slow and steady..... -WEEK 95

Soo this week was nice, slow but nice haha well it started out with of course finding again.. haha we’re always finding.  Trying to make some kind of teaching pool haha but we found one awesome guy on Tuesday who is kind of quiet, but friendly. When we walked up to him he was kind of shocked but excited to meet us and talk with us and invited us to sit down and talk right away! The lesson was awesome quiet and peaceful cause we just taught him outside under a big tree in the middle of his farm! And he seemed like he really would ponder about our lesson! We haven't gotten to go back cause he’s been busy but we’ll go back tomorrow! Then we got to teach Arcel our investigator we’re working with thats close to baptism and she’s awesome! She really wants to learn and read the Book of Mormon PERO there’s been some problems at her house recently with her family so we’re still pushing back her baptism but I’M so excited for her and hoping that she will get baptised before I go home haha! Other than Arcel, we don’t really have anyone I see progressing towards baptism.. BUT we will keep finding! There’s gotta be someone here that is ready to accept the gospel! Hopefully when school starts back up everyone will come back home and we will be able to find more families and maybe find THE ONE!! slow and steady.. it will come! 

Something that we’ve been trying is inviting EVERYONE to come play basketball with us on Mondays hahaha just so we can build some kind of realationship and eventually start teaching them haha! As of now it hasn’t worked yet.. 

Well I just wanna testify how awesome the BOOK OF MORMON IS!! Everyday I read it, and it tells me something new that I NEED FOR THAT DAY! AND FOR AN EXPERIENCE I’M GOING THRU!! If you're not reading it... READ IT!! President Monson basically begged us to in the last conference!! 

LOVE ELDER PANADERO

HAKUNA MATATA!!

I want to tell my friends about our church

And the happiness it brings to me.

I'll tell them how the gospel was restored,

Tell them how the Book of Mormon came to be.

ASU boyz take the streets! -WEEK 94

Soo this was another awesome!! week not how I was expecting it to go but it ended up being a great week! So it was weird cause we didn’t get to teach our progressing investigators this week because they were really busy...and almost all of our other appointments fell thru.. so sad right?? NOPE #BLESSED! Because we weren't able to teach the lessons we had, it only opened up MORE time for finding! So that’s what we did! And we more than doubled our new investigators this week! We found 13 this week and that was at least 1 everyday! So it was still an awesome and productive week! It’s been awesome to find so many people out here and also see 2 of those new investigators come to church on Sunday! It’s been a blessing to see the work progress here in Daraga! Hopefully we will still see MUCH more progression! Maybe I’ll get to see ONE more baptism before I head out haha! We are really working with Arcel to help her progress towards baptism but it’s been hard cause she’s been busy with getting enrolled in school but hopefully things will calm down and we can really help her progress! 

SOO about the ASU boyz taking the streets. ME AND ELDER ROBINSON had exchanges this week.. haha Elder Robinson is my batch and also from AZ he went to school at Corona Del Sol! Although their school always killed us in basketball... we LOVE EACH OTHER BECAUSE OF ASU!! and it was soo cool working with an American haha we actually have a really funny story.. so we went walking thru this village that I've never been to before so we asked some kids to lead us out. So they did and then they went ahead of us and told EVERYONE there that we were coming thru. haha So as we turn the corner there was like 50 people outside their houses staring at us and then started yelling at us "hey joe" and “what's up man" hahaha it was AWESOME!! Me and Robinson just walked thru smiling and saying hi haha but it was just soo funny at the moment..then it got funnier as we passed thru this little place we were walking away and I looked back again and they were ALL standing in the middle of the road staring at us HAHAHA!! it was hilarious! 

But my day with my ASU boy was awesome... we practically were finding ALL DAY!! haha and we found alot of potential investigators that we went back and taught the next couple days! Overall it was a super awesome week and really fun! 

I kinda realized these last couple weeks how #blessed I was to learn this new language and be able to connect with these people so good and I need to take advantage of it so I’ve been trying to make the very best of these last couple months!  I LOVE THIS PEOPLE!! There is no other people like them! No one that can be SOO HAPPY while posessing SOO little and still be willing to share whatever they have! They know how to TURN OUTWARD instead of turning inward!

I LOVE ALL OF YOU ALSO!! and hope you all have a good week! 

LOVE ELDER PANADERO

HAKUNA MATATA!!

When I'm home or far away, 

Heavenly Father, hear me pray,

Keep me safely in thy sight;

Help me choose and do what's right.

Thanks for home and family too,

Many things to love and do.

Thou art very good to me.

