Stowaway

I am exhausted.. But it's good because it's all from the work! So the week was pretty weird because all the people/investigators keep surprising me!

We have been teaching this family that is basically golden. They are super poor though so it's way hard for all of them to be able to make it to church. But they all accepted the baptism invitation and four of them are going to be baptized on the 9th but we had a super weird experience when we stopped by this week and the dad of the family was on the phone and when we got there he quickly hung up and we asked him who it was he told us a super long story of how he is from Mindanao which is like 100% muslim-philippines and he said when he was younger he stowed away to Manila and found his wife and moved here and that call that he just hung up was him talking to his family for the first time in 24 years! What the freak? But then we ended up having a super good lesson and they are all good for baptism now haha

Also we tried contacting a former investigator that lives down some crazy road and we had been asking tons and tons of people if they knew this person and nobody knew who she was.. the teaching record said her husband was stabbed and now she is a widow but long story short we found her! And she totally lied to our faces and said that she didn't know who we were looking for.. it's okay though we are gonna stop by again.

Are area is doing super good and miracles just keep happening and happening our investigators have basically been asking us to be baptized this week! I never thought that would happen but these people are super prepared!

I also fell down like 2 times this week tripping over a stupid little plank bridge and then some random pipe in the middle of the road.. it was rough..

Our baptism this week was super fulfilling because it was the same sister that had been hiding from us about a month ago and then after a little bit asked to be baptized and now she is a member! It's so sweet to see the change in peoples lives! Also when she was bearing her testimony at the baptism she said that hopefully her getting baptized will pave the way for her family as well. So I guess that means we have work to do!

So hammocks happened this week. Yeah we bought ghetto filipino hammocks and they were definitely filipino sized haha There was also like 6 power outs this week they call them brown outs here. Because "when the power goes off all the browns come out" it was so true everyone was outside when the power was off! haha

And that's about it for my week. I'm having a ever constant battle with this super ugly dog that keeps getting into our yard and I will probably take some pics this week so you can see how ugly this dog is but it definitely hates me as much as I hate it hahaha but ear plugs are my salvation at night!

Palanga ta ka!
-Elder Warnick

Mangoes

So first off Conference was awesome. Kind of cruel that they hold it back from us missionaries for a week. But it makes sense because if they streamed it live it would be like the middle of the night here.

So my week.

So we were really focusing on members working with us this week because everything seems to go better when we have them working with us. But nobody was super committed so we ended up having to work by ourselves sometimes because they didn't show up. Oh well the church is still true and the work goes on.

We have a huge mountain in our area called Bow-Bow and I guess there is one investigator there and the small town surrounding the mountain is full of Less Actives so we were planning on going there and just basically having some crazy adventure but once again nobody showed up.. haha ahh patay... (dead)

We actually ended up getting a ton of good lessons this week and all of our investigators are set for these next couple weeks to be baptized. And we have somehow found even more investigators just from teaching our regular investigators like there is one 14 year old kid who is so ready for the gospel, his mom got baptized last year but never got confirmed so we have to reteach her and hopefully we will be able to baptize her and her son.

We tried to find short cuts and stuff like that this week while walking through our areas so there was a lot of crossing through rice fields and sugar cane. A couple rivers too. And one night we were out so late waiting for our baptism candidate to get home and we had to walk all the way home because there was no more tricycles. I don't know how many kilometers it was but it was a long walk!

We have a baptism this Saturday and it has never felt more fulfilling because we worked so hard to get all these baptisms set up for the next couple weeks. Transfers area also next week so if I transfer AGAIN I don't know what I will do.

General Conference was awesome and it was definitely everything that I needed. All the talks were super good and conference is just a really good thing for a missionary. I loved Elder Gibson's talk and Elder Ballard's too! Priesthood session was a win. While we were watching conference and people were coming into the chapel I saw a lady that looked familiar and I realized it was Sister Buslay from my second area after the session we talked and caught up and she took me and my comp to lunch!

I think that was the main stuff of the week.

I cut down some mangoes off the tree with that weird tool thing so that's what the picture is.The mangoes aren't yellow yet so it was super sour but they still eat them here and just dip them in salt!

-Elder Warnick

Miracles

This week really was a week of miracles. Just small little ones but it all is building up to HUGE blessings.

So at the beginning of the week we went on exchanges, I was with someone even newer in the mission than my companion! So it was even harder than usual to teach and their investigators were asking super deep doctrinal questions but I learned a ton and situations like that really helps to boost my confidence.

When I got back from the exchanges we got right back to work, working in our area. And we had a super cool experience; So Sis. Morales an investigator that was super attached to former missionaries mid lesson stopped me from teaching and asked me if she could be baptized on the 25th and that she wanted me to baptize her. I was kind of shocked just because when we first started teaching her she would always hide from us and she said we only could teach her if we "happened to catch her" so that was just the start of the miracles!

We have been contacting a ton of part members, less actives and former investigators and it has really worked out from us! We doubled all our lessons this week and tripled the number of new investigators! We taught a sister who was super poor and lives kind of close to our house and when we were sharing about how the gospel blesses families she started crying because her husband is dead. We testified that families can be together forever, and I think she really got it.

We also went on member splits this week and I went to our super mountainous area with two young men. We actually ended up finding a sister who was baptized but never confirmed! And found a whole new family that are actually super strong baptists... They started bashing one of our recent converts and he totally stood up to them and bore his testimony! It was sweet! We also stopped by a less active part member home and the kids were begging for us to teach them so that was basically how we got in and were able to teach the whole family!

I was really expecting not a lot to get done this week because it was "Holy Week" but we ended up getting super good lessons and finding a lot of good people. But of course Sunday is always the day that determines if our investigators are progressing or not! And we were super blessed with half a family and then our investigator scheduled for the 18th! So looks like WE WILL have a baptism on the 18th!

Easter was basically a day of partying for the people here and wasn't super special. But the ward made it a pretty good day!

I've been trying to take a bunch of pics of the area because it is the most wilderness like area that I have had!

I had pork intestines this week and it wasn't too great..

Thanks for the packages! Cereal was great, and the Easter candy was even better!

Palanga ta' ka!
-Elder Warnick