on a hill a little bit taller than ours, but instead of completely leveling out the ground, Brazilians build 12 foot concrete pillars/legs/poles to hold the house up. AS such we are clearing what appears to be dirt and chunks of tectonic plate away from the front of the hill to build a ramp and, subsequently, a driveway to where he can park his car under the house. If I could send pictures you’d probably understand a lot easier, but it looks like you’ll have to wait until May to see pictures. Then again, if you want I can get my pictures burned on to a CD and mail that to you, but it would probably only get home a month before me. What do you think?

Ben Fielding is going to Colorado Springs? If he gets to the mission field before the end of May he needs to go and give Elder Lewis a hug for me. He’s a buddy from BYU that I’ve lost contact with. Go figure. 2 years with everybody on different continents and we lose track of each other.

Spencer won’t be home in May? He always has been a slacker. He excited about the new year with the Bills? We got potential to take the Eastern Conference this year? How is Collie expected to do in the draft? Is Max still the go-to guy at BYU, or have his “big game heroics” caused the coaching staff to rethink an option offense with Covey or Nielson at the helm? What are the chances that Jordan Richardson comes back from the mission and starts making an instant impact on the team at DE?

Sorry Mom, no postcards yet. We can’t seem to find any in this city if all else fails I’ll have to get one this weekend when we get to do a little bit of traveling. I hope no one will get too offended with a card that’s no from my current area. I’ll keep you guys posted.

This last week we had Cake night in the branch. Sacrament attendance has been around 60-70 people, so we were hoping to boost things. We had a competition between the members for the “Most Delicious” “Most Creative” and “Most Beautiful” cakes, with the prizes being homemade chocolate chip cookies. To mix things up we each made our own cakes to compete. Unfortunately by the time we finished the cookies I didn’t have a whole lot of time to make my cake. I had planned on making a “Better than Basketball” cake, but it didn’t work out so hot. I’m not sure if it was because we’d already had the oven baking cookies and cakes for 5 hours, but the cake turned out to brownies. The caramel topping I bought ended up tasting like molasses (so I didn’t us it) and the cream I bought to make homemade whipped cream died. I watched as Elder West made perfect cream for his cake and then when I opened the first pack of cream I’d bought the same day it had already spoiled. The “back-up” pack I bought had already turned to nasty, clumpy butter. As such, w ran to the store to buy one more pack. I opened it, tossed it into the bowl, added the sugar and after about 90 seconds of hitting with the whisk it turned into butter. It was one of the most frustrating days of my life but we still had 12 cakes to be judged and 61 people to finish up the masterpieces.

2 more transfers, 2 more zone conferences, 3 more interviews, plenty of time to make a difference.

The sun is out, the heat is here to stay, and I’m fine so stop worrying about me.

Enjoying Leftovers,
Elder Haws(mo)