Born a Mormon, Die a Mormon

Not too much to report on this week but I had a pretty good time.

The difficult thing about our area is nobody is consistently home on weekdays so Saturday is really the only time we can teach people.  So we have very few lessons throughout the week then we are scattering to teach when Saturday comes and unfortunately this Saturday a lot of lessons fell through which left us feeling pretty discouraged.  Our focus right now is just finding new investigators (that are hopefully available for more than one day of the week).

We did have a new investigator this week who said something that I really liked.  He said that he is willing to hear our message but warned us that he was "born a Roman Catholic, and will die as a Roman Catholic".  Even though that wasn't exactly the best news for us, I really respected that.  Looking at it from my perspective, I was born a member of this church and I will die as a member of this church.  I've seen the miracles, known the grace, and felt the peace and blessings that comes from knowing that we all have a loving Heavenly Father who has a plan for us to return to Him as eternal families.  Nothing anybody says here can ever change that.  "And he had hope to shake me from the faith, notwithstanding the many revelations and the many things which I had seen concerning these things; for I truly had seen angels, and they had ministered unto me. And also, I had heard the voice of the Lord speaking unto me in very word, from time to time; wherefore, I could not be shaken."  Jacob 7:5

Missions are the BEST when you hold onto your testimony.

I made a salad because that's actually all I know how to make... 

Have an amazing week and hold onto the iron rod!!!

Elder Burdeos

Hey I finally ate a burger

I'm sure as you have all read the title, nothing too spectacular happened this week so i'm going to try and keep this email relatively short.  

This was a very tough week.  It pushed us physically and really tried our faith.  Up until the latter part of the week we found very little success.  Our investigators either weren't home, leaving soon, or had some other reasons as to why they were unavailable at the moment.  It can be REALLY frustrating sometimes when you feel like you're giving your all and seeing little payout or outcome from your efforts.  There are some days you really just want to give up and run away from all trials and struggles.  I testify that it is in those times that we feel so desperate and useless that God is ready to lift us up and help us.  All we need to do is remember to turn to him.  He loves us as His children and He may be the only one who knows what we're going through so He is on hold waiting to see what we will do next.  A really funny experience that i'd like to share happened while we were contacting a media referral we received from the office.  We were introducing ourselves and he asks us if our chapel is the one with the basketball court and we say yes.  He then asks us if we know why our church has a basketball court and we ask him why.  He then goes into his house to search for something and comes back with a picture in his hand and says, "Because basketball is the sport of the Savior".  He then shows us the Picture and lone behold, a picture of the Savior in full basketball attire, shorts and jersey dribbling a basketball!! That was one of the most interesting conversations I think i've ever had...  You learn something new every day!

As the title states, I finally ate a burger.  It was incredible and it came with disposable gloves so that I wouldn't get my hands messy... GENIUSES!  

We found this cool landmark in our area.  KKK does not mean what you think it does.  It means, "Kataas-taasan Kagalang-galang Katipunan nang mga Anak nang bayan"  

...Yeah whatever that means

We also celebrated Bishop's birthday this week at their house!  Our Bishop is awesome and super helpful to us and to the progressing of this work.

That's it for this week I hope you all remember we are children of the Highest God!!!!!!

Elder Burdeos

Sleepless and soaked

This week was QUITE the roller coaster.  From walking through floods due to heavy rain, to all of us getting up at 4 am to kill a rat, and having a super fun family home evening.  

Rainy season really slapped us in the face this week.  We worked every day in the heavy rain.  The streets were flooded and luckily for me my shoes have now torn holes from all the walking so it always feels like I am walking on two swimming pools :')  The rain really affects the work and progression of our area because nobody really wants to hear from or let in two soaking wet Mormon missionaries to their home.  It's also quite the struggle to do laundry because the only place to hang our clothes is out in the pouring rain so we really have to think of ways around this season.

I've been coming home exhausted every single night and it has been super frustrating with all of the problems physically that stunt the work from progressing.  I definitely neglected the physical aspect to missionary work.  After all of these trials I couldn't help but be super frustrated and annoyed with never getting a break from all of these problems, up until Sunday.  Our lesson in Gospel Principles class on Sunday was about trials.  EVERYBODY has trials and hardships in their life.  We just have to remember, that's the way that got intended it to be.  If we didn't have any stumbling blocks along the way or anything to push us out of our comfort zone, we would never grow or be what our Heavenly Father wants us to be and knows we can become.  When I really thought about and pondered that it really helped me to change my attitude about the struggles i'm facing here.  I mean, the weather here still sucks but that shouldn't be my biggest problem at the moment.  It's all about preaching the Gospel and finding those who are prepared.  Anything in between can be dealt with.

