Blessed With Baptisms

FAMILY!!!!!

ELDER HALL- transfers: ELDER OVARD- stays!!!!!! DANGIT haha I am so sad today. It's hard to see my main man Elder Hall leave. We have had some great times together. Most importantly god has taught us so soooooo much. Both of us have worked extremely hard like I have mentioned in the previous letters. Hard time after hard time but hey guess what..... GOD BLESSED US WITH 3 AMAZING BAPTISMS this past week :) haha It was amazing to see the blessings this past week. God is Good family and I love that about him! He will always support us and bless us if we are giving him our all. One thing I loved about this transfer is I have learned the true definition of what it means to be patient. CHRISTLIKE PATIENT! It was amazing to look back on the transfer we have had together. How we did SO much to just bring some souls unto christ but yet how hard it was. Trial after trial, doing our best to endure it well. FAMILY God does as he promises. In preach my gospel it talks about how patience is when you face these trials and hardships but while facing them your attitude and spirit is still loving and uplifting to all those around you. HOPING with a surety in your heart that things will get better with gods help. I love that because that paragraph in PMG sums up Elder halls and mine transfer. I love it. 

We saw 3 amazing souls come closer to christ this past week. 3 Ladies names Nichole, Jamila and Dena!! All were miracles! Its so great to have seen them accept jesus christ in their lives. I will send you pictures on them :) How amazing they are though. Each one of them had to make a change before they were baptized. Was it easy... NO but they did it for god. That was their gift that they were giving God this Christmas season :) I love that about them!!!!

Not only did god bless us with 3 amazing baptisms but he blessed us with 9 people to church :) Our work was rewarding. We saw these people come to church, leaving behind the things of the world. It was sooooo cool. One of those families that came was Yakira. I think I've told you about her. Wait yes I know I have. She's the one that was evicted from her house. Well this past week she was seeing miracles in her life as well. She finally found a new place to rent and is going to move this week sometime. She loves church. She's been 5 times now. She really wants to get baptized. She is probably going to get baptized tonight before elder hall goes :) She said to us yesterday when we were visiting with her. I am planning on getting baptized this Sunday... We said Sunday WAIT Yakira look Elder Hall is leaving on Wednesday.. What if you do it tomorrow night? She looked at us smiled and said.. Okay I probably will but let me get back to you tomorrow :) haha so we are currently waiting for her to call us back! IT's great to see though. Another family of 3 getting baptized today! That would mean God would have blessed Elder Hall and i with 6 baptisms our last week together :) Like I said 'PATIENCE IS EVERYTHING. WHEN WE ENDURE IT WELL WITH LOVE AND LAUGHTER... GOD GRANTS US BLESSINGS' I love the lessons that i have been learning!!! God has also been blessing the zone. We have a goal of 32 baptisms in December and we are at 18 right now. That leaves us at 7 a week for these next two weeks. We can do it. I know we can and i feel soooo blessed to be a part of it :) 

Onto Christmas :) We had our party this past week and i'll email you a link with pictures of that party that president A took :) Anyways So next week we will skype hopefully haha no we will it shouldn't be a problem. I will find a member this week that will let us use their computers :) I'll give you more updates next week on that good stuff but plz if you can just let me know the best time you'd like me to skype. I can call a little bit before like we did last time if that works best. I'm really excited though and it should be fun!! I can't believe it's already time again! 

I'm excited to see who my new companion is going to be. It's fun being zone leader because you can almost guess who. For example i think Elder Hall is going AP and i will probably either get Elder WEBB or Elder Loucks as my companion :) Next week we'll see if i'm right :) It's fun though because some of the elders that came out with me and elders that i'm really close with will prob go ZL this transfer. Elder Hunter for example. It's exciting!! 

Anyways I love you all. Sorry it's a lil short. I wanna be able to send you the pictures of the party and stuff. I love you all!! Keep up the amazing work in all your doing :) Keep it real,. Keep it fun and MERRY CHRISTMAS :)

ELDER OVARD

p.s. The Book of Mormon musical is still going and boy it's a crack up everytime. Things always happen haha crazy questions are always asked and boy oh boy it makes me laugh. For example quick story... I contacted this one girl and her BF (i think) and I gave them a card. They asked if I'm a real mormon and I said Yes of course and the girl immediately looks at me eyes me up and down and says... 'then your a virgin right? yes I respond... she says well are you planning on staying that way?? cause it's going to be hard. Girls like me are just temptation ya know. hahahahhahaha oh man it was hilarious but yet sooooo sad to see that. A poor daughter of God like that. The great thing was it enabled me to share a scripture with them and then leave them the book of mormon afterwards committing them to live the law of chastity. OH CRAZINESS HAHAHHAHA

p.s.s. I got your first 2 packages and will prob get the 3rd tomorrow at transfer meeting haha thank you so much for everything. Elder hall wants me to thank you for the presents treats and everything as well :) we love you 

Give Gifts to God This Christmas!

Well all you SNOWBIRDS!!!!!! how is life?? haha Wow I can't believe how much it snowed back there in Utah. I see you all bundled up in layers of clothes and i just think to myself.. When was the last time i had a sweatshirt on?? hahahaha Florida is bomb!! I truly am so blessed to be here in this mission. I know i say that a lot but man. What could be better about it? 

I did get the package yal sent. I got the 12 days to christmas one. I loved the christmas tree haha that was impressive! I hung it up in our family room and everyone loves it! Only problem is all the missionaries check out my sisters and cousins... uh oh... :) 

This past week was awesome though! We went once again to the book of mormon musical. We are now going about 2-4 times a week. President came out and only said 8 of our companionships can go. I guess some of the newer missionaries were kinda having a hard time because its so rough. People laugh at you like crazy so president came out with a higher law! So elder hall and i are one of the 8 companionships that still go. No crazy crazy experiences from that this past week but we had a lot of fun. I think we passed our like 600 cards just from the 2 shows this past week that we went to. 

