December 16, 2013

mom,

okay, I will call on the 25th, sometime in the afternoon. just get on and stay on all day and ill call

[as zone leader] we normally run errands like bringing stuff to other missionaries or working with lawyers to get the investigators married or do baptismal interviews or do divisions with other missionaries. stuff like that. we did divisions twice this week with missionaries in our zone. we also had a mission christmas party in tegus, so we had to go all the way up there again, but it was good. I also met bethany`s (my friend from snow college) fiance today. he served his mission here and came back to visit.

we found a gairobo today in an apartment we were looking at, so I took a picture of it. it`s like a big iguana.

we played soccer this morning, and we ordered jerseys as a zone that should be pretty cool.

My trainer is going home this week, so I said goodbye to him today. that was a little weird.

Well, i don`t really know what else to say. I guess i`ll end.

I hope everyone`s still doing well,

Love,

Elder Ward

December 9, 2013

Mom,

my time to use the computer each week feels much shorter now. we`ve done a lot of stuff today, so now its late, but i`ll try and write a little bit to you right now.

yes, I know who the new branch president is, i`ve called and explained some stuff to him, but it will be very hard for them starting without any experience, but maybe they`ll have some new ideas for how to improve the area without too much prejudice or anything.

I don`t know why it`s so hot here, it`s not all that humid, but it is definitely hot. here the whole city of choluteca is really flat and dry. it did rain this week and after that it felt really humid. it is very surprising the difference that you feel when you walk into an air conditioned room. our house just has fans, but the church and a lot of public places have ac.

For christmas, i can call the 25th, (or the 24th maybe, latin american christmas) but i don`t know at what time yet. if you have a preference just let me know. we already figured out where we can use a computer with some friends of ours. The rule this time is use skype for just 1 hour, so it will be shorter than last times. i`ll keep you updated on that in the coming weeks.

no, im not sick anymore

we have meetings in tegus every month for the zls

as a zl we just run errands for other missionaries in the mornings and go on divisions and stuff sometimes. we just have no free time, and it`s hard to squease studying in in the mornings with all the stuff that we do.

that`s about it this week. we are working hard, we are always busy. we are definitely always sweating and dirty, but it`s good not to have any dead time. time is going by quickly without any breaks or any stops.

love,

elder ward

Dad,

i`ll definitely send some of this hot your way. id love to have some cold. at least we found an internet cafe with ac here. they have nice computers too.

my new area isn`t huge. there are a lot of missionaries in this city, and each ward has like 2 or 3 sets of missionaries. our zone is pretty big, we have some elders that are like an hour away, but most of the others are within walking distance. in my zone there are 13 elders and 8 sisters, but one elder is going home next week (that`s why there`s an odd number, they`re in a trio) there are like 14 or 15 zones in the mission. my companion has like 4 or 5 months as a zl. zone conferences are what the mission president and the aps set up. i`m only in charge of watching over district meetings and zone workshops, once a month.

zone conferences are every 3 months

we have some investigators, but it`s hard to get everyone to church. we try to get everyone to a place in our area where they can all get in the back of a members truck who will take them to church, but we (as missionaries) can`t go in the back of trucks here anymore, so we have to walk like 20 extra minutes to get to church after visiting and inviting our investigators.

I am feeling better. My stomach has been adjusting to eating members food instead of just buying whatever i need. it`s weird not to have to buy food, we just eat with others, and we will get super fat this christmas from eating with so many members and people.

I think that`s all the news I have right now. we are working hard and getting exhausted every day, but its good to always be super busy.

love,

elder ward

December 2, 2013

This week I had 2 exciting events happen that I´ll explain in this email.

First, we had the most amazing Thanksgiving dinner that any missionary has ever had in Honduras. Second, I finally had changes and left Yuscarán!!

