I´m sorry to hear that you guys are sick. That´s miserable. But Michelle, HAPPY BIRTHDAY (I´m really late, I know, but I did remember on the 13th!). Also, congratulations on your test! That´s awesome!
The more I am on my mission, the more I realize that I don´t actually have control over anything. This isn´t even MY mission. The only thing I have agency in are the rules of the mission. If I keep the rules the way they were intended to be kept, the Lord is going to take care of everything else. He is aware of us in every situation. We only control ourselves. For example, we have not had investigators in church for about 4 weeks now. This is bad. If they don´t come to church it doesn´t matter how often we visit them or how spiritual the lessons are-- they´re not going to get baptized. Hermana Vargas and I were making some contacts yesterday morning and met a lady in a bit of distress. We stopped her and asked if we could help her with anything. She rapidly explained that she had to go to the store to buy something and couldn´t talk just then but if we could please stop by her house later she wanted to listen to us. She was having "muchas problemas" with her "pareja" (partner) and was really desperate for help. So we passed by that evening. Like many of the people here, she lives in one room with a small yard shared with her many neighbors. There was loud rhythmic music blaring from next door. We sat outside and had a charla (lesson) about the law of chastity and how it could help her. She said that she loves her boyfriend, but he hits her and she wants to leave him. She has a 15 year old son with another man. She has been married and divorced. We challenged her to be baptized and she accepted gladly.
As we walked away from the house we looked at each other with the same thought: This wasn´t us. It was all Heavenly Father.
The law of chastity is something rarely practiced here. Children are brought up to break it. My companion and I were sitting on a curb to eat some dinner one evening, and some kids of some inactive members sat down to talk to us. We asked them why they weren´t in church last Sunday, and they said they were too tired. I asked when they went to bed, and they told us they play all night until 5 in the morning!!! I was horrified. These little girls are 7- 10 years old and they proceeded to tell me about their "amigovios" (a mixture of the word amigo for friend and novio for boyfriend) We had a brief talk about chastity, in which my beloved and direct companion told them that anyone who gets pregnant before they´re married is going to be alone. You should have seen their faces...
That´s all I have time fore. I love you. Take care of yourselves, and more importantly, take care of each other.
Love you forever,
Hermana Phillips
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