As far as the gators go?? God is sure teaching Elder Hall and I a few things. It's great though! The both of us feel like we've been working harder than ever before on our missions but yet the baptisms are all just sitting at the edge. We have so many people that are amazing and wanting to be baptized but just have one thing here or there that is keeping them from doing so. For example this past week we had 4 baptisms lined up that were really solid. Well Yakira and her kids didn't happen just because yakira wanted to wait a lil longer due to knowledge and feeling ready. Then Tony our other investigator planning on baptism came out and said the same thing sat night. haha it's crazy. WE HAVE LEARNED A LOT THOUGH. One thing that i have learned personally is being able to endure trials. NOT only endure them but endure them with a positive attitude! We found as we are diligent and obedient then everything that happens is for a reason. Gods reasoning. So this past week as we had that mindset, yes we went through a few more trials with no baptisms BUT also we remained positive. Because we did that God blessed us with 6 people in sacrament meeting on sunday. Yakira and her family who is once again preparing for this upcoming sunday. Nicole and her family. A different family we found this past week. Really solid and they are wanting to prepare for this sunday. And also a black girl named Deena. She is awesome! So here we are enduring difficulties but doing it with a good attitude, hence the reason why god is still blessing us. I love it. I love the lesson i have learned these past couple of weeks. Now we have a total of 7 investigators preparing for baptism this weekend. We are really excited and really looking to put more of our faith with efforts into the work this week. I will be sure to fill you all in with what goes down :)

Also Elder Hall and I are in the process of preparing Zone Training once again!! Yesterday we had a meeting with all the bishops in the stake and guess what..... WE GAVE A TRAINING!!!! ahhhhhh talk about a lil nervous haha It was really good though and i guess from what i heard the best meeting the bishops have had in a long time. It was more of like a counsel then a few people getting up and giving talks. It was awesome!! So we were really grateful for that! Now we are preparing Zone Training and even have to take a lil time outta our pday to prepare but HEY if it'll bring baptisms to the zone then we gotta sacrifice a bit. We are excited though we are going to be talking about faith. Then we will show our faith by everyone giving gifts to god this christmas. Then we will give a few gifts to different missionaries and have them open them. Those gifts will be how we will show our faith to god. For example one present a missionary will open is the AREA BOOK. We show faith to god and give god a present of faith as we fill out our area books nightly and also get all last names to people etc... We are really excited for the training but we have a lot of work to do for it!

Being a leader is amazing! I love working with all the different missionaries in the zone! I am grateful for you as my family and for helping me become a son of god! Keep moving forward with positive faith and i know god will bless you and protect you! Especially during this Christmas season!! Love you all!

ELDER OVARD

Week of Adventures at Its Best!

Oh what a BEAUTIFUL MORNING!!!!! hahhaha i woke up this morning basically singing this song and man oh man..... mom what have you done to me?? hahaha

WEEK OF ADVENTURES AT ITS BEST...... Here we go haha so first things first! The meeting with president last week was all about the book of mormon musical as you know! Well turns out president didn't give us too much heads up because the meeting with him was last monday and on tuesday night we were standing outside the theater passing out cards and stuff :) haha So that is basically how the meeting went. President told Us, the AP's, and 2 Sister Trainer Leader Companionships that one of our us needs to be there present at the theater for every show. Well how many shows are there?? There are 8 Shows a week. 2 being during the day saturday and sunday then the other 6 at nights. Well how long will the musical be here in ft. laud?? The Musical will be here for 4 weeks! WOW!!!!!!! hahaha So family week number 1 is in the books and boy do i have stories to tell!

So idk if you know much about the musical but anyways its been fun! We have been standing outside trying to jump start any little conversation with people about the church and what real mormons/mormon missionaries are like! Sometimes it's successful, other times its more depressing haha I only say that because you get people laughing at you, making fun of you, telling you how great of actors we were, yelling crazy things like mormons suck, etc.. you get the picture haha BUT I can be sure to say all of us missionaries that have gone thus far, we sure do love it! We love standing up for what we believe. It all actually brought me back to when i was 12 yrs old and choosing not to play ball on sunday! It brings back those feelings all over again and what amazing joy it is! So onto story time... First night we were walking around the theater looking for good places to be to catch people. Well as we were walking there was this family dressed up in really nice clothes sitting on the bench at the park across the street from the theater. We said hey yal going to the play? They said yes then we gave them a mormon.org card. They accepted and said well cool we are excited to watch your play tonight. Are you guys main actors? It is then we were confused... We said " NO we are the REAL Mormon Missionaries haha" (keep in mind this is the first contact we had at the show, we honestly didn't know what we were doing or really understand the purpose of us being there yet) Once they knew we were the real deal they began to ask all sorts of questions. Are you guys against the show? Do you have more than one wife? Why aren't you christians? Why is joseph smith like a god to yal? Why couldn't black people have the priesthood back in the day? etc...... Question after question. It was GREAT!!!!!! :) We testified and shared testimony with this family. Well in the 10 min we talked with them we cleared up a lot of their confusion, taught them the restoration and ALSO left them with a book of mormon as they were walking into the play! IT was great!! Another experience that wasn't as successful haha so One day we were there and it was packed. We found that in the parking garage we had a lot of people to work with. So there was this girl. She was prob 25 and had just left her boyfriend to go outside and smoke. So i said i'm giving this girl a card and telling her to look it up! So i did.... DENIED. I then began talking with other people then the girl was still out smoking, SO i went back to her. Are you sure we can't just give you a card. If you are interested in the play you will be really interested in the website. On and On I went insisting in giving this girl a card. WELL..... Turns out she looks at me and gives me a lil smirk, walks past me and as she's walking past me she gets up in my grill a little bit as if she's going to hug me or something. Then i began to worry a bit so i looked her straight in the eyes like WHAT YOU DOING GIRL? and thats when it hit...... SHE BLEW A BIG BIGGGGG PUFF OF SMOKE straight into my face, then walked into the musical :) BOY OH BOY I LOVE IT :)

