June 27, 2016

That sign is super hilarious! Do you think it´s specific enough now? 

How awesome about the new ward mission boundaries! I met two missionaries in the MTC that went there! Elder Baurro and Sister Bertalini. 

So It is sad to hear that Great Grandma died. She lived a long (very long) and happy life. She probably wouldn´t want to see us crying, but rather smiling and laughing because of all the positive memories we have of her.Just remember: we know where she went and we know that she´s happy there.

This week President Derbez is going home and President Owens will be arriving. Every latino in the mission has joined together in fasting and prayer united in their cause: Futbol. We hope that he lets us play sports. 

Have they announced wwhen the temple will be officially opened yet?

So to answer questions: I have 13 months in the mission

I have had 8 companions

I am still in my second area

I am in the Mezquital Ward 

I´ve been here for 7 months 

and everyone here knows me.

and it is awesome. 

I love this ward. It has its fair share of problems, but it´s improving. The weekly assistance here has been growing (slowly but steadily). Some of the members are super helpful, but only some. This week we brought 2 calenders to the Relief society, one to sign up to give us food and one to sign up to do visits with us. We explained to them the importance of the calenders: to keep us full of food and them full of the spirit. We explained that we can help them do their visits to members and they can help us visit investigators, and we´ll all end up happy and successful. We left the calender with them and went on to our other classes. When we went back to pick it up at the end, we almost cried. It was empty. The members had filled the food calender (because they love us), but not a single one had signed up to do visits with us. So i got a little angry and threw it in the trash. Here´s a picture below (if you zoom in you can see that it´s empty). So I guess you could say that we got a little upset. 

So we´ve been spending a lot of time finding more people to teach. The members hardly ever give us references which leaves us one option: Door Knocking. At first this tactic was greatly frowned upon for lack of results and risk of finding crazy drug dealers, but I´ve found it to be decently effective. How else are we supposed to find people to teach? we talk to people when we can, but when there´s nothing else to do: we knock doors. 

Another way to find new people is through service. Unfortunately, the people here are very stubborn\prideful and never accept help unless  they´re dying. so it´s not a very reliable source. We´ve had projects painting houses, gardening, and basic landscaping projects too. but not many. This last week we helped a less active member paint his house. 

On the average P Day we buy food for the week, wash our clothes, clean the house, write the family, and then we get together with the other missionaries of our ward to play games. We can´t play sports (yet) so we play card games. I´ve taught them how to play Scum and Egyptian War. In turn, my companion has been teaching me a mexican game similar to poker. We normally play for an hour or two and then go to our District meeting.

This week we´ve been teaching several extreme Christians. One guy started shouting and crying at the same time while telling us about how much he loves Jesus, and another told us a story about how he had achieved perfection for 3 months. so... It´s been an interesting week.

Let me just say that I know that the church is true. I know that The Book of Mormon is the word of God and that if we follow the principles written in the scriptures we can achieve great things. Not great in the world´s eyes, but True Greatness. I know that Christ is our savior and that he loves each and every one of us. Asi Es.

Amen

Elder Phillips

June 20, 2016

Wow! What an exciting week!

The Youth Conference sounds like a wonderfully spiritual experience! And the temple looks absolutely amazing! 

And Happy Fathers day Daddyo!

I´m going to apologize in advance, I don´t have much time today to write. So I´ll get straight to the good stuff.

This week we put several baptismal dates with investigators. Ramona and Pedro (her husband), are super excited and will be baptised on July 16th!   

I finished reading Isaiah. And truthfully I loved it. Isaiah has a great way of explaining God´s commandments in a super clear and simple way. Because that´s how the things of God are; simple. 

3 Nefi 23:1-3

  And now, behold, I say unto you, that ye ought to search these things. Yea, a commandment I give unto you that ye search these things diligently; for great are the words of Isaiah. For surely he spake as touching all things concerning my people which are of the house of Israel; therefore it must needs be that he must speak also to the Gentiles. And all things that he spake have been and shall be, even according to the words which he spake.  

Elder Phillips

Thanks mom! The only other thing would be ties with cool designs. 

I hope that charlie doesn´t die, but i don´t think that he´ll make it another year :´(

I´m glad that everyone had a fun time, you went to manti and beaver creek? it sounds like it was super fun!

Well, sorry I didn´t have time to write more today. And the batteries from the camera died and i havent had the chance to buy more yet, but I should be able to get more this week. That means more photos!

Love Ya!

Elder Phillips

June 13, 2016

    We are teaching an awesome investigator named Victor Prieto who is a carpinter. He's a very hard worker and only takes a break to listen to us when we stop by to visit him. We noticed that he was always working (in the night and sundays too) so we decided to teach him about The Sabbath Day. We promised him that the Lord would bless him in his work if he dedicated just 1 day to him. He accepted when we challenged him to keep the commandment and came to church with us the following Sunday. During the week he told us that he´s already been able to see a difference in his life, after just a few weeks. He has had more energy and more success in his work, and he has a steady flow of clients. On friday we taught him about The Law of Tithing. This is a very difficult commandment here in Mexico. Many people work long hours to make very little money, and truthfully, they don´t have a lot. But he accepted it willingly, and faithfully told us that he would obey this commandment. And on sunday when he went to church, he paid his tithing! He´s already more obedient and faithful than most members down here!