Heavenly Father, thanks to thee.

"THROW THE UMBRELLA AWAY!" -WEEK 93

Soo first off about the subject I heard something cool in church yesterday. So this guy was talking about how God is always showering blessings upon us but sometimes we’re just too scared to take in all his blessings! Then he said "GO OUTSIDE, THROW THE UMBRELLA WAY, AND TAKE IN THE RAIN!" 

I thought it was the coolest thing cause God’s blesisngs are definitely raining down on us ALWAYS! Maybe not the blessings we want.. maybe it’s a trial.. but no matter what it is, IT’S A BLESSING to help make you stronger and more ready to enter in his presence! 

But we had a pretty good week this week.. well it ENDED AWESOME!! So my new companion is Elder Balacuit this is his second area so he’s kinda new but he’s a GREAT missionary! Kind of quiet but I’ll break him out of his shell and help him be a little more open. But this week I was kinda showing him the whole area so that hopefully by next week we can do splits cause we have a lot of members that work over here with us, so hopefully we will be able to find those people that are ready for the gospel quicker haha! 

But we had the most awesome blessing this week! So our investigator Arcel came to church FINALLY!! She was the one that couldn't go cause her dad didn’t want her to ..BUT she was able to go this week and brought her little sister with her so that was AWESOME!! She’s soo excited to be baptized also.. we had to move her bapt date and she was like "ohh why I thought it was the 30th" haha so she really wants to be baptized and she loves the Book of Mormon! She testified of its truthfulness to us last week! I’m soo excited to be able to help her come unto Christ and finally see some progression in this area, she could be my last baptism..hopefully no.t Hopefully we find those other souls that are waiting for us! 

But Arcel coming to church was another testimony builder of FASTING! Cause I was fasting that her dad would soften his heart and let her come to church and.. it WORKED!! YESS!! So I’m pretty excited now and pumped to go out and find more people ready to be taught! 

One other thing that was awesome that we talked about in district meeting was the story of Lehi and his dream and how he wanted to share the fruit with his family and then Elder Vainikolo brought up the word ohana which means of course "family and family means no one gets left behind" and we talked about how everyone here is our family and we need to make sure NO ONE gets left behind! and doesn’t hear the gospel!! 

I love each and every one of you. You’re all part of my FAMILY!! And I hope you have an awesome week and an even better MOTHERS DAY! HAPPY MOTHERS DAY TO ALL THOSE AWESOME MOMS!! Where would we be without you!! 

LOVE ELDER PANADERO

HAKUNA MATATA!!

 "district"

TURNING "20"

ako ay snag darageno -WEEK 91

HELLO people! So first of all THANKS to all those who greeted me a happy birthday!  We had a pretty cool week this week we have been trying to find those new investigators that are ready for the gospel but let’s just say we’re still looking haha.. We found a lot of new people this week that we are hoping will become interested in the message of the restoration but if not we’ll just keep looking.. I know there is at LEAST 1 there waiting for us and WE WILL FIND THEM!

But we had a pretty AWESOME experience with one of our investigators this week.. So when we went to go teach her, she had just gotten out of the hospital 2 days before cause she got surgery done on her lower back to remove something.. so she said she’s had a a lot of time to READ! And guess what she’s been reading!?!? THE BOOK OF MORMON! Well I know that if you read the Book of Mormon you’ll know that it is TRUE! and that’s exactly what happened to her! She said at first she was reading both the Book of Mormon and the Bible and comparing them and found a lot of similarities so she became more interested then she said as she has been reading she just FEELS that the Book of Mormon is SOO TRUE! Obviously the spirit was working hard on her and she now accepted it and realized it was true!! Well after the lesson we invited her if she wanted to be baptized and she said YES I DO! But she still has to wait a month to recover from her surgery so she can’t go to church yet! And another problem is her father.. she’s 20 yrs old but because she lives with her father she has to follow his rules and he doesn’t want her to go to church or be baptized! so as of now our plan for her father is we’re gonna fast and pray to soften his heart and try to get close with him also to help him feel open with us!

so feel free to send your prayers over for her and her father so sister Arcel can get better soon and get out to church hehe!

ALSO BEFORE HEADING OUT I JUST WANT TO SEND OUT A BIRTHDAY SHOUT OUT TO THE BEST MOMMA IN THE WORLD!! HEHEHE LOVE YOU MOM!!

LOVE ELDER PANADERO

HAKUNA MATATA!!

TURNING OUTWARD -WEEK 90

Soo this week was ANOTHER awesome week! and went by soo fast! holy cow!

