Homecoming!!!!

Danny will be coming home on Tuesday, January 19th at about 9:00 p.m.


He will speak at the Muskrat Springs ward on Sunday, January 24th at 9:00 a.m. The church is located at 5375 S 5900 W in Hooper. This is the new stake center across from the Chambers' house, the same one where Tami and Andy had their wedding receptions. It is not the same building he spoke at when he left.


We are very excited for Danny to come home. Jan spent the day washing sheets and vacuuming carpets and getting Danny's room ready for him to come home. She found a tiny missionary name tag that said "Future Missionary" on it. It's hard to believe that our tiny little Danny has almost completed his mission and is coming home.


Looking back, it seems like his time has gone quickly, although we feel like we haven't seen him in a VERY LONG TIME!!!! It seems like forever ago that we dropped him off for his mission. As we were leaving, we caught a glimpse of Danny and we all waved goodbye for 2 years. He tried to pull out his phone to text us, but he didn't have it. Not being able to text was one of the hardest adjustments for him.


When Danny left, Lila was 3, the twins were 1, and Benson was just 4 months old. Since then, we have had Alex and Molly join our family. Emily and her kids are coming to visit and will be here when Danny gets home. It will be great to finally have almost everyone together again (we will miss Johnny).


It has been such a blessing to have Danny serve a mission. We can tell that he has grown so much, but we hope that he's the same old goofy Danny. We are so excited to see him again!!!

"fecha" means "date".... in case you didn't know

well, internet is not working today for some reason. I am sorry but this is tyhe only email i am going to be able to send. Please tell everyone sorry for me.

My new companion is elder urbina from Honduras. He is a great kid. Really humble, and i am excited to work with him. We ot to our area wednesday at about 630 and first thing we did was visit a new family. On friday we put a baptismal fecha with them. If you don´t know what a fecha is... sorry.

Well anyway, things are great. I will probably be calling this week, i am guessing sunday to set up the call. it will probably be about 730 at night or a little earlier... we don´t have daylight savings here though. Ok well, i will talk to you soon.

Im almost home
Love ELder Haws

Thanksgiving Picture Overload!

Ok so this week was Thanksgiving as you well know. Well, we decided to have a dinner as a district. So we tried to find turkey.... The only one we found cost like over fifty bucks... Also none of us know how to cook turkey, and we have no ovens. Ok so we talked and discussed it, and decided between two things.... All you can eat pizza hut (about eight bucks) or some sort of chicken. Well, we decided on the piza hut, and then later found out... they don´t do the "pizza attack" anymore. So we were forced to look for chicken. We planned it out well, and found thirty pieces of chicken for a pretty good deal, and we were still under budget. We found a good deal on mug rootbeer (three liters) so we got a few of those. Then we still had money, so we got some frozen fries and cooked those, and STILL had money, so we made some brownies (borrowed the oven from the church). We divided the chicken between the six of us!!! That's five pieces each. Well, it was definately awesome. We even read a Psalm before we ate, and then we all stood up and said something we are thankful for.
This is the before dinner picture.

This is after feasting.

Well, thanksgiving was great. We didn´t have pie, but I did eat so much brownies and milk that I almost barfed. Ok so last night we were planning p-day and we decided that we wanted to see the sun rise, and also make our day as long as possible. So we woke up at four thirty ish and went up to the top of the mountain to see it. We sat on some old ruins and it was pretty cool.

This is the sun rising.... I think you can see a cruise ship in the background

This is cool...

This is my favorite. That's a trompo... its a top and ALL the kids have them, so we learned to play... now we do it all the time. I have two in my pocket right now!!

Later, we went to see these racing sail boats that just got here from france... http://www.nacion.com/ln_ee/2009/noviembre/20/deportes2165792.html they were pretty cool. I guess they are like really expensive.

Also, today we had to do our tithing deposit, but the lines at the bank are allways long the 30th through the 7th so we went at about six thirty and waited for the bank to open at eight thirty... We played dominos and everyone laughed at us, but we were second in line... It was kinda like black friday....

Well, now its only 12:40 and we have already had an awesome p-day... We should still do way cool stuff today...