Okay enough with the musical haha we were there 4 shows last week and now we are set up to do it about 2 times a week from now until christmas :)

Investigator time!!!!! So this past week. Elder Hall and I were GO GO GO! Straight up once again. I feel like i was just barely emailing yal! But anyways so we had little time in our area this past week but at the same time we were planning on 4 baptisms. Yakira and her family and also Coach Tony! Well about halfway through the week yakira told us she wasn't ready yet. She used doctrine and testified but she wasn't budging. She didn't want to be baptized this past week. So we then moved on to tony. (obviously still focusing on yakira and her fam too) Tony was solid. He was excited to be baptized and to show his kids a good example. He was 100% set on baptism and thats when well.... El diablo (satan) came in to play. Tony got called in to work sunday. It was an emergency. Tony needed the lil extra cash as well as he's preparing for christmas and so he said aight elders i'm getting baptized next week. :( DANG!!!! We tried helping him to not go into work and to stay and be baptized but nothing was working. So there we had it our 4 baptisms all fell through. We were so bummed out and sad. We worked so so hard and didn't it all but yet thats what we got in return. It was then we realized. GODS TIME NOT OURS!!! So we showed our faith. We made plans on how to get them baptized the following week. (this coming sunday) We were confident in these plans! Also right after we made the plans we began to see love come from our investigators. Yakira called us up and was like my boys guess what i made you some thanksgiving dinner can you stop by tonight and take it home? We said of course!!! :) She was thinking about us and that meant a lot to the both of us! Then On sunday we had planned to teach Yakira a little bit during gospel principles. (the teacher is bad haha real bad) So we took her in a room and taught her some of the commandments but not only that she had some time to vent to us. She is struggling and needs helping finding an apartment still. She was the one evicted from her house 2 weeks ago. She's living with her aunt but needs to leave. We told her that as she commits to god to be baptized then god will show her the way and show her what place she should look for an apartment. We used the tree of life picture to help her understand. We said that rod is the spirit. The spirit that will lead you to your new house. The spirit that you will receive after your baptism next sunday. So yakira will you and your boys prepare to be baptized next sunday? She paused, pause, paused..... Then looked us straight in the eyes as she was crying and said YES we will. I know it's right. I know I need to :)

Family that right there is why i am on a mission. God KNOWS. He does. He was teaching elder Hall and I something this past week and that was to trust in him and his timing!! We did that and most importantly we didn't give up. We acted even when times were hard. If we expected Yakira to act when her life is hard right now then we ourselves best be doing the same :)

I love you all and keep pressing forward. Endure to the end. The light is there and the end of the tunnel is near!! Love you and PEACE!!

Love, ELDER OVARD 

I am loving Life!

Que tal con mi FAMILIA!!!!

Sorry i have to practice the spanish every chance i get now ;) haha How is the family doing?? Man i tell you what I am doing AMAZING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Except for a few things are making me really sad. One of them being sister rogers. :( I actually found out a few days ago. Luckily sister Daines is in my zone and i talk with her a lot. She is one of the sister trainer leaders and us as zone leaders have to work with them so, one day she brought up sister rogers and said elder ovard you and her are good friends i think you deserve to know... So she told me that sister rogers was headed home. She said she had bad anxiety and stuff and it's really sad. BUT life goes on and we will be praying for her hoping that she can make it back out!

Onto the good exciting news now :) Elder Hall and I are loving life!!! He's such a stud haha we have so much fun. Like i say each week, we are the exact same person! A couple times this week we had opportunities to BALL up some black homies in the skreet!! They were so funny! Of course we always play with a little bribery of some sort. The deal was if they lost they had to come to church. If we lost then we had to buy them a little ceasars pizza. Dont worry we knew we were going to win ;) haha jk It was so much fun though! Funny story... I was actually on an exchange one time with another missionary and some kids were out playing football. So while i was backing this missionary up in the car i said hey kids throw me the ball. I threw them a pass and they said hey you should be our quarterback. SOOOO i told the missionary to pull over and park again. He did. We played football for 10 min with the kids then we look over and the mom walks outside and was like hey white boys come here. Well long story short the mom had been watching us play football with the kids and she said i love yal for that but not only that i know you represent christ because you aint scared of us black people and you know we be family in gods eyes. Well family guess what. This family was baptized 3 weeks later :) So the whole football game worked but not only that converted a family of god back to his gospel!! It was soooo cool :)

