Monday, May 26, 2014

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

Friday, May 23, 2014

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

Tuesday, May 6, 2014

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