Pictures from Karen Candidato

Christmas Call 2018

We got an early Christmas present this year and got to Skype with Elder Holmstead on Sunday, Dec. 16, 2018!  His mission president lets his missionaries Skype home anytime between Dec. 15-30th so the 17th (16th for us) worked best for Wade.  He is so happy and really loves his mission.  I don't think he stopped smiling during the whole 45 minute call.  Here are some highlights from our visit.  Enjoy!

• Wade decided to Skype with us on the 17th because he is Tacloban for MLC and the internet is more reliable there.  It is a 2 1/2 hour van ride from Sogod.
• They will spend the day with other mission leaders doing activities and having FHE together.  Then tomorrow they will spend the day in a training meeting with his mission president.
• He got a new companion that week.  He said his name 3 times, but I still can't pronounce it.  He's from the Philippines and Wade really likes him.
• He didn't get his toenails taken out yet because he was waiting to do it in Tacloban.  He should have gotten them taken out after our call so we hope everything went ok.
• He is comfortable speaking Cebuano and Waray Waray (he forgot a couple of English words - haha) and he can understand Tagalog but can't speak it much.
• They got around by hiring trikes.  He said it's kind of expensive...10 cents per ride.  We laughed with him because that's less than $1 per day.  He's going to have some adjusting to the cost of living in America when he gets home.
• The members of his branch feed them a lot more than in other areas so he loves that!  He said they had 2 dinner appointments the night before.
• He hopes to not repeat the experience of slurping chicken brains out with a straw.  That was not the most pleasant experience.
• He is so happy and loves his mission so much!  He can't believe he only has 4 transfers left.  His release date will be sometime around July 10th but he didn't want to talk about that too much.  He is just enjoying every minute of where he is at.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas, but more like summer

Crazy Food of the Week:Chicken Brain, slurped straight out of the head 

This was another great week.  Lot's of people that we talked to and lots of crazy travels.

This was the last week of the cycle so we had to finish up all of our exchanges.  We had 2 this week and I was with both the missionaries who were still in training.  One of them is from Utah and he is assigned in a pretty tough area and has struggled a little bit to adjust so it was a really awesome experience to be able to minister to him and share experiences from my mission.  He is doing really well and it's awesome

My other one was with a filipino and he is basically fluent in english.  But plot twist he actually has a british accent because he said the american accent is too hard haha.  But we had a super good day teaching and were able to talk to a lot of new people and share the gospel.

Our crazy travels for the week took us down to Maasin twice.  On Saturday we had to go and have a meeting with the District President to  discuss how the missionary work is going here in Sogod.  Many of the areas are new branches and most of the members are new converts or just 2nd generation so the Church is so young so we discussed how to help members learn their duties especially when it comes to missionary work.

We then on Sunday had District Conference and we had a bunch of speakers from the district and also from the mission presidency.  One of the counselors of President Argana gave a talk (all in Tagalog) about not procrastinating marriage and it was super hilarious.  Then President Argana gave a power talk about how much he trusts the missionaries and how the members really need to support and help the work in order to get a temple in Region 8.

Transfer annoucements are tomorrow so we will see if me and Elder Arienda will be sticking together for Christmas time.  Also I am planning on doing Skype calls on December 17 in the morning here.  Not sure exactly how to time works out there but thats the plan.

Thanks for all the Love and Support

Love you tons!!!

Elder Holmstead

Philippines Tacloban Mission

Lighting up Sogod

Maayong Pasko!

Mahimong Kahayag sa Kalibutan!

This week was a whirlwind.  So much was going on that I don't even remember everything that happened.

The first day of the week we had exchanges with the Macrohon Elders in our zone and in Sogod they were having a celebration of lights in the center of Sogod.  They had huge fireworks and the municipal hall has tons of Christmas lights, its no Temple Square but its pretty cool :)  

We also had exchanges this week in Tacloban with the AP's.  That means we had to switch back to Waray-Waray for a day and teach in the biggest city in the mission.  I was with Elder Murphy from my batch and we had a really good time reminiscing on all the good times on the mission and how we can keep improving.  I again testify of the Gift of Tongues because somehow the people of Tacloban could understand me and we were able to teach some really powerful lessons.  Really good times.

Most of the week was devoted to traveling or having district meetings and stuff so we didn't have a lot of time to get work done here in Sogod.  Our investigators are pretty much the same.  We had a little bit of miracle because one of our investigators Angelica has started making progress on her marriage so we were super excited.  

