I love being a missionary!

heyyyyyyyyy!

What’s up guys? What the freak man, I just wrote you guys like yesterday. I have a bunch of things to talk about and not enough time. Haha! Man it sounds like its been busy at home.  Connor, I would tell you how dumb that was to wait until now (1week before your 18^th birthday) to do your eagle, but I have no room to talk...so nice work!

You know what, this week has also sounded a lot like that for me as far as running around for papers, getting signatures, figuring out what the heck we need to do next for this to happen. So...here’s the deal. Almost everyone here needs to get married, and in order for us to have a baptism, we also need to have a marriage. I’ll try to sum up what happened this week. We’ve been teaching this super awesome lady named Adaleida. She has so much faith and has wanted to get baptized since the day I met her. Unfortunately, her inactive member “husband” wanted nothing to do with marriage. This week we were talking to her about faith and how the Lord performs miracles if we have enough faith to do that which is aligned with His will (such as baptism). She had just finished reading 1 Nephi 3:7 where it says the Lord will prepare a way when the “husband”, Cezar, comes walking up to us. I had never even met this man and it was always so hard to talk to him. It was a miracle. We began to talk to him and we could tell that even though he was nice to us, he didn’t want anything to do with marriage. In short, we had the most spiritual lesson that I’ve had thus far in the misson. It ended with us all kneeling in prayer in their tiny house asking if getting married would be the right decision. He immediately said yes after, and they were both super happy. 

Here’s the catch...this was on Tuesday night. He was going to leave this Sunday to go to Costa Rica for 3 or 4 months, so we had to arrange everything in a week. We had to talk to lawyers, figure out all the laws, get their identification, make copies, arrange it with the bishop...talk about stressful!  But it was all worth it, because we were going to have a baptism. So Saturday we go to make sure that they were all good for that day still and had been talking to them every day that week. Adaleida then told us that Cezar found out that he was married here and was never divorced. So we go talk to more lawyers and stuff like that and did absolutely everything we could. In the end, the baptism never happened, nor the marriage.

I learned something super important this week. I think that sometimes the Lord tests us to make sure that we will do absolutely everything that he asks or expects. It’s kind of like the story of Abraham sacrificing his son. I imagine him suffering immensely as he went so far as to lay his son on the altar to sacrifice him. It was definitely super, super tough to not have the baptism and marriage this week, but I know that the Lord has his reasons. Honestly, I wanted to cry because I knew how badly that family needed the gospel and I love them so much.  But at the same time, I felt good knowing that we did absolutely all that we could.

Wow that was long, but it was the highlight of the week I guess.  Elder Rodriguez is seriously the man!  He wakes up at 5:30 to study every morning, he works super hard, he’s always positive, and he is an amazing teacher. There’s tons of other good stuff I could say about him, but anyways we’re finding tons of new people to teach.  I’m confident that we will have baptisms soon. We’re already way good buds, and I have loved being a missionary this week.

Other things from this week:

Bird pooped on comps shoulder in the middle of a lesson and it was hilarious.

Saw a 7 foot snake in the road and almost stepped on it.

Walked to the Cocos this week and it was a crazy adventure (out in the middle of nowhere for reference) and they weren’t home!  Oh well!

Elder Christofferson is coming to our mission! How sweet is that!

We're doing lots of splits with the priests this week and I’m pretty stoked!

Were busting our butts every day and I love being a missionary!

 Love you guys a whole bunch and that’s way sweet about the temple thing mom!  I’ve come to appreciate the temple so much more here, so prepare yourselves in every way possible for a temple in our very own town! We are so blessed!

Love,

Elder Trevor Ward