Alright, well I´ll explain a little of my week: the last weekend of november for the elections was when we stayed inside for 3 days straight. Then we had pday a day later (tuesday) and wednesday we worked for the last time in Yuscarán. Then, thursday, we went like 2 hours out to this area way far out in our zone and had an amazing thanksgiving with some members that live there. We went and had our district meeting in the morning there, and after, we went and they had cleared away a spot for us to go and play football there. I´m not referring to spanish fútbol like soccer, we brought out the real american ball and threw it around and played a little bit. They were really trying to adapt the american culture for us that day. After we threw the ball around a bit in the morning, we went into their house and we helped prepare the food a little bit, but it was a ton for just us. They had 3 turkeys, a huge thing of mashed potatoes, gravy, stuffing, jellos, salads, rolls, yams and marshmallows, and every other thanksgiving food that we would need. Plus all of the desserts, we had cookies, cakes, bars, and apple pie. It was an amazing meal that our whole zone got for free. This family is super rich, and they just offered to do this for us, just because they wanted to share with others who would apreciate it. it was so cool!

Then, thursday night, we got the phone call. They told me that my companion was leaving, and that the other elder from my branch was leaving, I was starting to get worried that I was going to stay in yuscaran because I had thought that my companion was going to be the next branch president, but then they told him he was leaving. But at the end they told me that I was also leaving. I came to one of the southern parts of honduras called Porvenir, Choluteca. It´s about 3 hours in bus south of tegus, unless you´re in a slow bus like ours, which took over 4.. The south is super hot, but it´s full of a lot nicer people. I´m in a really nice ward now too, and a good area. Yesterday in church it was weird because I just sat there in the back with my investigators and realized that I didn´t have to do anything in the meeting but listen. I didn´t conduct the meeting or the hymns, I didn´t bless or pass the sacrament or anything. Everything just worked without me having to do anything. Our ward is in the stake center down here in the south, which the building is massive, it´s bigger than my home church or my home stake center even. I´ll have to take a picture to send sometime.. We had like 130 people in church yesterday, which felt like a lot to me. It was nice to go to church with a lot of people again.

My new companions super cool too. I´m with the elder who was my DL about a year ago. He and I get along well and he is a great missionary. He´s from Riverton, Utah and has 20 months in the mission, so he´s pretty close to finishing. I just got called to be a Zone Leader this change, so he´s teaching me how to be a ZL. I didn´t think that I would be a ZL because most of the time you have to be a DL for a little bit before they call you to be ZL. But it´s interesting. I will have to learn a lot, because there are many differences between here and yuscaran. Choluteca feels like a completely different mission because everything is changed and it has its own kind of atmosphere. Our zone is really big now too, we have 21 missionaries in our zone and 8 of them are sisters, which is a lot. But it´s been good to get to know everyone here and learn how everything works here. I´ve been sick a lot this last weekend too. I got some stomach sickness that has been annoying me. Saturday we had to stay home because I really couldn´t go out. Sunday I felt a little better and today I´ve been doing pretty good, but it has not been fun being so sick.

I´m excited to be here and to start doing something new. I have a great area, a great ward, and a great companion and plenty to do, so I just need to start working like crazy. We´re going to always be busy now here, we have to work in our area, organize all the zone stuff with our big zone, we have a leader meeting in Tegus this week so we´ll have to go all the way back up there, and I imagine that we´ll be going on quite a few divisions with the people in our zone soon.

I hope that all of you everywhere are doing well and that my family can all recover from their sicknesses. I know that it´s not fun at all, but hopefully it´s just for a little bit.

I love you all!

Love,

Elder Ward

November 26, 2013

Mom,

I´ll put in a picture of our cake. It was very delicious. I love eating the rainbow chip frosting, even if it was a little expensive.

\
No, I actually wasn´t too stir crazy after the weekend of being in the house for 3 days. We ordered chinese and had people bring us food. We were supposedly going to have church sunday but nobody came, everyone went to the elections, so we didn´t have the meeting.

Nothing exciting happened in yuscaran either. Everything was super chill here. Everyone here likes the other political party that lost, so I guess people were sad, and in Tegus I guess that some people are protesting because not all of the votes were counted in it.

We don´t go to a internet café, we have the church computer that we use to email.

Well, I guess that´s it for this week.

Love,

Elder Ward

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