mekusuvera!! (I love you - in hererro)

Hello!

Short but sweet email. I loved it! yeahh we drive a car all day every day. Right on. What's up with PQ2 softball. That was a dismal performance. You guys are better than that. Where do you play?! Hourglass? I bet you've grown hair daddy since I’ve been gone. Ha!  Comeee onnn, Namibia has 13 fine athletes competing!! South Africa has a lot...we're winning gold’s...that’s what’s up! Mommy, I will gladly wash and vacuum the cars once I get home! You know I will!



Just hangin' out in

My week was great, as usual. Except for yesterday. We hit a dry spell for like 2 hours where NO ONE was home or they didn’t want to see us so we just drove around for what seemed like forever. But then, the Smiths inexpertly invited us over for dinner with the other elders, so that made up for everything! All’s well that ends well!

Did lots of teaching this week. Found another solid person who has a desire to be baptized, and shows that desire! It’s one thing to say that you wanna be baptized, and another to keep commitments and make things happen.

We met as a zone/district and chowed on all you can eat pizza for N60! YUMMM.  One of our recent converts, papa François got smashed on his head with a beer bottle, shame. He’s okay though. He is the sweetest guy, I don’t know what those drunken people who did it to him were thinking, and well obviously they weren’t.

Alright, I have to tell you the transfer news we got from president wood this past week!! so most missionaries like to, what we call, "speculate" ha-ha but President Probst called it a practice of the devil ha-ha. I don’t do it, like at all, but it’s entertaining to hear elders brainstorm what is going to happen in the next transfer with who is going where and who their companion will be. I just laugh cuz it NEVER happens the way they think! ha-ha. Anyway, the same thing happened. No one saw what was coming! okay okay okay soo a sister in the office booked Elder Morris’s plane ticket back down to South Africa on like august 15th, so we all thought he was going to finish his mission up here, until president phoned and told elder Morris that he should pack his bags cuz on Wednesday he is flying to Cape Town to finish his mission with another missionary there in Cape Town who is going home with him in the middle of the transfer so they can attend school. I’m soo sad Elder Morris is leaving me! :( He has been one of my favorite missionary companions, defiantly one of the most powerful ones and dedicated servants I’ve served with. Such a great love for the Lord and His work. I’ll always remember his example. But shame he's going to BYU. and there were like 21 in my group when I first came on mission, 1 got sent home early, so now out of the 20 left in my transfer, about half are going home early. Dumb! ha-ha. But that is a real bummer cuz a general authority is coming, and they won’t be here! A member of the area presidency is coming,,,the one and only Elder Carl B. Cook!! He gave the talk about how he was in an elevator with President Monson and he said it’s better to look up! Remember that talk?! Yeah that guy is coming here. I cannot wait!

Anyway, back to the transfer news, Elder Sheppard is going down to cape town to serve, so that means that there will only be 4 elders here in the entire country of Namibia! THE FINAL 4 baby!!! So Elder Twitchell and Elder Giles will be companions in Windhoek, and Elder Farley will be my new companion!! I am sooooo excited for that! We will just combine our areas and just be super busy for these next 6 weeks! Instead of having 4 elders in the branch, now there are only 2. niceee. More work for us to do.   But it will be my last transfer on mission. Number 17! I’m old. The only bad things is, is that I am not going to see all the elders that are going home this week! Shame. Oh well. I’ll probably see most of them back in the Promised Land.

Elder Smith gave a powerful talk/lesson during the 3rd hour on Sunday. That guy is amazing. Heck, all senior couples are amazing! I don’t know where the work would be without them. Elder Smith invited us to sit in with him and the branch clerk to do a membership audit! haha it was pretty sweet. Basically we just told him all the people in our area that we checked and found out if they still stayed there and stuff. It made me gain more respect for the faithful clerks in the church. It was cool to take an inside look at how the church is run. it is simply amazing!

Well, this week is going to be very hectic! Lots of planning of how we're gonna work together in our new assignment. It’s gonna be sweet. Elder Farley is like the coolest missionary ever.

Scriptures - Ezekiel 20:20 and D&C 6:16

We’re planning on going to a game park today. Nice!Till next week!

mekusuvera!! (I love you - in hererro)

LOVE,

Elder Haws

PS mom, what is flossing?

I’ll endure to the end of my mission!

