HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!

Kamusta na kayo? Happy Halloween!!!!! If any of you have any sick costumes be sure to send them to me I would love to see them. Turns out they celebrate Halloween here in the Philippines and you get really cute little kids giving you high fives on the streets while you're trying to baptize their parents :))) Tuesday: Here in the Philippines they have what's called "coding". It means that if your license plate ends in a certain number, you are not allowed to drive for a specific day of the week from 7am- 8pm. Pretty weird but it helps the traffic out a ton. So we forgot our vehicle was coding and woke up late so we ended up walking to the office and to the area which was a total of about 3 hours hahaha. Wednesday: The assistants forgot to switch our van out so we had to walk to the office again and it was even better the second time. Thursday: We ran to the LTO in the Quezon City mission with some missionaries to go pick up their licenses. I ended up seeing one of my companions from the MTC, Elder Casares!! He was very friendly and even though we didn't quite get along in the MTC I realized that I missed him and it was nice to catch up with him. We waited at the LTO for like 4 hours just sitting there then when we left we got a call from the assistants that we needed to move out of the house due to some emergency transfers and housing problems. So we are currently homeless... Not really, we're actually staying at the mission home right now with the Assistants, air conditioning, and heated showers. Homeless has never felt so good. Friday: I went on exchanges with one of my best friends in the mission, Elder Fiesta. He's one of the assistants and he was one of my first friends back in my first area haha. I learned a lot from teaching lessons with him. Something that I would really like to try to improve in my teaching is listening with love to those we teach. Also Elder Asay called us and told us that a couple of the investigators that we taught in our area was interviewed and being baptized so that was exciting!

Front row seats to the car show here

Elder Casares (My MTC companion) and I at the LTO

Best license plate ever

 So as you can tell this week has been a great learning experience for me and I've learned to just go with the flow and if I have a positive attitude about all the trials and hardships that i'm going through right now, the Lord will provide a way for everything to work out, 100% of the time. FUN NEWS: PRESIDENT WILL BE SENDING THE OFFICE ELDERS AND ASSISTANTS TO CORON ON SATURDAY SO THAT WE CAN HELP THE ELDERS DOWN THERE GET THEIR WARD STARTED IN A NEW AREA. I'M SO EXCITED, MY PICTURES NEXT WEEK ARE GOING TO BE SO COOL SO STAY TUNED. BIRTHDAY SHOUTOUT TO MY BIG SISTER ALYSSA!!! Have an amazing week AND A REAL SPOOPY HALLOWEEN!

 -- ELDER BURDEOS
"IT'S BOUT TO GET REAL SPOOPY IN HERE" ​
 The Church of​ ​ ​ ​Jesus Christ​ ​ ​​ of Latter-day Saints​
2016 - 2018 PHILIPPINES MANILA MISSION

Transfer Week and Cole Sprouse

There he is in all his glory.

So much happened this week yet I don't want to go into detail with it.  This week was transfer week which was one of the craziest weeks I have ever experienced.  

Monday:  We went to the area office by riding the MRT (The Filipino Trax).  We picked up the rental car we would be using and on the way back we found giant billboards of Cole Sprouse.  The Robles Family, one of the families in our ward, treated us out to Shakey's Pizza! 

Tuesday:  We spent the day with the departing missionaries, weighing their luggages and taking them to the hotel that they would be staying at for the night.  It was pretty fun because we were with Elder McCauley and Fiesta, the assistants, and it was like an all day adventure.  We picked up the departing missionaries from the mission home and drove them to the Mall of Asia to their hotel.  Of course we ran into another problem and there was a miscommunication between the church and the hotel so we had NO rooms for the departing missionaries.  Turns out the Quezon City North mission had the same thing happen to them so we all just sat in the hotel lobby for like 2 and a half hours.  It felt like it was so late but it was like 11:00 which is about the time I would be leaving the house to go hang out with friends before my mission hahaha.  So we just sat there waiting for some miracle... and it came!  The hotel supervisor comes down and says he "cancelled reservations" (Whatever that means) and they now had 14 available rooms!!  Such a tender mercy.  One of the Elders forgot his stuff at the office so we had to drive back to the office and then back to the hotel again.  We got home at 1:30am.

