Week #6 06/25/2009 (DR CCM)

Letter dated: June 25, 2009

Hola Familia
ok so I was just writing a bit and my computer got messed up on accident so I hope I don’t forget anything it was kinda funny haha but anyways so the food here is still the exact same it never changes haha its rice with beans some kind of chicken and then either beef or pork and then we have pineapple and papaya on the side (dad would be amazed at how much fruit I eat I think it’s because I’m like craving sweets and there is no way to buy and here) but yeah we have that every day except Thursday (p-day) they through it all in a bowl and add some bananas and more water and all the bones from the meat and call it soup haha I think it’s good but I like the other stuff a lot better sister Hendricks always teases me because I tell her I miss the beans and rice whenever we eat it and she just says you’ll love your mission then haha but yeah I think the main reason I like it a little bit more is because you don’t have to worry about all the bones that you accidentally chop down on when you eat the soup. but anyways yeah the time change is about 2 hours but it’s ok I got a lot more tired here than I did at Provo but I think I’m on track and the little bit of a time change through me off a bit but yeah we are doing pretty good now I think. It’s going to be really fun for Ang to get all the kids back on track haha GOOD LUCK ANG! but anyways it sounds like everyone’s having fun working on the little house it sounds like a lot of hard work but yeah I’m sure it looks great. You guys said its hot there but come here and I bet you’ll think its nothing haha jk mtn. home is a dry burning heat here it’s like step outside and you just start dripping sweat when we do service or have gym or go contacting I’m just dripping it like everywhere (that’s one thing I’m not looking forward to in the mission haha) but yeah it’s pretty crazy hot when you go outside. so Bobby Smith is here he is actually in my district so yeah I told him like three times about elder tanner but I kept forgetting to write you about it but yeah he’s here so you can tell elder tanner that. he’s a way cool kid me and him played some football yesterday two on two in the parking lot and we pretty much dominated ahha jk but he is really cool but anyways district leader isn’t to much here all you have to do is go to some meetings and you just assign people do do stuff and you have to conduct meetings and stuff it’s not that big of a deal you just do some extra stuff everyday but yeah Elder crawly is another kid in my district and he is from Orem he’s way cool and just a funny kid. right now there is 5 sister 4 of which are going to Puerto Rico and are American and then one sister that is going to Haiti and she is Haitian obviously cuz they don’t send any other missionaries there but yeah anyways. the singing was horrible last week actually for the next meeting I decided I would just have all the elders sing it was funny because there was like maybe 7 people left sitting that we sang for and then the speaker Elder Johnson who is president of the Caribbean area missions made fun of us haha but yeah it was bad. the Spanish is going ok I just pretend like I know how to speak it but I don’t think I do haha the people in the DR speak that fastest Spanish you’ve ever heard so it’s really hard to understand the whole sentence especially when they use words other than church vocab haha but I’m learning when I talk to them I always say sorry my Spanish is so bad and they says it’s really good but I think they are just being nice and have no idea what I’m saying haha. but I love speaking with people I say hi to everyone on the streets and when we are doing service its kinda funny some people just ignore me but it’s cool I just like talking to people but I really really really really wish that I could just speak fluent haha cuz it takes me an hour to spit something out :) but yeah we go to the university on Tuesdays and teach and we are doing pretty good there we gave a lady a book of Mormon this week and told her to read 3 nefi 11 and that was cool we talk to her for like 30 minutes and then a guy for like 30 minutes and they went really good so that was fun but no we don’t ever hear from them again so hopefully good things happen. but yeah we go to the temple every p-day and its really cool they do it all in English for us though and the few other people that are there that speak other languages get head phones and then they have people that speak all sorts of different languages so it’s cool. and yeah it’s definitely not white it’s like a red pink and brown and its all mixed haha. so the flu thing here isn’t a big deal no one has it and they really didn’t even say much about not touching each other so it hasn’t been any kind of problem but who knows what will happen when the Latin missionaries get here that might all change. the ccm has a ton of rooms but the middle two floors are for couple missionaries and people traveling to go to the temple and then the bottom floor is just the cafeteria and stuff but the new missionaries that come next week will be in rooms with us and they are building two new class rooms that were supposed to be done but they are nowhere close so I think we’ll have to figure something else different to do when they get here but o well it will work out but we leave to Puerto Rico on the 21st of July so less than a month isn’t that crazy I’m so excited to go :). but anyways I need you to send me Tyson Sessions mailing address in the next email please cuz I have a letter to send him and idk what the rules on the emailing other missionaries cuz at Provo they said we could and then I heard we can’t so idk so I’ll just have to see but yeah send me his address please. but yeah life is going great and I’m having fun sorry this email is a little crazy we don’t have much time so I just write when I think of something but yeah I’m really craving candy like crazy someone gave me a mike and ike (which are like my favorite I’m sure you know) but it was like a little capsule of heaven it tasted so good I want to go to the store but they haven’t taken us yet but they did say they will this next week sometime so hopefully maybe next p-day :) but yeah so I think the coolest part about this mtc is just getting out p-day we get to do service so usually we go to the park and pick up nasty trash and its way way way hot and I get all nasty but I love it cuz I get to talk to people and they usually just look at me like I’m a crazy and ask me why the heck I’m picking up all the trash but its way cool most of them think its way cool that we want to make their city look nice so they are nice to us but yeah its way fun and then on Tuesdays we go to the university like I told you and sometimes they like try and avoid us but I don’t let that happen too often ;) I usually don’t let them get away haha but yeah when we talk to them they are way nice but I feel bad cuz I like never understand what they are saying so I just look at them blankly sometimes when they tell me something and then they just laugh so yeah I need to work on my hearing what they say skills a little but I sure can tell them a lot about the church so that’s good but yeah anyways I better get going but I love you guys and I hope all is good back home and ill talk to you next week