    He has also invited us to eat with him several times. Sometimes soup, sometimes posoli, and sometimes tacos. One time he invited us to try a sea food soup with octapus, squid, oyester, crab, and other fish. I have to admit that I was a little skeptical about trying octapus but it was actually really good! Victor is from Vera Cruz and the people down there eat some weird stuff sometimes. Have you ever tried a good beef stew? Now imagine it with banana. Yep, that´s right. They put banana in their soups.

    I recently tried a few typical Mexican desserts. One of them is called buñuelo. It´s more or less a fried tortilla with sugar. They look really cool, are super thin, and taste great. I also tried Mangoneadas (or Chamoyadas). These are tasty popsicles made of blended mango. Then they stick it in a salsa called Chamoy. It´s a little strange at first, but it´s also pretty good and super easy to make. It´s an unofficial parting gift for missionaries I think, because almost every family offers us Mangoneados when it´s time for us to leave. The people here are super nice and friendly! 

    And to finish up, this week Kimberly (recent convert) was telling us about her baptismal experience. We asked her how she felt and she told us: ¨I feel great, but now I´m too lazy to insult Edwin (her younger brother).¨ Well it wasn´t exactly the answer we were expecting, but I guess that´s one way the spirit can help you have more peace in your home.

So if you have a lot of contention in your home, pray for the spirit of laziness!

Sincerely, 

Elder Phillips

June 6, 2016

So first of all: Happy Birthday Savannah!

I love hearing about the Memorial Day Party! Great to see that loads of people showed up! I´m glad to hear that everyone had a lot of fun!

Summer is officially here! This week will be heating up to a solid 102 degrees! Good think I´ve got sunscreen! Also, we are now allowed to use hats and sunglasses as missionaries! I think I´ll have to invest or risk getting scorched. I´m pretty sure that we could cook an egg outside on the sidewalk if we wanted to! So good thing we have sun screen!

So this week we had a baptism! About 2 months back we met Veronica Gomez, an inactive member of our ward, and her two kids. After a lot of hard work, she´s now active again and her two kids got baptized! We´re going to keep working with them to strengthen their testimonies, but I´m positive that they´ll be a wonderful, strong, and active family!

So this week we´ve been working hard with an investigator named Ramona. We met her on a super hot day when we were looking for a reference (we had their address but no idea where the street was). We saw her walking towards us with her family, so we stopped them to ask for some directions. We stuck around chatting for a minute getting to know them. It was Ramona, her nephew, her husband, and her son (but they don´t talk much, so mostly we just talked with Ramona). After getting to know them a bit we asked them if we could visit them and teach them  more about Christ and his church. She accepted very enthusiastically. We taught her about the Book of Mormon, The Restoration, and Baptism. 

She accepted our invitation to get baptised without hesitation and when we asked her how she knew it was she told us: ¨I just know. I´ve met missionaries like you guys before walking in the streets, but I always gave them a fake address. But when you guys asked me, I just felt that I had to tell you the truth.¨ 

We met a christian man one day who explained that the spirit made him want to run and jump and shout. But for me, that´s not what the spirit´s like. The spirit is gentle. The spirit is peaceful. The spirit is a soothing whisper, guiding us to the truth. 

That same feeling that Ramona felt when she first met us was telling her that our message is true. That´s the SPIRIT!!

Ask, and it shall be given unto you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you. For every one that asketh, receiveth; and he that seeketh, findeth; and to him that knocketh, it shall be opened. --3 Nephi 14:7-8 

So go ahead, seek the spirit. 

With Love,

Elder Phillips

May 30, 2016

Hey family! How´s it going? 

Remember that family I wrote about last week? well the mom is named Rosa (Rose), her daughters are Luz (Light) and Rocio (Dew). Well it turns out that they are super prepared! But I mean SUPER prepared! We taught them about the restoration, the plan of salvation, and baptism! They are super excited and accepted our invitation to come to church this sunday. We also hope that they´ll be able to  come to the baptism of Kimberly and Edwin this saturday!

Oh yeah, Baptism this saturday! We´ve been teaching the Gomez Family for about a month and a half now and this saturday Kimberly and Edwin will be getting baptized! They are a family of 3: Veronica (reactivated member), Kimberly (14, super shy but watch out if she gets angry), and Edwin (11, a rambunctious child). 

This week we did something kind of cool: We did an exorcism on a house! ok, not quite like that. We did a blessing for a house. Some recent converts had been having some problems lately and their daughter (4 yrs old) claimed to have seen spirits and other strange stuff, so we jumped into action! After the blessing they say that everything is better and the problems have calmed down.

I Love You!

Elder Phillips

Stay tuned until next time when Elder Phillips sends pictures!

Here is Becky's letter with a short reply. 

