August 5, 2014

Dear Sister Ward,

I thought you might want a little heads up. Your son has Dengue Fever again! He will still be able to fly home on Wed. but, he needs to drink 3 quarts of water a day, rest (no outside activities for at least a week) and he should take Tylenol every 6 hours. He may need a blood test (CBC) to make sure his platelets and white blood cells have returned to normal. This occurrence has been less severe. We are so sorry we couldn't send him home in better health.

It has been an honor to know your son and work with him! He is an excellent missionary!

Sincerely,

Hna S

Later in the day, in answer to our questions...

Sister Ward,

Our Area Medical Doctor says his platelets are high enough there shouldn't be any complications. Your son knows what to do.

You only need a doctor so he can order a CBC blood test. The blood test will tell when the white blood cells and platelets are going up. The only treatment for Dengue Fever is water, water, water, rest and Tylenol (1 or 2 he knows). Also Welches grape juice helps to produce platelets. Hand him a liter of water when you see him and some grape juice when he gets home. Activity wise: if he doesn't have to go out… don't. Sitting and visiting is fine. Standing and walking around a lot is not advisable. He should be able to give his talk. 

He will know how he feels … don't push it too fast.

Enjoy your son. Resting and visiting. Look at it this way …You will have his undivided attention!

Email anytime,

Hna S

August 4, 2014

Mom and Dad,

Well, our baptism fell through, our investigator started back up full time at her job, so she wouldn´t have been able to be baptized the time we had planned saturday, and then she didn´t want to set another time to be baptized and started talking about how she doesn´t feel like shes ready to be baptized yet.. so that was a little frustrating, but hopefully sometime soon she´ll be baptized.

This week has been interesting.. I don´t know why God planned for me to end my mission like this, but I got Dengue Fever again, so since tuesday i´ve been in the house sick, all week I´ve been just chilling here, feeling like crap, and this time I´ve felt worse than the last time that I had dengue.. I´ve had a few blood tests and on saturday they said that I´m still getting worse, but hopefully the test that I´m going to do later today shows that I´m getting better again... I haven´t been allowed to go to the area to visit anybody to say goodbye to any converts and I couldn´t go to church yesterday either, which is sad that I won´t see any of these people before i leave.

So, hopefully I´m feeling better when I get home, I may be resting for a few days when i get back to fully get over the sickness.

Well, see you all soon.

I love you.

Love,

Elder Ward

July 28, 2014

Well, this is probably the last group email, next week I´ll probably be lazy and not write anyone...

This week has been a hardworking, busy week, just the way I like it. ;) Last monday, we had a baptism, and he was very excited, but didn´t want a lot of people to come to see his baptism, which was good, because it was at a somewhat inconvenient time for everyone, so there weren´t lots of people. Then, we talked to another investigator about baptism on Tuesday, and she decided that she needed to be baptized, and felt like she should saturday. So we prepared everything and planned her baptism the same time as a baptism of the elders who share the ward with us. The other girl who got baptized by the other elders is the granddaughter of a recent convert of mine from this area, so it was neat to see her whole family there and more and more of this family coming into the church. I´ve been to 4 baptisms in this ward of people from this family, so it´s always been cool to see the progression through this rock solid family who always comes to church and all the ward activities. Saturday was a good day, and both baptisms went smoothly. Then sunday after church, we were talking to an investigator that we´ve been teaching for a long time and has been to church plenty, but had always asked for more time whenever we mentioned baptism. We set a lesson with her for last night, and we went with a member to visit her. We talked and she said that she knew what we were teaching is right and that she knows that she needs to be baptized, but was hesitating about being baptized because of what her friends and family would say against the church. We all testified to her about the importance of doing what God asks us to do, and not listening to the other people who criticize the church. It was a really good lesson and at the end, she said that we were right and agreed to be baptized and said that it was important that I would be there for her baptism, so we planned the baptism for this saturday at 4:00pm. It was neat to see how the spirit touched her and she was able to see and commit to doing something that I know will be hard for her, because many people don´t understand why she is leaving her old church and joining the mormons, but I admire her faith and her desire to keep going doing what she knows is true. My last baptism I will see will be one of the last miracles I get to see as a missionary, the joy of a person changing their life to live the gospel and obey the commandments of God.

I know that this work is true, and I know that if we let it, the gospel of Jesus Christ will change our lives and our attitudes about everything. I will never be the same from this point of my life on, and I am grateful for every experience that I´ve been blessed to have on my mission..

Including some weird experiences like having a staring contest with a goat that just randomly roams through our area and fights with dogs sometimes... ;)

Love,

Elder Ward

July 21, 2014

Mom,

I got a package today from you all, thanks!

I´m glad it wasn´t big though, because I´m going to have to start thinking about how much room I´ll have in my suitcases..

The temple was good.

In this weeks anouncements: we have a baptism today and probably a baptism on Saturday.. We are busy as ever and have plenty of people to teach. Other than that, things are about the same.. There´s not a ton to say..

Sorry I´m so boring...

Love,

Elder Ward

July 14, 2014

Mom,

Thanks for bday wishes, it`s been a good day.. No, I didn`t see a package when I went to the office today, but it might get here late.