Ok well, I am not trunky, and we have changes on Monday........

WOW time flies!

Love ya´ll

Love, Elder Haws

Generation of missionaries

Well, these pictures are of two things:
First our celebration of my 22 months and my comps 4 months (it was kinda depressing for him).
Also here is a picture of the "two generation" chicken sandwich. It had chicken patty, cheese, an egg(hence the two generations) and the other normal sandwich stuff. It was delicious.

Forgot one...

Danny sent me this picture but didn't say what it was... I guess you can use your imagination.

Picture make up

My fish from last week
our district two weeks ago...
same trip, on the beach!!!(notice the garbage..)
my comp landed on board walk 5 times with my hotel, and he still managed to beat me after playing for three hours!!!

Short

Well, this week was great yet long yet short I don't know how that works. It’s getting hard not to be trunky. Almost everyone asks me how much time I have left, or at least I feel like it, and I just tell them “I go home next year” which isn't a lie, but a little.

Well, today we went fishing. In all, we caught six fish. I caught three and elder Litchfield caught four. Yes your right, that is seven…. Oops. Well, we spent so much on shrimp to fish with I couldn't figure out why we didn't just eat shrimp, but the guy who took us said we couldn't eat them. In the end, we didn't even come home with fish, because he needed them for his family, but it was fun. After we went to the new burger king they just opened here in Limón. I think the lady was flirting with me a little…. But she must have been at least thirty, and I am a missionary, and Shanna is a lot awesomer!!!!

Well, that’s basically it. Oh. I got to this area with 75 ties, so we had a tie trade in our district. I got rid of like thirty ties, and got about 4 for them. It was a great trade.

Love ya'll (some more than others).

Love, Elder Haws

Pueblo Nuevo in Limón

Well, i got transfered finally alter 7.5 months in Rio Claro.

(pic in front of sign.) Before changes I was in San Isidro… Heres a cool pic.

(pic with “chicks”) Ok. Well, my new area is called Peublo Nuevo in Limón. Limon is an interesting place, if you Google it I am sure you will understand why.

My comp is Elder Morales from Costa Rica. He is a great kid and I am excited to get a lot of good stuff done here.

Well, I am ready to finish the mission strong. All is well here and I am definitely working hard. Sorry this is short, but so is my time unfortunately. Thanks all for everything!!! Happy Halloween!
Love Elder Haws

Short on time...

Danny's message this week is a combination of an email he sent to Jan (Mom) as well as to Tami and Nick. It is a little bit strange but Danny didn't have enough time to write something specific for the blog, so you get what you get this week! :)

He wrote the following to Jan:

Well, as always time is short.I guess that kind of has a double meaning huh? I donñt have much time to write, and i dont have much time left in the mission...I would lie if i said i didn{t think every day about going home. I am trying to use that to motivate me. This week was great but long.

On tuesday we left for san jose and weren't back until thusday night. It was a VERY long trip, but a great meeting. President Clarke of the seventy (and the area president) spoke to us. Literally it was two VERY spiritual days. Wednesday was zone confeerence and Thursday was just the zone leader meeting. I got to know him very well. Actually, he asked me for shannas phone num,ber.... I hope he puts in a good word for me...

Well, i believe that my time has almost come to have changes again. Elder Nay and I can't stay together because we go home together... So i a almost possitive i will be transfered next monday. I am sad, but at the same time happy. I am excited to get to my next and last area and work hard every day. As a zone leader there are so many things to worry about that we don't really get to wqork to our full potential. If all goes well, next week i won't be a zone leader anymore. I have had a great time searving in that function, but after a year, i could definatlely use a break.

Well, all is still well here. I am hapy and still doing my best Thanks for those quotes from my class... I don't remember them, but they are good.

Oh yeah, yesterday i was waiting for a bus and i remembered the tiome we were heading to washington and we helped that family whos van rolled on the side of the road. all i remember is that the baby was named corbin... or "cobin" as his slightly older brother said... I wonder how they are. Tell dad i said thanks for being a great example and helping them!!!!Until next time, Love, Elder Haws

Danny wrote the following to Tami to put on the blog:

Here are two pictures. One is me with this super cool family. They are all baptised except for the dad and we taught him a sick lesson in which he basically decided to get baptised. They live in my area but the other missionarries are teaching them... Long story.

