NOICE

These last two weeks have been pretty sweet.  I have a new companion, his name is Elder Hernaez!  He's super awesome and just like me he's a foreign Filipino!  Only difference is that he grew up in the Northern part of the Philippines until he was 9 then moved to Canada.  He speaks fluent Ilokano which is awesome and super useful.  Elder Somosa was shipped off to Palawan and we miss him tons.

We had a great time helping some sisters move out of their apartment this last week.  As you can see by these candid photos I was a huge help in that process.

Our investigator, Eric, has attended church for the last two weeks and he confirmed with us yesterday that he is ready to be baptized!  We'll keep pushing him for the 14th of April and continue to help him to accept this important step in following the Savior.  One of our recent converts, Jessica, has also informed us that she wants to prepare to serve a full-time mission!  As President Fermanis would say, "That made me happier than a rat up a drain pipe!"  The Lord keeps abundantly pouring blessings upon us here in the mission field and i'm so grateful for this opportunity to be a part of this work.  

1- Party at the office

2-​​​​​​​​​​ Gotta love that Filipino food

3- Another squad

4- King Ace's baptism!  (His name is literally King Ace)

5- Beautiful Makati 1st Ward

6- We had a mini MTC where we had future missionaries come and participate to prepare to serve.

  

We have a couple baptisms coming up this April so stay tuned.  Missionary work is too sick.  Love you all have a good week! 

ELDER BURDEOS

""

2016 - 2018

PHILIPPINES MANILA MISSION

Welcome to the Quezon City Mission

No, I have not been transferred to the Quezon City Mission but I've spent more time within their mission boundaries than I have in Manila hahaha.  

Wednesday we had our zone conference which gave us all the spiritual boost that we needed.  A topic that really stood out to me was what it really means to submit to the will of God.  Sometimes we think about submitting to the will of God as accepting the outcome of life and everything happening to us but it's more than that.  Submitting to the will of God is serving in all circumstances and situations, loving others like the Savior has taught us to, and making sacrifices and consecrating ourselves to following God and His commandments.  I love zone conferences and the opportunity that we get to listen to our Mission President and selected leaders.  I had the opportunity to give an example of the "Companionship Inventory".  Or commonly known as the most awkward part of missionary work in which you and your companion sort out any problems you may have with each other and discuss anything that could keep you from being unified.  It was a very fun experience.

Thursday was another eventful day as Elder Somosa and I travelled to the Quezon City Mission Office to deliver some supplies.  We had a lot of fun driving around trying to find the office and i'm pretty sure I am now more familiar with the Quezon City Mission's area than I am with Manila's haha.  Thursday night was one of the best nights of my mission because I was able to request permission from President to have dinner with some family in Rockwell.  It was so fun to catch up with them and they fed us REALLY GOOD Mexican Food which I have been missing a ton.  

This week was very enjoyable and the work in our area is starting to roll.  We were able to find some new investigators to teach and we can't wait to see the conversion and progress take place as they continue to follow the example of the Savior.  THE CHURCH IS SO TRUE IT HURTS.

1- Here are some of our investigators we've been teaching, the Canlas family.

2- Our lock broke the day before zone conference which was the day a lot of Elders stayed over at our apartment :')

3 & 4- Sick pics from the field trip to the Quezon City Mission office.

5- THE FAM.  Taken at the dinner I was able to have with my relatives from the Philippines and Hawaii!  

6- My cousin Angelo who appears to have been nonstop lifting the whole time I've been on my mission.  He could probably bench press me at this point.

7- Taking the new missionaries to get their licenses at the LTO.  Elder Somosa is the best co-pilot ever hahaha.

8- If all of us could be as happy as this dumpling guy, the world would be a beautiful place of healing and comfort.

9- The missionaries of Makati 1st Ward!

10- We'll be losing Sister Montaño on Tuesday as she will be heading to her real mission in Melbourne, Australia.

11- They told us to "act like you don't know i'm taking a picture"

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO MY OLDER SISTER ERIN ON THE 14TH!!  ALSO MAYSEN ROLLO ON THE 18TH!  AND SETH VANMAREN LAST WEEK!  LOVE YOU GUYS THANKS FOR BEING BORN.

I hope you all have an amazing week, thank you so much for all of your emails and support.  I love you be safe!

Sacrament Concert

How's it hanging.  We didn't have much go on this week besides MLC.  Something that I learned from the challenges and hardships I faced this week was that we need to counsel with the Lord on a daily basis on what our plans are and what we need to accomplish those set plans.  Sometimes we get so caught up in the work we've been given and we forget that God can help us every step of the way, all we have to do is ask.  My priorities this week were all on getting catching up on all the work here in the office and stressing myself out over everything as opposed to strengthening my own faith and the faith of those around me.  Even in the hardest and busiest of times it's important to remember the spiritual side of life and what should matter the most to us in the long run.  I invite each and every one of you who are reading this to prioritize what really matters to you this week.  Try putting God and family ahead of everything else and see the blessings that come from it.  Something really funny that happened this week was a member went up during fast and testimony meeting and somehow managed to blend singing a whole 4 verse hymn into her testimony and then just acted like nothing happened.  The best part is that for some reason she had her own D.I.Y. missionary nametag hahaha.  She's my new idol.

1- For a long time in the mission we went without Book of Mormons because apparently they were having a hard time going through customs. They finally came this week so don't worry the church remains true.