So she actually graduated! It has been a very busy weekend! But you know those are always the funnest. Aunt Sally uncle DEL, Tevon, Emma, and Grandma came to visit for the weekend. I don't know if I told you, Chris couldn't come because he's in Ireland! He went with school and will be there for six weeks. So fun! They haven't heard from him much, so I can't tell you any highlights yet. Our highlights were
1: going to jump Creek Falls. It's a nice little walk into a waterfall, can't really be considered a hike there for Ellie can't complain :-) I actually think she's getting better, she's hanging out with adventurous people that make her be OK with hiking. Grandma loved exploring, and the girls actually got in that frigid water! I will have to send those pictures separately.
2. We went to garage sales :-) that was at Sally's number one request one coming here. I found some good things, some cute clothes for little baby savanna, and a new coffee table! But nobody was there selling the gospel ;-) not like your yard sales!
3. I took all the girls up to see great grandma Thompson up in Haines Oregon. She will be 97 years old in September! I doubt she will make it that long though. We enjoyed our visit with her. My aunt Denise was there, And she let the girls ride her horses. They got to brush them down and braid their hair also :-) they were in heaven! We also went and visited aunt Charlene and uncle Jerry. She is in really bad shape! She fell and shattered the ball joint of her shoulder and had to have it replaced, And then a week after that fell on it again! I think they are putting her on hospice which usually means you only have at the most six months to live. They still love you, and ask about you

(From John)

Wow!

1. That sounds awesome and super fun!

2. Well somebody´s got to start! Buy a few book of mormon and start handing them out!

3. That sounds like fun, but it´s a real bummer hearing about Aunt Charlene and Great Grandma Thompson. So they´re thinking that they only have a few months left? they really need our prayers.

May 23, 2016

Wow! What a week! 

Let me just say that I am grateful for all those hot summer hikes that we did as scouts up in the mountains, because this week was a lot of working hard in the burning sun. And it was awesome.

I have found that in the past year (that´s right, I´ve been out here a full year already!) my best weeks were the ones when we worked the hardest. Porque asi es. That´s just how it is. And I´m starting to realize that that´s how life is in general. The more you work in anything -a calling, a job, school studies, etc- the more you get out of it. If you want to have a good mission experience, you´ve got to forget yourself and get to work.

Nifty Little Weekly Experience!

So last week we went through our Area Book again. For those of you who don´t know, The Area Book is our binder where we keep the progress records of all our investigators. And we have records from 2013ish up until the current date of every investigator whom the missionaries here in Mezquital have visited. Anyways, we went through it and found Rosa, an investigator from about 2 years back whom the missionaries stopped visiting. We stopped by to pay her a visit and she accepted to recieve the lessions again. However, she didn´t really seem interested. The first visit we got to know her and about her family (she has 2 daughters and 1 son, but they don´t live with her anymore). We left doubting her interest in the gospel but we decided to teach her, invite her, and see if she progressed. We went one more time and taught both she and her daughter about the Restoration. To our surprise, they were very receptive and promised to read the Book of Mormon! We went back a few days later and found that she had read in Alma, prayed about it, and got her answer! Holy Huacamole! I was truthfully astounded! She was one of our investigators who had progressed the least, showed the least interest, and was most dedicated to another church, but she got the answer! It just goes to show you that God gives ¨liberally and abraideth not¨ to all who ask in faith (James 1:5). So just like that, a question was asked and an answer was given. 

So that turned out to be super awesome! 

Also, we make a cake this week! That super delicious lemon cake recipe that you sent me. And it turned out a bit ugly, but super tasty!

I hope you all have an amazing week!

I Love You!

Elder Phillips

May 16th, 2016

That meat though! That sounds like 12lbs of sweet smoky goodness!

I´m glad that everone´s feeling better now, it always stinks getting sick :P

So about 2 weeks ago we met a young couple and their 2 kids in the street. We walked up to them and started talking -about the weather, their kids, local sports, the differences between the beans here and the beans back home, about loads of stuff (cuz that´s what we do)- and after mentioning our purpose as missionaries, they invited us to visit them and share our message with their family. This was awesome, because we had been fasting and praying to find new receptive investigators. But when we stopped by their house, nobody was there. Super dissappointing. The following week while walking in the street, we bumped into them every day! That never happens! So we talked to them a bit more each day and we put another appointment to visit them. And this time when we stopped by, they were there with there parents too! It turns out that the father (of the husband in the couple) was a member of the church too and that his wife and son (the husband) went to church too! They had stopped going to church a few years back but now the Lord helped us to find them again. They shared with us their desire to have an eternal family and grow closer to God. We taught them a quick little message and put another appointment to visit the couple and their parents too. Now we´re hoping that they join us at church this coming sunday. It just goes to show you that God´s always there. Here in the mission I have really noticed that God doesn´t abandon us. Sometimes we´re just not very good at noticing all the little things/tender mercies that he gives us. So remember that God has, can, and will guide you, and all you have to do is ask.

Con amor, 

Elder Phillips

So the pictures:

1. Elder Seguel and I went on divisions this week. He is from Chile!

2. Elder Madin (my companion) and I

3. Baptism of Joel and Claudia