LOVE YA
Elder Ward

Week #5 06/18/2009 (DR CCM)

Letter dated: 06/18/2009
Dominican Republic CCM
District Leader: Elder Matthew Ward
Companion: Elder Radmall

hola familia

so life here in the DR is going great and we are having fun so lets see if i can tell ya all about it before i run out of time but yeah so ill just talk a little about the day starting on the travel to the CCM (thats MTC in spanish haha boys was i wrong when we were talking about it in the car) but anyways so the first crazy thing that happened on the way to the DR is that i tried to give a man that sat next to me on the plane a book of mormon but he rejected it so that didnt get over to well haha but yeah it was kinda funny but then we had a lot of cool stuff happen on the next flight Elder Oviatt got someone to take a book of mormon and he taught her a bunch of stuff and then right after i talked to you guys on the phone we taught a group of older African American people and that went pretty good we taught them the whole 1st lesson right there in the middle of the airport and that was fun they were pretty open and receptive but one lady knew her bible pretty good and wanted to bash a little bit and i dont think elder oviatt liked that very much so that was kinda bad but we ended up leaving them with a card and committed them to call and ask for a book of mormon and call the missionaries and they said that they would so hopefully they do but then after that we went and were waiting by our terminal and then we were sitting buy a man and his wife and they were from the DR and we talked to them for a little bit and i guess he lives just down the street from the temple adn he said he tried to go inside but they wouldnt let him so then we taught him about temples and what they are and what they mean to us and it was really cool so yeah that was fun and then we gave him a card and commited him to call as well and then we are going to send the missionaries to him because he gave us our card and we told him that we wouldnt be touring the DR but he insisted that if we got a day off that we needed to call him and that he would take us all around the DR for free because he owns a BIG chunk of the tourist industry in the DR it was really cool so i have his business card and i might have to give him a call after my mission haha but anyways so yeah that was my experience there and then we landed in the DR and thats when the spanish started haha right after the plain it was spanish from then on and it is crazy because i dont understand much weve been going to classes all day and they dont speak any english in class. the teachers dont even know that good of english so its kinda crazy sometimes its really funny cuz they will tell us somethign to do and then they will leave and we all turn to eachother and try to figure out what the heck we are supposed to be doing its pretty funny but yeah the next really exciting thing that happened was sunday (o idk if i told you i dont think i did haha but im the new district leader and i have a new companion named elder Radmall) and they people that flew in are the only people here and there is like 20 of us and then like 2 elders and a sister from haiti that only speak french but we we have to take turns conducting the meetings for the week and we were the first district to go so i had to conduct and along with conducting your district has to give a special musical number well as you all know i am really horrible at the whole musical catagory but which might be hard to believe but the other 5 elders in my district are either as bad or as worse as me so in district meeting its sounds horrible and we just are really bad and half the time its just me and another elder belting it out cuz none of us can sing but we arent emberessed so we just go but anyways we had to give this musical number and so we picked "cerca dios de ti" and it was pretty hilarious it was so bad that the sister from haiti started laughing at us we had never tried it with the piano and we did it with the piano and the piano went a lot higher than we could go and it was not good haha our voices were like cracking and everything it was pretty ugly and i think for about half of it me and elder crawley were singing a horrible duet but yeah so that