Yes, we talked more with the Mission president this week, because we had interviews with our zone. It was good to talk with him and I learned from the interview a lot. I also talked for quite a while with his wife, which was good, she`s cool, but it`s hard for her since she doesn`t speak spanish much yet.

During the interviews the office elder in charge of my flight plans told me that the date changed to a day earlier than expected, so that is exciting..

Well, this week, other than the interviews, we went to the temple with our investigators to talk about the temples, which was good. Tomorrow our zone is going to go through the temple, which will be good. We were going to have a baptism last weekend, but in the end we didn`t get permission for him to get baptized and couldn`t really talk to his aunt very well, but hes 17 so when hes 18 he can get baptized I guess. We should have a few more baptisms this month hopefully..

Other than that, I don`t have a ton of news.. Life`s the same. We`re working hard and staying busy..

Love,

Elder Ward

July 7, 2014

Mom,

This week we had the meeting with the new mission president, which was surprizingly pretty short, but he´s a good guy and he´ll help the mission a lot. His wife doesn´t speak much spanish though, which will be harder for her.. We have interviews with him later this week, so we´ll get to know him a little bit better then.

We didn´t do too much new or exciting this week. This morning we went to Picacho, which is a tourist place that´s in my first area, it was weird passing through my first area again after over a year of not seeing it. We played handball, which is like ultimate frisbee with a ball, and it was pretty fun.

Sorry I don´t have anything more exciting to put.

Love,

Elder Ward

Arissa,

We had 6 investigators in church.

The leader meeting was good, we met the new President, and he´s cool.

This week wasn´t all that exciting. Just more visits and appointments, just like always.

Today we went to picacho, a tourist attraction in my first area. It was weird to pass by my first area again in the bus, but it was good to be with the zone. We played handball, which is like ultimate frisbee, but with a ball that you throw through a soccer goal to score. It was fun. I also climbed some trees and some building things.

Other pdays, we normally play a sport or do something small as a zone for a few hours.

4th of July was a normal day, nothing too exciting...

Love,

Elder Ward

June 30, 2014

Mom,

That´s great that Elder Lewis has been getting better. A lot of people from the ward here keep asking about him and asking how he´s doing..

Yes, a lot of missionaries get mugged here, but most of the time there aren´t any serious problems. I´ll probably make it through the rest of my mission without getting robbed ;( no fun stories for me.. 

Yeah, I guess the runway in Honduras is pretty bad. Even Pres. Uchtdorf commented on it during his temple dedication talk last year. He was like ¨I´m glad that I wasn´t the one who had to make that landing¨. It does go right over a bunch of houses, but I didn´t notice it too much when we landed..

We had 7 investigators this week in church, but not all of my converts from here came, so we´ll have to go visit and see why some didn´t come.

We had changes in the zone, and we have some cool Elders that just came in, so it should be good. My companion and I stay the same though, obviously.

We´re in the middle of Tegus, we have running water, and a water heater on the shower, but there´s not always water here. There´s a member that´s really awesome that washes our clothes for us

BTW, one of our investigators says hi, we were showing them pics of our families and everyone always comments that you look very young, like you could be one of my sisters, I always have to explain who´s who and show that my good looking 18 year old self was me, but sometimes people don´t believe me, haha. We have members feed us a lot too, if not, lots of time we go out to eat to wendys or mcdonalds or the grocery store that sells like chinese rice or something.

Well, other than that info, I don´t have much more news about this week. Things are going good.

Love,

Elder Ward

May 23, 2014

Mom,

They asked me about setting up my flight plans today.

The weather right now is hot and sometimes rainy. We haven´t done a lot of service recently, idk.

We had 5 investigators in church yesterday, and all 9 of my converts from here, and a less active family that we started visiting and we´ve had a lot of success bringing them all to church. We should keep progressing with all the investigators that we have right now, we´ve got some cool people that we´re visiting. We have changes this week, and a lot of people from our zone should be changing, but I imagine that my companion and I will stay together.

Things are going well, we are working hard and teaching lots of good people.

THat´s about all the news that I can think of right now.

Love,

Elder Ward

June 16, 2014

Mom,

Our baptism went well, we just didn´t have members show up to support him, so that was too bad.. But it went well.

here´s a little of what happened this week that I was writing to dad:

This week we had a baptism of an 18 year old, and we´re working with his family too, but we have to get them married first. They would have to travel in taxi, bus, canoe, and walking to get back to their little village that´s like 10 hours away to get some papers from the village so that they can get married. If they do get married, it will be complicated to get all the paperwork all together and everything and get a lawyer to help us and to get the actual ceremony prepared.

We´ve been in a threesome this week, but the other elder should be leaving tomorrow, which is probably good because our house is very small for 3 people..

The zone conference was good, I thought that I would give my final testimony, but i think that they might have another zone conference next month when the next mission president comes. 

Things are pretty normal here. Not much more to talk about..

Love,

Elder Ward

June 9, 2014

Mom,

Umm, this week was pretty normal. We had a leadership meeting and after the meeting we went to the temple to do a session, but we missed the session that we wanted to go to, so we waited a couple of hours for the next one and by the time we got out it was dark, so we got to see the temple all lit up, which was something that I had wanted to see here. It was good.

