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

September 30, 2013

Mom,

Yes we still always just contact in the streets, the members don´t help out to much right now, but hopefully little by little they will get more excited to help out and invite people to activities and church. Our investigators seem a little bit better now, we at least have a few that look like they should progress.

I´m glad that they´re going to broadcast priesthood session, because we were just planning on not being able to watch it here, because we can´t travel all the way out to our district center to watch it. We´re just going to watch on BYU internation TV here in the church.

We had district conference this week (yesterday), so we took a bus with like 20 members to the church building like an hour away. At first I was worried because the bus didn´t start for like 15 minutes, so we were late to pick people up to go, but we prayed and it started and we picked everyone up and were able to drive over and be to the meeting on time. The meeting was really long. They talked for 3 hours without any breaks or anything, and all of the kids there were getting antsy to go do stuff. It was long even for me after a while, but it was good. The district president talked, and so did our mission president and his wife. They challenged all of the members and everyone to read the book of mormon before christmas this year, so I´m going to have to get on that, because there isn´t much time left before christmas. It worked out well with timing though, because I´m just about to finish reading the book of mormon. It was a good conference and I was very glad that everything worked out with planning transportation and that so many members could go to the conference and learn there.

We also had interviews with the mission president this week. It was good to talk to him and learn some new stuff. It seems like president trusts me a lot from some of the things he´s told me, so it was good to hear that from him.

Also yesterday we had a deep doctrine class in the afternoon that I taught. I explained in depth the true meaning of Kolob as portrayed in the facsimile 2 from the Book of Abraham. I gave an analysis on the relation between the symbols of God and Heaven and Eternity and the Sun and things that go on in the temple as shown in the hieroglyphics. The only problem was that nobody came to my class, so I just drew the picture on our whiteboard for nothing. ;p No, just kidding, I didn´t give any class, but a couple of weeks ago I found a little like 30 page book here in the church about the interpretations of the 3 facsimiles in the book of Abraham and what they mean, it was really interesting. I learned a lot about the symbols from it, and so I was bored yesterday, so I drew it on the whiteboard when I needed a break from studying. It actually only took a little less than an hour, which is good for how good it turned out, given that I have little talent at drawing or art or anything. There´s a lot of symbols in it that are confusing to draw. So I thought that I would include a couple of pictures of that. :)

September 23, 2013

Mom,

Yes, I only had a stomach sickness.

We had a better turnout to church this week. We had about 20 people. We also had a lot of people at our activity, almost 30.

Yes, we have some investigators now, but it will be hard for them to progress.

No, I can´t think of anything that I need for christmas.

Thanks for the pictures. I don´t have much to tell about this week. It was kind of boring. I learned some cool stuff about the importance of setting goals this week, which was good. That´s about it though. We did a service project on saturday to go mow someone´s lawn, but with machetes... That was tough. I had to go buy a machete to help out with the service, because they didn´t have 2, and only had a small one.. (and I wanted one and it was cheap...) 

It was a hard service, and I have a few blisters from chopping grass. It is very tiring to chop the grass swing at a time. It´s not very effective either. I was tired after doing that. That´s about as exciting as this week was.

I hope that things are going well there.

Love,

Elder Ward

September 16, 2013

Mom,

Yeah, it was kind of sad that we didn´t have people for that sacrament meeting. This week we didn´t have people because there was another festival, and another parade. We had even less this week, so we had a record number of fewest people to take the sacrament, just five.. the four elders and a member that came.

 It was alright though, we watched the Testaments instead of having classes, and had a ten minute sacrament meeting, with just the absolute basic meeting. It was rather pathetic, and it was loud outside again.

So that was kind of lame.

 I haven´t worked much in my area this week either, I went on divisions twice, and was sick for one day this week. It´s kind of been a weird week.

That´s too bad that you all have been feeling sick too..

 Well, I hope that you have a good week this next week

 Love,

 Elder Ward

September 9, 2013

Hey everyone, here´s the update for the week (it´s probably more like an update for the month by now, because I´m a slacker at group emailing):

First off, I hope that everyone from my family is alright and learning to love going without power and boiling water and cleaning up fallen trees and dealing with floods and mudslides. That sounds like an adventure for you all. Some of it sounds a little familiar... Mostly just the power outages for long periods of time and filtering water, haha, hopefully the weather gets better there and that there aren´t more enchantments of large green vortexes over our house knocking over trees anymore...

