September 23

 

 My goodness what a bad week for Savannah!  I'm sorry about the loss of both cars but I am glad that Savannah is OK.  Sounds like someone up above is watching out for her and I'm so grateful!  Actually, I know that this might sound crazy and maybe a little prideful but I don't mean it to be.  As soon as I read that, I said a quick prayer thanking Heavenly Father for keeping her safe and I felt like the Spirit was telling me that one of the reasons that she was OK was because I'm out serving a mission (yeah I teared up when I got that feeling).  I am so grateful that she is OK and that nobody else got hurt in the process.  I hope that she will drive a little more carefully from now on and I'm sorry that she had to have such a bad week.  That's NEVER any fun for anyone!  Maybe I'll see what I can do to send her an extra letter this week in hopes of brightening her day.

I am in the Olympia Ward.  It's funny because one of the members (Brother Herzog) keeps talking about Brother Sonnie and every time he does I realize who he's talking about.  It's cool that they know each other and we have that connection!  I hope that one day you get to meet Brother Herzog.  He has so much knowledge about the temple and I could easily spend hours with him just listening and all of his tales about the symbolism of the temple and what everything means.  He's great.  In fact, the whole ward is great.  We found out that the reason why ..... decided to go ahead and get baptized was because of how wonderful the ward was and how well they treated him.  I was suddenly even more grateful to serve in this ward where everyone is so eager to fellowship and so kind to those they don't know yet.  The baptism was a success and he was confirmed the next morning at church!  He was so happy and I loved just being able to see his beaming face.  The baptism was a little unique though because he breathes through his throat so he didn't plug his nose when he went into the water.  Our Mission President was there and he was pretty excited to meet .....

Now that .....'s been baptized, we're focusing on finding people to teach again.  We are teaching 2 people who both want to be baptized but we know that we need to find as well in order to bring the gospel to everyone in this area.  It's actually pretty fun to knock on doors and meet all kinds of different people.  In just this area alone, I've met people from 26 different countries.  Talk about diversity!  I love being able to talk to everyone and learn about different cultures and how people act and think in the different places they've lived.

My companion is doing well.  It's always an adjustment to have a new companion and I have to be a lot more patient with this companion.  It is always a very humbling experience to get a new companion because you have to re-adjust your styles in order for them to work together.  Plus, every companion reacts to things differently so it takes a lot of compromising with each other so we can all work together in unity.  But we've had some incredible lessons that we've taught together and we are slowly adjusting and compromising with one another.  It's working out well!  Our  Mission President told me that she was assigned to be my companion so I can help her with some things and I am so grateful for the fact that I graduated in the degree that I did because it is helping me a lot with getting this sister to open up so I can help her.  I am so grateful for all that Heavenly Father has done to prepare me for this mission and for the things that I will be doing in the future!  Sometimes, we don't understand what or why we need to learn certain things, but then they become apparent later on in life in ways that we never expected.  I am so grateful that Heavenly Father is playing a hand in my life!

We had an incredible lesson earlier this week.  We taught a woman who is friends with a member in the ward.  We taught her the first lesson and all that she could talk about was that this all felt complete.  What we shared with her answered the questions that she had and filled the void that she was feeling.  Afterwards, the members were talking to us and complimenting  us on how well we did.  However, all I could think about was the fact that we didn't do much of anything.  It was all the Spirit!  This investigator was so ready and so open to just knowing what she needed to know in order to come closer to Christ.  Because of that great desire and her willingness to do whatever she needed to do to achieve that, the Spirit was able to testify to her as we spoke.  Probably one of the greatest things that I've learned so far on my mission is that we as missionaries can't do anything or accomplish anything without the Spirit!  This missionary work would be useless without the Spirit on our side.  How wonderful it is to know that the Lord is on our side as long as we are living according to His will!

Well I need to get going, but I love you all and I am grateful for your prayers.  Thank you for your love and support.  I love being able to hear from you each week and see how you're all growing over this time.  It's amazing how fast time is going by.  It's a bittersweet feeling.  Love and miss you all!

With love,

Sister Ward

September 15

  1 Attached Images

I'm doing much better this week!  I'm sorry that last week's letter was such a dud.  We had just gotten the text that morning and I was still trying to process it along with realizing the fact that my companion was getting transferred.  Basically, it was just a bad day and I'm sorry that you all had to deal with that.  But after a day or so it got better.  I'm actually doing really well, I just ended up having to email on a particularly bad day.  No need to worry I promise!