Dear family,

General authority pose at the country club

Glad the postcard made it to you! They sent me the flight plans as well. I made sure I flew to SD not from LA, so I didn’t have to go to the dumb commuter terminal ha-ha. I’ll try and get it for Diane Fice. I have some consecrated oil here, so ya I think I did take it with me. I heard from the smiths about that shooting, but what the heckkkk?! He is a mighty wolverine?! danggggg.   Have fun playing golf daddy!! Ah, I’m jealous. Heck yeahh I would love to go to an SDSU game. Mommy, to go to the temple from here is like a 24 hour bus ride. Only a few people have the means to go, and the branch trip is only once a year. Kelly sounds super busy. Wow haha

As for my week, it was pretty good. Last Monday the smiths took us to an all you can eat buffet!! yummmmm. N185, but it was worth it. They are so nice and loving to us. I ate freakin octopus! Man it was super chewy haha. There was lots of fancy food there. I ate wayyyyy tooooo muchhhh haha.

The Smiths went to Cape Town for a few days to meet with President Wood. We drove them to the airport, and picked them up. The airport is like 40 K's away and took like over 30 minutes to get there. It is such a peaceful drive across the Namibian desert. But the night we went to pick them up, we were sitting in the car waiting and this concerned Christ-like citizen came up and asked if everything was okay, then just walked back to his car. What a guy! He'll be blessed. It just goes to show that there still some good people in the world. Heck, we shoulda gotten that guy's details and went over to his house and taught him the gospel. He would make a great member of the church ha-ha.

We witnessed a miracle this week .we were checking up on this less active, who wasn’t home, but as we were walking to the car, this random person in the street saw us and seemed wayy too happy and excited to see us. Long story short, he is a member who moved here from Angola and had his mission call and should have left last month to the Cape Verde mission! He has been looking for the church here and now found it. The reason he didn’t go was cuz his mom who is not a member wanted him to finish school before he served. The guy speaks like no English whatsoever. Portuguese only. Hopefully he'll get things sorted out, but I’m just glad we found him!

There were 5 people from the north that came down to be baptized. There is an RM up there that was teaching them, and they came down and I got to interview one of them, and I felt bad, but I had to fail her. She was super shy, didn’t speak much English, but more importantly, didn’t answer any of the questions right. Maybe next time they come down she can be baptized. I had the obligation to hold the Lord's standard up high and without apology.

Also, church was good. Our 2 recent converts participated in the sacrament. François blessed and Lukas passed! To add on top of that, Monika taught gospel principles! I was so proud of all of them! It was so cool to see.

Guess what, I got my scriptures covered in buffalo and hyena! They look sweeeet! Sorry, I’ll show you what they look like when I get home! ha!

One thing I’ve noticed about Namibia is that there is a lot of anti-Mormon material around here. Many of the less actives in our area have been exposed to it. It’s really sad to see. I say, avoid it like a plague! haha

Other than that, the work is still rolling forward! Things are great here! we have a fun FHE tonight planned, about the Book of Mormon!

2 scriptures are as follows

Zechariah 1:3
3 Therefore say thou unto them, Thus saith the Lord of hosts; Turn ye unto me, saith the Lord of hosts, and I will turn unto you, saith the Lord of hosts.

Alma 48:17

 17 Yea, verily, verily I say unto you, if all men had been, and were, and ever would be, like unto Moroni, behold, the very powers of hell would have been shaken forever; yea, the devil would never have power over the hearts of the children of men.
 

Thanks again for the lovely emails every week and for all your prayers and love you give to me! I promise I’ll endure to the end of my mission!

LOVE,

Elder Haws

the 2 brethern who covered all of our scriptures

check that out

chillin at the airport waiting for the Smiths

Flight NEWS!!!

  MISSIONARY TRAVEL
  SOUTH AFRICA CAPETOWN MISSION

SERVICE               DATE  FROM           TO             DEPART  ARRIVE

_____________________ _____ ______________ ______________ _______ ______

BRITISH AIRWAYS       13SEP CAPE TOWN      LONDON         815P    645A

BA 58              THURSDAY CAPE TOWN INTL HEATHROW               14SEP
S ECONOMY                                  TERMINAL 5

           NON SMOKING      MEAL                          NON STOP

                            RESERVATION CONFIRMED         11:30 DURATION
                  AIRCRAFT: BOEING 747-400

BRITISH AIRWAYS       14SEP LONDON         SAN DIEGO CA   305P    615P

BA 273               FRIDAY HEATHROW       LINDBERG FLD
N ECONOMY                   TERMINAL 5     TERMINAL 2    
           NON SMOKING      MEAL                          NON STOP

                            RESERVATION CONFIRMED         11:10 DURATION

                  AIRCRAFT: BOEING 777-200/300

RESERVATION NUMBER(S)

HAWS/DUSTIN BENJAMIN  202298-R

Postcard from NAM

ONDIKUHOLE

Hi family!

