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