He wrote this to Nick:

Well, all is well here. Yesterday was a bummer day for me too. We had four investigetores that were going to get baptised, and they didn't show up... Turns out two went to another church and the other was drinking wine.... Yeah theres a bummer for you. Also it rained SUPER Super hard.

So everyone here has been freaking out about the swine flu.... I kinda thought it was all a big lie.... Who knows maybe its real... Is it true that in utah they chaged everything to HDTV?????? mWeird...

October is here

Well, this week was very eventfull. It was super awesome, but also very long. As you well know, it was conference week. Thats always a big thing here in the mission. We always want to make sure EVERYBODY goes to the conference. We worked hard all week to invite the people, and even asi thre were hardly any members that showed up. There was actually not one person that came to every session. I must say that i feel like the three nephites “afflicted for the wickedness of the people”. It is hard having heard such great talks and knowing that there were so many people that didn´t even care to come hear the prophets voice. Oh well, i guess now we have to go and and cry them to repentence!!!

Our zone at conference

Saturday in between conference sessions, i went to another wedding. This time Nelberth(look for his baptism post) got married to a return missionarry named merly. Oddly enough, merly is the sister of Didier(didier married Zailin)(another one of my converts) it seems as though all my baptisms are getting married…. I hate going to weddings, because they make me super trunky!! So Sunday after the conferencewe had to get on a buss and go to san josé again. We had zone council. It was cool, and president taught us lots of neat stuff. Well, today(Tuesday) we had our interviews for our zone, so after zone council President and Sister Galvez brought us home. Instead of going over the mountains, we went along the pacific coast. It was AWESOME. We had a great time and a long talk. Just to give you an idea of things we talked about, as we were pulling into rio claro we were talking about the three nephites…..

Well, today(Tuesday) we had awesome interviews with President. During interviews, the zone leaders give a training, and today we trained about the Book of mormon. We realized that we havent been using it as we should, well, we had a great training, and at the end we gave everyone one of the cheap copies and invited them to read it again, but the just look for and highlight a few things in different colors. 1 names and titles of christ after you finish a page, write in the bottom corner how many times it mentions one of his titles.2 faith 3 the atonement 4 repentance 5 baptism 6 gift of the holy ghost 7 endure to the end 8 any mention of the gospel( “this is my gospel”). It turns out, president later told us that we are going to do that as an entire mission. We promised the Elders that they will gain a stronger testimony of the Book of Mormon and our Savior. I am way excited to do this, and plan on doing it in the next 3 months.Well, thats all i got for now. I am absolutely in love with missionarry work. It is just awesome. Sometimes i think about goibng home and get scared, but when the times comes “i will go”(1 nephi 3:7) “for behold, it cometh quilcly sayeth the lord, amen” D&C 87:8

Elder Haws

Awesomest week of ALL time!!!

Well, things here are GREAT!!!!!! This last week was the most awesomest week of ALL time. If you paid attention last week you will know that i got the greatest news of all time and that Mauricio and his family were getting sealed, I´ll get to that!

But first....A few months ago, we heard a legend of an Indian chief. He said that his Grandfather had told him a story of a white god that came to visit them and that promised to come back. This story had been passed down from generation to generation. Well, supposedly a missionary way back met this guy, and told him about the book of Mormon. He said that if they could get 500 copies of the Book of Mormon that the whole village would be baptised... Great legend eh? Well, now years later we heard this story from the genealogy director of Costa Rica, and we decided to go check it out, seeing how missionaries could never get out there, so we got all ready, loaded as many Book of Mormons as we could, and got on a bus with the missionaries from the area where the Indian village is. We ended up having to pay a taxi to get out there. So once we get there, we looked and asked everyone if they knew Juan Quiros, and NO ONE knew him. We found the oldest man in the village, and he had never even heard of that last name. Well, i guess we wasted some time, but at least we have closure, and we actually taught the old man about the BOM (he already had one).

OK so that was Wednesday....