And then on Wednesday he texted us and said that he changed his mind and actually wants to get baptized. We got everything taken care of and his baptism is scheduled for this Saturday.  Hopefully it all works out! I'm so excited for him and his excitement about the gospel.  I'm really noticing that I don't really even care about whether or not it counts as someone that I "taught and baptized" because in all reality, it isn't the missionaries at all.  He is just ready to commit to our Heavenly Father.  I'm so proud of him and his diligence in overcoming the temptations and trials that he has and still committing to being baptized and coming even closer to our Savior in that way.  What a big yet exciting step for him!

I'm sorry that everyone's getting sick!  That's SO not fun!  I've been pretty fortunate to not really get sick lately which has been really nice.  Some missionaries have gotten super sick here because of all the stress and such so I'm feeling very fortunate that my companions and I haven't gotten sick yet.

I'm OK with you giving out my email.  Although I can't promise anyone that I'll respond to them regularly due to the fact that there just isn't a lot of time that we get to email and I kind of want to spend most of that time emailing you guys.  :-)

I remember Big Papa and Bedstemor writing me and telling me about how they're planning on visiting you guys!  I'm so excited for you!  That's going to be so much fun.  And you'll be able to practice some of your piano skills with your mom which I always enjoyed about them coming to visit.  I think that it's things like that that I miss most about home (No worries, I'm not homesick, I love being here!).  I loved hearing you play duets with your mom and just hearing the piano playing in the background while everyone else is just going crazy and making lots of noise.  I loved all the chaos!

I hope that Kenna takes that trip to London!  Ooh I'm super jealous that she gets that opportunity though! Yes mom, I'm still TOTALLY planning on going to Europe with you as soon as I can when I get home! That is kind of a priority to me before I get married and can't afford it anymore.

That member in my ward who texted you was probably the Ward Mission Leader's wife Sister Swasey. She's basically the greatest woman on the planet.  I love her so much!  She's done a ton for us and I was excited when she asked if she could text you.

I figured out how to bike with no hands!  We've been biking a ton this last week and I love being able to get the exercise!  Don't particularly like the heat or biking in a skirt, but that's OK.  We've been trying to contact a lot more people on the streets because it's kind of hard to tract in gated communities.  It's been fun to do it though!

I got a new companion.  Her name is Sister ........  She's been out 3 months and she's a little sweetheart. I'm almost intimidated though because President Berry specifically wanted me to be her companion because she's struggling with some things and he asked me if I would be OK with helping her out with her struggles.  I think he's crazy for trusting me with that responsibility but I can't argue with the man who's called of God to lead this mission.  It's been really good so far and I just hope that we can continue to get along and learn how to teach together.  It's a new experience for me to be with someone who isn't just learning everything.  We're learning to adapt to each other's teaching styles and make them work together.  It's actually kind of fun!

Well, I'd better be off but thanks for all of your love and Spirit and prayers.  They really do help out a lot here and I greatly appreciate all of it.  No worries, I really am doing great.  I am happy and I love being a missionary.  I can't believe that I'm already creeping up to 8 months.  I'm almost on the down slope! CRAZY!!!  Love and miss you all!

With love,

Sister Ward

PS: The picture is an epic one of the shirts that my last companion Hermana Allred made for us!  The symbol is what we use for the word baptize so it's basically her made up logo for baptizing all of Orlando.  Isn't that awesome?!

September 9, 2013

So...the investigator that we were teaching?  We had his baptism planned for this Saturday, his interview planned for tomorrow, and he just dropped us this morning.  We taught him a lesson yesterday and it was a commandment that he just couldn't commit to.  We're really disappointed about it, but we will just keep moving on I guess.  We're going to try and see him tonight and see what else we can do but I don't know how promising it's going to be.  But just keep praying for him and for us!  I'm trying really hard to not let the discouragement get to me.  

The dentist went well.  Sad news is that I'll probably have to get a crown on the tooth when I get home.  But the dentist I went to is a member and he fixed up the tooth the best he could without putting a crown on it.  And he didn't charge me anything which is a huge blessing!  He was really nice and it really didn't hurt.  Thankfully it was in the back so I was able to go and work without anything swollen or distracting for me and everyone else.

That's cool that you had the missionaries over!  That seems like it was so much fun.  I remember the missionaries saying prayers in their native language!  Funny story, we're teaching a guy from Iran (crazy right?!) and he said a prayer for us in Farsi!  It was so cool!  It helped me remember that tradition that we had with the missionaries in the past so that's funny that you had the missionaries over in the same week.

Congrats to Collin on his mission call!  Funny story, my companion Sister Allred's boyfriend is serving there!  He's apparently an incredible missionary so have him look for an Elder Silas Olsen.  I guess that he just became a District Leader or something like that.  Anyways, that's awesome!  He's going to love it.

