March 28, 2016

Wow! The photos look great! And it looks like you had a lot of fun doing it too :) more or less. And I love the old one from the pool that you found! 

So what do you do in this Manti trip? And does it happen every year?

This week has been quite awesome. Elder Madin is learning quickly and we´ve been having a blast! We´ve been working hard to find new people to teach with good results. A youth in the ward, Nestor Barajas, Sent us a reference to visit one of his friends. And when we went to visit him the whole family started listening and really enjoyed it. They invited us to keep visiting them and we plan on inviting them to the General Conference this weekend.

That´s another thing, General Conference in the mission is comparable to the Super Bowl back home. It is a huge event with all the missionaries speculating on who´s going to give talks, on what topic, how many airplane storries will Utchdorf use, etc. We want to invite EVERYONE to se it with us because it is always an amazingly spiritual event and the investigators can learn about the prophets and apostoles of our day! 

I highly encourage you to invite your friends to at least 1 session of conference this year. They will feel the spirit and they will want to learn more.

Romans 10:17

So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.

Invite someone to increase their faith!

Les amo a todos!

Elder Phillips

Here´s a pic of my companion ¨Studying¨ The Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith before going to bed. He has good intentions but never lasts too long reading.

And a picture of our new buddy Elder ¨Tablon¨ Madin. I guess you could say that we had a lot of spare time on our hands this week.

March 21, 2016

You really did have quite a crazy week! You think that Ellie and Megan are ready to go live on a farm now? (We got stuck in the mud, stuck in Oregon due to a back wreck on the freeway, and are remodeling the house. While visiting great grandma Thompson, Megan and Ellie explored the ranch, and bottle fed some calfs)
I can´t wait to see the new floors! Good luck! 

Down here The Holy Week (Semana Santa) Is pretty big. It was brought to Mexico by the Catholic church many hundreds of years ago. It is a week to remember the last week of Chrits life. It starts with ¨Palm Sunday¨, followed by ¨Holy Monday¨ and ends with ¨Holy Saturday¨ and ¨Easter Sunday¨. Many people don´t know why it´s celebrated, they just know that they don´t have to work and should go to church. But yes, it is a great time to teach and find people to teach. The kids down here get 2 weeks of vacation from school too! I hope that the streets will be full of people to contact!

I can´t wait to meet our new President! I hope that he´s awesome and I also hope that he allows us to play sports too. That would be awesome. Will they announce him in General conference? Do they do that? 

I love the story of your adventure! Did you ever make it to the creek, or did you run out of time and have to turn back? Did you have to push a lot?

This week I met my new companion, Elder Madin. He is from Mexico City and is great! He came to the mission prepared and ready to teach. He has a great testimony andis anxious to share it with everyone in Juarez! This week we focused on finding new people to teach. My goal was to help him to lose any fear of talking to strangers that he might´ve had and I have to say, he did great! After a few days of practice he was ready to talk to everyone! We found a several people who invited us to visit them this week, one of them being Rodolfo. 

Rodolfo is about 45years old and has lots of questions about the gospel. He enjoys reading the bible and when we invited him to read the Book of Mormon, he enthusiastically accepted our invitation. He said ¨I will read it, because I have a lot of questions that the bible can´t answer. And I know that i´ll find the answers here.¨ 

I can´t wait to visit him again! I know that the answers to his questions are in the Book of Mormon. And I know that he will find them!

 

Love,

Elder Phillips

MARCH 14, 2016

Awesome! What a crazy weekend! And David Johnson is the bishop now! 

Here on my end there hasn't been a lot of new stuff going on. Except the Transfers! That's right, Today is transfer day! Elder Kopsa will be heading off to Casas Grandes-Villa Hermosa to be the companion of Elder Ramirez, one of my ex-companions!  And I will be sticking around here in Mezquital and...Drum roll please.... Training Elder Madín! That's right! He's coming from Mexico City, Mexico. From a part called Cuautepec! He's coming in Green, straight from 2 weeks in the Mexico MTC! I'm feeling super excited to be training again and I can't wait to meet him!

This week we were walking and we found a tarantula wandering around. I wanted to get a picture, but he ran away pretty quickly and I didn't get the chance. We're out here on the edge of Juarez where it meets the Desert. They say that there're loads of them, but this was the first I've seen up close.

The weather down here's gotten really windy and dirty. There was so much dirt and sand getting blown around that for a few days it blocked out the sky! You could look up and just see brown. The sky was brown! It was crazy! They say that March is usually windy but that it'll be getting worse in the upcoming weeks. Wish me luck!

