Killing it!

Well I have about 0 oras this time. But tons of stuff have happened this week!! We met a lady and her daughter whose name was Eden. We were just walking and they were resting from carrying water to their house. I just told them that I would carry it (which was surprisingly heavy I may add) but they said "no" and picked up it and made it to their house pretty fast! Then when we came back to teach them the other day, Sister Eden (the mother) had SO MANY questions and is so so interested in the Gospel!!!  Then we taught a part-member family and as we were closing the lesson, the mother almost blurted out that she wants so badly to be baptized with her child! So, we are hoping for them to be baptized in May!!  We were in Gospel Principles class yesterday at church, and we found out that the couple there has 3 kids at home that aren't yet members, and they want us to teach them!! So we have just had so many blessings basically dropped into our laps only because of the mercy of the Lord for us. I know it is not because of anything we have done that we earned those blessings!! 

So our area is still beautiful, I'm still making people believe that I'm from Davao, and our ZONE IS STILL KILLING IT!!! We have broke some "false limitations" in our zone this last week in our key indicators so, it's just the best!!!!

Playing kickball

What happened to the dental hygiene program?

Beautiful view

Paradise and General Conference

Soooo! This week has been great (except for the many many hours of traveling...) I LOVED THIS WEEK!!! I don't think I could fit everything in this email about what happened, how I feel and the total and COMPLETE love I feel from the members, people, and most importantly the Lord.

So this past week on Friday, we had MLC and it was so so good. I learned so much!!! There is POWER in counseling together and I totally see why that's the way the Church is moving through revelation. Anyway, I loved it.

Then this week we watched CONFERENCE and it BLEW my socks off! It was the BEST and most spiritual conference I have ever been a part of!! I know completely by the Spirit that President Nelson was called of God. I love him so much, he is such a spiritual giant. I think for me the theme was about the Holy Ghost and revelation which is perfect for me. I have thought about something President Nelson said this past weekend, (I forgot the exact wording) "That Christ will do His most amazing miracles between NOW and His Second Coming". HOW AMAZING is that?? I believe at least some of those blessings we will see here in the mission field as missionaries :)

I love this area it is sooo pretty. In our zone there are 7 companionships and 10 (out of 14) of them haven't even reached 9 months in the mission! So our zone is really new and they are all hard working so we are really lucky. We have a lot of things we think can help our zone to become even better so we are super excited!!!

Elder Cody Aguiar

Philippines Quezon City Mission

Our district bowling activity

I love these kids!  They are the sweetest!

The view outside of our apartment.  Yep, those are rice fields!

Transfers!

So transfers were this week... And I will be transferring to the Morong Zone which is a province :) My whole mission has been province haha! President Koster called and also informed me the Lord has called me, to be a Zone Leader in Morong my last two transfers of my mission. So it will be an interesting last 3 months of the mission for sure. I'm comforted by the knowledge that the calling truly comes from the Lord and not from man. 

BUT THIS WEEK WAS AMAZING!!! Me and Elder Cagnayo just worked hard this last week together. We found 15 new investigators this past week who are ALL interested in the Gospel of Christ. We have found families and many individuals. There was one individual named Jopet that was refered to us by 2 people! And those two people don't even know each other and neither are members yet. So we figured that he was important to find right away! It turns out that he is being taught by some sisters in a different mission by his school, but because he and his family live in our area, we will be taking over the lessons for him :) We have been teaching  Joey Omugtong for the past couple weeks and I love him so much! He is less active and hasn't come to church in over 17 years! We taught him by the spirit and he realized he needed to come to church.  AND HE DID ON SUNDAY!! For the first time in so long!!! Everyone was so happy to see him, and later that night he came to our Group Family Home Evening :) How thankful we are for being used by the Lord to help our brother and best friend come back to the church!!

 I have seen so many miracles this week. This is truly the Lord's work, and oh how it is moving forward!!! I'm so humbled and filled with exceeding happiness to be part of it at this time. 

Elder Cody Aguiar

Philippines Quezon City Mission

Our assistant ward mission leader

My best friend Joey

My last ward FHE group

Another Great Week!

Everything is just starting to really blur together honestly hahah! This week was a great week though!! This week we had a baptism, and our zone had a zone baptism this where 11 people were baptized including our investigator Dwyane Placer. His mom has been a member for about 20 years and hasn't attended church in quite a while. Ever since Dwayne wanted to get baptized their whole family starting coming to church and now Dwayne's dad will be getting baptized this May! It's been really great and we have grown close with them. The family we had omyd a couple weeks ago "Alex", we have been going to their house every week but they are always busy and don't have time to talk with us. But that's ok, I know we did what we could and maybe in the coming months they will come to the truth of this Gospel :)

Things that happened in our area:

-I was asked if I could be a Godfather for our investigator's baby 😂😂

-People thought I was Filipino 😂

-We have seen less actives come back into activity because of the Book of Mormon 😊

