Elder Kopichke's Mini Mission Conference

Boy oh Boy!!!! COMO PASA LA VIDA????

Another week bites the dust and the miracles of god continue!! I love being a missionary soooo much! It's the best thing on earth! Everyday just to wake up and go. GO GO GO!!!! What better calling or blessing could i ever ask for in my life! Often times i ask myself 'Why me Father? Of all the amazing people in the world why do you choose to bless me so much god?' It's a question that has been on my mind a lot lately and a question that i have been studying and pondering a lot about! Ultimately my thoughts and studies have all led me back to this lil saying "When you give you receive, when you receive you DONT STOP giving...." It may be a lil confusing on paper but to me in my crazy mind it makes perfect sense! I love the mercy of god. The goodness of god. He wants us to be happy. He wants us to succeed. He wants to give us the blessings. SOOO why not accept these things? If god wants us to be happy then we must put it into the equation. (We must give to receive) So if we want to accept the blessing of happiness from god then we must FIRST help others to be happy. Make others day brighter. Help them to smile. Help them to enjoy being a child of god. When we do this then we Receive the blessing of Happiness from god. We accept this gift from him. Then REMEMBER REMEMBER once we have received this gift we must continually give it... if we don't we WILL lose it! Dont stop the service. Don't stop being as our Savior Jesus Christ!!

Okay okay sorry for the tangent haha I loved that though and i loved the inspiration god was able to give me as i prayed studied and pondered on these questions? 'Why me father?

This past week here in HOLLYWOOD was beautiful!!!! God was sooooo good to us! We were able to unite more of gods families together through the waters of baptism!! Back when i was with Elder Hall we baptized Nichole (mom) and Jamilla (cousin). For weeks and weeks we were working with the rest of their family. Specifically Nicholes kids Maleek (15) and Kiera (22)! They both are amazing with the greatest intentions on the face of the planet. Kiera really wants to be baptized but she works every sunday and is still fighting with her boss to get it changed haha Maleek was always just waiting for her sister to get work off so she could come with us all to church. Well weeks went by and maleek never came. Weeks and weeks. We continued to work with this family helping them and pushing them to trust in god. Well Maleek finally came to church. He met some friends and now he plays ball and stuff with them on tuesday nights. Well a week later he was baptized (yesterday)!!!!!!!!!!!!!! His baptism was awesome! He told us he felt soooo good and pure. He always just wanted to be pure so that he could always be with god. He told us his baptism was greater then he had expected. Afterwards he said... "Dang my sis needs this" haha :) What a blessing and a miracles it was to see him finally go out of his comfort zone and come to church without his sister. Now GOD has allowed us to baptized 3 of these members in the family and now we are just working towards kiera and helping her to take this step as well :) With god all things are possible and it WILL happen :)

So i'm not sure if i told you all yet but Elder Kopichke of the seventy is coming to tour our mission this week. We are having like a mini mission conference haha half of the mission will gather together with him one day for a conference and the other half of the mission the next day. I am extremely excited. The other day i received a phone call from president though. President Anderson said "Elder Ovard i have been praying a lot and really thinking of people that could give talks/testimonies during our mini mission conferences with Elder Kopichke. Your name Elder Ovard keeps coming to my mind and so i would like for you to give a testimony of a miracle or a mission experience that has changed your life. Will you do that for me in our conference?" AHHHHHHHHHHH NOOOOOOOOO i thought hahahahhaha i willingly without hesitation accepted. As i look forward to this opportunity i give thanks to god. I really do. I'm not much of a public speaker however it has gotten better since being in the mission field haha but it should be fun!! 

 

Also as far as the temple goes :) YEAHHHHH so we all in our entire mission we be involved with it from what i've heard. President says something like this shouldn't pass without letting every missionary be a part of it! I'm excited. I have been praying and hoping i just stay here in the Ft. Laud Zone though for one more transfer after this one. The missionaries here in the Ft Laud Zone will probably be involved with the temple A LOT! Sooo i'm hoping i will get to stay here!! It would be so much fun! The mission is sooo excited about the temple though. We all talk with our investigators and recent converts about it. There is projected to be like 100,000 people if not more walking through the temple during that time :) SOOO EXCITING! 

 

Well I love you all! God is real and he loves each and every ONE of us!

 

Love ELDER OVARD

Praying for my family!

FAMILY FAMILY FAMILY!!!!!