We are working with some positive people right now, we have a baptism lined up for this weekend and a family to get baptized at the end of the month.

I don`t have a lot of other news right now...

I hope everyone is doing well there.
Love,
Elder Ward

heres some temple pics and my companion and I in our Honduras team soccer jerseys.

June 2, 2014

Mom,

We haven´t had much cool stuff happen this week... We had a meeting with the ward councel (counsil?), which was good, we got to talk about our recent converts and our investigators so that we can go out and work with our ward leaders..

That´s about it for this week, not much of an update... I´d send pictures, but all of the computers here don´t read my memory card...

Love,

Elder Ward

Dad,

We´ve found some people I guess, we´re mostly just working with the people that we have. I was over in a couple of other areas this week too on divisions. We went to the temple on saturday with our investigators and my companion and I brought like 5 investigators and 3 recent converts, so it was a good activity. Things are going good right now.

Well, I have to go,

Love,

Elder Ward

May 26, 2014

Mom,

yes, the missionaries that got in an accident were serving in Yuscaran. I didn´t know the Elder who passed away well, but the other Elder was in my ward 2 weeks ago (there are 2 sets of missionaries in the ward I´m in) and had just gotten transfered to Yuscarán recently. He did return home to recieve further medical treatment. It´s sad, and everyone has been talking about it for the last little while. I´m surprized that the news got all the way up to you guys.

We had another baptism this week, which we weren´t expecting at all. She came to church for the first time in awhile with her sister and mom (who are recent converts from last month), but she didn´t say anything to us. We went to her house Wednesday in the morning to teach her a little, because we hadn´t taught her for a long time, but she had already heard all the missionary lessons. She said that the only reason that she hadn´t been baptized was that she used to work on Sundays, but that she had just barely been able to change her schedule to not work on Sundays. We told her that that meant that she could get baptized as soon as she wanted, and then she said that she wanted to get baptized this saturday, so we got everything ready and she got baptized. It was a small miracle that we saw.

We also went yesterday to visit our recent converts with the Bishop. He´s given us a lot of support and it was good to see that he will help these people that we´ve baptized so that they stay active, because that´s often a problem here in Honduras is that missionaries baptize a lot, but the converts don´t stay active because there´s no support. Our Bishop is really helpful to us.

We´ve stayed busy, just like always here, and we´ve got plenty more to do, but we´re going to focus on finding new investigators because it´s hard with a lot of the people that we´re teaching right now for them to progress and get baptized.

Well, things are still going well here.

Love you all!

Love,

Elder Ward

May 19, 2014

Mom,

My week was pretty good. We did have changes, and my new companion is from Farmington and he has like 15 months in the mission. He is a really hard worker, so I won´t be slowing down too much before the end of my mission. It´s strange to think that he most likely will be my last companion of my mission. But it will be a great way to finish, working hard until the end. We´ve been looking for families more than anything right now, and we´ve found a couple of good ones, that are really humble, the hardest part about it will be getting all the wedding papers and sorting all of that stuff out. Honduras has way too many laws and rules about getting people married.

We had a baptism this weekend, for the daughter of a lady that we baptized last month. She is 9 years old.

Things are going well right now, and we have plenty of work to do here.

Here´s pics of the baptism and my new companion and I.

Love,

Elder Ward

Oh, another little piece of exciting news for me...

I was talking to an Elder who got sent to Yuscarán this last week, and I called him last night and asked about how people from the branch were doing and he told me that one of the ladies that I baptized there is now the Relief Society President for the branch there in Yuscarán. That was kind of cool to hear for me, so I thought I´d share before I forgot to say anything about it.

Arissa,

Yes, I have a new companion from Farmington Utah. He is a hard worker.

That is cool that you had a spiritual experience while praying and that you found the solution.

This week we planned to look for new families to teach, so we decided to talk to every couple that we saw walking around or any dads with their babies or kids, which there really aren´t a ton walking around on the streets here... But we talked to one couple as they were leaving their house, and we planned to go with them to teach another day, so that day we went and we talked to the wife for a little bit, but the husband wasn´t there, so we planned another appointment to go back the next day, and we went and we found both of them and we taught the first lesson, and the wife had already read the whole pamphlet that we left her and was helping us explain the lesson to her husband, because she understood it and believed it pretty well just after reading it. We taught them and afterwards they asked us to come back and explain more and they apologized for having us sit on the floor and told us that if we kept coming frequently enough, that they would have to buy chairs for us to sit in to be able to talk to them. (they are a very poor family that just moved from far away to study in the city, so they only had their bed in their 1 roomed house). They were just very humble and very accepting. The only hard part will be to get them married because they would have to go back to the village where they´re from, which would be a ton of money to just travel to get the papers... But we´re glad that they listened to us and were open to our message.

I´m always staying busy. Life is good, except for the cold that I have right now... but that´s okay.

Well, I don´t have a ton of time today, I hope that everything is going great and that you enjoy the end of school and the beginning of summer. YAY!