Daddy you're the best! And mommy, you're awesome. Your emails always make me smile. Even though I’ve been gone for quite a while now, I still look forward to them every Monday morning. But I’ve really missed the last 2 weeks emails from my one and only sister.

Sister Koppa

I have no clue where I wanna stay up at USU. and heck yeah you should buy a condo up there. Or even better yet. A CABIN! That would be sweet. Man, life is going to be sweet when I get home, I hope! It will. And it sounds like everyone wants a piece of Connie Haws at their dental office! My teeth need a cleaning, but you'd be proud of how I’ve taken care of them.

Let’s see, time to report on my week. It seemed to me like the theme of the week was going to the temple! Taught it a few times throughout the week, and all it did was make me miss the temple even more than I already do. But it was wonderful to see the excitement and desire for these faithful Namibian saints to so to Jo-burg and attend the temple. I wish it was more convenient for them.

We did lots of service this week. We were in Katutura and all these small kids after school came over and were watching these 4 white boys out in the sun in the middle of the day, digging in the dirt. They must have thought we were crazy. These older ladies even came up to us and asked what in the world we were doing. Normally, when you see like a construction place, all the black people are working and slaving away while the 1 or 2 white people supervise. ha-ha.

We took Lukas fellowshipping this past week, which was cool. It makes a missionary feel good when you see someone you taught bear testimony and say that 'he knows' something about the restored gospel is true. It’s a good feeling. Also, Francoise the other recently baptized member, taught gospel principles. Even though he has a PhD, he still was learning how to teach about the gospel, cuz it’s different than normal things at school. He did a great job though.

This past Saturday morning we played soccer at the Windhoek chapel with the elders quorum. Man, I am SO out of shape it’s not even funny. I could barely breathe. We played in the smaller cultural hall and had a blast. My legs are still sore.

The NAM CLAN!! See the shape of Namibia

We set 2 solid baptism dates for the month of august, so we're excited for them. Yesterday I gave a talk in church! It was for 10 minutes about, what else, missionary work! I think it went very well. I focused on how important it is to do member missionary work and a spoke directly to those who wanted to serve missions, and those people who were not thinking about serving. I rebuked the entire congregation! haha jk. I just bore my testimony of the importance of missionary work and deciding to serve full time for 2 years and how epically awesome and rewarding it is. The branch has a lot of potential to just pump out elders and even sisters. A sister is leaving soon for Jacksonville Florida. Heck, the next talk I’ll probably give is my homecoming! Ahh.

I saw a cool thing this week. We walked past this shack, and instead of using a normal washer for the screw, they used a freakin bottle cap! haha it was funny, but I guess kinda smart. They sure do have plenty laying around  haha.  A classic Namibian thing to drink is a thing called Oshikandela! Basically, it’s yogurt, but really tasty and people here love it!

Rich people are soo poor all they have is money!  Sister Smith told us that she saw people during "opening exercises" doing literally exercises! Like stretching and stuff haha.

Today is Elder Farley’s b-day, tomorrow is Elder Sheppard’s and Wednesday is Elder Morris's! partyyyyyy. The Smiths are taking us out to a buffet later today. Have I told you how much I love the Smiths! They are like the best senior couple ever! Even though they young and not very seniorly haha

Scriptures - Alma 34:32-33 and Mormon 7:8-9

Nothing more to report from here in Windhoek, Namibia! All is well, all is well.

Miss you all! It’s been tooooo long since I’ve seen you guys.

ONDIKUHOLE!! (I love you, in Oshiwambo)

Love,

Elder D. Haws

Thats Ohamisa! Cutest girl everrr

Mission life is the good life.



WHATS UP SAN DIEGO STREET!

Dear family,

Shame to hear that Independence Day was cloudy. Bummer. Here is was a perfect day! haha that’s funny what happened on the barges. How embarrassing. Sure, I’d be honored to give a talk on my wonderful sister’s birthday! If she emails me! haha yeah that’s fine. Could you maybe tell me the topic so I can brew over it and make some plans hahaand I have no clue what classes I’m going to take or what my major is going to be? And how and why do you have 3 cars parked in the driveway now?!  Don’t get any ideas about me being a choir singer. Come on now. Don’t push your luck haha

Man it sounds like you guys had a party at the house! Wish I coulda been there, wait, missionary work is the best. Glad you had a wonderful anniversary at the Hotel Del Cornado. Wanna know something weird...I was in the shower and I saw the travel shampoo elder Morris uses, and you won’t believe what it said...HOTEL DEL CORONADO!! hahah I laughed. He’s been there before. Recently his family has been down to San Diego from Valencia.