Elder Dominguez is still the man.

This is the rat who woke all of us up at 4 am.  I know you can't really see him so here's a picture after we poured boiling hot water on him

If this seems a little bit cruel to you just keep in mind he ate my toothpaste at one point. 

We had a super fun ward family home evening on Saturday.  It was a huge success so they have decided to do it every month from now on!!

Love you all have an amazing week! The church is true.

Elder Burdeos

Another 6 in Tondo!!!!

So we got our transfer calls in and i'll be staying in Tondo as well as everybody in our house hahaha!  Poor Elder Dominguez has been in Tondo for almost as long as i've been on my mission!!  I'm super happy because I really enjoy it here in the Detroit, Michigan of the Philippines and that's no joke.   Once a thug always a thug.

Super busy week but it was so dang fun.  The week started off really boring actually with not too much happening in our area.  We've been struggling to find new investigators because everybody's kids are back in school so their schedules are super inconsistent and busy :(.  

A cool experience that I had this week really helped me remember to always be looking out for those promptings coming from the spirit.  We just got done with our personal study and we were getting ready to head out.  For some reason I felt a small prompting to bring a spare Book of Mormon.  I kind of brushed it off at first because we were heading to some investigators of ours who already have copies of the Book of Mormon.  Eventually I just decided to bring one just in case.  We headed to our appointment and we caught our investigators at the wrong time, they were just about to leave the house to take one of their kids to school.  DARN YOU EDUCATION NOBODY EVEN NEEDS YOU.  So we were unable to teach them and decided to go to some other investigators whom we had only taught once before.  So we taught them and the father of their household starts talking to us about how he reads the Bible every day and its importance.  We began teaching him about the Book of Mormon and its importance in finding out if what we were teaching him was true.  When I gave him the Book of Mormon that I had been prompted to bring he lit up with excitement!!  He said he is going to start reading it as soon as we leave and he actually began reading it while we were still teaching him so he wasn't actually listening towards the end of the lesson hahaha!  Grateful for the promptings of the spirit and I challenge each and every one of you to really listen for it in your life.  If you're not constantly looking out for its guidance, you're going to miss its promptings every single time.

We had family home evening at the Torres' home and it was sweet.

Chilling before district meeting!  They erased an area here in Tondo so instead we now have 7 Elders in our district!!  A lot better than just 4, we might as well have just had our meeting in our house.

For a service project we fixed a member's door and put glass through that little square cutout at the bottom.  Also while watching "A Bug's Life" which by the way is a mission approved movie :)

Don't forget those finishing touches.

Love you all! Have an amazing week the Church is so true it hurts.

Elder Burdeos

Hard Work and Blessings

This week was very rewarding and i'm very grateful for it.  Definitely a change from the last couple of weeks that we have been having hahaha.  So i'd like to start by sharing a spiritual experience that we had during the week.  

We were teaching some of our investigators, the Francisco Family.  They are some of the hardest investigators to teach, not because they are unreceptive or unwilling to progress, but because while we are teaching them I can't hear a dang thing.  Their house contains about 8 adults and 10 kids in a house smaller than the size of an average Utah living room.  Whenever we start to teach there is ALWAYS something distracting and loud going on in the room.  So we were just teaching them as usual and of course the kids start losing control and running around and our investigators are more focused on calming them down than listening to our message but then something really cool happened.  We started talking about how following the example of Jesus Christ and it went DEAD SILENT.  I am not even kidding I was freaked out.  The kids were literally just sitting there not saying anything, our investigators were staring at us engaged in the lesson and I honestly felt uncomfortable.  But when the spirit literally clears the room for you what do you do?  Invite to be baptized!  We extended the baptismal invitation to them right there in the middle of the lesson and they accepted it.  We've extended a lot of invitations to be baptized but that one really stood out to me.

