greetings from the best mission on earth!

Hello everyone! Well its another hot and humid filled day in the mission field, in the greatest mission on this fine planet! I don’t care what anyone else says. Anywho its good times here in the pasig zone. It was very sad saying goodbye to elder Sorensen, but as we were at the mission office at the butt crack of dawn yesterday, elder s saw the transfer board and said I’ve got a good companion, elder monilla. It should be fun times with my first pinoy companion. We are staying here in the signal II area and for right now im senior companion cause I know the area and investigators.
But lets see, the last week with elder Sorensen was great! We really worked hard to finish his mission off right. It finally hit elder Sorensen on Monday night when he was teaching the Moriles family and testifying about the atonement and the greatness of this our message of the restoration of the gospel that it was finally over. That was the last time he was going to testify to investigators sa tagalog as a missionary. It finally became real. It was really hard to say goodbye to my tatay, he is a great missionary and person. He will be greatly missed in this mission.
One of the great things we did to end his mission was to have his last and my first BAPTISM!!!!!!!!!! It was amazing to finally to see the fruits of our efforts. We baptized Noemi on Sunday morning before church, it was great! It was a small baptism cause it was at 7am, but we didn’t even start till almost 8; pinoy time is great. Anywho that was such a great experience and im really excited for our next baptism on 8/16! Really that’s all my excitement for now, im just in the grind of missionary work. We really need to find more people to teach cause our investigator pool is really going to dry up quickly. Oh, one that is really good. Elder Sorensen and I have been teaching a dalaga (single young woman) almost everyday and at first she was really scared about being the only member in her family, even when she lives with members right now; they're all related somehow, even though I have no idea how. But last week we came to teach and she had this big smile on her face and elder s and I were like she’s going to be baptized! Which she is, we gave her 8/30, but we are going to wait till the time is right. The work moves on. This transfer should be interesting, good thing elder monilla speaks good English. Should be an excellent chance to grow!
Mahal ko kayo
Elder b

Greetings from Dasma

so let's see...what's been going on. well on thursday i went on exchanges with elder pardus in the taguig area. that was an interesting experience, but good times. it was fun being with him and trying to find appointments, he doesnt know the area very well even though he's been there for over a month. anyway we had some good times, but also some frustrating ones. we went and OYM-ed this house and they let us in. we taught began teaching and the one nanny was like english na lang, which means just do it in english. i've heard that before, but that day i just wasnt having it. i looked at elder pardus and said if she isnt willing to try to understand, im not willing to teach so i didnt. so that was something intesting. we didnt even try to set up a return appointment.

anyway the next morning we got up and elder sorensen and elder talal came and met us at the apartment and we went off to interviews with president. that was way fun. president is awesome! you can totally tell that he loves and cares about you. as we interviewed he told me to be patient and to keep trying. he also counseled me to treat myself to wendy's or MacDo(that's McDonalds pinoy style) cause the food is still an adjustment. on the bright side i've lost about 15 lbs and should be under 200 for the first time in years by zone conference in three weeks, im quite pleased about that :) so thats good times.

on sunday morning we're having a baptism! its of course my first and elder sorensen's last. its way early in the morning, should be interesting who all shows up. let's see..what else is new..oh the ward wants to have a "ward family home evening" or what the really want is a farewell party for elder sorensen, but farewells are bawal (forbidden) although FHE arent. elder sorensen isnt to hot on the idea and neither am i for that matter. but anyways, today we are on memory lane for elder sorensen. we got up early this morning and with president's permission we are in his first area, visiting converts and the like. im just kinda along for the ride this morning. we're in dasmarines and i have no idea what we are doing today, should be interesting nonetheless. well thats all my news and excitement for last week. next week, transfers are on wednesday so thats when i'll be writing next.

hope everyone has a good week.
talk to you later.
mahal ko kayo
elder b

temple+p-day=AMAZING!!!!!!!