Love,

Elder Ward

May 5, 2014

Mom,

This week´s been good, but nothing much to tell about. We didn´t have baptisms this weekend, but next weekend we should have another 2. We´re trying to work with some families to get baptized, but the wedding papers are always a difficulty. We did a fast with a man that wants to get married and baptized, but his wife doesnt want to get married, which is pretty opposite of how it normally is here. Hopefully she changes her mind. We had our leadership meeting this week, and our zone got 1st place in the mission for baptisms, even though we have one of the smallest zones in the mission, so that was kind of cool.
Love,
Elder Ward

April 28, 2014

Mom,

First of all, I`m completely better now. This last week I`ve been fine since like Tuesday Ive been working again. I feel perfectly good now and I´m back to working and excercizing and everything. It was kind of crappy not to work out for like 2 weeks because I didn`t want to overstrain my body, but I`m glad that it was only like 5 days that we had to stay in the house and not work. Dengue could have been a lot worse, but we found out what I had early enough that they could treat it in time for it not to get serious and for it to go away quickly.

Yes, the baptisms for last week´s email were a mom and daughter. We also had 2 baptisms this weekend for another mom and daughter, and that went well. here´s a little bit of the update I sent to dad:
This week we went to the temple with our investigators (now recent converts since they got baptized saturday), and it was a good experience. We had another 2 baptisms this saturday for a mom and 10 year old daughter, and after the baptism the mom gave a good testimony about the gospel and thanking my companion and I for helping teach them. I baptized the daughter and I also did the confirmation of the mom in sacrament meeting the next day at church. It was cool. This is a family that´s been teaching me a lot of the new tribal language that I`ve been trying to learn. It´s fun talking with them and trying to learn some of the words. It´s a cool family, and maybe later next month we`ll have more baptisms from the extended family.

So, that´s been going good. That`s about all the news for this week. Everythings been going good, but nothing too exciting.

Love,
Elder Ward

April 23, 2014

Hurray!!   He is out of the woods!   His WBC 6.8 (norm 5.0-10.0), platelets 205 (norm 150-450).   I will advise him to start working again but, at a slow pace.

I am so thankful for a loving Heavenly Father who watches out for our missionaries!!

Hna S

April 22, 2014

Sister Ward,

Your son is amazing!   I told him if he did what I told him to do … he would get over Dengue in 7 days and not 10 to 14 days.  He has been so good about listening and doing.  I am so impressed with him!   He is over the worst and will probably start back to missionary work by Wed. or Thurs.   The cure for  Dengue Fever …  is rest, lots of water and Tylenol.  They do completely recover.  It is not like "West Niles Disease".  Last season we had 22 missionaries get Dengue (out of 230 missionaries).  It is carried by mosquitos.  We encourage the missionaries to spray with "off" (deet) every day.  Your son has a light case.  The disease effects the platelets in the blood.  The platelets drop…. if they drop too far … it causes bleeding.   the normal platelet count it (150-450).  If they drop below 60 then they put the missionary in the hospital.  Elder Ward's platelets went to 100 and they are now going up.  Today they were up to 140!  He is feeling a lot better!  We will do another blood draw on Wed. to see if he is back to normal.   I will email you and let you know.  Feel free to remind me of my promise … with 250 missionaries it can get crazy.   

I know that Heavenly Father truly watches over His missionaries.  Your prayers will and are helping.  I see miracles everyday.  He is going to be just fine!

Sincerely,

Hna S
(she is the mission nurse)

April 21, 2014

Mom,

I have been sick this whole last week with Dengue fever. I´m not sure how that translates in English, but basically, since last monday I had been having a head ache. I´ve continued with more frequent headaches and then tuesday I had a bad fever. I rested in the mornings, but worked all I could in the afternoons for the first bit of the week, but then on Thursday, I was feeling pretty bad while we were working, so we came back and I called the mission nurse, and she told me to go to the hospital the next day to have an examination for dengue. So, the next day, friday, I went to the hospital, and everyone was on vacations for Semana Santa this week, so I had to go to emergency room and ask for the exam, and they did a urine and a blood exam and like an hour later, they came in and confirmed that I had dengue. So, once we found that out, I was told to stay in my house resting for the next 3 days straight and to take lots of liquids and gatorade and stuff, and we got some helpful medicine. So, the last few days, I´ve been trying to rest and chill so that I can get better, although saturday we had to go back to the hospital for a followup blood test, and we also had our baptism in the afternoon, so we had to go to that, and everything went well there, we had 2 baptisms this weekend, and they are super positive. Other than that, we´ve been hanging out at the house for most of the week. My companion has left me with a priesthood holder and left with another to go work a few times too, so that we keep getting our work done in our area, but it hasn´t been too fun to just stay home a lot right now. I don´t feel too sick or hurting or anything right now though, it´s only if I go out and work that I start feeling sick, and I also have to be careful because my body isn´t very strong to fight off infections and stuff right now. But hopefully I get better this week. But don´t worry, I´m doing fine.

Yes, today, actually, I got your easter package. Thank you, my companion and I will enjoy eating easter candy and making water balloons from the package of balloons to have a water fight on pday.

There´s not much to report other than that. Here´s pics of my new companion and I, and our baptisms this last saturday.