So transfers are today!  My companion is getting transferred to a Spanish area so I'm getting a new companion in Olympia.  No, she's not brand new.  We get to just be missionaries and do normal missionary work which is pretty exciting.  We'll be biking a lot more because they cut back our miles so I'm excited to get more exercise!

Anyways, I need to go and help Hermana Allred pack.  I"m sorry that this is shorter, but I love you all, and you're in my prayers!  Love and miss you!

With love,

Sister Ward

September 2

OK I'm sorry that I didn't answer many questions from the last email!  Yes I got it, I just didn't really know what to say.  But I will do my best to answer your questions this time!

Unfortunately though, I wasn't able to open the pictures you sent!  But I can only imagine how beautiful the rainbow was and I'm SO grateful that I didn't have to see the spider picture!  We do have some incredible thunderstorms here, Utah is NOTHING compared to the ones here!  Florida is widely known for the lightning that's here.  The likelihood of someone getting struck by lightning in Florida is really high actually.  So whenever we see lightning, we all go and take cover underneath something or in the car.  We had a nasty lightning storm yesterday that made me really nervous but we've been pretty safe so far.  When it's not hot and humid, it's pouring rain and full of lightning.  It rains almost every day for about 15-30 minutes and then gets hot and humid again.

Oh the good old Onion Days!  I was thinking about that earlier today...I remember how much fun it was to go watch the parade last year with the kids!  I can't believe that was already a year ago!  It doesn't seem like it was that long ago.  Let me know what you think about the guard!  Is Rachel still coaching?  I thought that Camille was taking charge but I don't know for sure if that happened or not.

The bowling picture is a picture of the missionaries in my district on our district prep day.  And no, I didn't do very well, but it was still fun nonetheless!  It's fun to take some time to just hang out with other missionaries and just have fun with each other.  Last week, we played soccer and it started to pour while we were playing and it was so much fun!  I didn't get any pictures unfortunately but we had a blast.  We usually have District Prep Day once a month.  Last week was just a bunch of missionaries who decided that they wanted to play soccer and it basically turned into a big zone activity so there were a lot of missionaries.  I forgot my tennis shoes so I played barefoot which was an interesting experience.  No, there weren't any members, just a lot of 18-26 year-old missionaries being human beings.  SO fun!

OK, here's a rough draft of a normal day for us:

6:20-wake up and exercise

7:00-prepare for the day

8:00-personal study

9:00-companion study

Since Sister Allred is in training and learning a language, we have training at 10, and language study at 11.  After that is lunch for an hour and then we go out and work!  If we have teaching appointments, then we make plans for what we'll teach them and then in the free hours, we go and tract on specific streets that we prayed about the night before or we'll go and talk to people in the parks.  Sometimes we'll go and bike and just talk to everyone we pass by.  We also have a list of less-active people that our bishop wants us to work with so we will plug them into our schedule and try to meet with those people and share messages with them and commit them to start coming to church and strengthening their testimonies.  Next week, we're going to a less-active/part member family's home and holding FHE with them.  Hopefully we can start working with all of them to get them to come to church again and baptize those who aren't baptized yet!

Also, since we're in the stake boundaries that has the temple, we get to do temple service every other week for 3 hours!  We get to do work on the grounds for 3 hours and it is such a blessing to go and do that kind of service and feel the special spirit of the temple.  I think that we are more blessed than the temple workers are!

Oh the dentist...I am hoping to go and see the dentist tomorrow and get the problem fixed.  We found one that might even do my dental work for free so I'm really hopeful!  But I loved the message that Sister Berry gave to me from you.  Honestly, I wasn't expecting it so I teared up a little bit knowing that it really was from you and that Sister Berry was able to talk to you!  It was a smidge distracting for like 5 minutes and then we went back to work.  It just hit me how much I missed you guys!  It's weird knowing that I've been gone for 7 months and sometimes it's really hard knowing that I still have 11 months to go.  But I also love being here and I wouldn't trade it for the world!

OK, BIG MIRACLE OF MY MISSION SO FAR!!!!!!!!

