July 9, 2013

I don´t know if you have some of these or not, but here's some pictures from a while ago.

July 8, 2013

Mom,

Thanks for wishing me a happy birthday, it´s crazy that I´ve been away for such a long time!

And thank you sending a package, I´m sure it will get here relatively soon.

Well this Jehovah´s Witness lady and her son are getting baptized this saturday!!! (I hope). The whole family came to church this week, her and her 4 kids. We just need to finish teaching and have the interview.

I´m attaching some pictures of the umbrella right now. Thank you for sending another.

Well, I feel kind of boring this week, but nothing happened.

Love,

Elder Ward

July 1, 2013

Mom,

This week has been good. Nothing too exciting, but here´s my update that I sent to dad:

Yeah, the baptism was good. We aren´t teaching her family, her mom always says that she´s busy, and her kids are toddlers. But she is helping us to find references to teach. We are teaching a 16 year old girl that lives next to her, which is perfect because we can reteach the lessons to her and teach the lessons for the first time to this teenage girl. This same girl also came to my english class this week. The english class was good. We only had one this week, because no one showed up the first class. The class that we did teach, we were actually on divisions, so my zone leader was here with me, and he´s a gringo too, so he helped teach the class. We had 4 people come this week, all of them were teenagers, but we´re going to advertise a little more to have more people come. It went alright though. We taught something simple. We´ll see how it goes and if we get a group to consistently come to the class.

We´re also teaching a lady who was a Jehovah´s Witness, until she met us, that is. She is pretty positive for baptism. She already has received a testimony that the church is true, but it is hard for her to believe that there is more than just the bible, or why we need revelation in these days. But we´ve been teaching and bit by bit she´s learning. It´s pretty cool. She didn´t come to church yesterday though. None of our investigators did. That was kind of a bummer. Especially when the other pair of Elders in our area brought 20 investigators to church... haha, we had 46 people come to church this last week, a new record. The other elders are visiting this village that´s like 3 hours away walking to visit some people. There´s a huge family there that they´re teaching, and they brought 20 people of that family to church this week by renting a bus to drive them all over here and back. So that was cool.

That´s about all that´s happened recently. Nothing too crazy going on. There´s been a ton of rain lately, and thunderstorms. We had to stay with some investigators in their house for a couple hours during a big rain storm this saturday. They live super far away from where we live, like almost half an hour walking, and we were visiting them at night before we went home, and it started to rain super hard, and of course the power goes out, because any time it starts to rain the power dies here. So we chilled with them for a little bit. Then we left and had to walk back in the drizzling rain with the flashlight that I always have to carry around. My nice umbrella broke too. It was spring loaded, so all you do is push a button to open it, but one day it got stuck, so I pushed the button repeatedly and the spring exploded and half the umbrella shot out of my hand. The spring is like 3 feet long, so there´s like no way that I can put it back in, so I´ll have to invent a new way to keep it open, we´ll see.

That´s about it for now. It was a good week though.

It sounds like you all are doing well!

Love,

Elder Ward

June 24, 2013

the pictures are first: our room, second: the office, and third: the primary room

these are of the church´s outside, and the sacrament meeting room

4 kids from a branch activity

A birthday party that we went to, and talked to some members and friends.

Hello Everyone,

This week has been good, my companion and I had our first baptism here in Yuscaran! This Saturday we went back up into the woods for another baptismal service in our favorite little pool that we dammed up on Friday in this little stream. I got to do the baptism, the water was pretty frigid, but it was a good experience. The lady is 24 years old and we´ve been teaching her for only about a month. She felt the spirit when we watched the Joseph Smith video together, but didn´t tell us until the next visit that she had been touched so much by the video. She progressed a ton, and stopped drinking coffee and made a lot of other sacrifices to join the church. She said that she had always been searching for a church that would help her to change to become a different, new person. She didn´t want to go to a church just to go, but to change. it´s been neat to see the changes that she´s been willing to make.

Things have been well in our little branch here. It´s been growing too. Before we only had like 25 people each week come to church. But last week we had 32 people, and yesterday we hit our new record, 39!! We´ve had a lot of investigators coming too, which has been great! I gave another talk this week in Sacrament Meeting that went well. In the branch we´ve been trying to reorganize a lot of the leadership in the church to help the members become more responsible and have opportunities to serve as leaders. So we called a new Relief Society Presidency and have been working with them to help them go out and do visits, and we are trying to work with the few priesthood holders that we have in the branch to form a better Elders Quorum Presidency.

We have a few investigators right now that seem positive. We have one couple that we are teaching, and we went Saturday morning to help this investigator clear out this field to plant beans there. That was a service project that I hadn´t ever done before.. We´re also teaching a Jehovah´s Witness member. That´s been a little interesting. But she said that it´s possible that Joseph Smith could have been called by God to be a prophet, but she wants to learn more. She came to church yesterday, so that´s a good sign.

One morning I decided to build a little obstacle course in the little church patio that we have out of blocks and rocks so that I could do some parkour jumps, precisions, and exercises. That was pretty fun. 