Thursday we had devisions for a baptismal interview of Treicy.

Friday, we got on a bus headed to San Jose for the sealing on Saturday. We picked up three pineapples on the way, and when we got there we made pineapple smoothies... They were delicious.

OK, so Saturday morning we woke up at five in order to get to the temple in time. We got there, and then Mauricio and his family showed up. The sealing was at 12:30, so we did initiatory work for almost 2 hours while we waited... That in its self was AWESOME!!!

OK so finally it was time for the sealing. We get in there, and guess who decided to seal them...... Did you guess?.... The Temple President President Haws(great great grandson of William Wallace haws... like 3rd cousin once removed and return missionary 52 years ago who served also in Costa Rica)

He had met the family, and Mauricio asked him if we were related. I had met him before and i guess he remembered me cause he said yes, and Mauricio gave him an enormous hug and told him all about his story and conversion and our relationship. Well, President Haws decided to seal them. He said some wonderful words, and as Mormon would put it..."Manny wonderful words he spake which the tongue cannot speak"

Mauricio chose me as a witness, and as i sat there listening to what the President said, i looked into there eyes and remembered all the troubles we had. I remembered ever single step of their conversion and all the wonderful decisions they had made that got them to that point. Then i thought about the future and all of the wonderful things they are going to do as a family FOREVER!!! Literally, words cannot describe how i felt. I now truly understand the meaning of Doctrine and covenants section 18. HOW GREAT IS MY JOY

So Saturday after the sealing we had to book it to the bus stop or we wouldn´t make it for church on Sunday.

We arrived home at about 11 pm and went right to sleep. five hours later, at 4 am, we woke up and went to the church to fill the font for the Baptism seeing how we had Had NO time to fill it earlier. Church was interesting, cause our Branch Pres. didn´t show up. He was sick, so i had to run everything. Our baptism was supposed to be at 8 am before church, but treicy didn´t show up. We sent a member with a CAR TO GO LOOK FOR THEM, AND 15 MINUTES LATER I CALLED HER TO SEE WHAT WAS UP. sHE SAID THAT THEY WEREN´T COMING. i TOLD HER TO GET THEM (OOPS... CAPS LOCK) so she went back, and got them ready and brought them to the church. They arrived at nine thirty in the middle of my talk about the importance of temples, and when we were supposed to have Sunday school (i hadn´t had time to plan the lesson) we baptised Treicy and confirmed her immediately after.

I am not sure if what we did was kosher, but i feel OK about it. in the baptismal photo you will see a mom, and three daughters. The Mom is named Elizabeth, and she should be getting baptised any day now. The oldest daughter is Gabriela. She had been a hard investigator, but she will definitely be baptised with her mom. The next daughter(not pictured) is Daniela. She was baptised about a year ago, and since then we have been fighting with the rest to get them baptised. The Next daughter is Treicy in the Pucca shirt(red) and the youngest is Juliana. She is crazy and she said i was "guapo".

OK so Sunday night after the longest day of my life, we got home tired and did the numbers for the zone. After we were done with the phone calls, the phone rang again. It was Mauricio. He said that on Sunday the counselor to the mission president showed up and interviewed him, called him, and set him apart as the Branch President. I WAS SO EXITED!!

Well, i would say that is a pretty event full week wouldn´t you? Oh also Thursday night i dreamed Emily had her baby... I guess i was a few days late(congests Emily and johnny)

Well, thats that.

The mission is AWESOME!!!!