We were on exchanges with the Sister Trainer Leaders this week and I stayed in our area with one of the STL's.  She is the BEST at talking to everyone!  We decided to bike all day (got the nastiest sunburn but it's getting a lot better now) and contact people on the street.  We contacted this guy who looked like he was from India and gave him a pass-along card with a picture of Jesus Christ on it.  Nothing spectacular happened or anything and we went on our merry way talking to more people.  While we were talking to someone else, he passed by us again and we reminded him to look at the website on the card.  Later, my companion's bike chain fell off and we had to stop and fix it.  While she was fixing it, he came by us again and he stopped and asked, "Where is your church located and when does it start?  I want to come to church every Sunday!"  I about fell off of my bike!  We are now teaching him and he has a baptism date for next Saturday the 14th!  It was one of those situations where I know that the Lord put us where we needed to be in order to find this man.  He is so ready to be baptized and make that commitment to our Heavenly Father.  So please pray for him!  He is a great guy who just wants to come closer to Christ and we are so excited about him!  Some missionaries have to work with their investigators to get them into the font, but sometimes there are just people who are ready and the missionaries don't have to do much to help them along the way.  Don't get me wrong, we're still working with him and helping him, but he is so ready that he doesn't need a lot of coaching from us!  We still have to teach him some lessons so we'll see how he does by next week, but Hermana Allred and I are very hopeful that this works out for him.  This experience has strengthened my testimony in the fact that there are people out there who are simply waiting for the right people to come along and invite them to hear about the gospel.  I don't know what we did to deserve this marvelous blessing but I'm not complaining!  I only hope that the Spirit continues to testify to him and help him come closer to Jesus Christ.

We're still working on finding and trying to tract and talk to everyone about the restored gospel.  This experience has given me a new-found hope as a missionary and I am excited to see what the rest of my mission has in store.  I'm glad that you're all doing well and I look forward to hearing from you soon!  Peace and blessings to all of you, love and miss you!

With love,

Sister Ward

August 26

To respond to Dad's offer for adding me to the Gold's Gym membership when I get home...YES I would LOVE that!  In this new apartment, we have a really nice gym so I get to lift weights and I'm starting to use the treadmill a lot more often.  A gym membership once I get home would be great so I can continue to keep the habit of regular exercise.  We'll see how it goes with the altitude change.

And don't worry about buying a GPS for me.  They can get expensive but I'm not going to buy the most expensive one.  I want to buy a new one because the road names here change and I want to have one that is up-to-date.  I am just planning on getting one at Walmart that's about $100.  Besides, if you send one from Amazon, it just sits in the mission office because they don't send it VIA USPS and the missionaries in the office don't like that.  But thanks for offering anyways!

I'm glad that you guys got your school blessings!  Sometimes I wish I could get a blessing like that again.  I guess that I could ask someone for one...Anyways, no big deal though.

You know, it's hard to go through 7 months on a mission and not only never see a baptism, but to also go through the last 4 1/2 months or so and not even see an investigator.  I keep hearing all of these missionaries talk about these great experiences that they've had just fall into their lap after a lot of diligence, patience, and obedience and it gets discouraging because I feel like I haven't seen that in my mission.  After some time of this, I feel like I'm wasting both my time, and the Lord's time.  I don't want this to be a complaining email, but I've been really frustrated with it lately and I've been pleading a lot with the Lord asking Him why this is happening.  I feel like I'm obedient, I know how to teach a lesson in a way that is for the person, and I know that the Spirit is in those lessons.  So why aren't we having any success?  Why aren't we seeing any investigators come out of all our hard work?  I have no answer to these questions.  However, I know that God always has a reason for the trials we go through and I know that I have to trust that more than myself.  It's been frustrating, and extremely discouraging, but I am deciding to place my trust in my Savior.  I am so grateful that I can just give it all to Him and not have to worry about it anymore.  Please keep praying that I can keep an upbeat and faithful attitude.  After some time, the frustration and the discouragement can take its toll, but I am striving to remember my Heavenly Father and continue to not think about myself and just go to work.  Isn't the Atonement great?!

Well, I should probably end because I'm running short on time.  But thank you all for the support!  I love you all and I am truly blessed to have you for eternity.  Thank you for all that you do.  Love and miss you!

gust 26

August 19

This week has been one amazing miracle after another!  Since we're opening an area, it's been a lot of tracting and finding people because there aren't any potential investigators, and not really any former investigators either.  We are in an area the missionaries basically haven't ever touched!  However, it's a more wealthy area with a lot of gated and "No Soliciting" areas (granted, we're not technically solicitors because we're not selling anything, but whatever).  We have knocked on doors for 3 weeks with no success and no teaching appointments.  However, this last week we've finally had 4 people who are allowing us to come back and teach them!  Will they all keep their appointments?  Probably not...But this is a start and we're so excited about it!  Plus, we got a referral that sounds really promising so we're hopeful that we can work with this family and help them as well!

