August 1, 2016

Sounds like you had a wonderful week! how fun! Activities like that are super awesome and are great for strengthing the testimonies of the youth, keep it up! (Our youth just got back from youth conference called Keystone. It was focused on the Restoration) A less active family i was teaching back in mezquital is now active and the daughter went to EFY. She came back with a super strong testimony and is now preparing to go on a mission when she turns 19! So keep up the wonderful youth activities!

What is your current calling in the ward? Young women?

I just wanted to thenk you for the awesome package you sent me. Thank you so much! 

I Love You!

Elder Phillips

Dear Everyone.

It has come to my attention that my letters have been getting progressively...lamer. I wish to apologize. And to make it up to you, I'll be writing a (hopefully) better letter. 

And so to start off, I want to wish a big old Happy Birthday to my dad, who just turned 50!

This week has been quite extraordinary. We started off by practicing the "Fat Cat Approach". What is this strange sounding technique? Well allow me to explain.

My companion is Elder Arlington, he's been in the mission for 18 months and has been slowly perfecting this tactic for the purpose of finding new people to teach.  This is how it began: as we were walking down the street, my companion saw a really really fat beast cat sitting outside of a house next to the owner. he immediately (being a lover of all pets) went ove to pet the animal. As he did, he started talkng to the owner about his pet, his family, etc. And by the end, we've arranged an appointment to come back and teach him about the Gospel of Christ. It's a fool-proof tactic that has proven to be quite successful during this last week.

Another example: Walking down the street, we see a large friendly looking dog sitting in the yard watching us. Once again, we go over and start petting the dog. After a moment, a young man arrives at the house. We get into a conversation about dogs and then we smoothly change the subject to talk about church. It turns out that the young lad's father is a member of the church but lives far away so the kids never got baptized. As we talked about the church, the youth's older brother came out of the house, offered us water, a mentioned to us that he'd like to go to church with us too! we put an appointment to visit them during the week and to take them to see the temple grounds.

So maybe it's the guidance of the spirit, maybe it's just our love for pets. Who knows, but either way it works!

A wonderful thing about Rio Nilo: We have the temple in our area! It is super beautiful! I've only passed by it a few times, but every time I do I have to take a quick break to just look at it for a while. It reminds me of the primary song "I Love to See the Temple". I can't wait to go inside again! 

I went on Splits with the Zone leader this week, and we went to a funeral. The woman who passed away was a less active member and almost all of her family is inactive in the church. They were in tears during the whole service. It's strange to see the difference between an active family and an inactive family during a funeral. The only way I can describe it is that the active family has hope. They have a hope of better things to come. They look forward to the day when they can see their loved ones again. And as Elder Fonseca taught a bit about the Plan of Salvation, a few of the families grabbed hold of it and took hope. Not all of them, but at least some of them. I feel like that's one thing that we can never afford to lose: The Hope. 

1Corinthians 15:54-58

 "So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory.
O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?...
But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye steadfast, unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labour is not in vain in the Lord."

So let us be steadfast and unmoveable. 

Let us abound in the work of the Lord. 

Elder Phillips

Check it out, I crossed the Rio Grande! AMERICA!!!!

 This is the big red X. I think it means that there's a treasure burried there...

And I got dragged into eating Menudo (cow stomach soup) again. This one actually tasted pretty good.