So fast forward to Sunday and NONE of our investigators or unretained converts showed up at church and it had just started.  At that point I was pretty disappointed, it kind of felt like all of the hard work we put in this week had just been flushed down the drain.  While sitting there feeling bad for myself like a little weenie Elder Sison tapped me on the shoulder and I looked up and there they were at the front gate of the church.  One of our unretained convert families, 2 unretained siblings, and following not too far behind them, our the Francisco family that I mentioned earlier.  Thank the heavens for being merciful hahaha.  No effort goes wasted and I know that God sees all hard work of His Children.

So that's my spiritual experience for this week and freak I love being a missionary. 

I went on exchanges with Elder Amorin and their area is huge so it was just a ton of walking.  We went up about 6 flights of stairs and I was just about to faint and he took to me this nice view they have in their area which was super breezy and relaxing.  Pretty sweet place to just rest if you're still alive by the time you make it up there.

Baby that's my philosophy.

Love you all have a far greater than average week!!!

Elder Burdeos

Welcome President and Sister Fermanis

Hey all of you children of God I hope you had an amazing week and are still hanging in there!  So to be honest this week we didn't exactly find abundant success.  We had a whopping 1 investigator at sacrament. Masakit.  But hey one is better than none!  Even though we struggled all throughout the week trying to progress our area, I was still able to feel the companionship of the spirit every single day and that helps remind me that God is with us on every step of this journey.  Even during those hard days where we get rejected from house to house continually for hours, you learn to really listen to the spirit and trust that there are people ahead of you that God has prepared to listen to this message.  

Also as i'm sure you saw from the title of the email, President and Sister have now arrived in the Manila Mission and they are officially our new Presidents!  We had the opportunity to meet with him as a mission and he gave us kind of a devotional and introduction to his family.  He is from NEW ZEALAND!  I'm so excited because I absolutely love the New Zealand culture and people!  Can't wait to see the plans he has for this mission and I know he'll do amazing because... well, he was called of God...  Can't argue with that.  

It was Elder Sison's birthday on Monday so we decided to have a super fun P-Day and head to an aquarium at the Manila Ocean Park!

I had a cotton candy made for me and it turned out exactly like I hoped it would. ​

Also the Elders of Tondo 1B had a baptism this week!!  It was a great experience and we were able to bring three of our investigators who have upcoming baptisms (hopefully) this month!  Stay tuned conversion is happening here in Tondo I promise.  Have an amazing week I love you!!!

Elder Burdeos​

Goodbye President Ostler

HAPPY JULY 3RD ALMOST JULY 4TH!!  I'm the only American in my apartment so there will be no celebration this week for us:((( But nevertheless I love the land of the free and the home of the brave go America!  Well anyways this week was not the best hahaha.  Many things went wrong which are including but not limited to:

1)  President and Sister Ostler finished their missions and go home today 

2)  AGAIN, our house had no water from Tuesday until Saturday and this time it was our house missionary (the missionary in charge of paying bills)'s fault.  We took it as a sign that we needed to communicate and request more help from our members, they provided us with water for the most part and they are walking tender mercies :)))

3)  Manny Pacquiao lost

So this week was pretty challenging but we are just kind of rolling with it right now haha.

Here is a picture of us at our final zone conference with President Ostler!  We found Elder Albis who just barely left Tondo and has already lost a TON of weight.  Lucky guy.

The Elder with the red tie on the left is Elder Cram.  He approached me at zone conference and said, "HEY I KNOW YOU!!  YOU'RE THAT DASHINGLY HANDSOME, BEAUTIFUL, POPULAR, LIKE REALLY HANDSOME FILIPINO BOY FROM RIVERTON HIGH SCHOOL!!"  (just kidding but he really said) "Hey!!!  I know you from Riverton High School!!"  I finally found another Silverwolf.  We became friends immediately of course.

And here he is, the man himself, President Ostler.  President has been such a huge blessing to us here in the Philippines Manila Mission.  When he spoke, it was always so apparent that this man was called of God to guide and lead this mission.  He has given me advice and life lessons that I will never forget and i'm really grateful to have known him and Sister Ostler who is directly to the left of my big head if you look closely.

Trials, trials, trials, but the harder it gets, the more you learn to rely on the Lord and realize he loves us and wouldn't let us die in the middle of a waterless rat filled apartment :))  The Church is true have an amazing week I love you

Elder Burdeos