was that experience that was pretty fun so now on to tuesday tuesday was way fun we got to go contact people outside the mtc and so we went over to the university that is here and we stood outside and contacted people for about an hour and half and it was really cool my companion was a little shy at first but i broke him of that pretty quick because they gave us some pamphlets and said go and so i just went right after it and was talking to people like crazy it was way fun i would even cut them off when they tried to get away from me and stuff it was pretty funny i always said the same thing i said "hola como esta? nosotros podemos hablar con usted? it was funny and then i would something like this "no hablo mucho espanol pero nosotros tenemos un mensaje cincillo sobre jesucristo y su iglesia" it was pretty funny and then we would talk for a while and they would make fun of our horrible spanish and then everytime we would commit them to call and talk to the missionaries and get a book of mormon and most of them would commit but if they didnt i would bear testimony and wouldnt take no for an anwser it was pretty cool so yeah we contacted 12 people/groups and hopefully atleast a few of them call the missionaries but yeah so that was tuesday and now its thursday and we had our long awaited p-day it was great. we went to the temple first which was an experience that was way cool seeing a temple in another country (o by the way ya know how its white in all the pictures? well i dont know if its the weather or the sun or what but the marble on the outside has all turned red over time its kinda crazy, i havent been able to take any pictures yet because President doesnt want us to but he said we will get a day sometime but ill take a picture and show you its pretty crazy) but yeah so that was cool and then we went to the park down town and did some service and cleaned up all the trash and that was way fun its not a park like in the states its more like a trash pit haha but its full of people from the university and they were everywhere and they all kept asking what we were doing and we would explain who we were and stuff it was really fun some of the garbage was pretty nasty but it was well worth it so anyways thats whats happened so far i love the ccm its so fun and your always learning the food is pretty good its the exact same thing every day cereal and oatmeal for breakfast and then rice beans bread and MEAT for lunch (lunch is the biggest meal and its way good a lot of the elders dont like it very much but i think its amazing i mean you cant have a more perfect lunch i dont think it will ever get old haha) and then usually its something small like a sandwich, salid, stew, or something like that for dinner its kinda wierd but yeah. gyms pretty fun to we go outside and play valley ball, basketball, or soccer in the parkign lot and its pretty good or you can go inside and play pingpong so usually i do a little bit of everything. the weather here is crazy today was way sunny but other than that its usually a little overcast but its good the humidity is the killer part if you step outside you just start dripping so hopefully i get used to that soon but yeah its kinda crazy but i better go because i think im out of time and ive written a ton but i hope everythings going great back home and i hope i answered all your questions i think i did o yeah nevermind i almost forgot mom you should probably wait the mtc president said packages usually get here but it takes a while but i think ill live for a little while without it i would like some candy though haha its wierd ive been craving candy since i got here but yeah dont send anything yet cuz i think its pretty expensive and i want to make sure it gets here so yeah (i tell everyone they put us in the coolest mtc so they have to give us one thing bad and thats the mail haha some elders think its the food but not me :) ) but yeah so i think that gets all the questions it sounds like you all are having fun with all the rain and work haha and even BOATING!!! :) but yeah i misss you guys a ton and i cant wait to hear from you again next week

i love you guys
Elder Ward

ps your dear elder got here yesterday so it takes a little while haha

Week #4 06/13/2009 (DR CCM)

