Here comes the bride.....s..

This week was a miracle.

We didn't really get to work in our area, we were in Bacolod a couple of days this week finalizing everything for the marriages. We were lucky to be able to collect their information needed to process their paperwork and I was surprised when another couple in the family gave us their paperwork because we were only planning on the one but they also qualified for the free marriage so we had 2. We went to Bacolod and did a bunch of different things and there are still more things we need to do but we finished it! This is the first and last time I will ever help with a marriage here in my mission!

The Kasal (marriage) was awesome. It was all free because the church has so many hook ups here that a lot of bishops and stake presidents just happen to be lawyers and stuff and can help sign things and process the paper work. We had a bishop from a nearby ward come and he did the wedding, he was great, super funny and efficient! haha we had the baptism right after the wedding and they both asked me to baptize them so it was great!

We also were blessed this week because I thought we might not have a baptism my last week. And that has been my goal since I started to at least have a baptism on my last Saturday. But we might end up having 2. One of them told us yesterday that she wants to be baptized and she has been going to church she just needs to get the okay from her husband. The other one is the owner of the church. She sold the house to the church that we use for church and she is a super awesome lady but has never really listened to the missionaries or gone to church but she came to church! We have been able to share to her recently and she just needs to commit!

Sadly our investigator Nita won't be being baptized soon, she is the one who was involved in the NPA and has been involved with murder. She is one of the strongest investigators I have ever had but I got the word that she needs to keep going to church and it will be a while until she gets the OK from the first presidency. I'm sad about that but I am excited for the day she will be baptized.

Well I think I will send a small email next week and that will be it! I
-Elder Warnick

Sorry my card really gave up the ghost.. it's completely dead so I don't think I will get to send any more pictures home.

It's just not normal!

The weeks just go by so fast.. Life in the mission is just so different than anything else!

We were extremely blessed this week. We were helping to prepare the two Hagupars to be baptized. Nanay still had some doubts but they both passed the interview and Tatay was 100% for it so of course Nanay wanted to follow him. And it was awesome! Elder Liad Baptized Tatay and I baptized Nanay and on the way up Nanay wouldn't stand up haha she was just floating there and I was kind of carrying her.. haha I kept telling her to stand up but she was just floating on her back so I got her to the bank of the pond and helped her out.

I realized this week though we needed to get some more stuff going because if we don't things are going to stop by the time I go home so we were really searching for some more people that could be ready by the time I leave.

I think one of the best parts about going home is you become a lot more bold with your teaching because you don't really want to hear the same old excuses. We have been teaching the Banguanga family for about a month now and they always tell us they are going to go to church. It got to the point that we almost stopped visiting them because we were so sick of the disappointment. But we decided to go again this week and all that basically was said was GO TO CHURCH. "You said you wanted to be baptized but you need to go to church first to find out if our message is true" and sunday came and they weren't there.... So that was it for me, I wasn't planning on visiting them again. And then I went into the Relief Society room and one of the Sisters was there that we had been teaching! I was shocked! And halfway through Priesthood class the dad came walking in! It was awesome! And on top of all of it even more Hagupars came to church! haha let me explain how many there are:

The Hagupar family consists of Tatay Restituto Hagupar and Maria Rita Hagupar (the 2 we just baptized) and they have 11 kids. And each of their kids has on average 7-10 kids as well. If you add up everyone, you get close to 100 people. And the best part of it all is because Tatay is now baptized, he wants every. single. one. of his kids to be a member of this church as well. Like I said last week. Whoever replaces me when I go home is SET with baptisms as long as they keep teaching the Hagupar family.

SO MANY MIRACLES!

I think it's all because I'm training. There are blessings that come from a trainee that don't happen in a regular companionship!

The week was great! I'm going to see if I can finalize the wedding papers this week for one of our candidates if not we might not have a baptism this week.. But if not this week it should be good to go for next week!

Thanks again!
-Elder Warnick

Sorry no pictures.. they wouldn't load..

Batman

This week was great. It was a struggle but the blessings were awesome.

So for most of this week we haven't had Electricity and it's been an ongoing battle with the owner of our house for him to fix our wiring and fuse but he still hasn't done anything about it so for now we have power but you never know when it's going to go out again.