Well this week we were able to go back and teach some of the people that we had talked with the week before and they were awesome investigators.. they're super ready to hear the gospel and ACT on it! One of them is Jane. She was taught in Masbate before and is being taught by us now! She’s awesome! And then Daryl he’s a 19 yr old guy that used to go to church with some old guy but the old guy died and now we found him like 3 yrs later.. well he’s read like a ton of the Book Of Mormon and loves it the only problem is his getting to church cause they don’t have alot of money! But we’ll see if he can make it out next week! A lot of our other investigators that came to church before are like ALWAYS at work or busy and it’s soo hard to teach them cause it’s summer now here, but we’re trying to work it out. This week was fun! We were able to set a service project for Saturday at a less actives house so it was fun to do some service again and we tracted a guy yesterday and he said we could come help him mix cement tomorrow so hopefully we’ll build a relationship with him and eventually be able to teach them! Which goes along with my subject line... So I got this book that Elder Bednar wrote which is AWESOME! It’s called “Act In Doctrine" alot of it focuses on the "character of Christ" and how we can turn from ourselves to the Savior and others! A lot of what he says is how we need to turn OUT instead of turning IN! Or instead of complaining about our problems, we HELP others who are going thru that same problem or worse problems.  And it’s been a beautiful learning experience and I can’t wait to finish the rest of the book! 

sorry no pics...  

mahal ko po kayo! 

LOVE ELDER PANADERO

HAKUNA MATATA!!

And behold, I tell you these things 

that ye may learn wisdom; 

that ye may learn that when ye 

are in the service of your fellow beings 

ye are only in the service of your God.    

                           --Mosiah 2:17

PRINCE OF PEACE -WEEK 89

So first of all I love the Prince of Peace thing that the church has started this Easter! It’s the coolest thing like everyone finally gets to see that mormons do believe in JESUS CHRIST!!  A lot of people here think that because we are called mormons that we don’t believe in Jesus Christ!! So I love going around giving out the little Prince of Peace cards with Jesus Christ’s face on it!! It’s the best thing ever! And the church even has a commercial I saw on like national television!! I don’t know if that’s in America also but it’s soo cool when people are like "ohh ya I saw that on the commercial" like WHAT!? WE’RE FAMOUS!! lol! Especially with "holy week" going on this last week, it was really fun to testify of Jesus Christ to everyone!! But.. it was also hard cause alot of people were busy with it being holy week this week... so people were doing stuff at their own church and then alot of businesses shut down a couple of the days.. so it was pretty weird.  Like at one point we were walking thru a pretty busy part of the city and there was like no one there haha weird but nice and quiet! At one point there wasn’t even any jeeps or any transportation on the road haha but luckily we had a dinner appointment at that time and by the time we finished the jeeps were starting again so we got lucky and were able to make it home hahaha.

But this week was a tough but fun week. We didn’t get to teach all of our investigators that we were focusing on, but we did get to at least see them throughout the week and just build some relationships with them. We were disappointed on Sunday when we woke up to POURING rain! As soon as it rains on a Sunday any hope of our investigators coming to church goes right out the window! So none of the ones we were focusing on made it out to church, but randomly one of our investigators showed up with one of the ladies in our ward. So that was a sweet surprise! She actually came with the nanay holding the gun in the pic I sent haha Hopefully she didn’t threaten her to go to church with her!! jk

But about that pic. Well this lady is like one of MY FAVORITE OLD PEOPLE EVER!! hahaha she’s awesome!! We stop by to visit her and give her reading assignments and then she gives us snacks hahaha but she always tells us to visit her so we stop by for a couple minutes every once in a while hahaha But she PULLED A GUN ON US THIS WEEK HAHAHAHA! jk mom!  But it’s funny when we talk to her you literally have to YELL for her to hear you and sometimes she will just smile and look at you and nod cause she didn’t hear you hahaha and then go off on some story that is completely random! haha but I LOVE HER!! 

Something cool also that happened this week is we got a referral from a member.. and turns out she was an investigator back in the day when I was in Masbate! And we think we saw each other at the church in Masbate during one of the conferences haha! weird! no?? 

WELL I hope you all had a great Easter and keep remembering our Savior!! I know he is truly our Savior and He LIVED and DIED for us and LIVES  again so we all will live again...WITH our eternal families! LOVE YOU FAM!! 

LOVE ELDER PANADERO

HAKUNA MATATA!!

 For God so loved the world, 

that he gave his only begotten Son, 

that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, 

but have everlasting life.    --JOHN 3:16