Love,

Elder Ward

April 14, 2014

Dad,

to respond to the questions really quick, things are great in the new area, there is more work to do here than in any of my other areas, and we are always busy with appointments, so we hardly ever contact. We had 2 baptisms this last saturday (I don´t have a memory to USB converter right now, or I would send pics) and we had 9 investigators from our side of the ward come to church this week, plus all their young kids. This should be the most fruitful area in my mission. No, I don´t think that I´ll leave before the end of my mission, which is fine with me. I think that my companion will be leaving next change, and then I´ll get a new companion for the last 2 changes. It´s weird being in my last area and thinking that the end is kind of close, but I´m happy that we will stay busy working hard here. There are 2 types of people here, super rich people that live in gated communities (we also live in a gated community) and the poorer class, which is a lot of people who´ve moved from the deep deep jungle parts of honduras called the Mesquitia, and they have their own tribal language that my companion and I are trying to learn. It would be hard, but we just need to find a dictionary or a bible in mesquita so that I can learn new vocab words. We´ll see if I can learn it at all.

That´s it for now. If you could share this email with mom, I don´t have a ton of time to write to everyone today..

Love,

Elder ward

April 7. 2014

This week, we had changes, and I left Porvenir, Choluteca, and came to Guaymuras, Tegucigalpa, so I´m back in the city again. I´m happy to be in the city again, it was getting way too hot in Choluteca anyways. It is a good area here. The ward seems to be really good, and we´ve already had a lot of help from the members in teaching some great lessons. Even though a lot of people are really rich here, a lot of them are still willing to listen to the gospel when they have time. I´m still here as ZL, and my new zone is a lot smaller than my other zone, we have 12 missionaries, all Elders. We are all really close to each other, so it´s easier in some things. We have a good hardworking Ward Mission Leader too, so we do weekly coorelation meetings and everything, which is something I haven´t really done since I was in the city last like a year ago. This area seems really nice, we always get food from members, including sometimes double lunches or dinners. We also get rides from members too sometimes, which is weird to have rich members who help us too. I think that this area will be nice and we should have a lot of success here. I want to focus on baptizing a family before the end of my mission, because I´ve never had a whole family baptized.

My new companion has been with me since the beginning. He was in my MTC district, but we hadn´t really seen each other for a while on the mission, but now we´re companions, which is awesome because we´re good friends and he is a very hard worker and stays motivated. It´s weird to think that this will proabably be my last area and my second to last companion on my mission, but there´s still plenty of work to do here, so I´m happy that I´ll be able to stay occupied.

Thank you all for all of your support and testimonies. All of you have been great examples to me and have supported me to be here helping others.

Love,

Elder Ward

March 31, 2014

Hey!

This week was pretty good, a missionary from our zone had to go home, which was sad because he was really cool. But my companion went up to Tegus for a couple of days to drop him off so he could come back with his companion, so I stayed with some Elders in my zone, actually I kind of just jumped around from area to area helping wherever I could and doing interviews for people. It was alright though. Other than that, the week was just normal.

This pday we went to the beach. We played volleyball, ran around the beach, and because the tide had washed away a lot of old houses there were lots of old cement structures left all across the beach. Needless to say, I didn´t play volleyball this morning, but I started doing parkour and some flips. For the first time in my mission I did a flip today, and it was great! I just went crazy doing a bunch of old parkour moves like front flips, superman rolls, front handsprings, cartwheels, and I may have jumped off of the 13 foot structure that you´ll see in the last picture. It was super fun though, a friend of mine in my zone also did an arial off of something like 6 ft high. It was fun and we got super sandy. I love the first picture of my front flip that looks like I´m doing a gainer.

I´ll try to send as many pictures as I can right now. I like a lot of the ones we took, I also learned how to climb a coconut tree today, but it´s pretty hard. I was surprized to find that it´s harder to climb down than it is to climb up... so I didn´t go to the top of the tree, I just climbed like 10 feet up to take a good picture. i´ll send the other pics in the next email. It was a fun pday though, but don´t worry, I´ll be careful, I won´t go out on the streets and start doing flips all over, it´s just cuz we were on the beach. I still know how to flip/tuck/land perfectly, in case any of you thought that I forgot how...

Well, that sums up this week, things went well. Next week we will not have much time to work in our area. Tomorrow, we have appointments booked from 10 in the morning til 8 at night, we´re so popular, haha. I don´t know how we ended up with so many appointments already. Wednesday we have changes, and my companion and I have to go up to Tegus and back to help out there. I also may have changes and may leave my area, or I could stay. It´s a 50/50 right now. Either way is fine, I like where I am, but we haven´t had much success recently in our area. Thursday we have to go back to tegus to get ready for our mission leadership meeting that will probably take all of friday. Then saturday and sunday we will have General Conference, which should be awesome, and we should have plenty of investigators that haven´t been able to come to church meetings on sundays be able to come for at least one of the sessions, so that should be good.

Well, that´s my week, with a sneak preview of my next week (in case anyone cares or is too anxious to wait until next week´s episode of the Great Honduran Jungle Adventure;)

Love you all!