Letter dated: 06/13/2009

hola familia
I made it to the DR last night at like 12 o clock and im doing good its so so so so cool being in another country for the mtc there is only 26 missionaries here so its kinda crazy and we are all the same time so yeah its pretty cool ill tell ya all about it on thursday (thats our p-day) o and i was going to tell you that dear elder works here to if anyone was wondering so yeah you can let everyone know about that as well but yeah the DR is was cool and im way excited that i got the chance to go here instead of staying in provo but yeah i got to go but i hope you guys are having fun and ill talk to you thursday
love you guys
elder ward

PS i dont speak spanish and everyone but the missionaries do and its kinda crazy haha ive heard like 3 english words all day haha but yeah its crazy ill ttyl later though have a great day

Week #3 06/10/2009 (Provo MTC)

Letter Dated: 06/10/2009

OK to reply to everyones questions i am still Alive the sickness has not hit me or my campion yet but there are people dropping around us like flys its crazy that first week it got a little nuts but i think its going to slow down now but its really kinda crazy ill tell you about some things they have changed at the mtc to cut down on the sickness. First as you all know they stopped letting parents and family into the mtc and it is now curb side drop off its pretty crazy and they say that is a permenant change for the mtc from now on so i think its kinda cool we were the second to last group to ever do it the normal way. Next they have now gotten rid of all the silverware and and cups and plates everything we eat with is now disposible its kinda lame cuz i always break my forks and i hate it. they have also banned all contact sports because we are not aloud to touch eachother so that means no b-ball soccer or baseball because you share gloves but they havent got rid of 4 square left so we are all good :) and then lastly everywhere you walk no matter where you are you can see a hand sanitizer on the wall its pretty funny but but yeah so that first week was crazy but its slowing down now we had one in quarentee for a week but hes out now and then we had a couple that had to stay in there rooms for like 2 days i always ask them "is it the swine flue or the i need a nap flue" and then they get out the next day haha jk but i do ask them and its really funny haha but yeah anways so about the other stuff i have yet to get my sweet rolls so i dont know about that but i think i get them today because i got some package slips i just havent picked them up yet also the translator is great i just hated thumbing through that dang dictionary so this is nice but yeah so i need to tell you TODAY I AM GOING TO CALL HOME AT 4 so dont be gone because im supposed to call and let you know about my flight plans i leave thursday morning at 3 so that will be crazy but yeah im so excited to go i talked to a lady about the DR cuz she went to the mtc there and she said it was amazing she said its all one building and your classes and rooms and everythign are all on the same flour and that there is only like 50 missionaries there at a time so that should be fun and we get to go out contacting in spanish so thats going to be way fun and funning at the same time because we dont know spanish o wich riminds me about singing in spanish this is so funny i couldnt stop laughing cuz it was so funny and then i had to read it to everyone but you said that dad thinks we sing "secreta oracion" (secret prayer) but the funniest thing about that is the first day me teacher asked me what song we wanted to sing and i opened my book and the book mark was on page 80 (secreta oracion) but the best part about that is its suck a fun song to sing i make us sing it every day at least once and its like our district song now so thats why its son funny but yeah i couldnt stop laughing another good one is 88 i dont remember the name but we sing that one a lot too because its only in spanish it doesnt exist in the english book and its a good one so we sign it a tone but yeah so i was thinking about a scripture and i have to really good ones Alma 26: 12 and Alma 29: 9 so you read them and tell me what you like best but im thinking Alma 29:9 sorry it took me so long to write and tell you though i kept forgetting haha but yeah so look at those o i took so more good pictures so hopefully i can get them sent today so that i dont have to send them from the DR but yeah so look for those o and i almost forgot so adam and chris come in on the 10th maybe ill be a curb side helper so that would be cool but if not i have that dinner to find them so hopefully i can cuz that would be way fun and ive seen some people that i kinda met at school but no one i really knew to well except Been Wheeler from mountain home him and a kid from school are companions and i see them all the time which is kinda cool but yeah so anyways other than that i havent see anyone but hopefully i get to see adam and chris cuz that would be way cool. but yeah it sounds like homes been fun and kinda crazy at the same time the rain hasnt gotten that bad at all here but yeah i guess ill be getting plenty of rain in a few months but if jason is getting after dad to get the boat out now i could see it maybe happing about mid july hahaha jk hopefully you guys get to go a lot this year and you could even use your brand new cabin so that will be fun im expecting it to be all finished and done for when i get back so tell brad and dad to get to work. well im about to run out of time so i better get going but ill talk to you on the phone around 4 so dont forget but i only get like 5 minutes but yeah so ill talk to you then i hope you guys are doing good and having fun
I love ya
Elder Ward