Well the spirit is real and the spirit is strong even today :) You will not believe the wonderful experience that just happened to me!! So this past week i had been praying and praying for dad. That he might be able to score that job with SWIG! I caught myself evening praying too much for it haha It was like every prayer i would include it in there just because i want dad to be surrounded by good people while he works! WELL.... Today i got onto my email.. i immediately opened up dads email. I read and read and BAMMMM there it was. Dad says "I guess the big news for me is that I am starting a new job tomorrow!" God had given me the miracle i had been asking for! Immediately as i read i began to cry a little bit. I was tearing up a bit with joy in my heart. A joy that only comes from the goodness of god. A joy that caused me to feel LOVED by my heavenly father. I then offered up a prayer of gratitude, thanking god for the blessing he had bestowed upon me and my father. I then in my prayer stated... "God thank thee, if thou needest anything of me, please put opportunities in my path so that i can give thee thanks!" 

Family thats when something AMAZING happened. Literally 2 min after i prayed, i received a phone call. From a sister in the ward that called as she cried telling me that her son was in the ER and they were waiting on test results and she was wondering if we could give her son a blessing that everything will be okay. I then asked okay when would you like us to come? She said NOW!! Well, as each of you know today is our pday- we were in the middle of emailing and soooo SOOOO very badly i just wanted to tell her okay we will be there in an hour or two after were done emailing.. but then i realized. I realized that, the thought of procrastinating and waiting did not come from god. I realized that was the adversary convincing me that my personal desires and wants, were more important then using the power of the priesthood and the power of service! Then immediately the spirit took me back to my prayer.. The words that i had stated... "God thank thee, if thou needest of me, please put opportunities in my path so that i can give thee thanks!" Once the spirit humbled me and reminded me of the promise i had just made with god, immediately without hesitation i told this sister in our ward. Okay we will be there in 5 minutes, and off we went! 

Well family as i get back here to the computer now. Only 30 minutes later, It causes me to ponder and reflect on the experience i just had. Ponder and reflect on the power of god. The power of prayer. The power of asking. The power of Service. I'm sooooo very grateful to see these little miracles happening in my life. To see god granting me DIRECT blessings for the effort i am giving! Family i want to invite each of you this week to look for opportunities to give thanks and give service to others. Pray for these opportunities and I promise you god WILL put them in your path just as he did in mine!!!

Well what a way to start out a weekly email huh!! haha Okay fam how is life??  Mine is going soooooooo great!!!! Time is still cruising by but other then that it's going good. So as you all know transfers were this past week. My new companions name is ELDER TESCH. He is from Roy Utah and boy oh boy he is a kick. This is the first transfer for him as a zone leader and he is trippin haha I love being his companion though. We get along really well! We have been planning for our zone a lot and have some incredible ideas and things planned out. We WILL get 30 baptisms here in the month on february as a zone and were excited about it. As you all know the temple is coming and it will be in our zone SOO our theme to the month is #LookToTheTemple. We are excited. We also cut out a huge temple out of paper and then made it into a puzzle. So for each baptism we have we connect a piece of the puzzle. This will help us all stay focused on our goal and focused on the purpose that we've promise god this month. WERE SO PUMPED!!!!! Also this past week i was able to go on exchanges with the AP's!! There are amazing haha i always love being with them! One of them Elder O'neil came with me in my area here in hollywood. We had soooo much success. Family after family. God was sooooo good to us! Truly though we were amazed. It was fun to be able to have a great day like that!

Also this week something special happened. There was a ward/stake/area broadcast from orlando. Elder perry was there and boy oh boy he was a kick. That man has sooo much enthusiasm towards the gospel and towards missionary work it's not even funny! I love him! He inspired me to be even better!

Well family i don't know if i have much more to tell you for the week. Oh wait I do.... :) So this transfer is only a 5 week transfer. So i may only be with Elder Tesch for 5 weeks who knows. Also i did kinda have a chance to talk with pres anderson about when i should be headed home and he said to just have ayns go about everything and we'll make it work! He says it's just hard telling me when i'm going home just because it'll be a new mission president. When i'm in my interview with him though i'll ask and we will be able to set a date i think. 

Anyways I love you all soooo very much! Keep being strong followers of christ! I love you and may god be with you!!! "When you do this NO longer is it your life, but it BECOMES a life as the Saviors!!!"

LOVE ELDER OVARD