Okay So in our own personal area in hollywood south this past week we saw some miracles! One family that we are working with right now is a family of 4. Single mother that has 2 boys and one girl. Her name is yakira. Boys names are ayden, julian and the little girl anaiah. (im naming my future daughter that by the way... a-ny-a) Anyways we love this family! They are amazing! We actually found them knocking doors. Well some sister missionaries did they passed them to us as a referral but anyways. Yakira as a single mother works super hard! She has a job but it doesn't pay too well. Ever since we met her, her biggest desire and need from god is a better job. So we been helping her. We teach her about christ, baptism, all that good stuff. She loves it. She is progressing so much. It took her awhile to gain our trust but now she opens up to us and its awesome! It's crazy how hard satan is working on her though. 2 days after yakira and her family came to church for the first time (last week) the landlord of yakiras apt. evicted her. The landlord went into her place while she wasn't home and destroyed all her furniture, beds, desks, everything. He threw all her stuff outside on the front lawn. Then next thing you know before she gets home from work that day it rains. So bye bye to all her stuff that was in her house. It was so sad. We actually found out that all of this happened because we went to see her that night and there was all her stuff outside on the lawn. We knocked on her door and no anwser. We then though it might have been her stuff. So we asked the neighbor and sure enough it was her stuff. We called her and she said she was living with her aunt until she could find a new place to live. She was so positive and happy as we talked. It was unreal. So amazing to see her still positive and loving towards not only us but her kids. Well long story short her and her landlord didn't get along well and she was planning on leaving anyways. She has money for a new apt but she just needs to find a place. So we have been out looking trying to help her find something. She is awesome though we love her. Turns out elder Hall and I actually had her and the kids over to the church this past week. 2 days after they got evicted. We had them over just to play bball with the kids and to help relieve a little stress from yakira. So we went and bought them a little ceasars pizza as well that way she didn't have to worry about dinner for the night. We felt inspired to do all this for them and what an memorable experience we had!! It was so much fun just being able to help them! Afterwards we gave them a chapel tour and showed them the baptism font and what not! They loved it and now yakira and the boys are preparing for baptism this sunday! They came to church yesterday and loved it so much! God is good and we are trusting in him to provide for them!

This past week we also met a guy named coach tony!!! haha he is legit! He coaches like a kids travel league basketball team. He has 2 sons. One being baptismal age :) Well Coach Tony is the man. He has crazy desires to learn about god and i love it. He is currently progressing and ready to be baptized this sunday as well. He came to church yesterday and loved it! Him and his boys are so funny! He was asking us last night how he can get the scriptures and all that on his phone haha so we download the gospel library app for him and how he is listening to it at work and stuff :) FUN STUFF!! I'll keep you updated with him!!

Also really cool experience! So as i mentioned when i first got here to the area our zone was struggling. Elder hall and i knew we had a lot of work to do. We have really been putting in our efforts to change the zone and let me tell you how amazing it is to see the progression happen! Like i said.. God is good!!!! This past week as a zone we had 7 baptisms. Keep in mind we had 0 and 3 like the two weeks before that. So this past week we had a goal to get 50 people in sacrament meeting! A goal that has never been accomplished here in the ft laud zone. Nor has anything or anyone came close to accomplishing. The past few weeks we had gotten like 20 and 24 people to church as a zone. WELL family guess what... This past week our zone had 38 people to church and now they are all preparing to be baptized!!!!!!!! It was so awesome to see! I love it! Helping other missionaries succeed is just the best! 

Well family that is the week here in FT LAUD! Being Zone Leader has really changed my life and i love it! It's amazing the wonderful opportunites that come our way. For example some sisters in the zone were struggling with different things this past week and Elder Hall and I got called up for a preisthood blessing. It was so cool. Also tonight we have a special meeting with president anderson and the aps to talk about the book of mormon play that is going to be happening here in ft laud this week or next. So we don't know what president will want us to do with that but we'll see. Have you guys heard much about that play? I'm sure you have it's horrible. We are hoping to go there to the theater its at and hand out real book of mormons and to share our testimonies with the people that way they know the TRUTH about us as missionaries!!\

Anyways love you all and keep pushing forward. That way we may push pass the tribulations and workers of satan.... and we will eventually end up in the sacred grove!! The sacred grove that brought the truth the spirit and the purpose of life to each of us today! Love you bye!!

Hollywood!

HOW IT GO IN ST GEEZY????

haha I tell you what family! What a change it's been here in the good old Hollywood Ward in Ft. Lauderdale Florida!!! I love it! I be talkin like a black boy now though! I am working with so many blacks right now and they be teaching me good stuff! haha jk. It was a crazy week to say the least. Elder Hall and I have been go go go and man I love it! I don't like how much faster the time flies by though. I can't work with that. haha

The week all started preparing Zone Training! Like i mentioned we have the biggest zone in the mission and so i was a little nervous to go stand in front of them for 2 hours and teach them about leaving commitments. haha We have 16 companionships in the zone and lets just say a little more than half of them are all sisters. IDK but there are a lot of sisters here in ft  lauderdale. It makes it fun for us haha The sisters are funny and are always seeking help. It opens up opportunities for Elder Hall and I to teach them and encourage them to do certain things so that god will eventually bless them!~ It truly is a blessing to be serving as a zone leader. I love it. Yes busy days and long nights but it's so worth it! Okay so back to the Zone training!! Elder Hall and I after hours of planning finally got it all ready and it was show time! We presented an amazing training and by the end of it our missionaries were 1. EXCITED 2. MOTIVATED 3. PUMPED UP.

We talked a lot about faith, hope and just our divine potential as a zone. A big focus was on finding and also because able to leave commitments then have members call and follow-up with those commitments! It was a really simple easy basic training that everyone of the missionaries was able to internalize for themselves. That is what we love about it! We are all on board and going forward with one vision in mind.... BAPTIZE :) 

The next big thing in the week was exchanges! I went on an exchange with 1 DL and also an AP this week!  My exchange with the DL was by far a highlight of my week. One reason being is this was an exchange with a missionary that goes home in 5 weeks. His desires to work are pretty low and he is almost giving up because he hasn't had much success for 2-3 transfers. SOOO going into the exchange i wanted to focus it on him. His strengths the things he does well, that way by the time we are done he is really to go and help the other missionaries in his district. Well that what i did. I focused on his strengths, i was seeking advice from him just as i was granting advice. One thing though that i'll never forget is this missionary "Elder Burt, saying, Elder Ovard Thank you so much for the exchange today. It was the best exchanged i've been on my entire mission. You were seeking help from me. Not only telling me what to do, but you were wanting to learn as well. And you are the ZL you are not even supposed to listen to me for advice." :) it was a miracle! God helped me to know exactly what this missionary needed. I was grateful for him and for the miracles god helped us to see that day! We found families that they are now helping prepare for baptism!

