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