So hello to you all. This week has been a pretty dull week, just working and working and working. i'll try to hit all the highlights of the last week and a half. Oh and bytheway, not next week, but the week after is transfer day so pday is on wednesday. sorry mom for not telling you that this weeks pday was on wednesday, hope you werent to worried. But anywho...last tuesday was amazing! we had zone conference with pres howard. he is pretty freaking sweet! im excited for our interviews with him on friday. zone conference was amazing! totally spiritual and all that jazz. one funny thing that happened...pres howard knows each and every missionary in the mission by name and where they're from. except me, he was like elder beckstead you're from cedar hills right? and im like, no pres im from seattle. oh whoops. not that big of a deal, but then he was like where's elder sorensen? im point over at him and he leaves. im like nice talking to you too president. but it was funny, the first thing he says to elder sorensen is you're going home soon! and elder s is like thanks for reminding me president. elder s is really trying not to be trunkie and he's doing a really good job. im going to seriously miss my walking dictionary. at zone conference they said they were raising our support money to 8100 pesos a month because they want us to eat better food. so elder s and i went nuts at the store and bought a whole ton of junk food. it was so great! anywho that was about it for last week. nothing too exciting. the work moves on. we're going on exchanges tommorow, that should be exciting. i wont be with elder s for thursday or friday. it should be interesting none the less. so what else happened in the last few days...well our members are amazing! we taught close to 30 lessons last week and all but 4 or so of them were with a member present, it was awesome. and not only are they willing to help us, but its not just the same person everythime. we've got five or 6 that go with us frequently and it really helps(thats my plug for helping the missionaries, help them! it really does lead to lasting conversion and helping the investigators come to church, which makes our job a whole lot easier.) anyway back to the members..they love us! they feed us so much! i think last week we had 5 or 6 dinner appointments (some for 2 in the same night :) anyway that was most of the normal grind. so today we got up at 4 to go to the temple! i am so glad that im in this mission, it had felt like so long since ive been to the temple and its only been a month. it was so amazing. i felt so at peace. it was really nice. im pretty sure that once every transfer isnt enough! well thats all the excitement i can think of. so ill write again on monday with some more interesting news. hope everyone has a great week!
mahal ko kayo
elder b

the theme for the week....sakit!

hello everyone! so the theme for this past week, sakit or sickness! oh it was oodles of good times. so monday afternoon we come back and im not feeling to hot. i started to have some LBM's and that wasnt fun. elder sorensen was making dinner and i just laid there on the couch. as he ate i took a little nap and woke of shivering. thats a bit unusual since that day was probably 85 or 90, just like everyday. i was like uh oh, this does not seem good. i thought to myself youre probably running a fever, which i was, of almost 103. oh was it good times. elder sorensen asked me if i wanted to go out and work and i did. so we went to our first appointment at 6 and began to teach. we were teaching Kim, he's 9 and lives with his uncle while his parents are in austrailia working. his uncle's a member and he has two different colored eyes, but that's beside the point. anyway we taught the lesson and i was having a hard time. we finished teaching and were just sitting there talking and here came trouble. whatever little was in me was coming back out. i made it about 2 steps when the first batch came out on the floor. i made it outside and got some on my shoes. the third time was just on the ground along with the 4th, 5th, and 6th times. man was i feeling good. the member went and grabbed a tricycle for us and we rode home. we got home and it was almost 7 and i just went straight to bed. i was one hurting unit. that night was just LBM all night long, it was bad. the next morning i woke up at around 7 and continued with more LBM's. oh i was in pain. i slept most of the day though, which was nice. the other elder's came back from district meeting and brought me a 1.5L bottle of gatorade and i was happy. i would just wake up to LBM, but most of the day i just slept and slept and slept, it was kind of nice. i woke up at around 9pm to go to bed at 10:30. so that was tuesday. wednesday, thursday, and friday were just normal working days. we've had kind of a disappointing week. we are now in the process of cleansing our teaching pool cause our investigators will just not keep commitments. we've still got a couple that we have high hopes for, but i dont think we're going to have a baptism before elder sorensen leaves. but thats not our fault, we can only bring the gospel unto the people, not make them accept it. on saturday we stayed in cause elder soresen was sick. so this week we did not work for the glory of our stats, cause theyre horrible. it was not that great of a week. but we keep pressing on. the work is hard. i knew that coming out, but i didnt realize just how hard it was till i got here. its incredibly hard when you cant understand people and they cant understand the things im trying to say. its incredibly hard walking around in the heat and trying to find those willing to hear our message after getting next time na lang-ed all the way up the street. its just hard and trying to have a good attitude, but its just plain hard. im just waiting for the day when it becomes easier, when i finally can understand people and they can understand me. but thats a ways off so im just working hard and doing what i can with what ive got. hope all is well and would really like to hear from all of you more often.
mahal ko kayo
elder b
herews 6:1