2- Family home evening at the Garma residence

3- Found this upper decent sports car in the middle of BGC

4- This is my face 98% of the time 

5- T-REX X-ING WOW

6- On the left of me is Sister Cabrera and she went home this week.

Mahal ko kayo

Transfer Week :-|

This week was pretty dang sick.  It was transfer week again so of course we had a hard time saying bye to some great Elders and Sisters :(  But in return we had a really solid looking group of missionaries come in to replace them.  Our mission had the privilege to hear from Elder Rasband of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles over at the Manila MTC.  It was an incredible experience and he gave us the spiritual boost that we all needed.  He talked a lot about how we can gain a stronger testimony of the gospel in the hardest of times.  The process that he mentioned was learning more about the Savior Jesus Christ.  The more we learn about Christ and His ministry,  the more we will grow the desire to follow His example and become more like Him.  It made me see the correlation that our testimonies have to our understanding about a certain topic.  We can't have a strong testimony of something that we don't have a clear understanding of.  Therefore as missionaries our teaching should be as simple as possible.  Freak this week was so fun, I'll explain it with some pictures:

Departing missionary night:  We had some pretty upper decent missionaries leave the mission... okay they were great.  

Transfer Day: 

Our car got a flat tire because Elder Mitchell refuses to work out.  As you can see I took it upon myself to fulfill the most important responsibility of constantly identifying the problem as they changed the flat tire.

"Let's call some taxis while waiting for them to fix the flat tire"

CEREAL BREAK ON TRANSFER DAY

This was on Friday at Elder Rasband's visit to the MTC.  

My companion, Elder Cornelius, went home today due to some physical issues he's been experiencing so President Fermanis had us over for dinner last night as a farewell.

Well that's it for this week!  I love you guys thanks for the sick emails!  I always appreciate the love and support!  Have an awesome week. 

-The Men of Makati

Area Blitz #1

Hey how's it hangin' fam.  This transfer is about to be really crazy.  We spent a lot of this week planning for transfers and it's been super stressful.  President is planning on putting the focus of the mission on our island, Palawan.  This is going to be a good change and i'm excited to see the outcome of it.  Hopefully everybody had a good Valentines day and Chinese New Year!

1-  Sister Gabriel goes home this Wednesday during transfer week, she's super makulit but we'll miss here tons.

2 & 3 - Our district is beginning to try a weekly area blitz in which all of the missionaries in our district work in one area for a couple of hours and we find as many investigators as we can.  We worked in our area and as a district we were able to find 20 investigators in 2.5 hours!  

4 & 5 - Our ward had a family home evening in celebration of Elder Smith (a return missionary from the Manila Mission) coming to visit us.

My new camera came in!! (Thanks mom and dad)  So hopefully I won't have to borrow this one and I'll have more pictures to send here in the future.

Shoutout to my awesome family for hooking me up with the food!  Love you guys.  Also I'll be staying in the office for this transfer :-|  Just keep holding on and trusting in the Lord hahaha.  

We Have an Apartment

Not much time today to fill you in on what has happened this week and also my camera is broken and we're working on getting a replacement soon. :(  Pasensiya na sa kayong limang nagbabasa nito hahaha joke lang.  

-Our investigator, Kian, got baptized last Saturday (picture coming soon)

-We found our new apartment FINALLY and we love it tons.  It's really close to the mission office.  It's big and has air conditioning!  Hot water remains non-existent here but I still love the new apartment.  

-We ate unlimited pizza at Yellow Cab and I feel like a bowling ball.

-My companion accidentally left pizza in the office microwave for too long setting all of the smoke alarms off.  The pizza burned through the plate it was on haha...

Over the past few months our mission President has made it a mission rule to read at least 10 pages of the Book of Mormon every single day.  At first I thought it would be difficult considering I have the reading ability of a 5 year old but I can't explain to you the blessings that I've seen come from it.  God loves it when we sacrifice our time and effort to ponder His word and apply the teachings into our lives.  I can testify that reading the Book of Mormon every day, even just a little, will bring blessings and just like the prophet Russell M. Nelson said, we will be able to overcome the temptations and dangers that surround us in this modern day generation.  The feeling coming from reading the Book of Mormon and feeling like God Himself is talking directly to you and guiding you through your life is indescribable.  Don't believe me, try it out for yourself.

Love you have a great week, remember to ask your parents before going online.

Elder Burdeos

The Best Things in Life Come in 3

First off, huge thank you to the Eagles for putting Tom Brady in his place.  You've done your country well.  

So for the third time on my mission I'm in a companionship of three!  My new companion, Elder Cornelius, is from Fresno California and he's awesome.  He got an injured while serving on Coron so for the meantime we are taking care of him in the office.  It's been difficult because we've had to arrange exchanges a couple times because he can't walk very far.  He's awesome though and very knowledgeable which makes for some sweet deep conversations every day.  Truly not much happened this week other than MLC on Thursday.  One of our investigators is getting baptized on Saturday so be on the lookout.  

1) We all hid in President Fermanis's office because there were tons of people coming in and out of the office asking us for favors during our personal study :)

2-4) We found a way to the very top of our apartment building which was 42 floors up.  It had a beautiful view of the whole mission.

5- It was a nice view but Elder Reber is still a nicer view.

6) The missionary to the very right is Elder Cornelius our new companion.  Such a cool guy.

Love you guys thanks for all of your love and support I'll catch you next week.