Monday 28 September 2015

Pamilya!

It was family week! It was a crazy week! And super fun, I don't think I have had a decent sleep for a week or more!

We headed over to some other elder's area Tuesday for some interviews. They had their baptism candidates way up in the mountain so we did splits.. it was way early in the morning so I went back to the house with Elder Ehninger and I did interviews/house check with the Elders at the house. So that took a chunk out of our Tuesday.

Wednesday was a whole different situation.. We traveled to a different elder's area to do a surprise house check but really we were there to do exchanges with the elders that were having some problems with obedience. Things seem to be turning around even though it all went a lot deeper than we thought. We also were able to conduct another interview over there.

Thursday was the first day we were actually able to work! That's how crazy everything was. But we prepped Roselinda and Rosemary for their baptisms! And got them interviewed so that Roselinda got baptized this week and Rosemary for next week. This was a super cool baptism because they couldn't have been more prepared! Roselinda lost all her Word of Wisdom problems so fast and her mom was just ready to be baptized after the first visit! We did her baptism Sunday morning because then she would have been free of problems for a straight week. Not too many people showed up for the baptism because it was early before church but I gave a talk and it was a good little baptism.

Saturday we were invited to speak at National Family Week which is a Philippines thing that they do every year just basically focused on the family! haha the whole stake was there and we got up and got everyone involed talking about the importance/responsibility of family! AND THEY FED US SUPER GOOD FOOD AFTERWARDS! I was actually full and satisfied for once! haha

Sunday we were invited to come back to the Stake for their Council meeting. We focused on retaining new members and basically we just worked the rest of the day!

Now we are here again in Bacolod for our MLC! We have been all over the place so we're kinda low on funds haha it's all good though we are gonna get spiritually and physically fed at MLC!

We are kind of nervous for next week because transfer calls will be in... and well we really love our area and the ward is starting to help and progress and we have set up baptisms for all of October! And hey it's super fun being with an American! BUT whatever happens happens, so if I am no longer a zone leader next week or I have a new companion it's all part of the change.

I love all of you so much! Thanks for everything!

And hey it was family week! Let your family know you love em!

-Elder Warnick
Elder Slater, Roselinda, Elder Warnick


Monday 21 September 2015

Life is Good


I am not sure how to describe this week.. But it was good, really good!

Tuesday put a dent in our work but I think it was for the greater good. The church was locked so we ended up having District meeting at some park which was really interesting haha  We had had some companionships in our zone that were really really struggling! The ward members were getting involved and rumors and stuff were spreading, it was all pretty bad. Our mission president wanted us to take care of the problem and report back to him. So we met with the bishops and Stake President and everything went well the same night we made a surprise stop by the Elder's apartment and gave them some interviews. It was a full day ordeal so we didn't get to teach any lessons and we were so late in the other area we just had to walk home because it was too late for buses. We were fortunate enough to have a truck driver stop and give us a ride home. He was only speaking Tagalog though so that was fun.

The rest of the week we were just all over our area.. we had really narrowed down who our progressing investigators were and we needed to start finding! And the ward is finally helping! They gave us some pretty quality referrals this week! We really hope some good can come from it!

I don't have too much to write today sorry about that, our week was just packed with a lot of walking and working and I have never really been good at the whole email thing! Just pray for me to get better at that! ;)

So I think I talked about RoseMary? She is this referral we got a while ago who already had a testimony about missionary work and the church because she always sees missionaries walking. Anyway she was going to be baptized this week but she wanted to change her date so she could be baptized on the 3rd of October which is the same dated as one of her kids birthdays that died.. But that's a whole different story! We really wanted her to be baptized this week but of course if the 3rd is special to her we were happy to move it! But the hope isn't lost for this weekend! RoseMary's daughter Roselinda is hopefully going to be baptized she had a problem with all of the vices.. and she is only 15.. BUT we taught her about fasting and we fasted with her and yesterday at church she said that she's all good! BOOM!

I guess to close this all off I just wanted to talk about Priesthood and even though I didn't have any crazy experiences with that recently we were able to give a few blessings yesterday, actually it seems like we always are. I am just very grateful for the priesthood and all the blessings that we can receive from it.

The food situation is weird. I have gotten really sick of everything haha rice is good and all but we just really aren't that good of cooks! haha hopefully we will get better but there is only so much you can do with chicken and rice!

It's been a year since I left the states, this time last year I was in Manila! That was an adventure! Life is good!

Palanggo ko kamo!
-Elder Warnick


District Meeting in the Park





I don't have any pictures this week! haha but I got some pictures from back in the day so here's a little flashback!








