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