-I gave a talk again this week (maybe the best I have given on my mission haha)

-We recieved a 21 of 21 on our apartment cleanliness check ;)

-Helping our investigators get married (It's quite a process especially when you yourself have never been married before! haha)

This week I was so blessed to recieve many many revelations through the Book of Mormon. I was truly edified by the spirit of the Lord. Just something quick I learned that I want to share. I came across Alma 57:10 this week and I ALWAYS laugh at that scripture. It says

 "And we, instead of being Lamanites, were Nephites;". I just thought how obvious that was that they weren't "Lamanites" and laughed at the scriptual language. But I felt like it's in there for a reason, so why was that sentence worded like that? I came down to the conclusion that they "remembered who they were". They could've killed every single one of those Lamanites and destroyed them and their provisions like savages, something the Lamanites would do, but they remembered who they were as Nephites, of the knowledge they had of God and were still in the moment, good examples. They took them as prisoners and took provisions probably I think in the kindest manner possible. I'm thankful for something my mom always used to tell me "remember who you are", and that's what the scripture means to me :) (A little long pala sorry)

Elder Cody Aguiar

Philippines Quezon City Mission

Stake baptisms

Old Zone Reunion

Tag-init na!

Sooo it's definitely summer here in the Philippines!! The funny thing is that ALL the filipinos think America is really cold. And I always have to say, "Wellllll... its a different story. Especially in Las Vegas.." haha they are always so surprised.

Things that happened this week:

-I ate some fried liver (I have no idea what animal it comes from) hahahaahahaha (sorry mom)

-I ate some fried chicken neck (sorry again..) Here they use EVERY PART of the chicken (or any other animal for that matter), and I mean every part. They don't let any of it go to waste

-Ate some fried pig foot (and some vegtables don't worry)

-I was the "foreigner tour guide" yesterday for our "Half Day Mission"

-MTC exchanges

So yesterday we had a "Half Day Mission" in our ward and in our group. There was the Stake Young Men's President and counselor that attended our group and then afterwards 4 Stake High Council members came with us, along with members to go visit less active members as well as investigators and members. Me and Elder Cagnayo split to show the houses to the members and stake counselors and they were cracking up that an American was their "Tour Guide" in their own country, it was the best hahah!

We also had MTC exchanges and my companion was Elder Moala, he is from Tonga, and will be serving in the Legaspi mission here in the Philippines. He just started learning English in the MTC and he was quite good at it for the 3 weeks he has been there. He was so generous and humble. He bought this huge thing of water as we were proselyting and said "Here, you drink!" We found 4 new investigators as well. The little kids went crazy, I might add, because they saw a "Giant" and an "Amerikano". It was a really good day. 

This week and all these last weeks have just blended together. Honestly this is all I remember! haha I don't have any pictures because I left my camera at home. Hopefully the description I left can help all of you make a mental picture this week;)

-- 

Elder Cody Aguiar

Philippines Quezon City Mission

(Pictures are from Mom.  They came from a sweet Utah family visiting the Philippines.  They ran into Cody and his companion and spent some time with them.  I'm so grateful for kind people)

 

PQCM

So all I can say with the time I have is I know that Jesus is the Christ, He is totally and utterly perfect. He is our advocate with the Father. Because of the Book of Mormon and the records it contains we can all know more clearly God and Christs relationship with us here on earth. Just "fear not, only believe."

Elder Cody Aguiar

Philippines Quezon City Mission

Some cute kids playing baseball with a stick and tape :)​

March (I've run out of headlines!)

So this week was just a really solid week. 

The last couple of weeks we have been able to find a lot of families that have been interested and we were able to teach them! (did that make sense?) hahah. It's fortunatley  very rare, but we have been totally unnoticed by people as we tried to talk to them. Sometimes when I just ask someone's name they tell me what religion they are, I always have to ask that question (what their name is) 1 or 2 times for them to realize that I'm just trying to get to know them. We always offer to help, either to wash their clothes or to clean around their house or sweep outside. Almost everytime that softens their hearts, to help them realize that our purpose as missionaries isn't at all just to convert people or make them come to church, or make them change religion, even though that's what they suspect when they see us. We are here to serve others and help them come closer to Christ through faith, repentence, baptism, recieving the gift of the holy ghost and enduring to the end.

So this week we are helping one of our investigators get married, and her name is Rose Canete. And she is so awesome!!!  We are working hard so she can get baptized on March 17! The same with Christian Silva which we have been teaching since November! So that will be an exciting moment when he has more time this week to meet with us so we can get him prepared to enter the waters of baptism this month :)

I have so much more to share about this week but I dont have time.. So next week na lang

 ha? :)

We treated ourselves for the first time with pizza, I was disappointed about the shape of it though :(

Our favorite ward missionary