Monday 14 September 2015

2 is better than.. none

First off shout out to pops, Happy Birthday!

This week has been crazy! But nothing new for a missionary!

Our zone dive bombed... It's still awesome and everyone is doing crazy good work but our zone had 2 baptisms this week. That's better than none I guess! And we always have to remember it's souls! Not numbers! But they were our baptisms. :/ kind of hard as one of their leaders! BUT we have made some new goals and are going to help out some struggling companionships this week!

It rained a lot. We walked a lot. And we had a super good week! THE TWINS came to church this week and a lot of other people that we didn't expect to show up but sometimes you are just blessed with miracles! I think that's something we noticed recently that even though we would be working super hard nothing would really be showing for it. But then God would bless us by putting random people in our life. And now currently all our progressing investigators aren't even any of the people we found on our own! Gods ways are higher than our ways!

We had a one day mission baptism and ward home evening wrapped all into one this weekend! It was a super busy day but we really got the ward involved sometimes it feels like me and E. Slater are training the ward on HOW to be a ward! haha but they are learning and STARTING to be friends to our investigators.

The baptism went awesome! I baptized sister Marissa and her daughter Nicole they were super happy and we were so lucky to baptize them. Turns out back before we got here the other missionaries were just teaching Nicole. But she was 7 years old!!! They had her baptism date set for her birthday back in August. But they never had talked to her mom! She actually was relatives with a really active member! They live right next to each other! Anyway we didn't have to do much other than teach because Marissa's friend/relative was such a big help! And now we most likely will be teaching her husband! Member missionary work!

Weird or Cool things that happened this week:
-A dog peed in my shoe because you have to take your shoes off before you go into a house...
-We ate at a weird hamburger shack place that didn't settle in our stomachs..
-I climbed a coconut tree
-We killed this huge spider that was as big as my face. (it WAS poisoness)
-We braved the market this week and got a ton of veggies.

All in all the days are flying by and I am just hoping to make every moment count.

I love you all and I am sorry if the pictures don't work. Filipino computers you know!

-Elder Warnick


Elder Warnick, Nicole, Marissa, Elder Slater

Monday 7 September 2015

55

The trip to Bacolod was AWESOME! I had heard all these legendary stories of how MLC works or how the night before works and I was excited! Last time kind of shot my expectations but round two was a good one! After emailing last week we met up with Elder Paskett and Clarke and hit up a pizza place at the mall! We kind of just hung around and talked to other missionaries at the office  until the supply elders told us they needed our help with loading some boxes and this is where it gets good! Elder Slater has a Philippines license because when he was in another area he had to use a truck because the area was so huge, SO he was able to grab a mission truck and we had it for the night to help the supply elders and those trucks have good sound systems! We were blasting BYU Vocal Point...then they took us out to eat at this fancy place caled "21" and I had such a good steak! It was a good time.

In the morning we had our MLC and it was at the MISSION HOME! Just makes it more cozy! We had breakfast and training and President showed us a lot of clips from movies because they were applicable! It was kind of nice to see parts of movies but still weird. One of the big things about the MLC was focusing on being accountable. Which I liked a ton because blaming or assuming never works out and President taught us how we can be more Christlike Leaders.

We had a baptism! It felt good after all the work we had put in! I don't think I have said too much about Sister DelaCruz, she had been taught by the missionaries forever and was never baptized she would never commit to a date and shy away from any invitation to do anything but we were committed to help her make the next step and all it really took was sitting down and talking to her and helping her resolve her concerns of coures it wasn't easy because she still had doubts but when we helped her realize this is what would help her she changed and her testimony at her baptism was super strong!

We got twins! We started teaching a pair of twins this week and it's super hard because their names are Mary Grace and Mary Joy! They look exactly alike! Mary Grace was brought to church last last week by her cousin so we followed up with that and found out she has a twin! They are super funny and awkward but we see good things happening.

The ward is coming around too! They all started helping out a little more and actually caring about the investigators! We have been finding like crazy and have a ton of hope for this month! Every month we have to collect the goal for baptisms for the zone and our vision is to baptize weekly. Our Zone has 11 companionships meaning 44 baptisms a month BUT after calling everyone we figured out we had 55 planned! Due to some weak planning though it might be closer to 47 but still if we can achieve our goal we would be happy ZLs.

Well this week should be a good one! Hope all of you can do sometime crazy this week like ride a carabou.

-Elder Warnick
Zone Training

Storms

Sister DelaCruz and Elder Warncik

Elder Warnick, Sister DelaCruz, Elder Slater and Others

Campo Field


Elder Warnick - Riding a Carabou