As far as investigators go :) Elder Hall and I been working HARD man! We found a lot of new investigators this week. When are got here we were running a lil low so we stepped it up this week. We found like 3 different families. A total of 14 ni for the week! It was awesome haha One of the families in which came to church on sunday! Yakira, Aden, Julian and Anaiah. (Anaiah is a girl and the cutest thing ever... i'm naming my future baby girl after her. #cutename  #cutebabygirl) Anyways haha they all came to church and are preparing to get baptized. Yakira is the mother and she is kinda struggling financially right now. Her landlord is wanting to kick her out of her house because he wants to up the rent on her. She can't pay anymore than she already is. So we are helping her to find a different apartment. One that she can afford and enjoy. A few people from church own apartment buildings so we'll see what we can do. She along with her family are going to get baptized this sunday though! We are excited. We made the plans and are ready for god to work through us to help us get this miracle!!!

A member here named Jon Torsok remembers wes hall haha when he served here years ago!!!! If you can ask wes about it haha he's a funny dude!! The hollywood ward is amazing! I love it. People from all over and what a joy and blessing it is to be here at this point in my mission! I love our savior jesus christ and am grateful for him. I'm grateful to be serving him during this thanksgiving season!!

p.s. it doesn't feel like winter here haha also mom no i don't have a particular picture. You can just choose. I'll prob make my own christmas card again this year as well. Elder Hall and i will have fun with it!! 

P.S.S. funny story!!!! So when i was back in homestead Elder Lando Fausett sent me an email and said bro you gotta write this girl she is super cute haha So i did. I sent her a short little email a few weeks ago and got a long letter in return ;) jk haha but anyways so i met this girl through lando back while i was in homestead. This girl goes to the U of U and she seems cool. BUTTT CRAZY THING is that i was writing her talking to her and turns out her parents grew up here in florida!! I got talking a little more and she's like hmmm how awesome would it be if you converted my grandma. She is still living there in florida. I'm like what??? where? She said HOLLYWOOD. (remember this was before transfers back when i was in homestead.) So i told her well transfers are coming up and who knows maybe i'll be transferred to Hollywood. hahhaha not really thinking that i would be since it's an english area. WELL family here i am now in hollywood and here i am holding in my hand the email with the address of this girls grandma on it!!! hahaha I'm goin to baptize her! She is hard core catholic it sounds like but hey... Nothing Elder Hall and I and God can't handle :) I'll let you know how it goes! Love you all and may peace be with thy soul and you go about your week :)

Love Elder Ovard

Omer and Gema are Baptized. Elder Ovard is leaving Homestead!

Family!!!!!

 

ELDER MILLETT..... STAYS!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ELDER OVARD....... TRANSFERS!!!!!!!!! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO hahahhahaha well my loved ones! It's over. My run here in the homestead is coming to an end. I can't believe it. I am actually really sad to leave. Even though everyone says i'm going zone leader and all the open zone leader spots are with some of my favortie missionaries... but man i just don't want to leave everything behind here in homestead haha for example yesterday i actually began going around and saying bye to my recent converts. That is when i truly did realize how much they actually loved me and care for me. Everyone of them began to cry. They would cry and cry and all i could do was try and lift them up. I couldn't help but cry a little bit with them haha By the time time we left them though they were okay. I went around and gave them all framed pictures of their baptisms. Wal-mart allows me to do it without spending too much money haha so sorry for using my card but it was worth it. One recent convert i want to tell you about is Dilia. Idk if you remember her. She's the old old cuban lady. Little and has curly hair haha well okay so last night we stop by to see her.. We talked and talked and then i gave her the picture! She is soooooooooo happy! Like i have never seen a lady so happy!  Telling her at that moment that i had to leave was obviously not the smartest of times to tell her but it had to be done. So we waited a while longer and let her excitement calm a little then i said.... "hna me voy el miercoles. dios me ha llamado a servir en otro lugar." So i told her god has called me to serve in a different area and that i would be leaving wednesday. She then broke down and cried. She had tears rushing down her cheeks. She said no no please don't go. I eventually helped her understand that i didn't have a choice and that the new area is where god wants me to be. She then looked me straight in the eyes and said Elder ovard..."lots of people think i am crazy. They tell me i'm stupid. I have wanted to commit suicide and kill myself but i haven't.. i haven't because of the two of you. You two missionaries are my grandsons and each time i'm with you i'm happy. i want to live my life when im with you. My husband, he hates me. He pulled a gun on me yesterday and theres nothing i can do about it because i tell the cops and they just tell me i'm crazy. BUT the two of you. You missionaries understand me. You love me and make me happy..." As she is crying and crying and then she says "Elder Ovard i want you at my funeral. I want you there standing at my casket as they are putting me in the ground. When i go down i want you to give me a kiss on the cheek and tell me that you'll see me soon. I'll be waiting for you in heaven" she says I couldn't do anything but cry after that point. I couldn't believe how much we as well as the gospel and god had changed her life. She isn't suicidal.. She does love her life. I told her i'd write her and be back to see her and when we left she was okay but she truly did want us there at her funeral. I love her so much and that was extremely hard for me to tell her bye like that but it was done. She is one that just loves to be loved and the new missionary and elder millett will do a great job with that!

