Area: Navegantes
Zone: Itajai
I'm not sure if Navegantes is it's own city, or just a nieghborhood of Itajai that happens separated from the rest be a river. Looks like you guys will know before I do.
Elder Haws(mo)
Monday, March 24, 2008
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)
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)
Monday, March 17, 2008
Finding Friends in the Forest
Hey Family,
How was your week? Mine was pretty good. I'm sorry Greg didn't get into BYU. I was really hoping he'd be able to go down and be part of the marching band. Here's what he's gonna have to do:
(1) Try to get straight A's, but nothing below a B.
(2) Keep playing the trombone!
(3) Around next March try to transfer down to BYU and apply to get into the marching band.
If we manage to succeed on all 3 steps Greg and I should be on the field together my senior when he gets back from France/Korea/Germany. Ready...BREAK!
One question. Was the MWC Basketball Tournament in Las Vegas again? Somebody has got to see that this set-up isn't exactly fair. If we were able to play every postseason tournament in the Marriot Center, we'd end up winning the tournament too. In fact, we might have shut-out a team like CSU in the 2nd round. No worries, we've just got to keep proving that we deserve attention so that when I get back and rejoin the Pep Band the team will be on the wayto the Final Four in 2010. We will play UCLA in Anaheim? Who's the fat man on the NCAA Tournament commitee who has no interest in his eternal salvation. Some sinner is going to miss out on the kingdom he deserves if some serious repentance doesn't start happening.
Happy Birthday Jonah! The big 3. By the time I see him, I will have been in Brazil for half of his life. When I left he didn't say more than one word at a time, but when I get back his sister will be talking, AND his new littlebrother/sister will probably be pretty close to walking. I'm not sure if this would be a compliment to me or an insult to Jonah, but everytime I show the pictures of the family people say that Jonah looks a lot like me. That is, after everyone comments on how white the nephews and neices are. Brazilians have never seen anyone like them before.
Now to explain this week's pictures. The first three come from the top of a little mountain/hill that overlooks my area. We climbed up there with a member and her friend to share a neat little message about the creation and the love that God has for us (hey dad, you should send me a copy of that poem you always read: let's face it, God's crazy about you). When we got up there we stopped for a minute to take pictures. The first two pictures show the "center" and a couple inner neighborhoods of Imbituba. The third and fourth pictures, which have some plants blocking part of the view, shows the neighborhood where we live. Our house is a 40 minute walk from the center of the city. You can't actually see our house in the picture, it would be a little above and to the right of the white apartment building that you can see in the lower left. We will be going back up there next P-day (I think) to take some better pictures. As we were walking up to the top, we used a trail that cut through some woods. Everything was going good until I felt a thick string break on my forehead. I quickly brushed off my forehead and my shoulders, looking for what I thought would be a little spider on my clothes. Luckily, I found nothing in my clothes. I casually looked to see if I could spot the culprit, but a glance to my right showed nothing. Almost too casually I looked back to my left and found "my friend". Not more than 6 inches from the tip of my nose, the largest and most colorful spider I have ever seen was staring right back at me. I tried to take a couple pictures,but I couldn't get a really good one of the pattern on his back. You can see an almost white spot on the back of his thorax. In reality, that white spot is the pattern of a skull. I was a little creeped out when I saw it, but I have fully recovered since then.
Thanks for all the love, prayers, and support. The only thing that I was thinking I might like is a talk from Elder McConkie. I found it in Portuguese in the back of the "Strengthen Your Brethren" manual. It was the manual they used in Priesthood during the early 90's with the Doctrine andCovenants. The name of the talk in English should be "Just an Elder". Elder McConkie gave it as an address in a regional representative meeting (I think) so I'm not sure just how easy it would be to find. I was reading it in Portuguese, but I think I wasn't understanding some stuff, you know,McConkie has a tendency to say things really complicated in English. Imagine translating it. Besides that, I saw another Elder get a package that looked exactly like the big flat-rate envelopes you guys sent me a couple times. Is it possible that they do the same thing with boxes so that you don't pay for the weight?
