What is the last thing I did to you before I went out of sight?!

Dearest Family,

The 3 amigos!

How are you all doing?! that’s crazy to hear Eric is coming home. Wow. Mommy, let’s get it straight, it’s the 3 amigos! haha we're sweet, better than ever. Yeah the ward is starting to love us a lot I guess because I looked at the meal signup sheet, and it’s pretty much packed. Everyone wants to feed us! Nice. Yes President Wood knows Sister Clark.

I’m emailing so late today because this morning we all hiked the one and only Table Mountain! Man, one of the hardest things I’ve done on mission. I hiked it last year and it was tough, but I wasn’t bothered to do it again. but boy, I am exhausted. We hiked at like 10am, bad time to do it! can you say blazing heat, and no shade on the trail. I’ll be honest; there were moments that I thought I wasn’t going to make it. But I just pushed on and got the job done. I knew I could do it. I think the thing that made it so difficult this time was my health. sorry body, I haven’t been treating you very nicely this past week. very very few fruits and veggies, so I paid the price. The funny thing is, is that both Elder Twitchell and Elder Chikara have very similar diet, and they're just fine! haha anyway, I haven’t been eating much recently, because if I do, my tummy just starts to hurt. On Saturday I had a high fever and a narley headache, but I just sucked it up and made it through the day. yes mother I took some medicine and drank water and rested. we taught like 5 lessons that day...the Lord got me through. I’m feeling much better now. but back to this morning, I wasn’t feeling 100% but I couldn’t let my fellow district mates down and not go! Especially since not one of the 6 of them have hiked it before. So my dilemma was, do I eat and risk having stomach pains while hiking, or not eat and expect to hike it with no energy. I chose the latter and pretty much fasted today! haha up to not, I’ve only drank water and some PowerAde, and ate a plumb. But tonight we have a lekker FHE planed. Yeah, the hike up Table Mountain was awesome! The views were beautiful, and my body needed a wakeup call. Sorry I’m too tired and didn’t have much time to be able to transfer the pictures we took today and send them to you. Next week! There, you have something to look forward too.

From the pictures I did send home, you can obviously see that we went to cape point last week! Wow. Again, I’ve already been there, but things like that just seem never to get old. we took and absolutely beautiful scenic route to get there, and to get back as well. I just wish I could paint a picture in words of what I saw. Stunning! Unreal! Gorgeous! Right along the coast. But then we had to drive all the way to Hout Bay, and then to Fish Hoek because we were going on exchanges, so in total we drove like 160K's that day alone! And our limit for the week is 500K's. so we budgeted accordingly, and ended up being like 90K's UNDER our limit this week. That’s how we do it here in the Meadowridge ward!!

The district on the way to Cape Point

The rest of the week was super. Exchanges with Elder Park were fun. He’s a good missionary and teacher. he asked me for advice, and I felt really proud of myself for 2 reasons. 1 that he trusts me as his district leader, and 2 that the things I said to him really helped him, according to what he said. I was just glad that I could help. The next day was zone conference! it was powerful! I had to give like a little talk on some of the past training we had, and then we all bore our testimonies. It was very nice. The focus of the conference was how to work with less actives, the answer to the question of "How can we (as missionaries) help you (as members) do missionary work" so we had a nice discussion as a zone about that, and then lastly we talked about prayer. We all were asked to say their favorite story out of the Book of Mormon about prayer...man, there’s a lot!! Shows how important prayer is. I think my prayers have improved since then, and will continue to improve. Then president called me in and interviewed me to get a feel on how Fish Hoek is doing and how he can help. What a great guy to do that. It’s nothing serious, he just needed the inside scoop from Elder Haws! I’ll admit, at first I thought I was in biggg trouble! haha. I love President Wood with all of my heart! he's the best!

The other days of the week were hectic! busy busy busy! Teaching from like 2pm till 9pm. not tracting, or driving around, but literally from one teaching appointment to another. Crazy! it wears a missionary out, I tell you! I just passed out after we planned for the next day. The Lord is blessing us! Heck, yesterday at church, we had 6 investigators at church! Yeah! And we had 2 meals with members. yum yum.

This upcoming week is just as busy. I’m going on 2 exchanges, so that should be a blast. Also, one of our investigators (he's white, well off, and had a baptismal date) offered to take us to Hout Bay (a very beautiful place) and said he would buy us fish and chips on the rocks! Wow! Heck yes.

Yesterday we met with the bishop to talk about how we could help the ward, and wow, he is sweet! he gave us some people to see, and I think it really strengthen our relationship with him and the ward. I’m just wondering why we didn’t do it sooner haha. but that lucky little punk is flying to the promised land (USA) and going to Disney world and attending general conference! nice! he deserves it.

Also, yesterday there was a massive bike race! Called the Cape Argnus. It’s like famous. Like 35,000 cyclists came and cycled through parts of Cape Town I guess. Sadly, we didn’t get to see any of it. The Fish Hoek branch had to have church at 5pm because all the roads were closed around the chapel in the morning. Haha I heard that the chap who won did it in like just under 2 hours, and I think it covered 109K's. Impressive! I also heard that there was a big wreck at the finish line. Cool.

Oh yeah, I clicked 18 months today! yahoo! I didn’t really celebrate at all. Just went to work like any other day. It is pretty insane to think that I’m 75% done with being a full time missionary. It just blows my mind sometimes.

Here’s something for you. Answer this! It just came to me:
Mom and Dad, what is the last thing I did to you before I went out of sight?! Was it...
A. a wave goodbye
B. no look, just kept walking
C. blew you a kiss
D. a firm salute goodbye

What’s your answer! Let’s see if you remember haha

But some nice scriptures, with the theme of our zone conference are James 5:16, D&C 84:110 and Mosiah 27:14

LOVE YOU ALL VERY MUCH
Have a good one!
-Elder Haws

PS check out this scripture! Proverbs 25:25 :)