I think that we´re going to start teaching English classes this week, because so many investigators and members have requested it recently. We´ll see how that goes...

Well, that´s all that I can think of for the stuff that´s happened this week. Things are going well, and I´m always learning more and strengthening my testimony of the gospel. I know that this church is true and that it gives us happiness and helps us to become converted to Jesus Christ. We can only change through Him and His Atonement. There is only 1 path in this life that we should follow to gain the Eternal Life, and that path is through Him.

Love,

Elder Ward

June 18, 2013

[Sorry we had some problems posting to the blog, but we should be up and running again now--Tiauna.]


Mom,

Sorry that I couldn´t email yesterday. I didn´t have much time yesterday, I only had the chance to get on, write to the mission president, and read all of the letters that I had in my inbox, and then we had to go to a FHE with some members, so I had to go, and respond today...

Thank you for your prayers and all of your help and care for me.

That´s cool that you met Kate at Seagull Book. She´s been working there for a long time now... She was one of my friends in my high school group. She´s in quinn, tiffany, and brianna´s ward in Lindon. She also went to Timp Academy, but was a year younger than I.

We can´t read just any LDS author book. We can only read scriptures, PMG, Jesus the Christ, and some like church manuals and things like specifically from the church.

Nothing changed here in Yuscarán for changes. Everyone stayed the same.

Things are good here, and I think that we´ll have a baptism this next Saturday. We have this super cool investigator that´s all ready. We had 32 people come to sacrament meeting yesterday! New record! Before we only had like 27 people each week. But we had 6 of our investigators come for church on sunday, it was awesome! (well, technically only 4, and 2 kids, but still)...

Things are going good here.

I hope that everything´s good there.

Love,

Elder Ward

June 10, 2013

Mom,

I am doing good, I am feeling better, 100%, no worries.  The sickness only lasted like 5 days. Anyways, here´s an update that I sent to dad:

For me, this week was a little bit slow, I got over my sickness at the beginning of the week, but my companion got worse during the week, and so a couple of days we hardly went out and worked. But I have had some extra time to sleep and get some rest that my body has needed, as well as extra time to study. I have had some cool experiences this week during my study time, and I feel more close to the Savior and I feel like I can feel His love more than I could before as I devoted a little more time to my study of my purpose as a missionary.

Things are going pretty well here. yesterday at church, we had an investigator come who seems like she really wants to change her life, which is super cool. We also had a less active girl come, whose brother we are teaching and hoping that we can baptize him soon. He wants too, we just have to work with the parents right now. I gave a talk in Sacrament Meeting yesterday about faith, and after I sat down I realized that I talked for like 10 to 15 minutes without any problems and without any fear or worries about my spanish. I don´t feel nervous to speak in front of people anymore, it´s weird, because that used to be a big problem for me..

Anyways, thanks for the update mom, I appreciate that you take the time to write to me what´s going on in everyone´s lives. It sounds like everyone is well and changing into summer mode well.

This week is changes week, but I doubt that we´ll have anything change much here.

Love,

Elder Ward

June 3, 2013

Mom,

This week has been pretty good.. I´ve been feeling pretty sick though... I´ve had a stomachache for the last 2 weeks and this last week I´ve had a cold and a couple days ago I got this really annoying headache. All 4 of the elders here in Yuscaran are sick right now... So saturday night and sunday we didn´t go out and work. I've been trying to rest, because I think that that was probably the original problem was that I was walking a lot farther every day, not getting as much sleep and starting to excercize, as well as that I´m not cooking my own food anymore and just have to eat what the other elders are buying...

But I´m trying to rest and recooperate and get better.. I´ve slept a lot these last few days, so hopefully my body can have more energy to go do stuff..

We had a baptism this last week, for an 8 year old girl. She randomly decided to get baptized when we invited her again this saturday. We had a cleaning activity at the church, and we asked her if she wanted to get baptized and showed her the baptismal clothes that we had for her, and her family helped convince her to do it. She is the daughter of the elder´s quorum president, and we took her up in the woods in this little stream to baptize her in this little pool that we formed like a month ago. It was a nice little baptismal service, just her family and us 4 elders in the woods..

I´ll see if I can get the pictures from my companions camera, I didn´t bring my camera to it.

That´s about all for now. Things are going good, even if I am sick, we are working and having success.

Love,

Elder Ward

Arissa,

I do like my companion. He and I get along really well.

The weather is good, its always warm, sometimes a little too warm. Its started to rain a lot here though. This last week its rained almost every day, so I´ve been getting a little bit wet some days. One day we had a huge rain storm, where we weren´t prepared with umbrellas or flashlights, and it rained a ton and the power went out at night, and we still had to cross almost our entire area to get back home in the pitch black. Luckily the other elders came to drop some members off in our area, so we got under their umbrellas, and we all used one flashlight to get back, fun times... The power goes out here all the time, its kind of crazy. At first it was fun, but now it´s just annoying.

We don´t have bikes or cars, nor will I in my mission. I always walk, sometimes we take the bus for big meetings or stuff like that.

We can only read church stuff on the mission. Why? Do you have a good book to recommend?

Love,

Elder Ward