Back to the Basics

After a week of scorching sun or pounding rain, I'm here again!

So it's been rough, I'm not gonna lie. We have a TON of expectations set for us as ZLs and some of the companionships in our zone would rather be buddy buddy with us instead of take things serious...and our ward is struggling so this week we went back to the basics.

WE VISITED EVERY MEMBER! We grabbed that ward directory and visited every single member this week! Okay not everyone because a lot weren't home, but we asked their neighbors about them and we got information on all the members! It worked out pretty nicely because there was a ton of LAs and Part Members so we are hoping it starts turning out.

We also had this random girl give us one referral and it turned out we found a whole new village with 20 new investigators! One of them already had a testimony about missionary work and her son (even though he is gay) wants to go on a mission now! haha weird

Me and Slater are doing good, we walk a lot, talk a lot and argue a little but it all helps us get better! And our cooking is actually getting pretty decent! Just a lot of rice and veggies to get us through the day.

We are here in Bacolod again, It's already time for MLC so I am pretty excited for that which means I will be giving my 3rd training this week! I am excited though!

We started this weird tradition where we find the weirdest, nastiest looking drink on p-day and then Monday night we climb to the top of our water tower and drink whilst stargazing.. this past week we had this weird milk soda called a "milky" The Philippines makes ya weird.

Speaking of weird, one of my best buddies Elder McCracken was just made our AP! YEAH! That's cool we started from the bottom and now he's there! When he called yesterday to grab our zones numbers we told him that we were voting for him the whole time! #McCracken2015

So the baptism didn't happen this past week, but that's okay because the girl we were going to baptize is now going to be baptized with her mom in two weeks! And we have a baptism this Saturday, I am pretty excited! It's been a while.

The area is really nice, it's super big, it goes from the beach to the rice fields to the sugarcane fields all the way to the mountain we basically have a little chunk of everything.

We have been doing a lot for everyone else lately and President said to just take care of the Zone.. but it's been hurting our area so hopefully we can turn that around.

I think I say this all the time now but I am just loving it! It's super hard but nothing has ever been so fulfilling! I am super glad that I am serving and I don't think I would trade any of this experience for anything!

Thanks for all the help and support!
Love,

Elder Warnick

Laundry Filipino Style

I finally got a picture of what it's like to do laundry Filipino style!

The Passover

I felt like I was soaked everyday this week! It felt like we were in a typhoon this week!

Okay not that bad but it was raining like crazy and the wind was super strong!

It was the busy week of the mission though, MISSION TOUR. When everyone in the mission meets up and we have a big conference with General Authorities! I got super lucky this year because Mission tour came around and we are the Zone Leaders! Which means we got to have a special meeting with Elder Bowen and of course they fed us SUPER good!

The hardest part about the Mission tour was we came down to Bacolod on Tuesday for our meeting and went back the same day. Then we worked Wednesday until night where we had to travel back to Bacolod and Thursday was our Mission tour and we came back home after it was over.. So a lot of traveling! But I got to sleep in the Silay apartment (my 3rd house) and it was different but super fun!

The Mission Tour was super good! Elder Bowen had so much advice on how to improve our areas and he also gave some advice for "after the mission" ;) haha The biggest thing was that he challenged all of us to do 30 oyms a day... that's 210 a week! It is a lot of work but we tried it out and I think we can get there!

We found so many new investigators this week! And hopefully we will have a baptism this Saturday! But it's not for sure! This area has been up and down! The hardest thing right now is getting the ward to work with us! They really miss old missionaries that were assigned here!

Speaking of Old missionaries we were out talking to our Tagiya (owner) the other night and she told us that Elder Anderson came back, I guess he was assigned here and was companions with my MTC teacher! SMALL WORLD! It was cool to talk to him though and he was still super good in Ilanggo!

It was a good week though! Progress gid! We gave out a lot of baptism dates and had a lot of people make it to church! AND the best part of all neither of us got transferred! WHEEEW! THE TRANSFER PASSOVER!

If I could ask something.. please don't remind me how long I have been out or how much time I have left! I just really want to make the most of it! And the mission is too fast to get caught up in counting it down!

Thanks for everything!
-Elder Warnick

Kids eating some rambutan

Crossing the river

Me and Bon

Walking on a Dream

Sometimes that's just how it feels! Walking on a dream! Also I did hear that song by Empire of the Sun this week at the 7-11, it's like a little chunk of America!

We went to Bacolod on Monday because we had our Mission Leadership Council all day on Tuesday. It was super fun! I had heard all about "MLC" but I didn't really know what to expect! But it was really fun, all the ZLs have a big meeting to discuss about the mission, but the meeting is known for it's food! They give us so much food! It was super cool to be there with so many other seasoned missionaries and to be able to see 2 elders from my MTC group; Elder Paskett and McCracken! I got to stay the night at Elder McCrackens house actually and it's always fun to catch up!

They trained us so that we could train our zone this week. We are working super hard so that our zone can improve and start baptizing more! We are hoping to be the top baptizing by the end of this transfer! President expects a lot! he wants us as ZLs to do 120 oyms a week that's like "street contacting" that's a lot of people! But we just want to do what the boss says!