Thats what we ate on the 4th! NAM style

I guess you can record some of the good stuff of the Olympics for me? It’s going to sit on that TV for a long time, and I don’t plan to be a couch potato when I get home. I got places to be and people to see haha.  Mommy I’m glad your procedure went well. I knew it would!!

This week was fantastic as usual. The 4th of July was great here in Namibia! it actually was very busy with teaching appointments. We started at the library again sorting newspapers and the lady called us angels for helping her out so much. We taught and taught and taught from 2pm to almost 9pm. a solid day.  and in every one of our lessons, I made certain that they knew it was America's birthday! haha. Not many people knew, but now they do! We capped it off at the De Sousa home and ate goat head. I've eaten it before back in Cape Town, and this time it was just as good. I ate the eyeball, nose, and tongue. It’s not as bad as it seems. yumm.


The Baptism!

I went on exchanges with my former companion, Elder Giles! It was SO fun! We stayed up wayyy too late, which seems to happen a lot on exchanges, talking about Meadowridge! Man, good times. It brought back great memories and we talked about like every member in the ward and the fun times we had.

We did some nice service for the former relief society president. She was, and is soo faithful, I’m glad we could lend her a hand. She lives just with her son, so she really appreciated our help and was always like okay that's enough for today haha and we just ignored her and kept going and serving. at church, our 2 recent converts, Lukas and François got ordained to the Aaronic priesthood. It was fun to be able to teach them about the duties and responsibilities of their new assignment. François is teaching gospel principles class this Sunday. He’s going to rock it up there.
ohh, last night a member from the Windhoek branch invited all 6 of us elders over for supper and guess what, there were 2 American girls there! AHH! They are here to like study or something, from BYU, and it was weird to see them and hear their accents and stuff haha. But the food was great and I cleaned all the dishes. Nice.

Do you know what today marks?? 22 MONTHS AS A FULL TIME MISSIONARY. It’s my click day. Wait a minute, if my math is correct, I have 2 months, or round about 60 days, till I come home! AH! noo. haha. I’m proud of myself cuz I don’t think about home too much. Poor Elder Morris. He dreams about it every day! Haha

Well, thanks again for the wonderful email. i still look forward to it every Monday morning.
Scriptures = Alma 31:5, 34-35 and D&C 93:1

Things here are great! Loving the work and the people. Mission life is the good life.
LOVE,
Elder Haws

Clean up helpers

Zone Conference

Zone Conference

Our FHE last Monday..that girl is soo cute!

I never knew I would have to be singing soo much

Dear Family,

Powerful email! I got and responded to the Lew’s email last week. But it was a bummer, we never got around to sock wrestling, oh well. And heck yeah I’ll work at NuFLow haha or ZeroREZ with brother Holland. I just need to make some money so I can pay my tithing and get some much needed blessings haha. Mommy, you’re funny. Salty lemonade sounds good hahah

This week has flown by!  It was busy busy. Last Monday we decided to go to china town to get some matching ties for the upcoming zone conference. It was soo weird to see soo many Asians in Namibia. We finally found a store that sold ties and bought ‘em. They were only N10, so like only a dollar back in the states. They were not the best quality, but they did the job. We bought one for each of us, and one from President Wood and Elder Smith. I saw a cool thing there though, these guys used a shopping cart to have like a braai (bbq). They had like a rack over the top, and were just on the side of the road selling food to people haha.

So the assistants came up on Tuesday night and stayed in our boarding the entire time they were up here. Elder Doxey from Las Vegas and Elder Lebala, from Botswana, and proud of it haha. They are both sweet and powerful missionaries. President Wood decided to do something new. Last month Elder Morris and I flew to Cape Town to meet up with all of the other zone leaders for zone leader council and we talked about certain things, and that normally happens 4 times a year. But president decided to instead of having all of us fly to Cape Town, we could just have a zone leader council via Skype! So that’s what we did. We came here to the Smiths and had like a conference call with all of the zone leaders. There was no video, just audio, but it was cool! It lasted over an hour and we got all the things done and discussed that president wanted. But in the beginning of August, I will fly to Cape Town again to have a real zone leader council. That’ll be sweet.