 

Okay on to the HAPPY news hahaha SOOOOO Guess what???? We had 2 baptisms this week!!!!! haha It was AWESOME! Margaritas brother and sister in law got married this past weekend. Gema and Omar!! Ones that we have been working with and they are the ones i told you about last week :) They did get baptized though and what a service it was. We got a new ward mission leader and his name is Ben Stancliff and WOW he's a stud. He planned an awesome service where the spirit was able to acompany. Gema and Omar loved it. They said that they hadn't ever really felt that way before in their entire lives. Unfortunately i wont be here to watch them get confirmed but i'm excited for them and their decision to be baptized. That will make another amazing solid strong family in the church! I was honored to be asked by omar to baptize him. Elder millett baptized Gema! They are awesome! They feed us food from nicaragua like everytime we go over there. Tonight we are going to say bye to them and we got them a picture frame with 2 picture spots so we did one of margaritas baptize and another with Gema and Omars. It is super special and i'm excited to give it to them! I love giving and seeing the happy expressions on the faces of others. Just like i got a happy expression when i received that halloween package from my beautiful family :) I'll send you a picture though of their baptism :)

 

Also ANOTHER EXCITING NOTE..... SOOO as i mentioned earlier there is a rumor on the block that i am headed Zone Leader. Will I?? I don't know but the exciting note is that there is a chance that I could be companions with ELDER WEBB! haha how awesome would that be?? he went zone leader last transfer so it's a possiblity. I'm excited though to see where god wants me to go. Also Elder Anthony! Can you believe its already here?? WOW i'm excited to see him tomorrow! I know a few missionaries that are training and they are all amazing so we'll see if Elder Anthony goes to one of them :) I'll keep you updated with him though! I'll see him tomorrow at transfer meeting!

 

Well i better get going! Leaving and area is always adventureous haha idk if i ever told you how before i left riverside how i had a couple girls in the ward express their love to me.... Well yes that happened if i didn't tell you. BUT i thought it was going to stop there. I thought wow okay those are just some crazy latin girls and that wont happen again. WELL guess what..... This past week i have had a few different girls here in the homestead ward express their love to me. WHAT THE HECK???? like don't they understand they can't do that??? It's horribly awkward!!!!! There is this family here and there are 4 girls.... Turns out all of them for some reason or not like me. They range from ages 15-20 ahhhhhhhhhhh haha it's so weird. Why can't the girls back home be like this haha i guess what they say is true.... ALL girls look for the missionaries and they look even harder for them after they've returned home haha

 

Love you All have a great week

 

ELDER OVARD

Omer & Gema want to be Baptized!

FAMILIA!!!!!

 

QUE VOLA!!!  wow what a week! I am so so jealous for all the success with the hunts!!! DANG haha what happened? Since when could people go and shoot a nice decent looking buck in the general Utah deer hunt?? Especially to have multiple bucks killed in the gubler family. I tell you what having all these missionaires out is even blessing the family with big bucks huh haha jk I was happy to see all that fun going down this past week for you guys! For me it was an amazing week as well :) YESSSSSS

 

As you all know teresa was planned to get baptized. Well......... SHE DID AND IT WAS AMAZING :) :) I love her soooooo much. Her baptism service was soooo spiritual. It was sad because no one from the ward showed up. I don't know if you all remember but our bishop is kinda crazy here sometimes and a while back we got after him a little bit for doing saturday baptisms instead of sunday. Saturdays are just too hard because no members come. Anyways thats exactly what happened for teresas baptism. No one came and so it was super sad but still amazing. She asked me to baptize her and i felt honored!!! She then said she wanted me to confirm her haha so i did that as well on sunday. IN SPANISH IN FRONT OF THE ENTIRE WARD AHHHHHHH haha i was kinda scared but not really! I'm excited for her though and her family! TEMPLE here they come! Anyways it was funny sunday morning because in ward council bishop changed baptisms to sunday from now on. It was so weird but i'm excited about it. I don't feel bad for getting after him about it anymore. Sunday baptisms though will be so much better because the ward will be SOO much more involved.

 

As far as Elder Millett goes haha it's been rough. His health has been keeping us from accomplishing a lot. I know that god put me with him though to strengthen my patience and care for my companions. I love him i really do. He feels like a failure missionary just with all the health problems he's had. We are working on getting him better though. He feels like the success we are having is all because of me. I work a lot on the phone and just doing my best to set solid apts up with members and stuff. It works out. I do my best though to help him understand that the success is coming from the hard work we give god when we DO get out of the house. He will understand. I have another week to help him. He's amazing though.

 

