the Lord's work~

Weengapo!

Another great week! When is there NOT a great week as a missionary!?

Lots of great things are happening here and we are so excited! We are starting week 6, last of the transfer and are curious as to what is going to happen. I wanted to end in the city….but…. I really am hoping that I stay, but I of course know that whatever happens is the will of the Lord and there are reasons. I really love the people here though, and would love to end my mission here. We find out Saturday night, we’re sure one of us is leaving. :’(

Tuesday night we had a great visit with an inactive that we have started meeting with. We have really seen him progress and we are super excited. He was baptized in 95 his first day at church! He taught and received the Melchizdek Priesthood (sorry for spelling). But he hasn’t been for prob about 10 years he says. He is amazing and says that he knows he should get back to fulfilling his duty. We of course answered YES! He is working on getting work of on Sundays. He is for sure able to come tho to both night sessions of conference and PRIESTHOOD! He already has it down and planned, what a great time for him to come! :D

We did sadly, loose an investigator this week tho. He was 16 and we were so excited for him. You can see that he is struggling with something and lonely. He struggles with his younger brother who is involved with drugs and that group of friends gives him a hard time bc he is so good. When he is bored he does things for ppl and he is concerned for the poverty around the world. We went over and he was washing his neighbors cars J His dad is a preacher for the Baptist Church his family attends. After we left the last time he said that he didn’t believe in the Mormons and told him to throw out the book :’( and he of course did. Someday….

Wednesday was my last Zone Conference :’( It was so good. It is hard to be a somewhat older missionary who feels she knows somewhat of what she is doing and now all the teaching stuff is being changed. I feel that I am back to not knowing what I am doing lol. It is hard, but what a great way to end. I see the spirit doing His great works.

Saturday was the war social out in Amaganset (richest area of the Hamptons). We got to go to the beautiful Atlantic Ocean. Oh my goodness I love it there. Wow…. It was so good. The other ward was having movie night and they were projecting “The Testaments” up outside. We had told Toney to go. Recap on Toney.

He came to church a few weeks ago for testimony mtg and the ward showed him a lot of love. He has had a really rough life. He is 18 and showed us his biography for school. It really helped us to understand. His family is Baptist, not practicing tho. He is very street and so we knew it would be hard, especially where some family would laugh when we visited and yell upstairs, “Toney! The Saints is here!” LOL.

Well we decided that this time instead of meeting at the house we were going to go to the park nearby. This way there would be no distractions and we’d be able to ask inspired ?’s that would help us to know his needs. Well, that is exactly what happened. Toney is someone who really cares what ppl think of him and ppl watching. So he looks around before he pulls out his BOM J and wouldn’t kneel to pray, but its ok. As we taught we found out a lot of things that were holding him back. We taught according to the needs the spirit told us of and were able to end with him giving a kneeling prayer. He was able to attend the first branches movie night and when we saw him Sunday….there was a change. While watching the movie he felt “funny. It was weird. He had never felt that before.” He also prayed right after we had left and got the same funny feeling. We of course told him what the feeling was and there happened to be a baptism after church for the other ward. Our car broke down sat night on the way home…well it was in the process and we were able to pull into a members house who knows about them… so we had to leave after church bc our ride had to. That night (last night) our District Leader who is in the first ward said, “Now I have a question…. Toney was telling everyone at the baptism that he is getting baptized on Oct. 10th?” J We had asked him to pray about it and he said he wants to and well everything else just happened J He is still praying about it, bc the tenth is pretty soon for everything but that is the story for the week J

I love this work. We wouldn’t have ever thought that Toney would be baptized. But we have to remember to never judge God’s children. This is his work not ours. Even the vilest of sinners can repent and be changed.

Love you all and have a great week!

Sister Phillips