Wednesday:  We got up at 4am to head to the MTC and pick up the new missionaries.  They were chill and polynesian and stuff.  The Americans went through some problems with their fingerprinting so they were unable to come with us in the morning and we had to hold two in-field orientation meetings.  We drove back and forth from the mission home to the mission office all day and that's all I want to say about that.

Those two days were probably the most stressful and the rest of the week was just fun.  Other cool things we did this week:  

- We watched "How to Train your Dragon 2" for my first time at the mission home on P-Day

- The Filipino greeter from Walmart on 13400 S. walked into the mission office one day and I just about lost it.  What are the odds.

- My Aunt hooked it up with another package at the office

Yeah this week was sick.  i'm loving it here.  

These are the two assistants, the one on the left of me is Elder Zesiger and he went home.  He was the missionary who picked me up from the MTC and i'm the one who took him to the hotel to go home hahaha.  ​

​This is Elder Lopez and he was one of my favorite missionaries in the mission.  He also went home.  By the way these pictures were taken in the hotel lobby while we were waiting there for hours.​

ELDER FAWSON.  He sits at 6'9" and he was a super humble and hard working Elder.  He will be missed.

Love you all have a good week long live Cole Sprouse

Elder Burdeos​

The Office Season 10 (feat. Elder Burdeos)

So much change in so little time.  I got a call on Thursday night from President Fermanis saying that he wants me as an Office Elder in the mission office and that i'll be replacing good ol' Elder Webster.  I had a lot of mixed feelings about that call because of reasons such as:

1. I won't have the chance to finish training Elder Asay or see any of the baptisms that we had set up for the area.
2. Elder Webster (The Elder i'll be replacing) has been in the office for the last 15 months so replacing him would be like when Will Ferrell tried to replace Steve Carrell on "The Office"... A disaster
3. And of course the worst one:  I HAVE TO DRIVE IN CENTRAL MANILA.

So there were some downsides to being called to the office but I learned shortly after that being an office Elder is tight.  We get to do all of the behind the scenes work with helping with transfers and stuff you never take into account when you think about missionary work such as housing, supplies, finances, and mission documentation.  Doesn't sound too fun and it didn't to me at first but now i'm loving it and i'm so grateful for the opportunity that I have to serve here.  

    As Far as the new area goes, it's looking pretty promising so far.  On my first night in the area we met with one of their recent converts, Clair.  Clair has one of the strongest testimonies and it is so powerful to hear her bear it while we teach her.  She hasn't exactly had a break from her problems in a while, she went on about how there are a lot of trials in her life right now like not having any electricity in her house, the city hall losing her health card, and taking her youngest daughter to the doctor after getting hurt outside and stuff like that.  After hearing her problems I would imaging she would be a little frustrated but after explaining everything to us she turned to us and said, "But Elders, I have God and we're going to be okay".  It was pretty powerful and you can tell the spirit has really found a way into her heart.  

Our Zone went to the Manila Zoo this last P-Day.  I give it a solid 8.0/10

I drove for the first time on Thursday and I absolutely hated it :')))

Keep us in your prayers hahaha love you all have an amazing week!

Elder Burdeos

General Conference pt. 2

So I finally had the chance to watch general conference and it really gave me that spiritual fire I needed.  I remember back in the day (like one year ago) I would get super bored and I would not be able to pay attention but it's like the whole perspective of the General Conference has changed for me as a missionary.  It's such a privilege to hear from our leaders every six months and is just one more of the millions of reasons that this is the true and restored church of Jesus Christ.  I won't go into depth about what I learned but I would like to invite you all to watch it if you have not already and if you already have, set a goal to watch it a couple more times and I know that you will continue to feel the power of the words of God.  Even though our dear prophet Thomas S. Monson was not able to attend you could still feel his spirit.  

