Sept 13

Dear Family,

I'm sorry that I didn't have much time to write last week, but there really wasn't even much to write about.

This week has been a little bit more eventful. Every Sunday, we all are supposed to prepare a talk to give in Sacrament Meeting, just a short 3-5 minute talk, but in Spanish. Anyways, everyone writes a talk, and then in Sacrament, they will randomly call someone to speak. Anyways, this week I was called up to speak (there were 2 called from the about 50 people there). It went pretty well, even though I didn't feel as prepared as I might have if I had known that I would be speaking, but I feel that I did well. I filled up the whole 5 minutes (and probably went a little over), and I thought it went pretty good. Afterwards, the 2nd counselor, who had called me to talk told me that I had done a very good job, and that he was very impresed with my Spanish. Well, maybe I should have prepared less for the talk, because he was so impressed by my talk, that on Tuesday night, he called my companion and I into another room, and asked if I would be the district leader! Well, it probably wasn't just because of the talk, but I am now the district leader, over the 9 Elders in our district. So that's new in my life. Other than those things, life is about the same here. We just study all the time, which is good. Nothing too much exciting happening. We did have one of the elders in our district get his visa and fly out to the Spain MTC this week, so that's exciting I guess.

I hope that you are all doing well!

Love,

Elder Ward

Sept 10

This is part of a letter Elder Ward sent to his sister Averianne.

I really hope that soon when I get to Honduras, I will have a native Spanish speaking companion, so that I will have an example and be forced to quickly learn Spanish better.  I enjoy always having something to do with my life right now, and being super busy learning, teaching, and preparing here at the MTC. I enjoy feeling useful and productive. It's good. I am enjoying learning more from the scriptures and Preach My Gospel. There is so much to learn! The gospel is so deep, but still so simple it is crazy! You can never be bored going through and learning from the scriptures or other books. Right now I am reading Jesus the Christ by James E Talmage, which is basically an 800+ page book about Jesus Christ, and it is my favorite thing to read right now. I wish that I could just sit down and read it all day instead of learning Spanish... Also True to the Faith is a good book for topics or for specific gospel questions. I recommend both books, they are awesome! I know that I might sound like a typical missionary brother right now, but I want to remind you how important studying about/reading/progressing in the gospel is. I know that I didn't always have that as the focus in my life when I was your age, but it is super important! God will help you as you take time to give to him. I know that it's worth the sacrifice of time. Anyways, I will stop preaching now, I just felt like I should remind you of it.
   Love,
      Elder Ward

Entering the MTC

Sept 6

How's it going? I was glad to get your letter this week, it sounds like life is still keeping you busy! That's probably good. I enjoy being busy now, to keep me productive all the time. It is a lot different but it is good. I'm also glad that you were able to go see the Brigham city temple, that sounds like fun. That is crazy that your parents will be moving! I didn't really think that I wouldn't be able to see their house again after my mission. But hopefully it works out well for them.

The MTC is probably very similar now to how it was when you were here. Most of it is very old, and our residency hall is very old and falling apart, and probably needs to be refurnished. They won't let us play ultimate frisbee now, which is weird, but they will let us play soccer in the rain, where many of the Elders get injured. I am still being extremely careful though not to get hurt here, and normally only play some soccer or run or lift weights. I haven't let myself do parkour here, which is a little sad, because there are some awesome stuff here to do parkour at, and everyone else has wanted me to do some stuff, when I tell them that I did parkour. Oh well, it's probably better.

I feel bad that I never had many opportunities to hear many of your mission stories before I left. I realize that I should have taken more time to ask you about some of the stuff that happened on your mission.

Well, I have to go, my computer time is up, but I hope that you are all doing good back home.

Love,

Elder Ward

Aug 30

Hi, yes I have gotten 3 Dear elder letters total, well actually I've only gotten 2 in the mail but I recieve a confirmation to all of the letters to my email, so that i could read it. I think that you may have sent one of the letters to Honduras, because it said that the adress was a different one on the email, but I was able to read it.

I do not have my visa, but they say that if it doesn't come, we can still get into Honduras and we don't need it to get into the country. Honduras apparently is a lot more relaxed than a lot of the other countries that people are going to, that are waiting for months longer than scheduled for visas to come in. The teachers don't really teach anything about the cultures of any of the countries, but I hear a lot by talking to other people who know people who have served in Honduras and places around it. But I'm not always sure how much to believe. Elder Cousins just transfered over to the Madrid MTC, so he will still be training for the rest of the 9 weeks over there. There are 4 Elders in our room, and about 20 other rooms on our floor, all sharing the same freezing cold showers. About 1/2 the showers are warm, but there is always a long line to get in in the mornings. P-days, there really isn't anything to do here, since we can't leave campus during P-days, and they don't have anything else to do. So, we normally just write letters, talk with other missionaries, or sleep. My sleep schedule is waking up between 6 and 6:30, and going to bed around 10:30. I'm glad that you seem like you all are doing good for the most part. I will talk to you next week!

Love,

Elder Ward

Aug 23

I am doing good, I haven't been doing anything out of the ordinary too exciting. Just regular MTC stuff, studying the scriptures, learning spanish, teaching investigators, all that fun stuff. But my emails probably won't get very exciting until I get to Honduras and have some exciting adventures. We just got done this morning with going through the temple, like we do every morning of P-day. Umm, Elder Cousins left this week, he got his visa on time (which is very uncommon for those going to Spain, but because he got his call in February, he got his visa back in time to leave on time.) The Elders going to Spain in my district will be here until they get their visas, but they may not come for quite awhile. Also, we had a devotional this Tuesday from Elder Neal L. Anderson from the quorem of the 12 to come speak to us, and that was a super good devotional, which we all enjoyed. My companion and I have had our room to ourselves for the last 3 weeks since after our original roommates moved out because they moved up to the advanced classes, but yesterday we got new roommates, so it's crowded in our room again with not as much space, and more people come in our room now to visit at nights, which is slightly more annoying, but they seem nice, I haven't talked to them much since they just got here yesterday.

Aug 16

Life is pretty good, it's hard work, but I'm not going crazy yet. 9 weeks is going to be a long time here, I don't really enjoy being on the same campus all the time, within the walls of the campus, it will get old fast.. I'm sick right now, with a cold, which has been annoying me since saturday. Hopefully it gets better soon. There is a little bit more class time now, they did things differently the first week than now.. Spanish from school helped a little bit. I can pick up the concepts easier, but it is a ton easier to learn the spanish that will be relevant here. The environment here is good for learning spanish, because i am constantly surrounded by only Elders who are speaking spanish, and we talk about 50/50 English to Spanish, which is pretty good for only a couple weeks. The spanish is getting a lot better though. There is just a ton of food here at the MTC. It's not necessarily good, it's decent, but it's just buffet every single meal of the day. I enjoy eating Life Cereal or granola every morning for breakfast, as much as I want, because Life is my favorite cereal. I talked to a missionary from Honduras the first day, but he spoke in Spanish to one of my fluent friends going to Honduras. There aren't that many international missionaries from different countries here in Provo, because they normally get shipped out to an MTC closer to their mission, unless they speak English.

I can only read emails on P-day, but i can read letters any day, and if you use DearElder.com, you can send emails to me, and I will get them that day as a letter and can read them that day. and that is free while im here at the MTC, and ive heard people say that it might be a good idea for even when im in Honduras to pay for it, because it is a lot faster than regular mail getting to Honduras, but idk for sure. I can only respond to anything on my p-day.

I'm glad that you are all having fun with Naomi, and hope that things are going well there.

I will talk to you later, my time limits up...

Elder Ward