Love you tons!!! and keep Lighting the World

Also pray for the mission because we only need 65 baptisms in December to hit 1000 for the year.  

p.s. I have lots of pics but this computer isn't working so next week na lang

Elder Holmstead

Philippines Tacloban Mission

Bagyo ba?

Another stellar week here in Sogod.  

We started off the week with the whole mission freaking out because we had a typhoon coming.  The AP's called us and told us that it was like going to come right over our zone so we needed to prepare 72 hour kits and make sure everyone was safe.  When the day of the typhoon was supposed to finally hit.....all that we got was light rain, haha.  No problems at all.  We were pretty surprised and grateful.

The Philippines is in full out Christmas mode right now so I got out my little elder stocking and we have a mini christmas tree in our apartment so we are prepared.  Christmas music is playing in all the stores, I love it.  Our next transfer day in December 12 so me and Elder Arienda probably won't be together for Christmas :( because he has already been here for 7 and a half months.  

We also had our branch primary program this week, complete with kids running all over the place and some not really knowing the words to the songs.  We also had the older kids in Primary who really don't want to be there so it was fun and reminded me of home.

As far as investigators are going, Sister Daisy is having a problem with her marriage papers so we may have to push her back until next year which is kind of a bummer but we finally had Sister Jane, who has been an investigator for like 6 months come to Church for the 1st time so that was super awesome.  Also we had a cool experience yesterday.  We were just trying to find some new people when we talked to this nanay who immediately said she was busy.  We offered help and she wasn't really about it but then we introduced ourselves and she was like "oh you are those mormon people" we then explained the name of the church and she completely changed and was super interested in our message and committed to pray.  She opened up that she is not really active in any church so she will see if this is the right one.  Pretty cool experience.  Her name is Sally Zamora so keep her in your prayers to receive an answer to her prayers.

Um, no updates on Elder Arienda's grandma we are still praying for her.  We actually do have to give a presentation at the branch christmas party and I think we are singing a cebuano christmas song so it should be pretty good.

Love you tons!!!

#LightTheWorld

Elder Holmstead

Philippines Tacloban Mission

Me with some baby goats

Pics of us at the ocean during the typhoon

Video of us at the ocean during the typhoon

Spiritual Power of the Sacrament

We had some really awesome experiences this week.

The first was kind of sad because a really good member that was in our branch passed away.  His name was Peter Paul. He was 20 and was super close with us missionaries and he was having a problem with his heart.  We were able to visit him the day before he passed away and give him a blessing and there was just a big spirit of peace as we blessed him.  I know he is happy now and free from all pain and sickness.  He had a lot of health problems but he was the only one in his family that was active.  Such a great blessing to have the knowledge about the Plan of Salvation.

On a not sad note we also had a really great Zone Conference this past week.  It had a few different focuses.  The first was about working with Mission Leaders, then about Learning the Language(we had some really funny role plays with people trying to describe how to touch your toes and then spin in circles in cebuano haha)  The last was from President Argana about making the Sacrament a special part of our week.  I realized sometimes I am more focused on investigators coming to church than the sacredness of the Sacrament kinda goes away but this past week I really focused on the Savior and renewing all my covenants, not just baptismal ones and it really became a special experience. 

Thanksgiving was during zone conference so we didn't really get to celebrate but Sister Argana brought us some Chocolate cake and then we had our whole zone at our apartment during the night so we just talked and had a good time.

Our investigators are all still doing about the same.  Daisy is getting her papers ready for marriage and she is super awesome so we are excited for her baptism.  Bro. Neil has not been around this week so hopefully we can talk to him again this week.  We found a new nanay named Lita who is really kind and said she is going to come to church next week.  And sister Angelica is still working on her marriage.  

Thanks for all the prayers for investigators!!

Love you tons!!

Sogod Zone Conference

The Washing Machine 

Rocking my sandals because of my ingrown toenail:(

 Here's us with our assistant BML, the legendary, Bro. Mama

Maayo Kaayo nga Semana

This was super awesome.  I know I probably say that for every week but this week was especially good.