Well, this week has been good, we had changes this week, but me and my companion stay the same. The other Elders in our area had changes though. The elder who´s had a ton of time in this area and basically taught me how to do everything here in the branch left. An elder who was in my MTC district came in his place, which is cool because we already know each other and have gotten right to work. We´ve done a ton of divisions with him this week, so that I can teach him how to do a lot of stuff here in the branch because his companion is still just barely starting out in the mission and is learning spanish more than anything. So that was the big change this week. We´ve had a lot to do for the branch this week too. We did visits on saturday with all 4 elders, but a lot of people said that they weren´t going to come to church this sunday because of another festival that they had in Yuscaran (I´ve come to hate the festivals here in yuscaran, because they´re pointless and always on sundays, and they´ve had like 5 already in the 4 months I´ve been here). So almost all of the members had children in the parade, and it was required that the children would go to the parade, so everyone said that they weren´t going to come. So sunday morning, I had all of the classes prepared and a sacrament talk prepared to give, because nobody would take any assignments because they weren´t going to come. Then, at like 9:30, we have 1 member at church, so we are just waiting for more people to come, when the 2nd counselor to the mission president comes in to our meeting, and of course he comes on the worst day possible to come to one of our meetings. We talked to him for a while, and with him and 1 more member that showed up, we had sunday school, and after we had sacrament meeting, with 7 people in the meeting: 4 elders, the 2nd counselor, and 2 members, while we listened to the noise of the marching bands from the parade right outside. We took the sacrament, and after we finished, President turned to me and asked ´Are you going to give talks this sunday or no?´, and I told him that each of the elders had something prepared to share, but he said that we should just end the meeting early, without any sacrament talks, so I announced that this sunday, we wouldn´t have any talks, and we ended the meeting. So that was the most tiny, pathetic little sacrament meeting that I had seen in my life.

We´ve also had a few meetings that we´ve had to go to and a bunch of errands to run. I ran around Tegus doing a whole bunch of stuff today, and worked more than relaxed - a normal pday for me now, haha. But we got everything done today while we were there in Tegus, and I got everything I needed.

Anyways, it´s been a crazy week, but it´s been good. It´s been hard, because we have no investigators right now, and way too much stuff to do for the branch, but we´ll have to balance our time to go out and contact and teach and preach and work as missionaries do. :D

I hope that everyone´s doing well!!

Love you all!

Elder Ward

September 2, 2013

Mom,

and dad, (so that I don´t have to repeat saying everything twice..)

Thank you again for the package. I am enjoying the music, although I think of home often when I listen to some of the songs that I´ve heard you or Mishelae play on the piano all through my childhood.

Also, I have happily found out the secret to all of my workouts before my mission, and why I had been so lazy with working out during most of my mission. It´s because I work so much harder when I have music. This week I started a new workout program, but each day I´ll listen to the music, which isn´t even like fast paced or anything, but it helps a ton. Even if it´s like Mozart or something simple, it still helps me keep track of time and get going to a rythme. So now I´ll get buff before I come home from my mission. ;p

My other umbrella didn´t have a flashlight in it. It was bigger too, and not by the same brand. idk.

We did have our baptism this week! It was a little weird, because we did it in a swimming pool by their house. This guy owns this little old swimming pool there, and we asked him if we could use it, and he said yes. it went well, but it was difficult to find a second witness for the baptism, and we were worried we would have to redo the baptism, but it all worked out at the end.

We also had the confirmation in church yesterday, so I baptized and confirmed her, and we had a baby blessing for her son. I had never participated in a baby blessing before.

We´ve been contacting a lot this week. We´ve had a little bit of success, but not too much. This next week is changes, and we´re pretty sure that the elder who is the  first counselor is going to leave this change, which will be sad, because he knows a lot more about the branch and the area than I do, so I will be the one with the most time here in Yuscarán after he leaves.

I don´t think that my companion and I will change this time, but maybe. We´ll see.

I think that that´s about it for this week. I´m glad that you got my letter. 

Here´s some pictures that we took yesterday of us,

and another picture of us studying and doing tithing in the office. It took a while to get the camera timers to go off right so we would all be in it and studying.

We had more people come to church this week, and things are going better than before now. Hopefully the changes that come this week will help us with everything that we´re working on here.

I love you,

Love,

Elder Ward

August 26, 2013

Hello everyone!

This week has been interesting. I don´t know, it´s kind of just been an off week. We don´t have any investigators right now, so it´s been difficult to do much teaching. We have had some stuff to do to stay busy with the branch though, but it has been a weird week. It´s rained a lot this week, but thanks to the package from my parents that I got this week, I had a cool new umbrella to use that works really well and has a cool little flashlight on the bottom, which is perfect for my area, because when it rains, the power always goes out, so now I don´t have to carry both an umbrella and a flashlight.  

I also enjoyed the cards and candy in my package, and
I got a USB full of music, so I bought a sweet new mp3 player that looks like a car. It has really nice speakers too, and it was pretty cheap. So now I have a lot of good music to listen to. :)   

This week was kind of depressing, because we didn´t have hardly anyone come to church again. We´re going to have to change something, but I don´t know..

Also our baptism fell through. We were going to have a baptism this week, but when we went for the baptism on Saturday, it was really rainy and we couldn´t go out hiking out to the spot where we normally have baptisms. So we postponed it until next week. Our investigator did come to church again though, so that´s good.

I don´t know, other than that, it was a boring week here.