Elder Ward

March 24, 2014

Mom,

Actually, sleeping in a hammock gets more and more comfortable the more you do it, the first time I slept on a hammock, it was a little uncomfortable, but now, it´s the only way to stay cool at night. It´s getting hot out here, in 2 weeks it will be the hottest week of the year here. I´m not too excited for that.

Well, next week we may switch houses. We found a house right next to where we´re living right now that looks nice, and we want to move there and let the other missionaries move right into our current house so that they can live in their area, and we can both have nicer houses. We´ll see how it goes though. Tomorrow morning we will go look at the new house, but if we like it we´ll probably move as soon as possible.

Right now we don´t have a ton of positive investigators, we will have to get looking for new ones. We´re getting a little bit more help from the members that live in our area, so hopefully we can find new investigators with their help.

Well, that´s all the news I have for this week.

Love,

Elder Ward

March 17, 2014

Well, this week was a little bit interesting I guess, haha I have stuff to write.

This week we stayed busy. I went on divisions with all 3 of our DLs in our zone. We also had stake conference this week, and the night before they told my companion and I that we had to speak for the adult session on saturday, and then saturday they explained what we should talk about. We gave talks about member missionary work and how the members could help out, so we talked in front of everyone, there were a lot of people there, but I think it went alright. I talked for like 10 minutes, and I think it went alright, but it was a little crazy to talk there.

Then for the sunday session we had a transmition from Utah from Richard G. Scott and Dallin H. Oaks, which was good. Richard G. Scott talked in perfect spanish, and at first I didn´t even recognize that he was speaking spanish, because he had such a good accent.

Also this week, we had our baptism for our 19 year old investigator that came to church because a friend invited him to church and he went like 3 times before we could even find him at his house to teach him. He was positive and says that he has a goal of going on a mission. So, I had my first baptism from a reference in all my mission. The other baptisms that I´ve had were from contacting, haha.

Well, that´s what happened this week with me. It was a good week though, but it was kind of crazy.

It's getting even hotter here now, but I figured out that sleeping outside in our back yard on my hammock, with the fan blowing on me feels really good and I even get to cold to use the fan like half way through the night. I´m probably going to keep sleeping outside from now on.

I hope that you all are doing well and staying strong in the faith. I know that this church is true and that Jesus Christ is our Savior.

Love,

Elder Ward

March 10, 2014

Mom,

My life really isn´t all that exciting and there´s not much to say.. We do the same thing all day every day, except for when we have to go to meetings or go with other missionaries to do interviews or divisions. But  I'm happy, well, and safe, no worries. I am enjoying being a missionary, and of course I´m glad that I´m here. I am learning plenty and working hard. It´s just hard expressing what happens typing and I´m not the most talkative person either. Idk... :p 

Well, this week has been pretty good, another trip to Tegus for another meeting that took up a couple of days of our week. We finally got a hold of an investigator that has been to church 3 times by himself, just because a friend invited him and so we`ve been over to try to teach many times buy he was never there until this week when we found him this week and we taught him and he said he wanted to be baptized. So we have a baptismal date for him this saturday, we just need to make sure that we can find him during the week to teach him everything he needs to know. That´s pretty cool though. We also have a few other positive references from some members, so we´re starting to work a lot more with them now.

Other than that, we´ve been doing about the same, things are good here, but there´s not much to report. Today for Pday we played dodgeball with our zone and another one. It was fun, but not everyone wanted to play, so we also put on wreck it ralph, which was a good movie to watch. I liked it. That´s basically what we did this week.

Hope that everything is going well for everyone. I love you all!

Love,

Elder Ward

Arissa,

The biggest holiday here is a weeklong holiday during the hottest time of the year, the holy week (la semana santa in español). It´s like the first week of april, where its super hot and everyone has work off, and everyone goes to the beach to cool down. Everyone eats mangos and is happy. Except for the missionaries, who regardless have to keep working even though everyone´s gone visiting family or at the beach, and the missionaries hang out walking around in the streets in the over 100 degree weather wishing they were dead. That´s one big holiday here.

Have you been wasting all your time playing blob wars now? I kind of miss wasting time, it sounds fun to just sit down and play videogames or watch movies. I kind of miss that. But it´s good to be useful and stay working too.

No, I don´t really go to the temple often, I´ve only been 3 times in my mission, plus the few times I went for the open house.

Love,

Elder ward

March 3, 2014

Mom,

Yeah, the smores was fun, no nobody had tried them before. We had chocolate left over too, so we made milk shakes with milk, bananas, chocolate bar pieces, peanut butter, and oreos. it was pretty delicious, and since we brought all the ingredients, they charged us just for the basic milk shake. Actually less, because they are members and always give us discounts when we buy stuff there. That was pretty cool.

We had zone conference this week and it was pretty good. other than that nothing much happened this last week. Tomorrow we go back up to tegus for another meeting, and we may make a chocolate cake with some members in our ward later this week too. Stay tuned. ;p

It sounds like you and dad had a good time with your hiking trip.

I guess that´s it for this week.

