Letter # 64 12/17/2013 Ola de Calor‏

Dear Friends and Family,

Thank you for the pictures!!!! You all look so good! But Christopher-- what's going on with the mustache?

Well, transfers happened, and I'm leaving San Carlos. NOOOO!! But it's ok, really it is. I'm going to Sarandí del Yí, Durazno, with Hermana Peña from Colombia. Mom, if you want to try to get in contact with families or individuals you knew in Bogotá, you can just send me the info and she can ask her family. You never know...

These transfers are strange for me because my whole mission (minus 6 months or so) I've been training or my companions have been relatively new missionaries. Hermana Peña was in the MTC with me, so we have almost the same amount of time on the mission. I also lived with her when we were in a house of 4 in La Paz. I'll let you know more about the area and the branch/ward when I get there.

I'm pretty excited for the Christmas conference we'll have tomorrow. The choir will be performing, and I'm singing in a quartet. We have a surprising amount of musical talent in our mission. I'll try to get someone to record it so you can see it when I get home-- I can't send videos by email because the file is too big.

Speaking of videos-- I can watch videos so, Michelle, if you want to send me a video of Ethan's songs, I can watch them!

We went to La Barra today, which is a tourist spot on the beach near San Carlos. It's super pretty. A member in our ward is building a house out there so she offered to be our guide. There are crabs EVERYWHERE! If someday I can take my family to Uruguay, we're going there. We could only spend a little while there, because I have to pack and clean and visit all the members. I've never been so NOT excited to leave an area. It's a new adventure, and of course I will embrace it, but I feel so at home in San Carlos, and I feel like for the first time I have a strong relationship with the members here. I love them so much. And their food is DELICIOUS! Plus we have a firm baptism set for the 28th of December that I'll miss. Keep Inés Pereira in your prayers! She needs to stop smoking. And now I'm off to the countryside, closer to the interior, so things will at least be a lot cheaper!

Love you all so much! Take care!

Love you forever,

Hermana Phillips

Letter #18 01/14/13

Dear Family,

There's not much to report this week. I've been feeling kind of down for the past couple of days, so I'll just talk about Uruguay.

We check our email in "el cyber" where there are about 15 ancient computers for public use. The same soundtrack plays with anouncements on repeat about every two minutes.

As you walk down the street in the middle of Florida, every once in a while cars pass that blast public announcements and business advertising. Right now one jingle is stuck in my head: "¡Vamos a la playa, oh, oh-oh-oh-oh!" ("Lets go to the beach!") Everyone is at the beach for the holidays still, including two of our most promising investigators, and things are pretty dead. People leave for weeks!

Hermana Vargas and I have been feeling inspired that we need to concentrate on finding potential priesthood holders to teach. We've been praying about it and asking everyone if they know anyone (along with asking for all other references). A few days ago we were trying to track down one of our recent converts who is now completely inactive, Pablo. Apparently with the previous missionaries, he walked up to them and asked, "what do I need to do to be a mormon?" So he was baptized a week later with only attending church once and without having been taught things like the Plan of Salvation and Tithing, according to the teaching record. So we were trying to find him and instead found his younger brother, Gonzalo, who we are now teaching. During our next attempt to find him we found another younger brother, Sebastian, who is also awesome and whom we are also now teaching. We asked in this lesson how many siblings they actually had. 7 sons of priesthood age. So that's an answer to a prayer that is going to be our project for a while!

There are a LOT of religious groups here. The ones that have the deepest hold are Evangelicals, a church called Cristo Vive, and Testigos de Jeovah (Jehovah Witnesses). While I'm fuzzy on the specific doctrine of each one, I am becoming familiar with the specific type of person each attracts. Everyone that we've met in Cristo Vive, for example, are single women above the age of 55. Everyone else is Catholic. Last week we accidentally interrupted an Evangelical meeting. They were nice and we explained a few of the doctrines they asked us about. They make me nervous, though.

I love you!

Siempre,

Hermana Phillips