Love Elder Haws

Peaks and Valleys

Dear all,
so i still have no idea who amber is marrying... Thats weird, i thought she was getting married in december. Well, tell her good luck getting married.
So all is well here. We can´t help but talk about how little time we have left in the mission, but we are trying as hard as we can to stay animated(excited) we had a really good week this lasyt week in which two girls tols us they want to be baptised. One will be baptised this friday. We normally do it on saturdays, but i got a call last week from mauricio. I don´t know if i told you, but last week in transfers the mission president asked me to stand up, so i did. He said, "(in spanish) Elder Haws, i have good news. Mauricio Odio and his family are getting sealed on the 26th of october and you will be there¨
Well, i was about the most excited anyone has ever been. Mauricio called me the next day, and i was so excited to talk to him. Itr has been about a year since i talked to him. Well, long story short, we will be going to san jose on friday afternoon to be in the sealing on satureday moprning, so we are going to have the baptism on friday morning.
Other than that, all is well. Having lived in this house here for six months, i kindof lost interest in cleaning it. It got a bit messy, and so now that nay got here, we cleaned up A LOT. Good news is the house is clean.
This week elder nay let me read his book called "Peaks and valleys" It is awesome and i would recommend it to anyone that need to be inspired. Well, after reading it, i decided we should go climb a montain, so we went to the nearest one in our area. We knocked doors on the way and then knocked to door at the very top. We found a lot of great people that we are going to visit tomorrow. After reading the book, i have had a desire to do awesome things, so today for pday we decided to follow this river(actually rio claro) up towards the mountain, so we went with our district. It was hard, and a few of the missionarries were acting like laman and lemuel, but elder nay and i just telling them to keep following us. Luckily, then it started raining. Well, we got soaked, but we fiunally got to the road we were looking for. It was very satisfying to explore like that. Anyway, thats about all for now. I am very excited for these next four months. We are working like crazy, and i truly have become the missionarry of my dreams. I look forward to golfing with everyone when i get home, but i am definately not good.
Thanks for all,
Love Elder Haws

fix

katchup

I think this is a turkey... it pooped on my hand
This frog was mad cause his house fell down(see next foto)

This tree fell on our cooks house. You may recognize it, because i climbed it once.... Remember when i climbes the tree?

They were lucky and it didn't really hit there house, only barely.

This is a baptism from a few weeks ago... Remember the wedding?

left to right... Elder Martinez, Sarai Mylie July Zailin, Didier Naomi(in his arms), Mosiah Helaman(squatting) Nefi, and elder haws.

Yep, they are all now members.

All is well, all is well!!

Well, this week was cool. We had a WEDDING and it made me TRUNKY!!!!


a member who is a return missionary an had been inactive for quite some time decided he wanted to come back to church(we may have had a part of that... I don´t really know)
Well, he came back, and brought his.... i guess girlfriend... And their like 20 kids back to church. Well, we found out that they weren´t married, and so we talked about it, and they planned a HUGE wedding.


Here we are in the very back..
Heres the cake... It was good for a tico cake (si un tico lea esto perdoname pero los quuqes no son buenos aqui al menos que Felsy los hace...)
MMMMMM Cake.
While they were taking pictures, they said"family" and took pictures... then they said "elder" i thought who is elder... And then they took pictures with us. They are happily wed, and Saileen and her daughter July will be baptised this week.
In the afternoon before the wedding, we didn´t have lunch cause our cook was cooking for the wedding, so we made lunch(i don´t know whats with the sweater vest....)


Oh, and at the wedding we were singing with these two guys... I think they were a little drunk... You can´t here us sing, cause the guy came in and told us to stop.



Well, thats all form here. All is well!!!!!

Love, Elder Haws

Is anybody out there????

Does anyone even read this? I am not sure. Oh well, at least i will have a cool electronic journal someday....

Well, this week was great. On last sunday Elder Ramirez went home, so his companion Elder Davis was with us for an "undetermined time". Well, Elder Martinez went on divisions with one of our areas, and left me with Elder Davis. He is from Albequerque New Mexico. Well, luckily, on friday they called and told us he was going to get a companion on saturday. While we were together, i realized how much i have grown as a missionary. Elder Davis worries so much about everything, and thats exactly how i used to be. I used to get som upset if one of our investigators didn´t progress, or if no one wanted to listen to us. What i learned, is that peopl make there own choices, and as long as we present our message the best we can, it isn´t our fault. I didn´t realize that i had learned this until i was with elder Davis. He is a great kid, and will do great things in his mission. I am sure that my Zone leaders thought the same thing about me when i was a youngan, and now look at me.

