Paskto na naman? O Kay Tulin ng Araw!

I'm having a blast here.  I love the Christmas season and being a missionary during the holidays is such a privilege.  We literally go around talking about Jesus Christ to those already celebrating His birth.  Really the only negative part about this week was seeing one of my best friends in the mission go home.  Good ol' Elder McCauley.   

We picked the assistants up from the airport after their flight from Palawan and we thought we'd give Elder McCauley a little bit of preparation before the real deal. 

Here's the man himself.  He was one of the very first missionaries that I interacted with when I hit the field.  He's taught me a lot and I'll miss him tons.   (Also notice the beautiful December clouds rolling in so it's not blazing hot during Christmas time!)

I'm a Certifide Master Teacher.  Only God can judge me.

Some students from Dela Salle (Basically the richest school in the whole Philippines) came to the office to learn more about the church for a project.  They were incredibly friendly and impressed when I told them I had been studying English for the last 18 years.  WOW

Bunch of goofs in the office

NEXT EMAIL WILL BE CHRISTMAS DAY... IN THE PHILIPPINES.  MALIGAYANG PASKO.  MAHAL NA MAHAL KO KAYONG LAHAT.  

The Week my Brain Took a Vacation / Light the World week 2

I did a lot of unintentional stupid stuff this week which actually led to this week being hilarious and amazing.  

I hope everybody is having a fantastic holiday season!  As a missionary, you really start to love the Christmas season even more because you begin to realize how cool it is that people all over the world are coming together to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ, the greatest gift that this world has every received.  We've been running back and forth, trying to prepare for this upcoming mission tour so not much has happened there but here's a list of those unintentional stupid things that I did this week just so you can all make fun of me:

- We were in a parking garage at a mall to buy ties for the mission and we had to make a sharp right turn.  Elder Fiesta asked me to check if our wheels were going to hit the curb so I intended to stick my head out the window to check but I forgot to roll down the window so I ended up just banging my head on the glass while the other 4 laughed at me.

- We were at a restaurant and my food was steaming hot so right as I was about to blow on it, Elder Reber started talking to me and not thinking, I turned to him and started blowing on his face.

- I was standing up from my desk and the box that holds all of the computer equipment was left open so I hit my head on that. That one was a less forgiving mistake haha...

- I was poking my head into President's office to tell him something and the door hit a sudden stop in the floor so I hit my head on the door.  President was dying.

Unfortunately there are a lot more...  ANYWAYS.

Here are my pictures for this week:

We had a sweet Christmas party in our ward.  It was so dang fun and we got to perform a song that I made out of 3 Tagalog Christmas songs that we used to sing for caroling before I left!  I'll send the video hopefully next week.

​My awesome companion Elder Cram plays the piano for the Christmas choir so while they practiced I just sat there and gave them a thumbs up or thumbs down on how they sounded :))​

Mury krismis from SM Makati.

ALSO CHRISTMAS IS COMING EARLY FOR ME THIS YEAR BECAUSE OUR INVESTIGATOR WAS FINALLY ALLOWED TO GET BAPTIZED BY HER OLDER SISTER!  December 23rd is going to be a great day.  

I believe in miracles.  The church is true.  Be sure to roll down your windows before you stick your head through them.  Love you

Elder Burdeos

Happy Light The World / Silver Rush

This week was just insane.  I didn't get to bed at 10:30 any night this week because we have been so booked with transfers.  I'll just give the rundown of a couple of days we had this week.

Tuesday:  We headed to the area office which is right by the temple in to pick up our rental car.  After we took the car back we helped departing missionaries weigh their luggage and get ready for their flights home.  One of those missionaries included one of my companions, Elder Webster.  He's the one who was in the office for 17 months of his mission and an incredible missionary.  After all was done, the hotel that we normally leave our missionaries at had no rooms available so we went to a hotel all the way in the Quezon City mission to drop them all off.  During the car ride I started to play funeral music like bag pipes and stuff which Elder Webster enjoyed immensely.  I Had to say goodbye to some outstanding missionaries then Elder Cram, my other companion, and I headed home.  It was quite the drive and we got home at 12:30 am.  

