Father's Day! :))))) and Transfer Week :(((((

Happy Father's day to all of amazing dads out there!  You are the best examples and of course every boy's first hero is their dad!  We love you dads!!!!!

Transfers are this week and I will be staying in Tondo!  I got a new companion and his name is Elder Sison!  He is yet another Filipino and he's pretty chill, we're going to great things here as a companionship.  We have already seen some miracles happening since he arrived here.  Our investigators attended sacrament and we found some new families to teach!!  

SOOOOOOOO i'll fill you in on one of the challenges we faced this week.  Sister Cinco and her family are some of the investigators that we have been teaching for the last few weeks here in Tondo.  They are incredibly nice and always willing to hear our message.  Unfortunately, they refuse to go to church because one of the members in our ward was a good friend of theirs back in the day.  Turns out he has a pretty big amount of debt to them and refuses to pay it which caused them to become poor and move into the ghetto part of our area, the permanents.  Since then they have been struggling and living some pretty hard lives.  The father of the Cinco family says if he attends our church and sees him he'll punch him right in the face so you can see there are still some pretty bitter feelings going on here.  Well, the father of the Cinco family passed away this week from a stroke... Shoot.  Sister Cinco is still willing to listen to us and we delivered a very powerful lesson to her this week reminding her about how families are eternal and she'll see her father again and she REALLY enjoyed it so we hope to see how the spirit will help us to comfort and progress their family.

    That is just one of the struggles we have faced this week but I love having trials in the mission.  You really have to stop, ponder, and listen to what the spirit is telling you.  We have no idea what to do or how to help these people sometimes but Heavenly Father knows all of His children individually so we just need to listen.  This week was sweet.  

That's Elder Sison my new companion! 

While exploring our area we walked into this tiny slit of an entrance and it led to this giant market it was sick.

District meeting where they announced transfers!!!  Always the scariest meeting!

Last picture with Elder Dominguez on transfer day!:(((  Freak i'll miss him so much.  He transferred ALL THE WAY down the stairs.  Our area is Tondo 1A and he transferred to Tondo 1B...  Same house and all.

Still Guapo as always.

Have an amazing week and once again HAPPY FATHERS DAY I LOVE YOU DAD!!!

Elder Burdeos

Faithful in the Kingdom

This week was tight.  Even though the majority of the week was spent looking for a new apartment because ours isn't exactly passing missionary requirements.  The Lord truly blessed us while while we were searching because it was cloudy the whole time and we didn't die of heat stroke.  

Something that I would like to share is a thought coming from the Philippines broadcast that we had this last Sunday.  Elder Lynn Robbins mentioned the faith that it took to establish the church back in the day.  It really makes us think, if we lived in the early times of the church would we be able to endure and keep the faith?  Travelling thousands of miles on foot and enduring hate and violence upon you and your family because of your religious beliefs?  He then stated that if we are faithful now, we would have been back then.  BUT THEN THE QUESTION COMES are we faithful enough and satisfied with where we are on the foundation of our testimonies today?  I don't know, just something that I really pondered this week and it really increased my testimony and faith thinking about the hardships that they faced back then being Mormons and outcasts. Well anyways I had a great week this week and I hope you all did too!

We got to visit the new buildings at the Philippines MTC and they are BEAUTIFUL.  Super spiritual and great experience, you can truly feel the spirit while walking through the halls and buildings of the place that starts the journey.  The happiness lasted up until the 2 hour jeepney ride that really made my buns sore because we had to fit more than 25 people in one small chubby bus.  But now it's all good :')

Some pictures from the Philippines broadcast we had on Sunday in which we had the opportunity to hear from some leaders of our church!  Kind of like a small General Conference, it was very enjoyable and spiritually edifying.

We were kind of just chilling planning where we would go next by this little river and these kids came up and started chilling with us.  Little kids are our best friends here, they know everything.

​It started pouring rain and the lighting looked pretty nice to me and Elder Dominguez took a picture here, nothing too spectacular.

This week is transfer week but i'm almost positive i'll be staying in Tondo and Elder Dominguez will be transferring because he's been here for about 6 months now :-|  Flip i'm going to miss him SO much though, easily my favorite companion so far.  