This last week we lost several families of investigators. It was rough. We had been visiting them for a long time now, up until this week when we determined that they really don't have a desire to repent (change their lifestyle) and be baptized.  A common mentality down here is: "My mother was a catholic. I was born and baptized Catholic. I will die Catholic." We invite them to ask God what he wants for them, but  they are blind. Here's one of our recent conversations at the end of a lesson: 

Us: "If God told you that you need to change, would you do it?"

Them: "Yes, of course"

Us: "Ok, so how can you ask him if you need to change?"

Them: "By praying"

Us: "Exactly! Would you like to know which church is true? Would you be willing to change if God tells you to?"

Them: "Yes and yes."

Us: "Great! Will you pray and ask God specifically if this is his church? Will you ask him tonight?"

Them: "Hmm... No. My church is the Catholic. I don't want to change."

Us: "....."😕😢

I swear they must be brainwashing them over there. We had been visiting that family for a few months now, we'd taught them about the Restoration several times, the necessity of the Priesthood, baptism, They believe that the Book of Mormon is true and all, The wife was even baptized when she was 8 (but their family then left the church and she went back to the Catholic)!

 

 The good news is that we learned from it. If you don´t tell them straight up that Baptism is our goal for them, they´ll have a much harder time being prepared for it. The same with the Restoration. We must explain these points to the people in the first visit or two to establish the expectations for our visits. If we don't, they'll never progress and they'll end up like those families this week.

I can truly testify to you that This is God's church. That this is the only way to have happiness and peace eternally. We can have the Spirit in our lives, a divine guide that comes directly from God! But only if we're willing to repent and change our lives. I testify of that, in the name of Jesus Christ Amen.

I Love you!

Elder Phillips

(John and I got to email back and forth a few times today, that is always fun! )

I'm glad to hear that Justin came to church! Tell him to write me! I'm not sure if he's got my Email Address, but he hasn't written me yet! Ever! I think I wrote him just about every week while he was gone, and now I'm getting kind of Cheesed off because he hasn't even written me once! But ewither way, I'm glad that he'll be going to school in BYU now. It'll be a good environment for him.

Are those pictures of the Meridian Temple? Or the one in Utah? it looks great! And beautifully cloudy too! 

Have a great week!

I Love You!

Elder Phillips

March 6, 2016

WOW!! So Much is going on back home! And Grandma and Grandpa are building a NEW HOUSE???? Santa Vaca!! Where are they going to build it? So the package still hasn't arrived, but that's ok. I'll probably get sent down to the offices to renew my green card in a week or two, so I'll just get it then. I was thinking the other day, I'm a pretty spoiled missionary. It seems like you're always sending me packages of goodies and stuff. That's not a complaint or anything, I'm just saying... thanks. It's pretty awesome :) You're the best :) 

So this week We ate a new type a food called Panuchos!  It's like a tortilla stuffed with meat and cheese topped with lettuce, tomato, an egg (sunny side up) , cream, and more cheese! With salsa too! They were big and tasty and I ate a few of them. This week we alos had a baptism! Her name is Blanca Sánchez. The next day in church she was Confirmed and Then bore her tetimony! She had been investigating the church for about 2 years until we started teaching her. We invited her to pray specifically to God about her baptism and she got an answer! That´s what I love about God, he never lets us down. Never! He may not always give us the answer that we want, but he´ll always give us the one that we need. And thus it came to pass that we had a baptism on saturday.

Unfortunately, due to technical difficulties I am unable to upload photos. 

Also: Here´s a little shout out to the Newson family! Thank you for sending such a wonderful Valentines Day Card!

I Love You Mom! Have a wonderful week!

Elder Phillips

How aweome! I love it when the Converts in the church have super strong testimonies! And good luck on your new calling! Remember when one of the girls prayed that you'd be Bishop? That was super funny! I hope you get put in the Sunbeams. It'd be nice for you to be back with people of your own maturity level :) haha!

So everyone down here hates Donald Trump. EVERYONE! They only know that he wants to build the wall bigger and stuff and kick out all the illegal immagrants, but they all have illegal family living in the states... so they hate him. So what's actually going on there in the political world? Who's running? Who's winning?

I Still love how he calls it "Open mike Sunday". And how old is Ashley? There's a young lad down here (17 yrs old) who's going out with a less active member and she's coming back to church now. Maybe I could try the same approach with her after the mission. No promises, just saying that it may be an option. But I'll need photos, her full name, interests, age, and all other relevant information sent to me in the next email. :D

I Love You!

Elder Phillips