We call them COW LADIES

So exchanges was fun with the assistants. Elder Lebala is hilarious. The next day president and sister wood flew up and then on Friday we had our zone conference. It was powerful! As a zone leader, we had to come up with a creative thing called a zone report…where you just summarize the people and things that have gone on in your zone. Some zone leaders get really creative and use like scriptures or other themes to make the report entertaining and funny. Throughout my mission, there have been some really funny zone reports. So Elder Morris and I had to come up with one. After much deliberation and thought, to sing to the theme of Mulan ‘I’ll make a man out of you’ so we just replaced words and put our own spin on it. It was epic! It started out “Let’s get down to business to report this zone. When we came to Nam, it was little known” you know that song! Haha we had another cool line “time is racing towards us, till we give up the ghost. Then we will get sent back, to the Cali coast” hahahaha good huh?! Each companionship sang a part, then we all sang the chorus together. Sister Wood filmed it, it was so good! But heck it took lots of preparation. Later at zone conference we sang the song from Zion’s Camp “Hark listen to the trumpeters” and I even sang like the first line solo, then one by one the other people in the zone sang along. Man, I never knew I would have to be singing soo much haha.

Elder Lebala and I

But overall, zone conference was very nice. President said that missionaries are really good at teaching about faith and baptism, but not repentance. So that was a topic at the conference, as well as gossip and how we shouldn’t do it as elders. Haha. I learned lots and took good notes. President Wood is powerful! So that was one day. And oh yeah, we ate delicious chicken enchiladas for lunch!! Yummmm. But listen to this. So we were all here, just about to eat lunch, but then I heard like water coming from the bathroom, I was like huh, who is taking a shower right now, wait, there’s no showers in that bathroom, but out comes Elder Farley with OLE FAITHFUL behind him!!! One of the urinals exploded and water was bursting up to the ceiling! Ah, you shoulda seen it. It was insane. All hands on deck! Elder Smith rushed to close the tap and shut off the water, but it was no use. Literally, I kid you not; there was 2 inches of water in the entire bathroom, and in the hall and kitchen! It was soo bad. Oh man.  For some reason, the water never shut of until like an hour had passed and thousands of liters of water wasted. And get this, the next day there was a baptism! But long story short, eventually the water stopped and things dried up, but the damage had been done. I was just starving and wanted to eat haha. It was defiantly something to remember.

Then after zone conference, President Wood took us all out to eat at a restaurant called Spur. It was nice. And then the next day us zone leaders had to do training while president interviewed each elder. Things were so hectic that Elder Morris and I had to finishing up the planning for what we were going to present the morning of haha. It went very well though. But I also sat down with the man himself and interviewed me for my temple recommend, because mine expired in August. It was the best interview ever. How could I not be worthy of going to the temple, I'm a full time missionary. I eat sleep and breathe the gospel haha. But he said he knew he could just sign it right then and there without the interview, but he gave me the privilege to declare my worthiness to him and the Lord.

Like I mentioned, there was a baptism! 5 in total got baptized, and 2 from our area. Fransois and Lukas! Lots of people were there, and things went smooth. It was good timing for President Wood to be there. I was so happy for each person that got baptized. The next day at church they were confirmed, and bore their testimony! They actually spoke for a long time. I find it so rewarding to listen to recent converts bear their testimonies. It’s so rewarding. Just to see them progress and learn and grow. Awesome. But Brother Francois stated his full name and then testified about the truthfulness of the church and Book of Mormon, it was powerful.  But the only bad thing right now is that I don’t have the pictures, so I’ll send ‘em home next week for sure.

But now, things have settled down and are back to normal. Back to the grind!  The fellas were talking about school and what they’re studying and stuff, and I realized, dang, I have no clue! Haha I know the Lord will take care of me, but I’ve got to come up with some of the decisions and get like registered and stuff? I don’t know. Haha I guess you could look into things?

I may have forgotten to type about father’s day, and I’m sorry, but I shall not forget your upcoming anniversary!! On the 5^th of July, eh?! I hope you plan to do something fun and memorable. Isn’t it like 25 years or something like that. Haha. I’ll be thinking about you 2 on that day.  But no big plans for the 4^th of July here.

Look up Alma 10:6 (end of the verse). HahaThe 2 scriptures are Alma 17:2-3,11 and D&C 64:29 (Agent Haws)  I heard that the word “elder” means ‘defender of the faith’ and that’s what I’m doin’  Things are great here in Namibia! No place I’d rather be.

Good luck mommy! You’ll be just fine. Miss you lots. Love you even more!
Have a great week!

LOVE,
ELDER HAWS