Here's my favorite miracle though...I love it when the Spirit is direct and we just KNOW what we need to do!  After dinner one night, we had plans to go and tract on a street.  As we were driving there, we felt like we should pull over and pray about which street we should tract on.  We had several planned and we felt like we should actually go on a street that we had planned as a back-up.  So we turned around and started heading to that street.  About 1 mile later, we saw a family that was re-modeling their home and we felt the strongest prompting to pull over and offer to help.  Conveniently, we had work clothes in the back of the car (can't really do a lot of service in a skirt so we've started to make a habit of keeping the clothes in the car so we can be ready for any service opportunity that might come!) so we grabbed our bags and marched to them and offered our help.  They said yes but realized that they were almost finished for the day.  So no, we may not have actually done anything, but we knew that we HAD to go and talk to this family and that the Lord made sure that we were guided to them.  They were very appreciative of our offer and then we found out that they knew a member of the ward.  We will probably end up helping them next weekend and we are very excited about it.  I love it when the Spirit just tells us what to do and we don't have to second guess ourselves!

I can't believe that school is starting already.  School started today for most students here and it just baffles me that summer's already almost over!  I swear it just started!  What grade is everyone going to be in now?  I may have everyone's age, but I never remember what grade everyone's in.

Is there any way that you could send me another pedigree chart?  I seem to have lost mine in the process of moving to Olympia and I can't seem to find it anywhere!  Online, I don't have all of the information from mom's side and I would love to be able to do a little bit of genealogy when I can because we're trying to get better at it so we can use it as a teaching resource!  But we kind of need to know what we're talking about so we don't act like robots.

Is it OK if I send a check that grandma and grandpa sent to me and you put it in my checking account?  And could you please pay my tithing on it as well?  I want to use the money for a GPS because it's hard to maneuver around Florida without one thanks to the fact that it's not a grid system and there aren't really ANY mountains to use as a reference!  I would greatly appreciate it if you did!  I'll make sure to send it today.

The Savior is truly amazing.  We aren't having tons of success, we aren't teaching anyone, but we are still seeing miracles every day.  He truly is blessing us for the work that we put in to being a missionary.  We are trying to work harder on always being a representative of Jesus Christ.  We literally wear His name on our chest and we want to honor that name.  However, just because members don't wear a black name tag doesn't mean that they don't have His name in their heart.  We are all His representatives, and we all need to live up to that calling.  It's amazing to be able to have this experience and share the gospel.  I love my Mission President and all that he does for us, I love my companion who pushes me to be better.  I am an obedient missionary, but Hermana Allred has taught me the difference between an obedient missionary, and an exactly obedient missionary.  How grateful I am for her and her diligence.  I love being a missionary.  I know that the gospel is the greatest gift that we are a part of.  Without the gospel, we would have nothing that would sustain us into eternity.  We are truly blessed in many ways that we feel like we don't deserve.  But in our Heavenly Father's eyes, we deserve all that He has if we choose to accept it.  

Well I love you.  Thanks for being awesome!  Good luck in school, and thank you for the love and support.  Be safe, and I'll hear from you soon.

With love,

Sister Ward

PS. Here's a picture of me and Sister Allred and then just a really cool picture of the Orlando Temple.  I love that we get to serve in the area with the temple!  We are incredibly lucky to have this here and we are blessed to have the chapel just across the street from it!  What a blessing.

NOTICE: This email message is for the sole use of the intended recipient(s) and may contain confidential and privileged information. Any unauthorized review, use, disclosure or distribution is prohibited. If you are not the intended recipient, please contact the sender by reply email and destroy all copies of the original message.

  2 Attached Images

August 12

Hello hello!

I'm so glad to hear that the trip was so much fun!  It's great that you guys were finally able to go and see Mt. Rushmore and have that awesome experience.  I love the pictures!  And I totally loved the pink shirt that Levi was wearing as well.  ;-)  

My birthday was great.  A member was very kind and made sure that I was able to have a birthday cake and everything which was great.  Also, the Elders in our ward got wind that it was my birthday and they doorbell ditched us and left a cupcake on our doorstep that morning.  The missionaries who are in my district also all made sure to call and wish me a happy birthday and the Elders in our district who speak Portuguese sang happy birthday in Portuguese as well which was a lot of fun. I enjoyed my birthday a lot.  

But I think that the biggest miracle was the fact that it was just another day!  When I woke up that morning, I knew that I didn't want to make the day all about me.  Usually, our birthdays are all about us and I love that!  But as a missionary, I remembered that August 9th was not a day for me, it was a day for my Savior.  So I asked Heavenly Father to help me to remember that I was not the main focus that day.  I had volunteered myself to serve the Lord full-time for 18 months, and that counted birthdays and holidays and I wanted it to stay that way.  Heavenly Father greatly blessed me because of that.  We recognized people that we could serve and we acted on it.  It's really hard to explain, but I was so grateful to forget myself that day and just serve those around me.  My favorite part of the day wasn't eating cake and celebrating my birthday, it was when we were able to do a small act of service for someone in need.  I loved doing that.

