November 18, 2013

Mom,

Hey, I got my Christmas package this week! Thanks so much for putting that all together and getting it here early. Last year I stuck with the schedule pretty well and opened 1 envelop each day, but this year I was a little more impatient and I already read all of the letters from the family and ward members. It was nice to read so many notes from so many people who I haven´t heard from in a while. I can´t promise that I´ll have time to respond to each of them anytime soon though...

Well, we got really close to having a baptism this week. It was going to be for a 10 year old kid who we´ve been teaching for a little while. We taught him and he had his baptismal interview and passed and everything and we set the date for yesterday after church, but we went over in the morning and he left to go somewhere else when we went to bring him to church and his mom said that she wouldn´t give him permission to be baptized or sign the baptismal paper form thing (i dont remember how to say that in english anymore), so we lost our baptism for this month.. So that was sad that he was ready but at the end he couldn´t. Church was a little bit better this week, we had 17 people come, but most of our teachers didn´t come and so I had to kind of make up a sunday school lesson right on the spot... and a sacrament meeting talk. But they both went well-ish. We also had a member of the mission presidency come to our sacrament meeting to finish a temple recommend interview for one of our members who is going to get married in the temple, so we gave out the first full use temple recommend in all of the members in yuscaran. So that´s momentuous I guess. (i don´t think that´s a real word but I´ll leave it).

This weekend will be weird. The election stuff this year is getting pretty crazy. Here in yuscaran not so much, just a whole bunch of advertising and campaigning which is loud and annoying, being as we live right in front of central park.. So, this weekend, we have strict orders not to leave our houses for all of sat, sun, and monday, not even to go across the street to the pulperia to buy food or anything. So that will be weird. So, they may change pday to tuesday or wednesday next week, so if I don´t write exactly on time, it doesn´t mean that I´m dead from the crazy electionist peoples, it just means that I´ll get on later in the week.

Well, I think that´s about it.. I bought frosting today and I already have a cake mix so we´re going to make a delicious cake this week, because I doubt that we´ll have an oven in my next area. I´ll miss the other Elders´ kitchen when I leave.

Changes are on the 27th btw, so I´ll either know next week or the week after where I´m headed.

That´s about it. Don´t worry about the elections or anything. I´ll follow the rules and be safe. I´m in the chillaxist little village in honduras, nothing´s going to happen here.

Love,
Elder Ward

from Mom:

Hey!!! <:<‏  

You were not supposed to open your Christmas early!  Now what will you do for Christmas?

from Elder Ward:

Hey! I only opened the letters! and a couple of the presents that sounded like candy when I shook them. the Tic tac present was too obvious, and I had to have good breath for my investigators, so I opened it.. but I still have the rest for christmas. I just had to hide the package to avoid opening everything. ;)

November 11, 2013

Mom,

We went on a hike today to look for some waterfalls, we didn´t end up finding them, and it started raining like crazy, so we came back, but it was still fun.

This week has been alright, but we only had 5 members in church yesterday and we haven´t had much success recently. It´s all going kind of slow, but were still working here.

There´s not really a lot to say this week, sorry this is short..

I hope that you are all doing well.

Love,

Elder Ward

November 5, 2013

Dear family and friends,

Yesterday for Pday we went to a tourist place between where I am and Tegus in the mountains called Valle de Angeles to hang out and buy some stuff. It had a lot of little shops and stuff for tourism. There were lots of other gringos there too, it was kind of weird.

Here´s some pictures of us in the shops seeing some of the stuff there. The pic with us eating ice cream is me and my companion. They had a whole bunch of weird flavors of ice cream, like cookies and cream, and the one I tried: avocado. It was surprisingly really really good. Everything was expensive there, so I didn´t buy much.

We got back really late last night from valle de angeles, so I didn´t have time to write yesterday.

Arissa,

For Halloween, we passed by a cemetery at night in our area. We had to come back to our houses early though on that day, because it´s witch day here, they don´t celebrate, they just have weird superstitions. We went home earlier and one elder bought a bunch of candy and we watched a church movie about Gordon B Hinckley. That´s about it.

It is nice to work with just church stuff. Yeah you can feel the spirit a lot working in the Lord´s work, but it isn´t something that´s always there, you still have to look for the spirit and live right so that you can have the spirit and guidance of the Lord.

Yes,  I like being on a mission. Yes, I like being out somewhere else, outside of the US.

Love,

Elder Ward

October 28, 2013

Mom,

Fellowshiping nights are our activity nights for the members. We don´t always do like a lesson or something spiritual, sometimes they´re just for fun, so we call them fellowship nights.

That pancake mix and stuff is for all 4 of us yuscaran elders. It is a lot though, but we use it quite a bit. I think that we´re going to use the cake mix for some branch activity. We made some for the mothers day activity, and everyone went on and on about how good the cake was, even though it was the basic cake with frosting, so we´ll probably make a couple for the branch and a couple for us.

here´s what happened this week:

This week we had a special mission conference with Elder Ochoa from the Quorum of the Seventy come to talk to our mission. There were 3 sessions over 3 days, he talked to the missionaries in the city, in the south, and then us missionaries in the east of our mission. He talked to us about a lot of stuff and gave examples and demonstrations and stuff to show us how to be better missionaries. It was a good experience and I felt the spirit a lot telling me some stuff I need to do in the branch and stuff I need to do better. It was a good conference, and it lasted for the whole day on friday. We came back and had our weekly branch activity, not many people came to that, but it was still fun. Then, saturday morning we had an activity to clean the church, and we actually had a lot of people come to help with that, and we got a lot done. The church looks a lot better now, and we had a lot of fun doing it too. We started a water fight with the kids, and we all ended up soaked by the end. Even a few of the adults joined in and everyone that came got at least a little bit wet. Our investigator even came to the cleaning activity, but he didn´t end up coming to church yesterday, even though he said that he was going to. We didn´t have many people come to church yesterday. That was a little sad. But the old branch president is starting to come back to church, and that might help out because he knows a lot about the church and the doctrine and everything.