Wednesday:  We woke up early to go pick up the new missionaries from the MTC.  A good like 90% of them are Polynesian which I have no problem with because they are super good at singing and hard workers.  We ran back and forth from the office and the mission home running errands for President and our office couple.  At the end of the night there were tons of Elders and Sisters who were unable to find taxis so we had to take them home and that may have been the worst decision I've ever made.  We left at around 6:30 pm and it took us 5 hours to drop off 3 sets of missionaries.  My buns were so sore after that I couldn't walk.  Those poor pan de sals.

We've still been paying for the harsh side effects of transfer day.  Who knew it would be so hard to have missionaries get from point A to point B.  

It was one of the most frustrating weeks of my whole life but I'm so grateful to have help coming from those around me and of course our loving Heavenly Father.  This whole week has been full of small tender mercies and blessings that I have seen even though sometimes I feel I do not deserve the help or support.  I'd like to testify that Heavenly Father never forgets about His children and that He wants to see us succeed in life sees the potential in each and every one of us.  Because of this, we need to struggle and go through hard times in order to become the people that He knows we can be and reach our full potential.  I'm grateful to be a missionary and it's such an honor to be a part of this marvelous work.

“But the Lord knoweth all things from the beginning; wherefore, he prepareth a way to accomplish all his works among the children of men; for behold, he hath all power unto the fulfilling of all his words. And thus it is. Amen.”  - 1 Nephi 9:6

One of our Elders in the mission got an infection in his eye this week.  He's hilarious and goes around calling himself Cyborg.

This picture is from the hotel we dropped all of the departing missionaries off at. ​

I got to see the beloved Robles family from Makati 2nd at our Stake Conference. 

I AM SO DANG THANKFUL

Hey all you party people I hope you had an amazing thanksgiving and spent time with all of your loved ones and ate lots of food and watched the annual dog show after the parade!  Even though I didn't get the opportunity to do those things, I really want to express my gratitude for this opportunity that I have to serve and help others learn how important it is to show our gratitude to everything that God gives us every single day.

As far as how my week went, it's been really busy this week in the office with preparing for transfers and missionary interviews...

Here is a picture of the family home evening we had at the Matias family residence.  Notice Sister Andrada's face on the far right.  She's crazy.

Have a good week love y'all.  Sorry my email was so short, not too much happened that i'd like to fill all of you in on.

(ALSO I'd like to congratulate my my cousins Jordan and Alex for having their new baby boy Mac this week!  Can't wait to meet him one day) 

--

ELDE

​​

R BURDEOS

"

​ I'd like to bury my testimony​ 

"

2016 - 2018

PHILIPPINES MANILA MISSION

Sara Got Baptized

Can't remember much from what happened this week but I just remember it being a blast and a half.  I'll just explain what happened through pictures.  :)

One of the investigators in our area, Sara, had her baptism on Saturday.  Since there are a lot of people in this picture and you might not be able to tell which one Sara is I drew this visual help in the picture below.  

Sara is amazing and it's been such an incredible experience to see her willingness to follow Jesus Christ and the light in her eyes after her baptism.  She is going to be such a great addition to this ward and they already love her. That's her in the yellow behind me.  She's awesome.

I met the Walmart versions of the Justice League while walking to the area one day.

We celebrated my gwapo companion's un-birthday today.  He won't be here for his actual birthday so we celebrated it ahead of time. 

This week was so much fun and our area is really starting to pick up.  That's all I have to say for this week.  Love you.

Elder Burdeos

PICTURES FROM CORON

1. We pulled the car over because there was a nice view of the ocean.

2. Squad

3. Elder McCauley and I next to Coron's baptismal font

4. Squad pt. 2

5. This is what yards look like

6. When flying into Coron we saw this cool whale shaped island

7. Some of our investigators from the night who ended up attending church the next day 

8. "  "

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...