Dec. 25, 2012

Here are some things we learned when we talked to Matt on Skype on Christmas Day! 

 

He said to get around they walk, ride buses or taxis.  It would probably be possible to walk the circumference of his area in a day.  None of the elders have bikes.  Matt thinks they would just be stolen anyway.

He has had two haircuts since he has been to Honduras, and he got his hair cut by a member.  

The stake center there (where they had their Christmas party) is the biggest in Central America and bigger than the ones in UT--it has 3 floors.  His ward there has about 75-100 people who come each week.  

His address isn't an address--it is directions.  That is is why it is so long.  It says something like: go this way, turn left at....

His mission president does not speak English.  His kids are all grown and gone from home.

In one of his pictures, there is a sister missionary with a cast on her foot.  When we asked him about it, Matt said, the zone was crossing the street as a group, and she was hit by a car, which ran over her foot!

They drink bottled water, which they haul in 5 gallon bottles up the hill to their apartment 2-3 times a week.

The weather there is like UT in August.

He said he knows a couple of missionaries who have been mugged.

To take his daily shower, he boils a gallon of water, which he adds to 4 gallons of cold water in a bucket, which he pours over himself.

Most things are available there, but quite expensive.

People sit outside the supermarket trying to sell things like toothpaste.

20 limpiras equals about $1.  A pizza costs 100 limpiras, which is about $5, but the pizza is a lot smaller than it is here.

The zone gets together on p-days.  They often play soccer.  On Thursdays they have district meetings and usually go out to eat at a place where they can make their own burritos.

40-50% of the mission are American Elders/Sisters.  His zone leader is from Mexico.  He doesn't get much of a reaction about being American since he is in the city, but he thought he might if he were in the more rural areas.

There are 11 zones in his mission.  Transfers are every 6 weeks.

A lady in their area washes their clothes for free.  They have brought her candy bars to say thank you. After she washes their clothes, they bring their damp clothes home and hang them up to dry.  They clean their own apartment.  I asked Matt to send me a picture of the bathroom, but he said he wouldn't, so I am assuming it is pretty bad.

Once when they went to a member's house, the lady was straightening the daughter's hair with a clothes iron.

He gets 1-2 hours/p-day to spend on the computer.

There is no bedding provided, but he has his own sheets and that is usually plenty.  If he ever gets cold he just puts on his hoodie and warm socks.  

I asked if they had problems with flying bugs, like mosquitos, and he said no.  They have a few flies, but that's about it.

He hasn't seen any snakes, but his companion did.

It gets dark about 5:30-6 p.m. and light about 6 a.m.

He understands quite a bit of Spanish, but still struggles to speak it.

He said he is happy and enjoying his mission.  

 

He looked and sounded really good.  It was great to talk with him!

Dec. 24, 2012

Mom,

Okay, it looks like I have to go fast again, I´ll answer some questions:

There are like 22 missionaries in our new zone, which is a lot bigger than before, they opened up 2 areas in our zone. The temple is in Teguz, but the city is split and shared by our mission and the Comayaguala mission, and the temple is out of our mission´s area, but in the same city.

I haven´t gotten the backpack yet, my ZL´s still have it, but it made it from the office to their house, so I will have it by the end of the week, my ZL forgot to bring it today when I saw him to give it to me, but it did make it.

There were transfers this week, but Elder Evans and I are still together for another change (until february). He was expecting to leave, since he had already had 4 changes in the area, but we are still both here. A lot of the Elders from my district in the MTC, that came at the same time as me are training other new missionaries now, which is crazy to me!

It is hard for me to take pictures of a lot of things because I don´t always carry my camera around, and I don´t want to be waving my camera around in public places to get robbed. I have been trying to take more pictures with some of the members and converts, this week we took a lot of pictures because my companion thought that he would be leaving. When I get time, I´ll try to upload them. :)

Did Golden come home and has he given his homecoming talk?

Okay, well I will talk to you tomorrow..

Love,

Elder Ward

Christmas Fun!

These are pictures from the Christmas party this week. One when we were in the temple, and one at the church, at lunchtime

Christmas Decorations!

Christmas decorations! We found some christmas stuff that was left in the apartment from other missionaries, over the years, so we put up a tree, and some lights, and like snowflakes all around the apartment. well, mostly just my companion... I just sat there and studied, while he decorated and called me a scrooge for not wanting to help. 

More Apartment Pictures

Bedroom, and main room shots

Apartment Pictures

Apartment pictures

One with my desk, and how I normally study in the mornings... With PANCAKES!!

the other is just a general view, as we walk in the front door

 

Zone Pictures

Here are some pictures of my zone.

Zone Leader & Companion

One picture is me with my ZL, the other with my companion, at a hill overlooking the temple. this was about a month ago. my hair was really long with the wind, so in some of these pictures I have weird hair. (My hair is short now, which is good)

Tie and Temple

Here´s some pictures.

