Jan. 28, 2013

Mom,

Umm, to start answering some questions:

It isn´t cold anymore, but I never found a blanket, I didn´t go out to any stores looking for one though...

I can understand my mission president fine now. Spanish isn´t super hard for me to understand. Especially if we talk about gospel things. My mission president actually complimented me on my spanish, and told me that I talk Spanish really well for how much time I have.

He did not give me advice if I get mugged, but I´m really not too worried about that. I don´t carry anything valuable except for my scriptures, and have a little spare change to give to theives if I had to. I´m not worried about getting mugged in the area that I´m in right now, and I´m not even ever worried about it. 

I think that we probably have a ward budget here, but it would probably be lower here, and possibly based on how much people pay their tithing here. I don´t know for sure how that all works out.

I don´t know why this lady has gravel in her house. It´s just going to be stored there for a little while while they do some construction above her house.

And no, my back didn´t hurt afterwards, but I did get all dirty and sweaty.

Teaching the gospel is good. It is hard to tell if people let us in just because they feel obligated to, because they think that they´ll be cursed if they deny the preaching of the gospel in their homes, or if they actually want to learn and change their lives.

This week has been good. Nothing else super exciting.

I hope that everything has gone well there!

Love,

Elder Ward

Jan. 21, 2013

Dear Mom,

My life is too boring to write long letters, there´s nothing much to say...

Yes, your spanish was right (well, minus an accent, but it´s a lot harder if you don´t have a spanish keyboard). I wrote my last weeks email to mishelae all in spanish, and she must not have liked that, because she didn´t respond yet. :)

BTW, Happy birthday, since I forgot to wish you a happy birthday last week...

Umm, nothing too exciting has happened recently. Just normal missionary work stuffs.

This week its been really cold, colder than I´ve ever been in Honduras. We worked in our suits on Friday, and in long sleeves Saturday and yesterday. I have also had a little cold too, so that might add to it being even more cold to me. I need to buy a blanket soon, because all I have is a sheet to cover me when I sleep, which normally works, but this week, not so well, but I have been sleeping with both of my hoodies, sweatpants, and long socks.

This week has been good though. We had interviews with the mission president, and that went well, we did an activity at the church on saturday to have the members bring their non member friends to watch a video and have a lesson, but nobody brought anybody, and none of our investigators came either. But still a lot of members came, and so we switched the lesson plan up and decided to teach the members about missionary work and their responsibility to find people to share the gospel with and watched some videos and had a little lesson on that, so it turned out good. Also, after that activity, they brought pizza, which is weird for Honduras, normally they don´t have refreshments or anything that big to serve for ward activities.

Also, Saturday morning, Elder Evans and I went to do a service project for an elderly lady in our ward to help her move some things. About a week ago, we helped her move like 3 couches out of her house, and into a new house that her daughter who was living with her built right above here, and it was really tricky to get the couches out because we had to go up this beat up, moldy staircase, and we couldn´t fit the couch through the gate, so we had to pull the couch over their pila (the washing tub and washing board) and get the couches in the other house. But anyways, this saturday, she wanted us to take these big bags of gravel, that each weighed between 200 and 300 lbs down the stairs to put into her house. We couldn´t carry them down the stairs, so we lifted each bag up one by one, it took both of us to lift each bag, and then we would take it to the top of the stairs, and then we took a long board of wood to make a ramp to slide down each bag, so it ended up being easier than we thought that it would be.

Other than that, nothing much else...

We´ve dropped some investigators this week, a couple of families that weren´t progresing, so that was a little bit disappointing, but we´ve had a lot more people to teach too. We are working with a few people who look positive, and hopefully we will be having some baptisms soon.

That´s all that I can think of right now.

Love,

Elder Ward

Jan. 14, 2013

Mom,

We continue to live off rice and cup of noodles.

That´s good that everyone seems to be doing well.

That´s crazy that James got assigned to a companion that is from AF too. I met an Elder here on this mission that´s from PG the other day. I knew him a little bit, he was in my weight lifting class in high school. Also, I know a girl that my ZL is writing because she is from PGHS, so it´s kind of funny that I know her too, and have known her longer than he has.

I don´t have much time, so I guess that thats all for now.

Love you!

Elder Ward

Jan. 7, 2013

Mom,

This week has been good, we´ve been busy this week working with some new investigators. We have 3 families that we have challenged to be baptized and have accepted, but we will still have to work with them for awhile before they are ready, but things have been going good. We have people to teach now, and before we didn´t have a lot of people.

It was good to see Ben´s pictures, his apartment is big! But I guess that he also has 4 Elders living there too. I´m jealous that he has a microwave...

I don´t really know why they burn wooden people. I actually didn´t see any of it, because we went to bed too early. We did see plenty of fireworks though. We were with a member family eating dinner New Years Eve when they lit off a huge firework bomb that I guarantee would be illegal anywhere in the states. It was loud and the explosion was big. Fireworks are big here. There have also been a lot of drunk guys for the holiday season. We´ve talked to a few of them this week.

I hope that you´re all doing well!

Love,

Elder Ward

Dec. 31, 2012

Mom,

It was good to talk to you all this Christmas for a little while!

My week has been good, a little bit different because of the holidays and a lot of people are out of town or have guests at their houses, but it has been good.

People have made us some food for the holidays, and tonight we are going to 2 different houses to eat food with these member families. The holiday favorite foods seem to be tamales, which they don´t normally make or eat at any other time during the year, and a french toast type of thing covered in milk which is pretty good.

Other than that, they don´t really celebrate much. They all build their own little wooden guy, and then tonight I think that they all will burn these wooden people that they build, kind of a weird tradition, but I guess it will be cool, we´ll see. Also there have been a ton of fireworks going off everywhere. There aren´t any firework rules in Honduras, so every day people are lighting off fireworks at night, mostly just firecrackers, but they all go crazy with them during the holidays. So tonight will probably be pretty crazy with all the fireworks, burning stick people and drunk people.

That´s all I can think of to say right now, but things are going good.

Love,

Elder Ward