OK here's a funny story of the week.  We got the cops called on us!  We were tracting and I guess that there were a lot of burglaries in the area recently and apparently, we seemed suspicious so a home owner called the police.  They found us while we were walking back to our car actually and they had to stop us and give us a quick background check.  Let me tell you, I was SO grateful to have my proselyting card!  But it was hilarious because the police officer knew from the start that we weren't the burglars, but he had to do the background check anyways to appease the people around the neighborhood.  It was really embarrassing but our District Leader just thought that it was the greatest thing ever.  So, if there are missionaries going out, make sure to carry around your proselyting card even if people say that you don't really need it because you never know if the cops will end up stopping you while you're proselyting!

Yeah Sam just got married on the 10th!  I was so excited for her.  She sent me a letter last month telling me about the postponing of the wedding and I'm glad that they're now officially married!  And Savannah told me about Chloe getting engaged but that's all that I've heard!  I don't even know the guy's name!  My friends are totally FAILING at keeping me in the loop!  But I'm glad that she's getting married and I'm glad that Emily and Ben's baby is cute and healthy.  I'm glad that Landon's getting back into the groove of things and such as well.  How's Katelyn doing?  And Storie?  I should probably write her again.  I do hear from Tyler so I know that he's doing well.

I'm glad that you got the card I sent you mom!  Sorry that it came so early.  I didn't want to risk it not getting to you in time by sending it this week so I sent it last week.  But I hope that you enjoy it.  Also, Grandma and Grandpa sent me a birthday check, is it OK if I send that to you and you put it in my checking account and pay the tithing on it?  I think that I'm going to use some of the money to buy a GPS because the map is just not working.  My poor companion gets car sick really easily and having to look at the map isn't helping her.

I'm so glad that Dad's starting work today!  It's great that he has a job but can still try to work on his business and do tennis and such on the side.  That's exciting!  Good luck Dad!

It truly is a gift to be serving the Lord full-time.  Everyone says that it's a great sacrifice on our part, but in reality, it's more of a gift to us from our Savior.  Going out on my mission, I thought that I was making a sacrifice to the Lord by giving 1 1/2 years of my time.  But actually, He is giving us such a gift!  This is a great opportunity to learn and grow, and then to also bless the lives of the people here!  How wonderful it is to serve the people in Orlando!  The mission truly does teach us so much and it is a miraculous blessing.  I am so grateful for the opportunity to serve my Savior and to wear His name on my chest every day.  There are two names that are big on this name tag, my own, and Jesus Christ.  How wonderful it is to have my name next to His and be able to say that I'm a literal representative of Jesus Christ.  

Thank you again for the wonderful birthday wishes!  You all are just awesome and I am so grateful for you and the love and service that you've given me.  You are all truly blessings and a light in my life.  I love and miss you all!  

Oh, and Mom,  HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!  I know that it's not until Friday, but happy birthday on Friday!  I hope that the kids treat you well and that they spoil you on your special day.  You deserve to have your day!  Love you lots, and I'm thinking of you!

With love,

Sister Ward

August 5

Dear Family,

My goodness, it sounds like everyone is having a great summer!  I can't believe all of the fun things that you've been doing over the past few weeks!  I must admit that I'm a little envious of the fun adventures that you get to experience.  But no matter, I'm glad that you all get to do these things before school starts later this month.  This summer has just FLOWN by!  Congrats to Tatum and her swim meet, that's totally awesome.  And also to Levi for the award he got at the Jamboree.  So cool!  And that's AWESOME that Booker touched the stingray in Mexico!  And the swimming with dolphins is always a fun treat to experience.  I loved doing that!

Olympia is awesome.  We have a ward that spoiled us rotten with the apartment and they are really excited to have both Elders and Sisters in the ward now.  They are very excited about the missionary work and we have a ward council and ward missionaries who are very involved with the missionaries.  I just love it!  Plus, it helps that we have the temple right across the street from the chapel.  The spirit here is just so strong with the temple in the ward boundaries.  We are trying to get a feel for the area, we don't have a GPS so we're using a good old map that's 6 years old so I'm getting REALLY good at 3-point turns and U-turns!  But we really enjoy it.  There's a lot of hope and potential here so we're excited.