We had another amazing experience this past week. So.... Do you remember Margarita?? The one that we baptized like 3 weeks ago. She was a doctor in nicaragua? Well guess what. We have been teaching her brother and sister in law. Their names are Gema and Omar. They have a 10 month old baby and i can't help but think of lil baby miles haha anyways well this week we taught Gema and Omar a lot. They were basically all 4 of our lessons haha. Gema and Omar really love the church. They have been going with us for a good 3 weeks now and just love it. They were the ones that wanted me to tell you as my parents thanks for raising me so right. They want to raise mateo, their little boy just like we were raised. They love the church and the standards that it has. Well we were having a hard time getting them to keep commitments and because of that they were not receiving a testimony and also they were not accepting a date. We knew that it was only through the commitments that they were going to receive their anwser. SOOOOO we went one night and kinda threw down a little bit. We had to help them understand the importance of these commitments. So one commitment that we left that we were really pushing them to keep was to watch the restoration video. It was awesome though because as we were explaining how the restoration video would help them, Margarita jumps in and bares SOLID testimony of Joseph smith and she said that the movie basically converted her and thatts when she knew without a doubt that she should be baptized. Margarita told them about after Joseph Smith translates the b of m and takes it to his dad, his dad begins to read it and search his anwser from god to know if the book is true. Then once he received that anwser the next thing he did was BAPTISM. Margarita told Omar and Gema that that is what converted her. SOOOO we left them with that commitments. A few days later we went back and guess what!!!!!!!!!!!????????? Margarita was like Elders guess what..... hahhaa we were like what? she said Omar and Gema have an anwser for you :) :) we began to get excited. we said okay what is the anwser?? Omar and Gema look at us.. SMILE... and say well we watched the videos (not only did they watch the restoration but they watched another we left before that too) we really really liked the videos. Just as margarita mentioned we loved the part when josephs dad was baptized. That part is really spiritual and it motivated us and helped us to feel the spirit. Elder Ovard and Millett we want to be baptized!!!!!! WAIT WHAT???? our jaws dropped???? You want to do what????? hahaha it caught us off guard soooo bad. We were soooo excited though. We then began telling them how excited we were and how it would be something that will bless them and bless mateo as he grows up. We felt so so blessed and we were so honored to have been the missionaries to help these souls receive an anwser to their prayers!! We cried as usual haha it just was amazing. I love this work i love this gospel I love gods blessings that come from hard work :)

 

I love you all have an amazing week and keep doing whats right! God is with us and will push us through!

 

p.s. mom no the bugs don't bite me haha at all! They are nice to missionaries :) love you all

 

ELDER OVARD

Elder Ovard Can Turn Pages!

FAMILIA,

 

Well here it is the moment everyones been waiting for!!!! haha ELDER OAKS!!!!!!!!!

It was amazing to say the least. After waking up at 5 in the morming and driving for an hour or so we made it up there and were ready to listen and be inspired by the words of a living apostle of god. It was such a great experience! But lets just start out by getting a good laugh out of the all of you... So LUCKY ELDER OVARD had the priviledge of being able to flip the pages for the pianist during the special musical number played for elder oaks... WAIT SAY WHAT???? Elder Ovard can't read music. WOW i was a trip. Elder Millett played the piano for this musical number and i didn't know how in the world to follow the song he was playing. It was abide with me but like a fast FAST paste mode. I was so so scared all week. We would go to church and practice and i just didn't know what to do. I literally almost searched somone else to do it. All it was, was 2 pages. I would have to turn them when the time was right but yet there would be an apostel of god watching and also close to 2 hundred missionaries.... YIKES!!!! I was soooo nervous. Like i didn't know what to do. 100 times worse than pitching in a championship or having to drive in the winning run with only one out remaining in the ball game. FLIPPING 2 PAGES for all those people was sooooo much more stressful!! BUT I DID IT!!!! Was I proud or what! Some people say i'm humble but lets just say after i successfully flipped those pages there was no no NO humility involved hahaha jk It was fun though!!!

 Elder Oaks is the MAN! I learned so much from him. He talked about the importance of a testimony and how that testimony is what shapes an investigators/New converts life in the church. Another thing i loved that he talked about was the importance of TEACHING AND BAPTIZING in order to get people to the temple. Sometimes as missionaries we forget about the temple part. We are just so focused on our purpose which is to baptize that the temple part kinda goes unnoticed. Well Elder Oaks helped us notice it. Our purpose as missionaries is to GET PEOPLE TO THE TEMPLE.... and in order to do that you have to be BAPTIZED!!! So it was really an eye opener for us as missionaries but something that we desperately needed to hear. It was awesome!

 

Also guess what!!!! remember Novelty? Way back when?? So this passed week we were going to see him but at the same time our goal and game plan was to set his wife.. Teresa with a baptism date! So we truly didn't know how to go about it. We've tried setting teresa with a baptism date for months now. She goes to church every sunday with novelty and their daughter. They are basically all members. Like their so amazing we will have investigators at church and i'll say ok well give us a few minutes and we will take you to class... THEN next thing i know teresa runs up grabs their hand and says i will take them for you elders no worries! haha we are like what??? why can't the members be like that haha Novelty and Teresa are the best i love them so much. So back to this lesson.. We go in there and she begins talking about church on sunday and how in class they talked about the family. She loves the family. They talked about more or less the plan of salvation and how after this life we will be able to live with our families for eternity. She loved it. She just was so happy in the lesson, we could tell. So that was basically going to be our spring board for the lesson we were going to teach. We were going to bring up that spirit she felt in class and then follow the spirit to know how to set her with a date. Well as we talked with her about this lesson on sunday she said oh elders guess what. After that lesson on sunday i came home and was feeled with the spirit. I was happy. I felt peaceful. It was a good day. Well then come to find out elders that night my son got in a Car accident. Both air bags went off and he totalled his car. BUT guess what... He walked out of that accident with just a lil scratch on his cheek. He was fine perfectly fine. Then she asked, Elders i feel grateful and happy for god watching over and protecting my family... HOW CAN I GIVE BACK TO HIM? WHAT CAN I DO TO SHOW HIM THANKS? hahaha immediately the light bulb clicked in my head. I looked at her and said Teresa God loves you. He loves your family. The one thing that You can do and that GOD WANTS you to do is to follow that example he put before you and to be baptized!!!!!!!!!! Right as i said that she said okay.... Your right i need to do that, its time. So she accepted a date for this saturday. The 26th of Oct!!! I'm so so so excited for her and i can't believe how great god is for giving me this opportunity to watch her walk into that baptismal font and make this covenant with god!! It's going to be awesome!! Not only that though God set everything up! He performed every little miracle there was to help Teresa receive this anwser about baptism!! I love God I love Teresa I love the MISSION FIELD. I love you all family and i look forward to writing you next week about this amazing baptism!