Love,
Elder Ward

Dad,

Things are good, nothing much new, we had a zone conference this week, and president came down south to talk to us, and it went pretty good. We got locked in the church the next day when we had a meeting with the zone and I just asked some secretaries to let us into the building(i didn´t have the keys because our bishop lent them to someone else), but then later during our meeting the secretaries left and locked us in the church and we all just sat there confused for a bit. We had to call another bishop from a different ward to come help us escape, so that was a little interesting. (yes, I was considering jumping the 15 foot wall, but I only climbed to the top of it, but it has spikes on the top.

That´s cool that you and mom could get away for a little bit and go on some hikes and stuff.

What´s up with the alternator, why does it keep dying and dying all the time? Do I get the taurus when I get home??? please? haha, that´s my favorite little car ever, don´t sell it or get rid of it before I get home..

Well, that´s it for this week.

Love,

Elder Ward

February 24, 2014

Mom,

This week we hmmm, we had a marshmallow toast for a s´more activity with investigators and members. It was a good activity, so we´ll probably have to do it again. I`ll include pics of the fire jumping activities we did before a really good testimony meeting. Also, I have a picture of me messing with a laser pointer that I bought from a random kid off the street, I set my camera at a 5 second shutter speed so that I could write stuff with the laser.

We had changes, so I had to go up unnecessarilly to Tegus again, but the bus driver went pretty fast so it only took like 3 hours instead of 4. Our zone had a few changes and now we have another area, so our zone has 20 missionaries again, so the zone`s pretty big now. We all played dodgeball this morning and watched a disney movie at church and it was pretty fun.

Other than that, I don`t really know. We didn`t do much else this week.

But, life`s still good here. We stay plenty busy taking care of the zone, and they`re having plenty of baptisms right now, even if my companion and I aren`t really. Hopefully our work picks up soon though.

Love,

Elder Ward

February 17, 2014

Mom,

We normally don`t go anywhere new, our area is pretty small. We do sometimes meet new people, but I don`t know, it`s not anything really worth describing..

Yes, I can print out sheet music if you send some to me from email.

Well, that`s it for this week I guess, we have been busy with a meeting in Tegus and interviews with the mission president where we had to go with him to each of the missionaries houses while he did interviews and house checks. So we had a busy week again, but not with just going out and working. But we have been contacting quite a bit recently, so we should have some new investigators soon. Changes are this week, but I doubt that anything will happen with me or my companion.

Love,

Elder Ward

Dad,

Things here have been alright, we were still busy this week with another trip to Tegus (no surprise there) for a meeting, we also had interviews with president and we had to acompany him to each of the missionaries houses, so that took up a whole work day, so we were down like 4 work days this week. We have lost most of our investigators now because nobody wants to get married, plus the prices here to get married just went up a lot. But we`ve been contacting a lot too, and we`ve found a few people more to teach. This week there`s changes, but I doubt that we`ll have changes here. It`s been hard here in my zone because our cell phone tower is out of service and they aren`t going to fix it any time soon, so we cant call or receive calls in half of our zone. That`s been difficult, especially when president wanted us to gather up the zone for a surprise meeting before interviews and we had to go in taxi to round up all the zone early in the morning.

Well, that`s my little bit of news for this week. Life`s good!

Love,

Elder Ward

February 10, 2014

Mom,

My life is straight up just boring!! I have no idea what to say, everythings the same every single day now.

Today we played football for pday and we also played a little bit of ultimate frisbee at the church. It was pretty fun. I also played the piano for a while while we were waiting for everyone to show up, and I`m enjoying playing a lot more now. I`m learning winter wind and that`s helped my sight reading a lot, so I`ve been able to slowly read some new hymns too. I still remember the 2 hymns that are engraved into my finger`s memory: God speed the right and Choose the right. Mishelae said that you might have some sheet music for Hall of the Mountain King that maybe you could send me. I`m looking for new music to play, because before district meeting every week we wait for everyone to show up for awhile at the church.

We don`t have that many investigators right now. Nobody is progressing very well, and we lost the baptism that we would have had this last week, the day of the baptism they said we couldn`t, because the mom of the 11 year old girl we were teaching changed her mind and said no even after she had initially given permission. That was frustrating. Saturday was a pretty crappy day and both my companion and I were pretty depressed that day.

We are trying to leave with members more. We`ve had a few more lessons with member and we`ve been working frequently with some youth getting ready to go on their missions, so that`s been good.

My companion is cool, I get along with him pretty well, he is a hard worker and always motivates us to keep working hard. It`s been good working with him. I think that we`ll stay together an extra change.

I guess that`s it for now. Life`s pretty good, but things have been moving really slowly lately, but hopefully it will pick up soon.

Love,

Elder Ward

February 3, 2014

Mom,

I bought a hammock this week, I put on some pics.

We go to tegus because we have meetings or stuff like that. We went up twice this last week, 1 time for a meeting, and another time so that I could renew my residency here. Both times were kind of boring.

We found a few new investigators and if all goes well we should have a few baptisms these coming weeks.

hmm.. what else. my companion was sick a little this week. That`s just about it. idk what more to say.

Love,

Elder Ward

January 28, 2014

Mom,

Well, we didn`t have our baptism this week. That family has been avoiding us and not coming to the door when we pass by, even when we know they`re home. We have found a few new positive investigators though.