The weather is great, the work is coming along, and I'm fine so stop worrying about me.
Climbing the hills wherever I go,
Elder Haws(mo)
How was your week? Mine was pretty good. I'm sorry Greg didn't get into BYU. I was really hoping he'd be able to go down and be part of the marching band. Here's what he's gonna have to do:
(1) Try to get straight A's, but nothing below a B.
(2) Keep playing the trombone!
(3) Around next March try to transfer down to BYU and apply to get into the marching band.
If we manage to succeed on all 3 steps Greg and I should be on the field together my senior when he gets back from France/Korea/Germany. Ready...BREAK!
One question. Was the MWC Basketball Tournament in Las Vegas again? Somebody has got to see that this set-up isn't exactly fair. If we were able to play every postseason tournament in the Marriot Center, we'd end up winning the tournament too. In fact, we might have shut-out a team like CSU in the 2nd round. No worries, we've just got to keep proving that we deserve attention so that when I get back and rejoin the Pep Band the team will be on the wayto the Final Four in 2010. We will play UCLA in Anaheim? Who's the fat man on the NCAA Tournament commitee who has no interest in his eternal salvation. Some sinner is going to miss out on the kingdom he deserves if some serious repentance doesn't start happening.
Happy Birthday Jonah! The big 3. By the time I see him, I will have been in Brazil for half of his life. When I left he didn't say more than one word at a time, but when I get back his sister will be talking, AND his new littlebrother/sister will probably be pretty close to walking. I'm not sure if this would be a compliment to me or an insult to Jonah, but everytime I show the pictures of the family people say that Jonah looks a lot like me. That is, after everyone comments on how white the nephews and neices are. Brazilians have never seen anyone like them before.
Now to explain this week's pictures. The first three come from the top of a little mountain/hill that overlooks my area. We climbed up there with a member and her friend to share a neat little message about the creation and the love that God has for us (hey dad, you should send me a copy of that poem you always read: let's face it, God's crazy about you). When we got up there we stopped for a minute to take pictures. The first two pictures show the "center" and a couple inner neighborhoods of Imbituba. The third and fourth pictures, which have some plants blocking part of the view, shows the neighborhood where we live. Our house is a 40 minute walk from the center of the city. You can't actually see our house in the picture, it would be a little above and to the right of the white apartment building that you can see in the lower left. We will be going back up there next P-day (I think) to take some better pictures. As we were walking up to the top, we used a trail that cut through some woods. Everything was going good until I felt a thick string break on my forehead. I quickly brushed off my forehead and my shoulders, looking for what I thought would be a little spider on my clothes. Luckily, I found nothing in my clothes. I casually looked to see if I could spot the culprit, but a glance to my right showed nothing. Almost too casually I looked back to my left and found "my friend". Not more than 6 inches from the tip of my nose, the largest and most colorful spider I have ever seen was staring right back at me. I tried to take a couple pictures,but I couldn't get a really good one of the pattern on his back. You can see an almost white spot on the back of his thorax. In reality, that white spot is the pattern of a skull. I was a little creeped out when I saw it, but I have fully recovered since then.
Thanks for all the love, prayers, and support. The only thing that I was thinking I might like is a talk from Elder McConkie. I found it in Portuguese in the back of the "Strengthen Your Brethren" manual. It was the manual they used in Priesthood during the early 90's with the Doctrine andCovenants. The name of the talk in English should be "Just an Elder". Elder McConkie gave it as an address in a regional representative meeting (I think) so I'm not sure just how easy it would be to find. I was reading it in Portuguese, but I think I wasn't understanding some stuff, you know,McConkie has a tendency to say things really complicated in English. Imagine translating it. Besides that, I saw another Elder get a package that looked exactly like the big flat-rate envelopes you guys sent me a couple times. Is it possible that they do the same thing with boxes so that you don't pay for the weight?
The weather is great, the work is coming along, and I'm fine so stop worrying about me.
Climbing the hills wherever I go,
Elder Haws(mo)
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