 

Also Margarita... She lives with her brother and sista in law. We have been working a lot with them and the've been to church 3 times now. Love it everytime and they wanted me to tell YOU my parents thanks for everything. They said you guys are like the best parents in the world because i am in the right path. The path in which god has put before us to be happy. So thank you mom and dad!!! Your helping me for 18 years is going to help a few investigators now be baptized. Through examples, the gospel, prayer and the spirit!!

 

Love you all and have an amazing week! Keep doing work on the mountain!! Peace!! Until next week my loved ones!

 

Elder Ovard

Kenneth and Margarite were both baptized!

Coach wad emailed me haha i loved hearing from him! Also let me know if theres anything i can do for you all! Love you! OH and p.s. I forgot to tell you about a funny story haha so Margarita had us over for dinner and the A.P. was on an exchange with us. The food was awesome but the drink there is a story behind haha so this was before we taught her the word of wisdom. What happened was It was one of the Arizona drinks. Lots of them have tea in them. So the A.p. and I looked over at the Arizona can and sure enough the one she gave us had tea in it. So the A.p. and i didn't say anything to margarita. We just figure we wouldn't drink it. Then 5 min later we look over and Elder Millett is just chugging it down hahahha chug chug chug..... Eventually the a.p. and i just start crackin up a bit. We didn't know what to do. We couldn't offend Margarita. She offered us coffee before and we had to deny her and it made her feel bad. So we watched Elder millett drink a big glass of green tea hahahahahha it was funny. We told him after and he had no idea. He was a little upset but then again we all laughed it off!!!!!!!!!!!!!! EXCLAMATION POINT hahahahha peace

What is up Family!!!!!!!!

 

What an amazing amazing week huh! I love General Conference! Especially as a missionary haha I tell ya what it's like CHRISTMAS in the mission. A time to sit back and relax and enjoy the show haha Honestly thats how i felt this past weekend! At the same time though God blessed us tremendously! Elder Millett and I started off the week solid. We worked as hard as we could with all the people that came to church last week. If you remember right last week we had 8 that came to church. Well one of them i think i told you about. His name was Kenneth. Kenneth is a thug haha g unit to the max!! He is a stud though. I love him. We actually met him about 3 weeks ago as we were harvesting and knocking doors. Kenneth i knocked in to on an exchange. From day one he was always talking about his past. What he had done, Where he had been, ETC.. It was crazy. We always enjoyed it though. Lots of the stuff he went through, he regretted. He didn't like the person that he used to be. His actions and choices eventually led him to jail. We love kenneth and everyday we went over to see him our hearts were filled by the spirit. His desire to repent and be forgive was off the charts. We taught him a lot about repentance and the power of the atonement. It was hard teaching him at the same time because he cant read to well and so it takes him some time to understand things. And as we learn from PMG doctrine (or what were teaching) understood changes behavior. So us as missionaries our goal was to help him understand truly the importance of repentance and the atonement. WELL sure enough as he understood he changed. He became a better man and GUESS WHAT he was baptized on sunday!!! YEAH YEAH YEAH haha he's a stud.  We love him. God Loves him. God loves me and i thank him for the blessing i had to be his guide in his conversion.

Now moving on to Margarita!!!! She was amazing. Margarita is also another lady that i knocked into with another missionary. She was so prepared and accepted baptism there at her door after we said a prayer with her. BUT the miracle is that I said this prayer with her like 2 months ago. For a month or so I was always going to follow up with her and trying to stop by to see her and teach her. It was nearly impossible to get in contact with her. We didn't know what was up. Well eventually we got in contact with her. We taught her for a week or so then guess what.... she disappeared again. haha We didn't know what to do. We were so close to dropping her because one, we couldn't get in contact and two, she hadn't kept her commitment of church for like 2 weeks. So we were planning on dropping her but we decided to put forth our faith and stop by her house one more time! As we did she was home!!! She let us right in and began telling us all about Joseph Smith. She told us the story of moroni appearing to josephs room and telling him about the book of mormon. She went on and on about joseph smith. We were so so confused. It had been a long time since we'd seen her and here she was telling the story of joseph smith finding the book of mormon better then i could tell it!!!! haha it was incredible!! Come to find out, the last time we were there teaching her we left the commitment to read the testiomony of the prophet joseph smith with her. She kept her commitment and read it. Then we find out she was a doctor in nicaragua where she is from. She is a doctor. Super smart and intelligent. She is awesome!! She as well after that lesson changed completely. She came to church twice and then conference this past weekend. She ALSO was baptized on sunday!! Funny story though. Her name comes from russia for some reason and so it's like 5 words long. WELL turns out i couldn't remember her names at all so she had to say her name then i repeated it as i baptized her hahaha ALL IN SPANISH as well. oh boy it was funny haha certainly something that brought some laughter as well as spirit:)

Kenneth and Margarita both were baptized and boy it was awesome. An amazing baptism service inbetween conference sessions haha. I will never forget that! God is good and i love him and all he has done for me! I've learned so much since being here in the mission. MOM i just knew you were going to love the EXLAMATION POINT talk haha i thought of you during that one! All the talks were super good and I learned a lot. I hope all of you did as well! Love you keep up the good work with everything. Miles looks like he is doing great as well. I love him already and just can't wait to hold him. It'll come fast though. Too fast is the problem. I can't believe it's already the 7th of october. HUNTING SEASON thats what i'm talking about! DAD start sending the pictures haha hopefully you can get a nice beautiful pic of you with some big curves huh!! haha love you all peace!!!