One is of the tie that I´m going to give to Ben, because it has turtles and is pink.

The other picture is of the temple on one of our temple trips.

Dec. 17, 2012

This week we had a Christmas party with like 4 zones in the mission, and had some musical numbers and talks and stuff, and then we went to the temple, and fit a ton of missionaris onto a schoolbus, there were like 100! I was standing the whole half hour long ride there. Then we went back to the church, they gave us each a little present, with an apple, some treats, and a mini PMG that is really handy. We got a really nice lunch that was catered. Then our mission president let us go and choose between playing soccer, or basketball, or watching a movie. I went to watch the movie, and we were allowed to watch Toy Story 3! I was surprised, but the president let us watch it this one time on the mission, for the Christmas party, so that was fun to relax and watch a non church movie. It was also interesting watching it in Spanish. we only watched like the first half hour of it though, then we had to stop, because we had to go. So that was a nice break this week.

We have been mostly just teaching the new people that weve found. We have a few investigators, so that´s good. Saturday we went out with a teacher´s age convert, and he came with us for most of Saturday so that we could show him what it is like to be a missionary, and to bring a member to bear testimony of what we teach, so that was a good experience.

We have changes this week, so we will see soon if my companion stays or goes.

I heard the other day that they are going to add a mission in Honduras in 2013, so there will be 4, so that might affect where I would go, I could get switched to a different mission.. Idk if it´s true though, it was just a rumor that I heard. We are supposed to get a lot of new missionaries here soon though.

To reply to some of your questions, mom:

The weather is pretty much still the same. It has not rained for a few weeks, it hasn´t been too cold, we´ve had a couple of hot days, but it´s still about perfect weather. It feels like an average, utah, august day, every day.

I sent some pictures. I haven´t been taking a ton, I always forget to take pictures, although nothing here stands out to me as being all that exciting anymore to take pictures of.

Okay, that´s about all of the news that I have right now.

Love,

Elder Ward

 

(We will post the pictures as soon as we can get them to work.)

Dec. 10, 2012

Dear Mom,

I don´t have much time to talk today again, sorry...

I was going to get pictures sent today, but I think that the computers that we are using here at the internet café are all locked from using a file explorer to upload pictures, so I will have to wait until another P day so that I can send them from the church computers.

The temple is not in my mission, but we just went a few weeks ago. We heard the announcement this week for when the open house and dedication for the temple will be! The open house will be from Feburary 4 to March 2, and the dedication will be the 17th of March.

I did not see the Christmas devocional, we just worked that day.

This week we had an activity, a family home evening activity thing, at the Mission President´s house. We brought 2 investigators and a recent convert. It worked out really nicely because one investigator is on crutches, and can barely walk with them, but the other is a taxi driver, so we got a driver to drive all the way up the dirt hill to this guy´s house who couldn´t walk, and didn´t have to pay like a bajillion lempiras to get there and back. So that was good, and the activity went well, we watched the Restoration video and the President and his wife talked for a little while, and then we had donuts and went home. So that was a good activity and turned out well.

Other than that, we have still been trying to find new people to teach, we don´t have many investigators right now. Changes are next week, and there is a good chance that I will get a new companion, but stay in the same area. I don´t know if that would be good or bad right now, I know that we are getting a lot of new missionaries coming in in the next couple of changes. We are getting about 50 more missionaries in our mission than we would normally have, so there will be some new areas opening up, and a lot of people will be training. I hope that I won´t get called to train yet, but I have heard that the mission president likes to do that to the new Elders who are right out of training... We will see what happens there.

Thank you for sending my backpack. Also, I got a package from Grandma and Grandpa Beecher this week with socks in it, which was good! Please thank them for me for that!

Also, my companion got a package this week, which had all of his Christmas stuff in it, and his mom also sent presents addressed to his companion, which was random, but super nice of her. So I got 2 new ties, and some candy and stuff.

Anyways, thats whats happening recently!

Love,

Elder Ward

Dec. 3, 2012

Mom,

I don´t know how the Skype thing will all work out yet, we still need to find somewhere with internet and a webcam and all of that stuff before I can find out times and stuff.

The baptism was good, and we had a few members from the ward there.

We had some other Elders here make the Thanksgiving dinner, and we bought the chickens from the store.

Nothing else much has happened this week, I wrote dad about how our recent convert is doing, I´ll copy and paste the piece here for you to read:

We only baptized the man, he does have a couple brothers and his parents, who are all older (He is 25). We are working on trying to talk with his family, but it is a little harder because they go to another church already. I was there for the whole time with teaching him. He has also been watching a lot of the church DVD´s that we have given him to watch, and has even been showing them to some of his friends, who we have started to teach too, so he is a cool convert because he wants to learn more and share the gospel already in his conversion. He got the priesthood yesterday too, so he´s a priest now. :) So that´s been good.

Other than that, not much has been happening here.

I hope that everything´s good with you all!

Love,

Elder Ward