Well, today we went fishing on the beach with one of Golfitos investigators. Unfortunately, we only caught two fish. The first one was a little guy that martinez caught, but it fell of his hook before he got it in(i don´t really count that) the second, i caught. But, it turns out it was a blow fish, and they are poisonous, so i had to let it go. Needless to say, we are hungry cause we didn´t eat lunch.... Heres a picture that basically explains our day without words....
My feet got sunburned.... But i have had worse
Sorry I didn´t take a picture today of us fishing... But i am sure you can imagine.

Well, that all for now

Love, Elder Haws

Happy mothers day!!! (in costa rica)

Well, it turns out that mothers day is a diferent day here... I don't know why, but it is. So this week, we had our mothers day activity in the Church.

For some reason we decorated it like valentines day... I don't kno why... But we Played ames, listened to two kids play Marimba, and everyone(except for me and my comp) danced.

This is a picture of a crab that i ate.... Suprisingly it was delicious.

This is a plate of my food... You can se the crabs, and oysters there... I actually like it so much that i am going to tell our cook to from now on only make seafood...

While everyone danced i got to watch Keidan, so i let him play with my nametag...

He is one of the coolest kids i have ever blessed(i have only blessed two but they are both super cool)

The Party was great.

So remeber our new dog Bookie? Well he isn't really ours, but every night when we get home he runs into our house. Anyway, the other day he was eating Elder Martinez' shoes... It was funny.

I think he may have given us fleas.....

Also, today for pday we went to the beach... It was cool, but we just sat there and looked at it... Oh then we threw a cocanut out there and saw who could hit it with a rock.... Yeah...

This is me Elder Ash, and Elder Davis. Oh and you can see elder flores' pants in the background.

Elder Davises companion went home yesterday(he finished the mission) and so for the next month Elder Davis(byu shirt) will be in a trio with my comapanion and I. He is from Albequerque New Mexico. He is cool.

Well, Thats basically all for this week.

Things are still AWESOME and i am not even trunky even though yesterday i hit my 19 month mark....

Peace out,

Elder Haws

Elder "Of my dreams" Haws

Howdy yall. Well, its time for the whole monday comunication with the family.
So this week was pretty cool. Basically we went to San Jos'e for transfers. The transfer meeting was weird, but cool. My comp and i are still together.
So about two weeks ago, we went to visit Guiermo and his family. They were inactive, we reactivated them, and baptised Joseline. Well, when we showed up to their house, i peeked in the window, and what did i see??? THEM READING THE BOOK OF MORMON AS A FAMILY!!!

I know that to most this may seem insignificant, but to me it is like a payday! You have no idea how excited i was!!!

Also, a few weeks ago our neighbor got a new lil puppy. They named him something stupid like poopy, so we decided to change his name. First i started calling him Bufalo cause he kinda slightly looks like a buffalo (He is some sort of bulldog mut mix), and then my comp called him Bookie. I guess he had had a dog named bookie way back when, and well, it stuck. So anyway, bookie is always running around in our yard(because we share a yard with the neighbor) and the other day, he learned to come into our house. Now, when we wake up in the morning and open the door, he is there waiting to come in. We don't mind, and one day i even gave ghim a tie....
Oh cool shoe huh, i bought them for really cheap(ask nick he will tell you all about it)

Actually speaking of my new shoes, we went to the border of panama last week, and i was looking for some new shoes to play soccer, you see the week before we were playing soccer and i fell down about 15 times cause my sambas are all worn out. Well i searched and searched for a good deal, but everyone was just so expensive. Finally after giving up, i found a great deal!!! i got two pairs of shoes for less than half the price that everyone else was charging for just one pair. I forgot to take a picture of them, but here is a cool picture of me wearing them...
Yep, they are hover shoes. Oh also, i got a cool pair of sweat pants for 2 bucks...

Ok now to the important part... Last sunday a guy showed up to church and told us he wanted to be baptised.... Yeah i know thats just something that happens here... Well, we talked to him for about an hour, and this guy allready knew everything. It turns out he had investigated for a long time in sn jose but never felt like getting baptised. Well, we put a baptismal date with him for the next saturday(or last saturday)

And....... WE BAPTISED HIM!!!

This is Nelberth Gutierrez Quiros It turns out he is our branch presidents brother in law....



Well, thats all folks!!
Thanks for everything,
Elder Haws