It started with the MLC.  We had a bunch of minute to win it games and my team took 2nd place.  I hope Sister Argana posted some pics cause I forgot to take any.  We had FHE at the mission home with all the leaders for the mission and it was super awesome especially because like 5 or 6 of my batch was their as well so it was fun to catch up on stories since we first got here.  Also I got a hot shower :)

The next day we had a big training and we just had a big discussion on how to be more christlike missionaries.  I felt the spirit super powerfully as we all shared experiences and insights.  I realized how much the Lord wants us to become like him and how willing he is to help us as well.

We also had our zone interviews with President Argana and as usual he really inspired me to keep working to be a Christlike leader.  

Our work was pretty slow this week because we had so much going on but we did have one cool little story that I want to share.  We were teaching this kid named Neil he is 17 i think and we were sharing about the Book of Mormon.  He started asking some pretty deep questions like "How do you know Joseph Smith translated the Gold Plates exactly right and What time period were the Jaredites from?"  Not usually the questions we get from investigators haha.  But we were trying our best to answer all his questions but then I got a prompting from the Spirit to let him read and answer his own questions so we just stopped bore our testimonies on the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon and committed him to read.  It strengthened my testimony that the best thing we can do as missionaries is to give people the way to resolve their own concerns.  

Also one side note, please keep Elder Arienda in your prayers as well because his Grandma who raised him is in the hospital and it doesn't sound like she is doing super well so I know he would appreciate some prayers his way.

Love you tons!!!

Also good news President Argana made our email time back to 1 hr and a half so hopefully I can send some more stuff in my emails :)

Elder Holmstead

Philippines Tacloban Mission

Padayon na lang

The big transfer day came and Me and Elder Arienda are both staying.  I am super excited because we are doing really well right now.  We are hoping for 4 baptisms in December so hopefully it all works out.  

We only had 2 people transfer from our whole zone so transfer day was super easy.  We got one new american elder in our zone and I haven't met him yet but I'm excited as well.  

Our good progressing investigators right now are Rayza and Raya Bautista, Michael and Daisy, Janel Monter, and Angelica Lastimoso.  They are all doing pretty good.  Michael and Daisy have been investigators for over 2 years and they finally have decided to get married so we are super excited for them.  Rayza and Raya are kids that are part members so they are pretty sure to get baptized.

We also had a member die over this past week so we got to participate in some funeral services as well.  They do this a bit differently here.  They have had like a week long viewing and every night they do like a little service with talks and food.  I got to give a talk on Saturday night about the Plan of Salvation and I am always reminded how amazing the knowledge we have.  We don't have to be sad but we can know that God loves us and we can keep moving forward.

We are here at MLC right now in Tacloban, i'll some pics of the activities we do.  

Thanks for all the Halloween pics.  We didn't celebrate Halloween but we did celebrate All-Saints Day and All-Souls Day last week which was basically everyone goes to the cemetary and then get drunk and parties.  It was pretty fun.

Question from Mom & Dad: Did anything funny happen this week?  Actually we did have a funny thing happen this week.  We had the two holidays All-Saints and All-Soul's day and we were supposed to have a curfew, you know for safety reasons but somehow on our phone the number for the Assistants got blocked so we didn't know about the curfew so me and Elder Arienda worked like a normal day haha.  We even visited the cemetary and there were so many people there.  We finally learned afterwords about the curfew and everyone was safe.  Crazy life in the Philippines.

Love you tons!!!

Elder Holmstead

Philippines Tacloban Mission

Last week of the Cycle

Kumusta sa inyong tanan!!??

So this week was pretty solid once again.  We actually had one of our best weeks of the cycle finding and teaching people. We keep finding a bunch of new people and then we have to sort through who is actually potential and who is just to nice to say no.  That's mainly the challenge of missionary work in the Philippines. 

One of the best parts of the week was I went on exchanges with Elder Quirante.  He is from Texas but is Filipino so everyone is super surprised when they realize he is not fluent in Cebuano haha.  But we had a super good day and taught 9 lessons.  We should be getting like 3 or 4 baptisms in November if everything works out.  Fingers crossed.

This is the last week of the cycle and Elder Arienda might be transferring on Wednesday so I will let you know what happens. You never know with President Argana but it's always exciting. 

Sorry it wasn't a super interesting week for anything but we working hard and I am really enjoying it here in Sogod.  Also just to add I just hit the war chapters in the Book of Mormon and I realized how faithful Captain Moroni is, one of the verses is like the very powers of hell were shaken.  I know if we are righteous we can too can shake the powers of hell and the devil will have no power over us.

