HOLY KWAN (feat. Coron)

HOLY KWAN.  This week was the best week of my whole mission... It was insane.  I'm just going to give you the rundown of what happened this week!  Sorry if it ends up being SUPER long.  

Tuesday:  HAPPY HALLOWEEN I woke up and my thumb was super swollen so we are still trying to find what i'm allergic to...  We zoomed to the office today incredibly fast because there is a holiday here in the Philippines called the Non-working day which is exactly what it sounds like.  No traffic and one very happy Elder Burdeos.  The kids here are so funny, they were all trick of treating and instead of asking for money they would ask for 5 pesos.  Smart kids.  A pretty cool tradition that they have here in the Philippines is called "All Soul's Day"  where tons of people spend the night in a cemetery and it's basically the fourth of July in a cemetery with no fireworks... If that makes any sense.  Lucky for us, the cemetery just happens to be in our area!!  We headed over there and talked to some really cool people.

Wednesday:  Today we walked 2 HOURS to the cemetery... For Papa John's Pizza.  It was a super rare occasion and I regret nothing.  

Friday:  Friday was crazy.  We woke up early at the mission home because they were going to have a conference there.  After the conference we came back and ate Shakey's with some friends in the mission and that was tight.  On the way home I got pulled over FOR THE VERY FIRST TIME IN MY DRIVING HISTORY.  It was because I had accidentally crossed a yellow line which I was unaware about.  The cop was so set on giving me a ticket so I did what I always do to be innocent here and I ENGLISHED HIS FACE OFF.  Filipinos love it when you compliment their English so I just explained how i'm a foreigner and i'm not used to the driving and after 30 minutes I convinced him to let me go with no ticket or 2000 peso fee.  I was way happy and thankful for that tender mercy hahaha!

Saturday:  CORON DAY!!  We got up bright and early and rushed to the airport.  We basically flew to the airport and got there in less than 10 minutes and hustled to catch our flight.  Turns out that our flight got delayed anyways and we were 2 hours early... I didn't mind though we met some way nice people at the airport and that gave us a little time to practice talking to people and sharing our message.  

We got on our flight which was an hour and a half but felt like a solid 15 minutes.  Flying into Coron was like flying into Jurassic Park and maybe even more beautiful.  We landed and picked up our mission car from the airport and headed on a two hour drive to get to the chapel.  The drive was a pleasant experience though because the only traffic that we had to worry about were chickens and stray dogs.  When we arrived in the Elder's area we were able to arrange exchanges to work for the rest of the day.  We worked in the northern part of the island in a place called Busuanga.  It's an amazing place.  I walked up to the very first door to tract and before I said a word they invited us to come in and we were able to share a little message with them.  We spent all of our time that night on one street because the people kept letting us in and were open to our message.  Each time was just a little testimony builder to me that the Lord really does prepare people to hear this message, and the people in that area are really the Lord's chosen.  At the end of the night we found a little Japanese type restaurant (you know, one of the ones where you sit on the floor and eat with chopsticks) and we had sushi.  It was a good night.

Sunday:  This was a pretty challenging day because we had to find out how we were going to get all of the investigators to sacrament meeting while at the same time we had to make sure that there would actually be a sacrament meeting.  The sacrament meeting took place in a small pavilion on the side of a shaded outdoor basketball court.  We were constantly running back and forth escort people in while bringing equipment to the sacrament from the Elder's apartment.  After a pretty hectic morning we had a pretty good turnout of 45 people at sacrament!!  That was a giant step from the 3 that they had in attendance last week!  It was an amazing experience and it baffles me to think about the amount of faith that each and every one of them must have had to attend a meeting of a church that they have never heard of upon invitation from some random little boys wearing ties.  During the meeting we were actually able to get some investigators to come up and share their feelings since it was fasting testimony meeting.  There is so much potential there and you could feel the spirit so strongly just knowing that Zion is gradually strengthening and this is only the beginning. 

 

​After this week you could say that I am in love with my mission and being a missionary...