Week #2 06/02/2009 (Provo MTC)

Letter dated: 06/02/09
Hey guys
the mtc is going great and im having a lot of fun i havent got the translater yet but im sure it will come in no time. i was going to ask you if you sent me those sweet rolls yet from shelly because i was talking about them with Elder Oviatt (my companion) and then one of the other guys said he got some from some lady he didnt know but it was addressed to him and everything so if it did go to him that would be really funny we were just curious. But anyways is wierd that i only get to write to you guys on p-days its hard to remember everythign that happens during the weeks and remember all that you guys said during the letter you sent me but anyways about the missionaries in my zone we have three districts and the third one just left yesterday wich had 2 elders and 4 sisters me and elder oviatt were kinda bumbed when they left because the two brothers were are best buddies and they all went to chile they were the last people that made it out of the mtc before they stopped travel because of swine flue. Then we have the second oldest district and there is like 10 of them and they are all going to mexico and cali. i think and they are supposed to leave on the 15 4 days after us but they say because of the travel stop and the swine flue and stuff that no one is going to be leaving the mtc till the 15 so well see if we get out. In my district there is 10 of us there used to be 12 but 2 got moved up to intermediat and so the ten of us are left and me and elder oviatt are the only ones going to puerto rico the rest are going to argentina and colombia. Me and elder oviatt decided that we would hunt down the other puerto rico missioaries and i think we found a lot of them weve met a ton of people going to both the east and the west side of puerto rico but i think in our travel group there is 8 of us total going so that should be fun. its kinda wierd youd think they would put all the puerto rico missionaries in one district but they have us all spread out but yeah so i guess i should probably tell ya that i am alive and the swine flue hasnt got me yet but last week at church there was like only 15 of us in sacrament but i was kinda happy because me and elder oviatt and the district that left had to sing for it and so i was glad everyone was gone. I mean you guys have heard me sing in english and thats bad enough you should hear the spanish singing it might make your ears bleed haha but yeah so its hard to remember what to talk about because they only give us a little bit of time and i keep a good journal but i dont have time to read through it while im typing. o and tell andrea i forgot to bring her email to the computer with me so i wont be able to send her one this time but i promise i will next time and ill try and write some letters today to if i have time. its kinda crazy cuz on p-days we are still way busy like we have to do all our laundry and that stuff and we have study for like 3-4 hours and we go to the temple and we have devotional so its kinda crazy i thought p-day would be like just a day off but its not one bit in the mtc haha. but yeah so it sounds like adams fair well was pretty good im excited to get to see hime i really hope i do its going to be cool its kinda crazy though because i dont know if they are going to let his family come in they told us yesterday that all the missionaries that are comming in this week that their familys arent going to be aloud to come inside any of the building because of all this swine flue stuff so if thats the case i feel really bad for them but who knows maybe it will all be cleared up by then. thats really cool that you guys got to go to a live session in the salt lake i heard that its really cool and kinda crazy. everyone says that they are going to shut the salt lake temple down for some refurbishing for a pretty long time idk if thats true or not but i thought that was kinda crazy. well i better get goin before i run out of time but i will try and write some letters today. the mission is going great and im enjoying my self its a lot of hard work but i love it. and i love you guys to thank you so much for all the letters and all that good stuff i love getting letters its the bomb haha well you guys have a great day and dont have to much fun and ill probably write some letters right after i sanatize my keyboard hahaha
LOVE YA Elder Ward