I am getting sick of trips to tegus though. we went yesterday (which is why I am writing on a tuesday) and I have to go again friday. There are too many meetings and stuff to get done.

Today we had a new eating adventure, we ate a delicious combination of chicken inerds (spelling?) feet, heart, kidney, lungs, liver, and neck. I think it`s called soup of giblits in english. Either way it was pretty gross, but I just kind of ate it without complaining much, I just kind of did it.

Yea. I don`t know what else to write. I`m boring, sorry. We`re working hard and staying busy, no worries.

Love,

Elder Ward

January 20, 2014

Mom,

here`s the update I sent to dad this week:

I am doing well, weve been pretty busy this week doing random stuff, but we haven`t had much time to visit our investigators or teach lessons. Monday we went up to tegus and stayed the night and tuesday morning we had our mission leadership meeting. Then wednesday we travelled to a different part of honduras to get some papers for a wedding that some of the sister missionaries in our area had this week. Then thursday, we went back up to tegus to go to the temple, and that was nice. I finally got to see the new temple video and it was good. Then friday we had our zone meetinga and then we went around and did interviews for missionaries in our zone`s investigators. Then saturday we started working a little bit, but we also had to help with some of the baptisms and the wedding of the sisters. So we didn`t have a great chance to work in our area this week, but we had a couple of investigators in church yesterday. We will probably still have a baptism this week, next sunday, so that`ll be good. It is for a youth. She is pretty positive, and we`re still working with her family to get baptized. Other than that, we don`t have a ton of investigators. 

We are working with a lady that has been an investigator for a long time, but was an investigator of the other elders in our ward. We challenged her and she may want to move out instead of getting married to the guy that she`s living with. We`ll see how that goes..

Things with my companion are good. We`re working well together and we`ve stayed busy like I`ve said.

Yeah, I was on a bus way too many hours this week. Probably a whole 24 hours of bus rides. It was painful. But at least there were no chickens, I`m not sure to which movies you would be referring.

Other random thought: yesterday we ate pigs foot with some non members, that was a little gross. They also accidentally gave us tea, because they thought that iced tea was okay. we just tried a sip of iced tea mixed with pineapple juice, but then they told us so I stopped drinking it. haha. pig feet is gross though.

I guess that`s the news for this week.

I`ll send some random pics for the last few weeks, I don`t remember if I`ve already sent some or not...

Love,

Elder Ward

January 13, 2014

Alright everyone, I guess I`ll send another group email out to keep you all at least a little updated about my life and stuff.

This week we had changes and my companion left to Tegus to end his mission. I learned a lot from him and he was one of my best companions.

My new companion is cool too, and we`re going to keep working hard together. He is from Ephraim, Utah and he has a change less than me in the mission, so like 16 months.

We`re staying busy here in porvenir, choluteca, were trying more than anything to get people to come to church, but we have a few investigators that are progressing and we normally have at least a few that go to church each week. We`re also busy running around helping the zone out with everything, there are lots of weddings and stuff that we have to get ready before the families can get baptized.

That`s about all I`ve got for this update. Sorry it`s short.

Love,

Elder Ward

Mom,

Sorry about not wishing you a happy birthday last week. It`s hard to remember when you only have like an hour a week to write you.

I hope that you did have a good birthday though.

Thanks for your pictures of Mexico, It looks like fun work.

Our investigators are like 20-25 minutes walking away from the church. There`s buses too, but sometimes people don`t want to pay.

Today we`re going to go up to tegus for a leader meeting. I went up last week too for changes, and I`m sick of the 4 hour bus ride both ways.

That`s about all the news I have, this keyboard I`m typing on hardly works to type with, so I`ll finish I guess.

Love,

Elder Ward

January 6, 2014

Mom,

That´s good that your trip to Mexico went well and that you were all safe. 

Things here are about the same. as always. we´re working hard, but it´s not easy to bring our investigators to church every week. nobody wants to go because it is so far away. This is probably my last week with my companion, which is sad. Changes are this wednesday, and we´ll see if we have big changes with the zone and stuff.

I´ve been on divisions a few times this week and been away from my area for a bit, but it´s been good. New years there were a lot of celebrations and they lit of a ton of fireworks. They sell big dangerous fireworks really cheap here, so new years day was loud, but it was cool.

That´s probably about it for this week, but here´s some pics.

Love, 

Elder Ward

(to Averianne)

well, things here in honduras go well. This morning we went and played baseball with our zone, which was alright. I also jumped off of a roof that I climbed onto, I keep wanting to do more parkour stuff already, but I guess I´ll just have to focus on working out to get huge so I can do even cooler parkour later. I twisted my ankle playing football today too, and I thought that it was going to be pretty bad, but it very surprisingly got better as soon as I tried to walk on it and now I haven´t even noticed it, so that was cool.

I think that that´s about it for this week.

-ME

December 30, 2013

Mom,

I ate pig skin soup and chicken throat this week with some members. I didn´t like the pig skin soup. it felt really weird, and I was already full, so I was like gagging while I was eating it.. We´ll see if you guys can find anything weirder to eat while you´re in Mexico. ;p

Well, I hope that your Mexico trip is cool and that you all stay safe.

Love,
Elder Ward