Miracles of Minoyan

This week was great! It was definitely nothing that I have experienced before!

So on Monday me and Elder Clarke were companions for 3 days. We are in the same district and  we are both training so while we waited for our trainees to arrive we worked in both our areas. With training President wants the new trainees to have a baptism on their first weekend so we had to finalize some stuff and get interviews done for baptismal candidates. Mine was really last minute which was terrible planning on my part but the original candidate for us wasn't allowed to be baptized because her parents don't want her to.. So we tried our luck with another family the Hagupar family and two of their kids Marits and SunnyBoy were ready to be baptized we just needed to see if they could pass the interview and they did! We ended up interviewing two more of the Hagupar kids-two teenagers and they will be baptized next week!

It's actually working out nicely! I would have preferred to baptize the whole family at once which would have been about 8 but they all are progressing at different rates so still have problems with coffee and some need to go to church more so the way it works out is probably going to be every week about 2 of them will be baptized! I am just hoping we can help our other candidates to get baptized as well. And I need to make sure that they area is all good still when I go home.

Ay! So my trainee's name is Elder Liad (lee add) He is from Quezon City, Manila and he's awesome! It's been so weird being on the other side of things and I have never been with a filipino who didn't know how to speak illango so it has been different teaching someone and last time when I was follow up training Elder Baldwin I didn't know as much as I know now so it's been a lot better the second time around.

It's been non-stop raining! I gave my umbrella away to a member because yeah.. just getting home when I picked up Elder Liad was so crazy! We had to take a bus for about an hour to get to our area and then we had to hop on motorcycles (carrying his luggage) and speed up a hill while pouring rain. The first thing Elder Liad told me when we got to the house was "I am never going to forget this day" haha he has been good! He's trying really hard to learn the language and I think this week I am going to push him a little more to teach more. It will be good!

I just want to testify of miracles! And I think there are miracles when you are working with a new missionary! They don't know as much and so the spirit helps out a little more than usual! He's blessed as well to be in such a great first area! And the members are helping out a ton I think they think of him as their little baby, even though he is taller than most Filipinos. haha

Well this week was great and I am expecting this next week to be great as well!  Even better! We are going to do some finding, work out marriage papers, find out if one of our investigators who killed people can be baptized and try and stay dry haha who am I kidding you'll always be wet in the Philippines.

Palangga ko kamo!
-Elder Warnick

*Pictures:

-First Baptism for Elder Liad- Marites and SunnyBoy Hagupar

-The boys (some of the batch going home, Elder Paskett, Clarke, McCracken, me and Ehninger)

Happy Fathers Day! I'm going to be a Dad!

Changes naman.

So this week was a funny one! I was super pumped to be with Elder Tacuban because he such a good missionary and I was excited to get everything going in the area. And we did! We helped invite a lot of people for baptism and got things hopefully set up for this weekend to have one baptism with the possibility of another one.

Okay I will just get down to the good stuff, I am not an assistant anymore! After one week with Elder Tacuban HE transferred.. Yeah I was super surprised, but I was even more surprised when they told me that I will be training! Which means I will be a "Father" haha I am going to train a new missionary from Manila so this will be interesting because he won't know Ilanggo and I don't really know Tagalog but I am excited it's just crazy to think that this is going to be my 4th companion in this area and I have only been there for about 2 months.

We had a lot of miracles though this week. The Hagupar family from the very top of our area went to church! A couple weeks ago a few of them came to church and then every week there was more and more of them coming and yesterday we had almost the whole family there at church! We are just going to help them get rid of their coffee problem and we should be good to go!

So this last part of my mission is going to be the best! I am excited to see the miracles that my trainee will bring for this area!

I love you all!
-Elder Warnick

Dasig lang ha

Well I don't feel like I will have a lot to write but I AM able to send some pictures this week so that's good.

It was a fast week because we were doing so many different things we had MLC on Tuesday which took a lot of time out of the week but it was another good set of trainings. We worked in our area on Wednesday and we were still getting hit by the rain like crazy, that sadly was one of the only days this week that we were able to work. Thursday we attended the Zone Training in Sipalay which is the bottom of the island and I had never been there before! It's known for its white beaches and known for being super super far away. We woke up at 2 am and left Bacolod at 4 and ended up getting to Sipalay at 9... It was so long but I was able to see the whole Island and it was so awesome! Tiring but it was great! 

Elder Welton is going home this week and my new companion is Elder Tacuban he is actually from my batch so this will be the first time that I am with someone from my batch! It's going to be a lot of fun and I am really anticipating the success we will have because he is going to do such a good job!

That's probably it for now. This is probably the worst email I have sent but we need to get back to our area and we have just been stuck in meetings/running errands all day so we need to get back! 

Thanks! 

-Elder Warnick

Chillin at the Mission Office late at night

Apple's baptism

Sipalay white sand beaches

Top of our area

101

I guess I can still send this email now even though it's pretty late in the evening. THIS WEEK WAS A WEEK! 

So we beat our goal. Yay... after one week of hiking through the mud and rain and getting an ingrown toenail and cold a long the way we taught 101 lessons and had over 130 new investigators. The best part of the whole thing was because we had challenged some other missionaries to do 75 it kind of started a fire with people and everyone started to have a new desire or I guess a new understanding of what their capacity is. It's awesome!

We found a lot of awesome families this week but none of them came to church. We didn't really expect them to come right away because usually the pattern is after the first Sunday if they are interested they will go by the second Sunday. And the members helped a ton! This area is so amazing, I am really blessed and grateful to be able to end my mission in this area.

We had our baptism! It was great! The day itself was crazy because we had planned to teach 20 lessons but we do our baptisms in the next town over, so long story short we took our branch presidents tricycle down the mountain through the rain and had our baptism. There was literally no one at the baptism because all the YSA had a activity and it just didn't work out but our investigator Apple seemed perfectly fine, I don't think she wanted a lot of people there. I was able to confirm her on Sunday and she was super happy so overall it was a great experience.

Elder Welton goes home this next week so it's going to be weird but everyone seems to be getting ready for it and then I will be starting my last transfer here in the mission. It's been such a crazy time here in the mission and I have loved every moment of it, it's just been weird to see how fast it has gone by. But that doesn't really matter right now I am just trying to finish strong.

Well we have another MLC tomorrow I missed the last one because I was no longer a Zone Leader but I am excited to be back and it's just going to be different being on the other side of things. It will be fun though! 

The week was great, thanks for everything. Sorry my emails aren't great I just feel so much more busy lately! 

Palangga ta kamo!

Elder Warnick