HAVE AN AMAZING WEEK I LOVE YOU

Elder Burdeos​

Stand as a Witness

I hope you are all doing well because I really miss each and every one of you!  This week was A LOT better than last week.  Although it sucks being sick, it feels amazing when you start to heal so it all worked out :)

We had our zone conference this week and it was incredible as always.  There's always something special about hearing from your Mission President because you know that he holds the keys and authority to give the missionaries in this mission the guidance and instruction that they need to carry out our responsibilities as representatives of Jesus Christ.  The theme that I got out of this zone conference was standing as a witness of Jesus Christ.  Every member of this church has their own witness as Jesus Christ and all of us have an obligation to protect our faith and constantly exercise it by following His example and learning more about His word.  Stand as a witness and let nobody touch that foundation that you have built as acknowledging Jesus Christ as our Savior and Redeemer.  Great zone conference I enjoyed it immensely.  

Of course the struggle we had this week was, you guessed it, investigators attending church.  Sometimes it gets really hard when you spend a whole week teaching about the importance of church attendance and your investigators don't show up to church.  You just love them so much and want them to exercise their faith but DANG JUST COME TO CHURCH.  Hahaha nevertheless we'll keep working and I know Heavenly Father will provide ways for them to come to church.  

Here's a picture of my companion and Blackie Chan lurking in the background there. Look at how cute my companion is freak.

Alright that's it for this week I love you all have an amazing week and STAND AS WITNESSES!

Elder Burdeos

Weather Have Mercy

This week was extremely hard.  The weather has really not been showing any mercy to us lately.  We've been struggling a little bit here because our investigators have not been attending church which i'm sure any missionary would agree is the hardest part of the conversion process.  We were supposed to have 3 baptisms here on June 4th but if they don't come to church there's no way we can baptize them.  We're still working really hard and with that being said we still have LOTS of potential here in our area.

We had our last formal interview with the Ostlers and that really sucked.  I honestly don't want President Ostler and Sister Ostler to leave.  They are outstanding mission presidents and we are always able to receive the guidance and help we need from them :(  At least we still have 2 zone conferences with them!  We'll make those count.  

So yesterday must have been the WORST day of my mission.  The weather is starting to change from rainy season which you can see we were NOT prepared for.

I got REALLY sick from the rain.  I felt like throwing up all morning yesterday because I was so dizzy and my head hurt really bad.  Luckily for me I was asked to give a talk on missionary work yesterday and so I had no choice but to suck it up and go to church.  I drank some tylenol and little did I know that it was the drowzy kind and so I fell asleep during all of sacrament meeting (up until my talk which I rushed through because I was sleepy and my head hurt)  then I fell asleep during the rest of church.

This is a random picture from our day of service on Saturday with Mormon Helping Hands!  So not exactly my best week but we'll keep pushing and get those baptisms!  Love you all have an amazing week!!!

Death to the Daga

This week really flew by I feel like I haven't left this computer.  We struggle here every day and to be honest it is REALLY exhausting but we are definitely making progress so i'm pretty excited about that!!  We had our investigators attend sacrament finally and that was really exciting.  Unfortunately it was ward conference so it wasn't exactly the most spiritually uplifting sacrament meeting ever.  We obtained a new bishop so it was basically a testimony meeting of our former bishop, his counselors, and their wives.  Also we had the opportunity to join our ward choir this week!  One of our investigators who attended sacrament meeting, Tatay Noel (you may know him as our investigator who fell asleep while we were teaching him), fell asleep again while we were up there singing in the choir so I ended up just laughing and staring at him the entire time!  He's a blast and a half.  We've changed our focus from finding new investigators to focusing on our investigators that have baptismal dates so i'll let you know how that turns out.

We got to do a session in the Manila temple last week and I loved it.  I wish I could go to the temple every single week.  

WE FOUND THE DAGA (Rat in tagalog)!  This jerk has been eating our bread and breaking stuff while we have been sleeping for the past few weeks.  Elder Albis chased it around the house (and it came up and bit him) late at night when he got up to go to the bathroom and finally trapped it in between our spare door and a wall.  He then flattened the heck our of it as you can see in the picture above.  I think there may be more of these around our house so when we find them i'll be sure to film it, it's a great time.  