My companion...So she's named Hermana Allred.  Oh yes, I am training a Spanish speaking sister!  That's a wonderful adventure!  She's my first 19-year-old companion so that has been interesting but she's great.  Just younger, but that's not bad and I think that it's going to help me to remember to have fun and not serious and boring all the time.  She's from American Fork, Utah and just loves being a missionary.  She's extremely obedient which I hope she keeps with her throughout her whole mission.  I don't have a picture of her yet, but I hope to have one that I can send next week.

The biggest miracle that I've seen is the miracle of the gift of tongues!  I didn't think that I remembered ANYTHING from my 9th grade Spanish class but Heavenly Father has been gracious with me.  Hermana Allred is great with her Spanish (the Spanish Elders say so as well) and has been teaching me while practicing and improving herself in her language studies.  I may not know any of the vocabulary, but I remember almost all of the rules on pronunciation and such.  Basically, the Lord has helped me to remember how to read the language correctly and how to speak correctly.  Now I just need to learn vocabulary words!  But it truly has been a miracle over the past week to see what the Lord has helped me to remember.  It's nothing new, just a lot of things that are coming back to my memory.  It's so weird!

I got the package, and I'll probably get the other letters either today or tomorrow.  Thank you for everything that was sent!  They were great and I love all of them!  I especially loved the pants you sent, they were super comfortable and my companion was pretty envious of that.  It was great though.  Mom, you cut your hair?!?!  You totally need to send me a picture of this!  I'm sure that you look great!  And I hope that you have a fantastic birthday next week as well.  To answer your guys' questions, I don't do anything special for my birthday.  It's just another day of missionary work!  But that's OK because I am not here for me, I'm here for my Savior and His time is short and precious.  But a member found out that my birthday's on Friday so she signed up to have us over for dinner that night and is planning on making a cake for me so that'll be fun.  I just hope that they don't make it all about me because we're supposed to be in their home to help strengthen them and their testimonies of the gospel.  So we'll see how it goes!  But thank you for all that you do and thank you again for the birthday gifts!  I truly feel blessed and I know that the Lord has a lot of miracles in store for all of you because of your righteousness.  Love and miss you all!

With love,

Sister Ward

July 29

TATUM!!!  Happy birthday yesterday!  I can't believe that you're now a teenager and just getting prettier and prettier by the day!  I hope that you had a great birthday yesterday and you were definitely on my mind throughout the day.

My goodness family!  What a great past few weeks the mission has been!  It's amazing to realize just how much influence the Lord has in our lives.  It truly is a miracle and I love that He is in charge.  It's so much easier to depend on the one who sees the finish line and the pathway to it than to just depend on myself and go the direction that I think is best when it really isn't.

I'm getting transfered.  I just saw in President's email that I'm getting transfered to Orlando in the area that has the temple!  And I get to train again this next transfer so she and I will be able to open the area together which will be really interesting!  Super nervous, but really excited to see what the Lord has in store for us in this new area.  Although it's really sad to know that I'm leaving both of my companions and so many great members in the Leesburg Ward.  I've come to love so many of them and they have made such a great impact on me.  I am so grateful for everyone in this fantastic ward.

Thanks for the email from Mike!  It looks like Mexico is gorgeous and it seems like you guys all had SO MUCH FUN!!!  I'll admit, I was super envious about the zipline and the driving through the mud.  It looks like that would be a total blast!  I'm glad that you were all able to spend some time together as a family and create memories from that. 

It's amazing how much happier a person can be when they just trust in the Lord!  I've seen that dramatically over the past 2 weeks and I am just amazed by it.  Trust me, going out and knocking on doors with no success in 100+ degree weather not including the humidity isn't my ideal activity to do.  But I have found the time to just fly by when I know that I'm doing this for the Lord and that it's what He wants me to do at this present time.  When you finally just accept that He's in charge and just go with it, fully trusting in Him, things just go by much smoother and you don't get discouraged.  I have no idea what's going to happen in this new area and I have NO idea what we're going to do first, but I do know that the Lord is in charge.  Therefore, He'll guide us in the direction we need to go. 

Has anyone read Jesus the Christ?  If not, I HIGHLY recommend that you use it for your studies!  I was challenged to read and study about Jesus Christ for 30 minutes of my personal study.  I have used Jesus the Christ as I've been reading the New Testament and it is incredible!  Something that I've been trying to do is study Jesus Christ more in order to know Him better.  If we know our Savior, then we can have a stronger relationship with Him and strive more to be like Him.  I've seen this happening in my mission and I pray that it continues to grow.  