Question from mom and dad - How does your new washing machine work?  um I will take a picture of it next week but it basically you have to manually fill it with water and then in goes for like 10 minutes then you empty and fill it up again to rinse everything and then it has a spin dryer that gets the clothes around 90% dry so it's pretty nice.  It takes around 1 to 1 and a half hours.

Thanks for all the emails

Love you tons!!!

Elder Holmstead

Philippines Tacloban Mission

Pics of our district meeting with the Bontoc district and Me and Elder Arienda

Zone Conference October 2018

Elder Holmstead and Elder Arienda

Sogod Zone

Seated l-r: Sisters Iulai’vailua, STL, Belleza, STL, Vinculado, Amundsen, P/S Argana, Escalona,DLT, Labis, DL, Egam, Cardenio

Back row: Elders Calapit, McMullin, Quirante, DLT, Urdiales, Holmstead, ZL, Smith, Adams, Graham, Arienda, ZL, Deponio, DL

Elder Holmstead conducting the meeting

Another round of demo teaching

Who's my real companion??

This week was another great week. Mao ra gihapon (Same as usual)

One highlight was that Sister Kristine got baptized.  She has been an investigator for over 6 months and we were really happy to see her progress.  She stopped drinking coffee, and had some problems with modesty but now she is really good and we are excited for her. 

One sad note is Bro. Marlon decided he does not want to be baptized right now.  We were a little bit discouraged but then we had these investigators named Michael and Daisy who are living in but come to church every week finally decide that they want to get married.  Miracles so we gave them an IBD for the end of November.  We also got referred to the Monter Family.  Their daughter Janel is friends with a member and comes to church every week so she also has a goal to get baptized at the start of December.  Thanks about it for progressing investigators.  The family of 6, Colonia Family is not really ready right now but we will keep trying.

Some other fun stuff that happened was that we had 2 different exchanges this week.  One was with the Hilongos elders who is a training area. Elder Adams is from Cedar City so he was giving me all the updates on the happenings of Southern Utah haha.  We had a good time.

Next we had exchanges with the Libagon Elders so I was back with good old Elder Escalona.  It was fun to have exchanges with him and to be back to together.  He goes home in December so that was the last time I will get to work with him but it was fun.  We were saying it is crazy how fast the mission goes because we were companions when he hit his year mark and now he is going home.

Me and Elder Arienda are doing really good.  I am loving the Zone Leader craziness pa and it's fun.  We only had to travel once this past week so I was happy about that.  

Question from Mom & Dad: Tell us about a day in the life of your mission.  Answer from Wade:  Okay so a normal day for elder holmstead is arise at 6:30 then we exercise.  I am not super good at exercising but I try haha.  We eat breakfast which is usually oatmeal or eggs or pancit canton and then we have personal study.  I have been studying the Book of Mormon trying to highlight all the references to Christ and I am in Alma 39 right now it is really cool to see how often Christ is mentioned in the BoM, like every verse.  I have also been reading the Bible because we are encouraged to teach from the Bible a lot more lately so I have been trying to learn more.  We do finding or street contacting in the morning so wherever we go in the area depends on what we want.  This area has been a little tough to find so we have been working with members a lot.  For lunch Elder Arienda usually cooks us up some good filipino food or we eat out.  We have tons of restaurants here in Sogod so I like eating out here.  My favorite is called TexMex, Pizza, and BBQ house which serves basically all american food :) My favorite thing there is the Dutch Apple Pie, heavenly.  We spend the afternoons with comp study, language study and contacting or visiting investigators, members, las, rcs just depends on what we plan for and we are home by 8:30.  We eat dinner, usually we have been getting fed by the members for dinners so this is becoming one of my favorite areas haha.  So yeah that's about a normal day.

Love you tons!! Have a Great Week and Happy Birthday Dad!!!!

Elder Holmstead

Philippines Tacloban Mission

Sister Kristine's baptism with Elder Arienda

Exchanges

District Training Meeting

Conference Weekend

Well I was way excited for Conference and as usual I loved it.    I am having a really hard time choosing a favorite and I have forgotten a lot but here is just some of my favorites:

I really loved the story about the temple from Bishop Davies and listening to a prophet.  It was just a theme for me that Prophets really know better than we do and blessings come as we follow.

Also the story of the Sheep Dog with the sheep on the Mountains in the cold.  Really good reminder to care for people especially all the missionaries in my zone.

