Happy Easter & Happy Birthday Dad

The family all got together Good Friday to celebrate Easter and also Dad's birthday...#87. He was so happy to be around everyone. I have to say that I missed Mom soooo badly. It just was not the same getting together at the house without her. Love you Mom. She was always so good at making the Easter Gathering fun with dyeing of eggs and Easter Egg hunt, the kids always loved going there every Easter. Since we met in the evening there was no egg hunt, but it was nice to just be together, eating and talking, and singing "Happy Birthday" to dad. Debbie found Mom's birthday card to dad, already signed and all. Bitter sweet! Happy Birthday Dad hope you have many more to come!

Elder Ward the Traveling Trainer

Hello Everyone!


So, tomorrow will be my first day as a traveling trainer- so that means that tomorrow is going to be the first day of 6 crazy weeks. Usually when I pack, I just throw all of my stuff together in different suitcases just to get from point A to point B...but now I have to pack one small suitcase to take a weeks worth of stuff with me at a time and then have everything else packed away and stored in some old missionary apartment. I think I am just about packed, basically I am just going to take a week's worth of stuff with me and then do laundry at random member's homes or missionary apartments where they will let me. I just get to go to a different area every day and I get to decide where I am going too- so tomorrow my buddy Elder Wright (we served together in Clearfield) is going to be whitewashing (or completely replacing..usually one missionary stays and one new missionary comes in- so that people know the area, members, how to get around....but every so-often you have a whitewash, or both missionaries get replaced. Elder Wright is whitewashing Riverdale Spanish, which was part of my first area. So, I already decided that on Thursday I am going to go show Elder Wright around Riverdale....should be a lot of fun!). It looks like I am going to be spending a few weeks in the Cache Valley this transfer, a couple weeks down in Syracuse and Clinton and then a few weeks in Brigham City. You can Google all of those...I am going to be traveling a lot! Haha.
Elder Plowman is coming here with Elder Bassett (Elder Plowman, Elder Bassett, Elder Wright, and I are all like best friends and MTC buddies......so we all want to serve together) and we are all stoked that those 2 get to be here.
We had a baptism on Friday of Maria Guadalupe Ramirez, or Lupe Ramirez for short. She is the lady from Mexico that we had been teaching for a while. She finally decided that she wanted to be baptized. She was one of the funnier characters I have taught on my mission- usually funny characters are good for only 1 lesson because that are not too interested in talking with us, but they are crazy and weird and make for a fun lesson. However, she always kept the commitments that we extended to her and she loved it when we came by. She always joked, "Como estan mis bonitos gueros?" Or in english, "How are you my lovely white men?". Whenever we would take a member with her, she always called him her "moronito" or little brown one. He ended up baptizing her too, so now she calls him her "padrino" or "godfather". It is so funny. She is so crazy.....just your crazy old lady, but it happens that she is from Mexico and that has to make everything funnier. Also, she has a fear of taking photos. Usually, we take photos at baptisms and people are super excited because they want to have the photos too. Now, Lupe Ramirez came running out in her jumpsuit to get baptized and showed it all to us....but when it came time to take the photos....she just ran away and hid. She has a fear of taking photos and is super stubborn- so she was determined to not get a photo. Needless to say, but Elder Bassett and I are pretty stubborn too...so we devised a plan. We sat down beside her and her daughter- like we would during the baptismal service. Then, after about 5 seconds Elder Pyne was to run in and snap 2 really quick photos and we would all share them. SO, it work! I just got the photos from Elder Bassett, so I'll attach them in this email. You can see just about how happy Lupe Ramirez is, haha. She lightened up though and tried to play in the water of the baptismal font afterwards. In all, this will all go down as just about the funniest baptismal service I've had.
So, I'm going to preface the next story with a general trait of hispanics- they are completely tone deaf for the most part. Seriously, they are really bad. So, Elder Bassett, Elder Pyne, and I sang for the baptism on Friday and just did this simple thing where we all sang melody one the first line, then had melody and bass on the 2nd line, and then melody, tenor, and bass on the last line. Everyone loved it! It was alright, but generally to write home about. Well, if it is "nothing to write home about" you might ask why I am writing home about it. Well, everyone flipped. Since then we have been invited to sing in almost every event or meeting or whatever. So, we had to break the news to the Ward that I was leaving and since I was leaving Elder Basset and Elder Pyne don't want to do the song by themselves....so they flipped again. Haha. They eventually got over it, but we seriously got asked 4 or 5 times to sing within 2 days after the baptism because Hispanics never has special musical numbers....so they wanted to experience. It's just something funny that happened, nothing else really.
Not really too much more to report. Today we need to get haircuts, I need to finish packing, we might go do something fun....who knows! Next week's email will be from a location that is still TBD- I guess we will find out next week! Until then, I love you all!


Love,

Elder Ward

Tory's first PrOm!

Can't believe that Prom has already come and gone by so quickly. Everyone looked so handsome and so beautiful all dressed up in their best. We had dinner here at our house, love doing that for them. Thank you so much Sharmyn, Kristi and Sarah for all of your help. Then it was off to downtown Charlotte, to the Roof with a view. I have no pictures from that night because we were not allowed to attend this year. They all said that they had a great time. Can't believe that my little Tory was even old enough to attend. He and his date Shannon had alot of fun.

Guess who turned the big 50

Such wonderful friends!!! Love you Heidi, Kristi, Sharmyn and Deneen! Turning 50 wasn't so bad, atleast when you celebrate it with dear friends. Kristi and Sharmyn had the coziest dinner for me with some of our dearest friends. It was a very memorable birthday! Thanks so much girls, it was wonderful.