A fun experience that we had this week took place while we were walking to the church one day to teach an investigator there.  On the way, we noticed a nice old lady chilling in a wheelchair just watching people pass by.  We decided to start a conversation with her and like 30 seconds into the conversation she just starts crying really hard and telling us about how her kids kicked her out of the house and she has a skin condition which gives her difficulty walking and nobody helps her.  This story kind of broke our hearts and we couldn't help but feel super bad for her.  I asked her if there was anything that we could do for her and she kept declining and telling us it was okay and she didn't need help.  We kept pushing and pushing for her to let us help her with something and she finally told us that she has some friends at the top of a hill on that road and she wanted to go talk to them but she couldn't make it up there on her own.  So without hesitation I started to walk behind her wheelchair and told her I was pushing her up the hill, she thought I was kidding up until I actually started pushing.  She was laughing the whole time as we pushed her up this hill and as some of her friends in the little neighborhood were asking her what was going on she would always respond, "I'm being deported! They caught me!"  hahaha she's awesome and we managed to get her up the hill and with her friends.  We'll start teaching her this Wednesday and we're super excited.  

Small acts of service can really help us to feel the pure love of Christ and charity for those around us.  When Jesus Christ himself was here, not only did He teach those who were willing to listen but he also showed His love through His actions to each of God's children by serving them.  Being a missionary is such an honor and Elder Asay and I have been working harder and harder to make sure that we don't take this chance that God has given us for granted (granite).  

Don't forget to get out and vote for good ol' Romeo "Lucky" Medina for Kagawad.

They had a mural painting contest in our area back in 2012 so you'll see cool murals like these all around on walls and underground passes.

This is probably my favorite little girl.  Her name is Eileen and she is super chill and mature for her age.  No joke I could probably just sit there and talk politics with her.

I convinced these little kids that Elder Asay was Captain America and so they wanted to take pictures.  Elder Asay handed them pamphlets and told them Hulk wanted them to give the pamphlets to their parents hahaha what a guy.

love you bye

(James) "Harden Not Your Hearts"

I should make that into a t-shirt.  Rest in Peace Elder Hales, what an incredible example of a dedicated servant of the Lord.

A big theme that came to me this week was hardening not our hearts.  I pondered the meaning of what the scriptures mean when they reference that saying and some things that I decided would really help me to harden not my heart were to: 

- Be more humble

- Have a good attitude

- Obey willingly

If we soften our hearts and hearken unto the Lord in all of our doings, He will let us know why things that we don't expect in our life are happening and reveal more of what he has in store for us.  

Good ol' Elder Asay and I have been working every minute of every day, so when we came to church on Sunday and none of our investigators that we expected show up actually showed up, it was super hard for us.  However if I were to complain at that moment and grow angry at God or feel bad for myself that would go completely against what I have been studying this week about hardening not our hearts.  So we continued to be humble and have faith during the rest of that meeting and really felt the spirit as the members bore their testimonies (by the way we haven't seen general conference yet due to time differences so it was just fasting testimony meeting).  Anyways after the meeting we got up and turned around and it turns out our investigators were there the whole time but we just didn't see them hahaha!  What an incredible feeling and example of the blessings that will come if we put our trust in the Lord.  

Welcome to Buendia

President Fermanis allowed me to go to lunch with some of my family last P-Day and they spoiled my companion and I yet again.  If you're reading this, Auntie Susie or Milet, I love you you're the best.  This is the cheesecake I got and it's plate was in the shape of a mousetrap.  Legendary.

We met with some of our members this week including the Thayn family.  We just talked about their missions and "Stranger Things" and they are now my best friends here in Makati.  They're amazing.  

I love you all have a stellar week.

Elder Burdeos