The funniest joke for me was when President Nelson said he was the mother of 10 children.  I was laughing really hard.

Some of my favorites were also Elder Holland of course and I really liked Elder Renlund's talk as well.  

As I was taking notes during the first session my pen exploded and I was a little disappointed but then I got a thought  "Don't write what you hear, remember what you feel" and as I applied this I got some cool promptings that answered questions I had that weren't directly said.  

One note as well, Me and Elder Arienda have been working really hard to use the full name of the Church because the people here only know our church as the mormons and I have seen that as we have been doing it people are more interested or they ask more questions so it's true for sure.

Aside from Conference we also had more exchanges and I went with another new missionary and had to rely almost entirely on my cebuano.  A trike driver told me my cebuano was really good so I was pretty happy, lots to improve pa.  We also had interviews with President Argana and he challenged us to have more faith and to really encourage our zone as well.  As I have been taking this challenge I have learned and seen more miracles in our work.

Question from mom & dad: What do your STL's do and what responsibilities do you have as a Zone Leader?

So as the zone leaders we are responsible for the whole zone the STL's don't really do anything, because we only have 2 companionships of sisters.  We have to do exchanges every cycle with every district leader(we have 4) and training companionships and give a training at all of their district meetings so we get pretty busy traveling and preparing trainings and doing exchanges but it keeps us really busy which I like.

Love you tons!!

Sorry no pics this week :(

Elder Holmstead

Philippines Tacloban Mission

Faith to Find the Elect

Hey Y'all

This week has been another crazy week.  Lots of stuff going on but I enjoyed it a lot. 

I had two exchanges with new missionaries this week including one who is just out of the MTC.  It was really fun to feel their enthusiasm and to see the fire of new missionaries.  Not to say my fire has gone down of anything you can just see the excitement.  But one thing was I had to rely almost entirely on my Cebuano and I was again reminded about the truthfulness of the Gift of Tongues and how important it is to bring the Spirit to lessons.  One of my favorite quotes from Preach My Gospel says something to this effect  The language of the Spirit can communicate with anyone regardless of language barriers. 

We also had our zone conference this week.  It was a really good time to see a bunch of missionaries from around the mission and to hear the revelation from President Argana.  He challenged us to always have the faith to find the elect.  They are being prepared by the lord and we just have to do our best to find them.  Good reminder for me.

Me and Elder Arienda have been working a lot with Sister Kristine this week and we ended up needing to push her baptism until October 20.  She has been making a lot of changes in her life and is doing really well but we decided to really make sure she has a strong testimony before she is baptized.  She is doing really well and I am excited for her.  Yesterday we also had a little miracle as we were finding.  We were looking for a potential investigator we taught last week and approached a house and found out it was a less active sister with 6 kids that have the potential to get baptized so we are going to try to help them out.

Also shout out for a new temple in Davao!!!! and Washington County!!!!  I am super excited to watch general conference next week and will look out for all the favorites you told me :)

Love you tons!!! The church is true!!!

Elder Holmstead

Philippines Tacloban Mission

Saints and MLC

Another super good week.  Mao ra gihapon

We started off the week in Tacloban for MLC and it was a super good time.  Most of my batch is now zone leaders so I got to see almost all of them so that was a great time.  We had an outdoor FHE because the weather was really good and then we ended with a big boodle fight.  The next day we had a really good MLC and President Argana gave a really good training about recognizing patterns from the scriptures and in our lives.  Really powerful.

Me and Elder Arienda organized a Member Missionary Fireside for our branch and we gave a training to the members about how to overcome the fears of missionary work and we gave them challenge to all give us a referral so I am hoping we get some good member participation this next week.

Our investigators are all progressing really well.  On Saturday Kristine has her baptismal interview so keep her in your prayers.  We have finally had some time to do some finding and it was successful.  We contacted a former investigator family of 5 and they were super interested and have come to church before so we are going to see if we can get them to start progressing.  We should have 2 baptisms for sure in October and the whole mission hit 129 baptisms this past month so we are super excited.

Oh and this last week I ordered the new Saints History of the Church book and I already finished it.  It was super good and I definitely recommend it.  I learned a bunch of new stuff about church history and it was amazing to see how strong and faithful some of the first members were.  

That's about it for this week.  Congrats to Brock for his baptism!!

Amping kamo.  Naghigugma ko so injo!!!

Elder Holmstead

Philippines Tacloban Mission