July 25,2016

John didn't write last week, but he has been transferred again....back to Juarez! He is also now the District Leader.
 Here is this weeks letter!
Poor Charlie! I'm gonna miss that dog :'(

Things have been good this week down here in Rio Nilo. The Branch is super supportive of the Missionary Work and they are all wonderful people. This week I got here with Elder Arlington (from LA California) and we got straight to work. We focused on finding new people to teach and reactivating inactive members. So far we haven't had any success with reactivating members, but we found several new families to teach! 

We went to visit a less active member whose name was found in the ward directory, but she wasn't home. As we walked away my companion and I both felt impressed to knock on the neighbors door. We did, and 2 young men came out to talk to us. We chatted for a minute and asked them about their neighbor (the possible member), and after a while they asked us about Joseph smith. We explained the restoration to them, and they accepted an appointment for us to visit them again. They were super interrested in the church!

Elder Phillips

A rather crappy first day (pun intended) I love the birds.

July 11, 2016

This week was awesome and we have a baptism coming up this saturday!

So my area is super rich and it's rough. It's a lot harder to find people to teach here, but the people who accept us are wonderful! This week we contacted a man outside his house and we put an appointment to visit him. He doesn't believe in God, but he told us that he'd like to find something to believe in. He confessed that he has a bit of a criminal reccord and drinks a lot, but truthfully, these are the people we are looking for! As we talked to him a scripture came to my mind:  

Mark 2:17 When Jesus heard it, he saith unto them, They that are whole have no need of the physician, but they that are sick: I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. 

I know that by preaching the gospel, we can change lives. I have both seen it and lived it and now I want to share it! I'm in a new area where I still don't really know the people, but my goal is to get to know them all and teach them the gospel!

Love,

Elder Phillips

Sorry for the short letter, but the good news is that a picture is worth a thousand words!

So check out all the great foods we have here in Nogales! 1. Cow tongue  2. The Pancho Mama (a giant hotdog with sausage, wrapped in bacon)  3. Vancouver Donuts!

 My companion in his knee therapy. His therapist is named Shamir (I'm pretty sure he has a crush on her)

And some investigators invited us over to eat cake for Elder Rodri's Birthday!

July 4th! 2016

June 29th, 2016. It was a wednesday just like any other. I got up at 6:20 AM, just like I always do. I rolled out of bed, stretched my arms a bit, and said a prayer.  My companion and I exercised in the house for a half an hour; stretching, jumping rope and doing pushups. At 7:00 I Ironed my shirt and hopped into the shower. By 8:00 we were both studying the scriptures.

At 8:30 we got a phone call from the asistents: "Elder Phillips, you've got changes."

So here I am, A stranger in a new city. I am in Nogales, just over an hour away from my last area; but everything is different. This is where the rich people live. Truthfully, it's a completely different world here. I'm used to poor families that work in factories for a living, not millionairs that go to Cancun every other month for vacations. In Mezquital everyone walks or goes in public busses. Here everyone has their own car. There are members here who have Mercedes Benz and even Ferrari's! 

To make a longer story a little bit shorter: life here is different.

My companion is Elder Rodriguez. He's from Mexico City, Mexico. He just turned 24 on Saturday,  he's a Lawyer and a businessman. He's super cool. We're working hard in a new area where the members don't really support the Missionary Work. Just a few months ago there were 3 missionary companionships here, now there's just one. And that's us. So there's a lot of work to do down here.

The good news is that the missionaries have been working hard up here, so we'll be having baptisms in July!

In other news, We celebrated my companion's birthday about 3 times this week! one family took us out to eat in a place called Wing Daddy's, and that was quite tasty. Another invited us over for cake and then today some missionaries invited us to go eat at a nearby restaurant. The place is called Playa Bichis. And I tried Cow tongue! And it was super good! Seriously, the tongue tastes great. I was quite surprised.

So Welcome to Nogales,

Elder Phillips

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