We had our zone service project on Saturday where we painted and cleaned classrooms at a local school!  To be completely honest with you we did a terrible job i'm not exactly the most artistic person in the world but they were so happy and thankful so PRAISE TO THE LORD!

This is just a picture from our ward conference yesterday, i'm not exactly sure who this family is and neither is Elder Dominguez :').

Missionary work is hard.  I hope you all have an amazing week!

Elder Burdeos

I LOVE YOU MOMMY

Happy Mother's Day to all you amazing mothers out there!!!  Be sure to give all of your moms giant hugs because you never actually realize how much they mean to you and how much they do for you until they aren't there by your side all the time!  Mom if you're reading this (which you better be)  I love you so much!  I got to call my amazing family and it really made me realize how lucky I am to have such an amazing family!  

We are doing pretty dang well here in Tondo, we have extended some baptismal invitations and they were accepted!  I honestly don't want to say how many because here in the Philippines, or really any mission, just because somebody accepts a baptismal invitation it doesn't necessarily mean they will end up getting baptized.  So hopefully we will progress those whom the Lord has prepared for us to help at this time.  One of my favorite moments this week was when Elder Dominguez and I were teaching an investigator we have, Brother Noel.  He is 60 years old and he is always so receptive to the message so we love teaching him.  One day he was extremely tired while we were teaching him so he began to fall asleep while we were teaching and there was a period in time where while we were talking he was completely asleep.  We stopped teaching and it was completely silent.  Elder Dominguez and I looked at each other and broke out laughing I was laughing so hard even when Brother Noel woke up and he started laughing with us too.  Great moment, always embrace the awkwardness!

I wasn't able to take a lot of pictures this week so I will do better next time but here they are:

(Me showing off my incredible artistic capabilities)

(The new district also notice how psycho my companion is he is honestly THE best companion I could ask for)

(This is basically what Tondo looks like, poor houses, loud music, happy people)  

Love you all have an amazing week!!!

Elder Burdeos

Parañaque > Manila West

Remember how last week I said I was scared for what was going to happen this transfer week?  Well I had a good reason to be scared because I was transferred!  I thought for sure Elder Desabille would be the one transferring because he has been in Parañaque for about 5 months now.  We were pretty surprised to hear that I was the one transferring and to be honest I was REALLY sad.  I love Parañaque and the members and most of all I HATE packing.  

I've been assigned in Manila West, Tondo 1st Ward.  Tondo is referred to as the Detroit of the Philippines so you can imagine my excitement upon hearing that I would be assigned there!  Transfer day itself was SUPER hectic.  We spent a total of 7 hours waiting for a taxi on transfer day.  3 hours to get from Parañaque to Makati, 2 hours to get from Makati to Tondo, then 2 more hours to drop an Elder off at his area since his companions are zone leaders and they were attending a meeting at the mission home.  Our house here is pretty ugly to be honest, there's rats and cockroaches.  The only difference is the cockroaches here are not the size of a dollar bill.  Also to top it all off the very first day we arrived here the water was broken throughout the whole city.  There were people showering in the giant pipes to the side of the road.  Tondo is absolute craziness but the weird part is I am so happy here.  As weird as this place is I really love it here in Tondo.  There are SO many people here.  It's like i'm walking through a concert crowd 24/7 but they are so friendly to us.  Before we even introduce ourselves and the church they tell us to come in and they are so willing to hear our message.  I know that this place will continue to progress and there are so many people here that the Lord has prepared for us and I cannot wait to share this message with them.  I have a good feeling about this area and i'm starting to learn more and more about what it takes to be a missionary the harder things get!  

Here are my pictures for this week:

Last pictures with Tatay Desabille.  He is incredible and he has taught me a ton!  He's going to continue to change lives and i'm so grateful for the opportunity to be companions with him!

My new companion is Elder Dominguez, the crazy one holding taking the picture.  He is amazing and I can't wait to change some lives with him!

Have an amazing week everyone and remember you are loved!

Elder Burdeos