That was all the excitement from this week. Things are going well though. I get along with my companion well and everything.

Right now, I study like 3 or 4 chapters of the BofM every day to finish before christmas, because our mission president challenged us to, and I study PMG and spanish and I also read a lot of church manuals and other church books and pamphlets to help out each of the leaders in their classes. I´ve even read some weird books like the RS daughers in my kingdom to help out our RS president who can hardly read. Its all interesting though. I do sometimes wish that I could just focus on scriptures a lot more though too. Sometimes I have to go through all of our paperwork and financial stuff too in the mornings so I don´t always have a ton of time to study whatever.

Love,

Elder Ward

October 22, 2013

Hey all!

We had changes this week! My companion left, and so I stay here in Yuscarán my 5th change. I´ve been here forever! But it´s alright here, I´ll survive it here in my second area... My new companion is one of my friends from my MTC district, so we have the exact same time in the mission. He´s from Spanish Fork, Utah. It´s weird being with a gringo again and always talking english. Also, one of the other elders from the other area left this change to be a ZL, so we have a new Elder from Guatemala here training. So we still have 3 gringos and a guatemalan in this area, we´ve had that pattern for a few changes now. So we´ve been showing the new Elders around here this week and showing them how to do stuff with the branch.

We´ve been doing fellowshiping nights here in the branch every friday night, and this week we had over 20 people show up, which was cool, we even had some investigators and quite a few less active members. Yesterday in church we almost had 20 members, but we had our investigator come to church, so that was good. It´s been a while since we´ve had an investigator come from either area. So it was good to have people come this week and have a little bit more success here than the last few weeks.

I am enjoying being able to learn new things in this area and always see new things and meet new people and being able to serve the people here. Even though it is hard in this area and we have plenty of problems, I still know that I need to be here a little longer to help more people learn about the gospel and to help the branch here grow however I can. I know that each of the parts of this gospel are all interrelated, the missionary work, the temple work, the ordinances and blessings that come from the priesthood, each of the classes and meetings that the church has are for the same eternal purpose: the salvation of many souls. Each of us has been called to do our little part in the work of salvation, which will help us gain our own salvation if we serve faithfully. I have a testimony of this gospel and the many opportunities that we have to progress are a sign of God´s love for each of us. It doesn´t matter where we start, as long as we do start, on our journey to progress. I know that everything that this church teaches is true, and that the church is perfect, even when the people in the church are not. I know that studying the scriptures, especially the Book of Mormon, will change our lives profoundly if we strive to apply what the spirit testifies to our individual lives. I am grateful for the testimonies of all of you and for your love and support that helps me to be out here on my mission. I love you all and hope that you will feel God´s love and a desire to serve Him.

Love,

Elder Matthew Ward

Mom,

Sorry, we couldn´t write yesterday because when we got back from Tegus the power was out from 2 in the afternoon until 11 this morning, so we just barely got on to write to everyone.

This week was good. We had changes which I explained in my other email, but yeah, it was a good week. Yesterday we bought a ton of food from Tegus in bulk. We got 2 bags of 10 lbs each of pancake mix and 2 big things of syrup and 4 cake mixes that I have to make before I leave this area and don´t have an oven anymore. I´ll send a picture of all of it.

I hope that everyone is doing well.

Love,

Elder Ward

October 14, 2013

Mom,

I wrote so late last time because we got back late from an activity with the zone and then all 4 of us still had to email, and I wrote to you and to Mishelae, but I didn´t finish and I had to get off the computer, and then my companion wrote until really late, so I didn´t have time to finish emailing, so I just sent the messages that I had finished to you 2 and didn´t get to write to anyone else.

This week was good. It´s been kind of stressful with a ton of members asking for help (food or money help), but it´s been alright. Everyone in Yuscarán is sick right now, I swear... I have a cold right now which has been annoying more than anything. Next week is changes, so we´ll see what happens. I still don´t think that I´ll be leaving here for another change at least, but we´ll see if one of the other 4 leave this week. Other than that, not much has happened this week.

Love,

Elder Ward

October 7, 2013

Mom,

Conference was super good. We tried to watch it at the church, but our cable didn´t work very well. (we have cable and a TV, but the cable didn´t have all of the channels) So at the end we had to go to the other 2 missionaries´ house to watch it, because they had a better cable connection, and then we got on our laptop and streamed the whole conference in english for the 3 gringos, and we watched it laying down on their beds. It was pretty chill, and it was a good conference. I missed a few talks while preparing all of the tech stuff, so last night I had to go back and watch all of the talks that I missed. It was good though. I received some good answers, even for questions that I hadn´t even written down or asked for or anything. We were glad that we got to listen to priesthood session too, even though I would prefer to be able to watch it in a stake center.

Well, I hope that you are all doing well.

Love,

Elder Ward