So a big part of our week was taken from us because of trainings and traveling, but when we got back into it we went crazy we were working all day from morining til night and I think it is really paying off! But I think we are going crazy! We actually gave ourselves haircuts this week! I don't know why we did it but now it's not super long and hot!

We did some exchanges again this week because we always have people to interview! But it was super fun, I was with Elder Pedroso again and it was fun to catch up on old times and our candidate passed! He is super ready!

The baptism went great and we had a meeting with bishop afterwards, turns out bishop that that our candidate wasn't married to his wife and then we realized how dumb we were and we really never asked him about that but he passed the interview when he was asked if he was living in with someone. BUT just to make sure because he had already been baptized we talked to him! We got it all worked out but it was a close one.. that would have been interesting to explain to President.

Hope all of you are enjoying your last few days of freedom before school starts again!

Love,
Elder Warnick

Cause it is tradition

I don't even remember this whole week.

It just flew by. We had a meeting last week on P-day so we were in the big city! It was cool to catch up with a lot of elders that I hadn't seen in a while. It was a super long day though, filled with a lot of traveling and preparing for our training!

The next couple days of the week I don't really remember it was just work, eat, sleep, prepare for training. Over and over until Thursday! My one year mark! It was just like a birthday I didn't feel any different! haha But we actually had to do some interviews that day so I was with Elder Baldwin again in my area and it was good. Later that night I burned a shirt. Cause it's tradition.

Then there was the big day.. ZONE CONFERENCE. I was so nervous all week and I really didn't feel like I was going to be able to deliver the training because we never had a super smooth practice. Even though we had bought matching ties and everything! ;) BUT the day came and it went super good! We focused on Magnifying our callings as missionaries and we showed the video STRIVE from lds.org everyone I talked to said it was good! WHOO! We did the catering to which was super good! Missionaries LOVE food!

Saturday was killer! We skipped studies and worked the ENTIRE day mostly because we were low on teachings from going to Zone Conference and our mission president interviewed us and said that he expects a lot of us as Zone Leaders. So good things are coming!

We are doing a lot of preparing for mission tour, where we will have area presidency and 70s come by. So things are super busy here in the Bacolod mission!

Life is good though! One year down and one year to enjoy and learn and grow.

Love you all!

Hope all your "bucket showers" are refreshing!

-Elder Warnick

Filipino Graves

1 Year Mark - Pancakes

1 Year mark - Burning Shirt

Rambutan (Kind of like Grapes)

Happiness is what you make it

I am tired. But that is just missionary life! This week hit us hard though..

Kind of realized barely how fast the time has gone by. I remember getting ready for my mission and how excited I was and then entering the MTC and learning how missionary work WORKS. Now that I have been out a year I realized things aren't the same but that's not necessarily bad it's just different and I want to keep giving it my all because this is only a short amount of time.

So some of the elders needed us to do interviews for them this week so we switched companions Tuesday night so that me and Elder Ehninger could work in his area and get the interviews done the next day. They have to leave at 7 in the morning to get to the area so it was a whole day thing! But his area was fun! Super mountainous and the members were really cool! And I did my first 3 interviews! It was good to catch up with my buddy Ehninger.

The rest of the week was really just like sprinting the whole time! We were trying to get our investigator prepped for his baptism on Saturday and planning for our Zone Conference. A lot of late nights for sure. 

Elder Slater had been telling me that there were these two old ladies in our area that can't walk and they are sisters, he said they know everything! haha You can ask them for advice about anything and you will get the "perfect answer" the hard thing is he only went to their house once and it was on his first week in our area and he doesn't know their names! So literally impossible to find them! BUT he said he knew they were down some alley way-well we took the first alley we saw and this little boy walked up to us and asked us if we wanted to talk to his nanny we said sure and it ended up being them! I wasn't able to get a picture of them but they were the sweetest old ladies in the world!

Speaking of old ladies when I was with Elder Ehninger we stopped by a house with 2 old ladies too and they were trying to speak to us in english. Elder Ehninger shared 2 Nephi 5:27 and his question was "What is happiness?" and one of the nanays responses was "Happiness is what you make it" It was funny to hear her say that in broken english but I thought it was a good response.

Sad news with our baptism though.. it never ended up happening.. We thought he was so prepared and we had already had him interviewed the week before but 5 minutes before our baptism our bishop pulled us into his office and said that earlier in the week he saw our investigator smoking... so it of course didn't happen. But he still really wants to be baptized so we extended his date and we are going to really help him this week.

We have our Zone Conference this week. I think we are pretty much ready! Wish us luck!

I ripped through my rubber shoes this week! Those puppies lasted since January!

So I want to go into more detail of "The filipino experience" Sunday morning while getting ready our power was out. It just went of randomly, I should really send you all a picture of what the power lines look like here! Just a pole with lines everywhere! So we went to church with no power as well hot and sweaty but it was still a good fast sunday. When we came back home still no power, it's just a regular thing here! Long story short when you can't turn on your electric fan or use the motor to fill up your water tank from the well you really realize what you are grateful for!

Hope all your electric fans stay on through the night!
-Elder Warnick

People gathering things to eat off the beach

The beach

View outside my apartment

Getting a selfie on the night bus with Elder Slater - escaped the rain

River was flooded this week

Riding the Cires bus - no room for a white boy