So what's going on back home?  Haven't hear from y'all in a while and I'm hoping that everyone's doing OK.  How's the business and how's everyone doing personally?  I hear that Bedstemore and Big Papa are planning on visiting.  When is that going to happen?

Well, I don't really have much more to say.  I hope that everyone's doing well though.  I'm expecting a report from you guys on miracles that each of you have seen over the past week!  Are y'all still recognizing miracles and talking about them every day?

Well, I love you guys.  You're all in my prayers and I am so grateful for each of you.  While here, I'm really starting to recognize how each member of my family was meant to be a part of my life.  You've all made a difference and I wouldn't be the person or the missionary that I am without all of you. You're all amazing!  Love and miss you!

With love,
Sister Ward

NOTICE: This email message is for the sole use of the intended recipient(s) and may contain confidential and privileged information. Any unauthorized review, use, disclosure or distribution is prohibited. If you are not the intended recipient, please contact the sender by reply email and destroy all copies of the original message.

  1 Attached Images

Monday, July 8

No worries, pictures are totally allowed.  In fact, I love getting them!  Sounds like there's going to be a super fun vacation this upcoming week!  I hope that you all enjoy Mexico with the family.  Also, thanks for the update on the other family members, I can't believe that Rachel is already almost done with her pregnancy.  That's just amazing.

For the 4th of July, we got permission from our Mission President to stay out late to go to parks, contact people, and watch the fireworks.  There was a big city celebration in Leesburg that night so we went to the park where it was happening and got to talk to a lot of people before the fireworks show on the lake.  It was so much fun and it was something different which was nice!  However, it rained like 3 times and it was a thunderstorm for one of them.  We're starting to ride our bikes more because we want to have more exercise and also try to contact people on the streets more often so we got soaked on the way to the park.  One thing about the weather here, it rains almost every day for about an hour and there's tons of lightning and pouring rain, and then it stops and gets super hot and humid to a point where the streets are steaming from the recent downpour.  It's pretty sweet.

So I've been in Leesburg for pretty much my whole mission so far (5 months).  I love the area but I'm also expecting that I'll get moved in about three weeks when we have transfers.  Most people don't stay in an area for more than 4 transfers so I'll be surprised if I stay.  Plus, we were told that our tripanionship wouldn't last for very long so most likely one of us is getting transfered out in a few weeks.  But I like having three girls because it's so much more entertaining!  Sister Peterson is just a great addition to an already great companionship and I have never laughed so much in my life because of her.  My companions are starting to keep a quote book of all the hilarious things that we say/hear.  Plus, it's really fun to mess with our District Leader with 3 girls as well.  He always says "Tri's are the worst!  Especially with sisters!"  Although we know that he secretly thinks that it's a blast.  We just love going out and working.  We're working a lot with less-actives and it has been quite successful.  Our Bishop is pretty excited because a new less-active comes to church every week which is a great improvement.  Now we just need to work harder on getting investigators to teach!

Something that I've noticed as a big change for me is my study habits.  I've really noticed how much mroe I take out of the scriptures now that I'm reading them every day for an hour!  I love reading my scriptures!  I've never marked so much in them as I have over the last few months and I love it.  I have noticed how much my testimony has grown because of it.  The scriptures really are from God.  I am so grateful for the Book of Mormon and its added testimony to the Bible about Jesus Christ.  I'm starting to read the Doctrine and Covenants backwords and I hope to do that with the Book of Mormon too once I finish reading it all the way through again.  I'm doing this because I want to be more familiar with the scriptures. I want to know them frontwards, backwards, and in-between.  How interesting it is to be reading the scriptures this way and see the new things that come out!  I have also grown a lot in my testimony about the Priesthood.  Without the Priesthood, our church would just be another church!  The Priesthood is what allows us to be different, it is what makes us have the fullness of the gospel, and it's what made the restoration of the gospel in this dispensation possible.  How grateful I am for the Priesthood and God's everlasting love for His children!  Even after His Only Begotten Son was killed, He was still loving and merciful to His children enough to give us the gospel again on the earth.

Thank you for the emails and such.  I'm sorry about the complaining last week.  I sometimes get down because I don't really write and email anyone which is fine and usually doesn't bother me.  But last week was just harder for me especially because both of my companions get a lot of letters, packages, and emails and it was hard to not get any letters and then no emails either.  I'm sorry for the complaints.  I know that you guys have busy lives and that writing me isn't a main priority nor should it be.  I had a selfish moment and I am sorry for that.  But I love you guys and I hope to hear from you again soon.  Haven't gotten your letter yet but I'm guessing that it'll come today.  Love you all!

With love,

Sister Ward