We were working hard this week to try and get Sis Hagupar to commit for baptism. We have been planning to get another one of the sisters in that family married and then we will have her baptism but they wanted to have their baptism on the same day, but we felt she was ready for this weekend and the marriage isn't 100 % certain so it would have been better to just do her's now and do the other one later when it is 100% ready to go. We got her interviewed and explained how we shouldn't procrastinate the day of our repentance but do all we can now to prepare to return to god and she agreed to be baptized! She asked me to baptize her and we had the baptism close to their house at a waterfall! It was a really nice baptism and on sunday after church we went back to them and the two grandparents accepted to be baptized this week! Bro. Hagupar used to be a leader for the catholic church and he even reenacted the crucifixion of Jesus Christ and he was acting as one of the Thieves that is crucified with Jesus. Honestly all our progressing investigators right now used to have a big part in the catholic church! So it's cool to see that they are seeing the truth!

We had our Zone Training this week and it was my last zone training.. It was weird but in all honesty I didn't feel it. I still don't feel like I am going home and they had the departing missionaries give their testimonies it was weird, I kind of just felt like I was ending a Zone Training but I guess the work goes on.

So I have a weird story from this week and MOM don't freak out because it's not as scary as it is going to sound and I am 100% okay! haha Worried? Well here it goes: So we were coming home from work and I knew we didn't have any gas at the house for our stove and that we didn't have any electricity either so I bought some rice and some canned tuna haha wow this sounds worse than it really is anyway and we were at the little store trying to buy the food and this drunk guy who is already pretty crazy when he's not drunk yelled at us "diin ta magkatdo? sa langit o impeirno?" Which is "Where are we going? Heaven or Hell?" and he was pointing a machete at us. I just ignored him and tried to buy my tuna but he came up to us and started asking a bunch of questions and the owner of the store started getting mad and he was yelling at her too and he put his arm on the counter and what's on his arm? A bat. He just had a bat clinging for dear life on his arm and then he followed us until we lost him on the way to our Branch Presidents house. So don't worry we are okay it was just so weird like honestly it was a lot weirder than scary.

That's about it for this week! We have been having so many miracles with our investigators and this area! Whoever is replacing me when I go home is going to be set up! haha

Thanks for everything! Hope you all have an amazing week!
-Elder Warnick

It's a zoo

This week was good. I wanted to work really hard but everything just felt like it was in slow motion.. I'm not sure why but we didn't do as good as we could have.

So we had our follow-up training this week for Elder Liad's batch. I don't know why it was a week after he got in the mission but I guess that was what president wanted. It was good though, I had heard most of the trainings before haha but it's okay.

Sadly a lot of our baptisms that we had planned for this July 30 aren't going to happen because we just found out that their parents are okay with us teaching them but they don't want them to change religions. It's okay though, and I realized that I have never baptized a kid unless that family also ended up getting baptized or was already baptized. I think that is just how it has worked out for me.

ANYWAY the baptism this week was awesome! We had 2 again and it was two of the older sisters from the Hagupar family! And we are trying to get their mom to commit for this weekend! We had a family home evening at their house yesterday to try and get them more comfortable with us and the members! I think it was good, everyone was laughing-I ended up having to sing in front of all of them.. so yeah 

It's still raining almost everyday! And I gotta hand it to Elder Liad. He doesn't come from the Bukid he comes from the City and our house is really run down, it's clean but you only clean so much when the house is just nasty to begin with. This week our house was a zoo! We woke up and there was a snake on our counter, once we finally got it out of the house we saw a huge frog.. like HUGE and i kicked it haha (literally) out of the house. On top of all the animals we have had problems with electricity and water.. haha I feel bad for him but he's doing good and it will make him tougher.

SO MANY BLESSINGS! July is going to be such a great month! I mean it already is! We have had baptisms the last two weeks and if everything works out we should have baptisms every week until I go home and hopefully it will keep going once I leave. 

The area is doing great. Honestly the Branch doesn't really know what they are dong but they help out where they can and they do what they are told ;) haha 

I'm excited to make this month the best month of my mission!

-Elder Warnick

Soup #5 - I will tell you about it when I get home

Snake on the counter

Baptisms for the older sisters in the Hagupar family

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

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