Monday, November 11, 2013

Christmas Goal

Dear Friends and Family,

I am going to attempt to summarize the last two weeks.  I apologize for missing last week.  We had to change our schedule for our temple trip.  Speaking of which, the temple trip was great!

I found out the Hong Kong temple covers 15 different languages.  I'm glad I got called out here to serve. The East is a completely different world.  Different philosophy, different way of thinking, it's really crazy.  Hong Kong is pretty special because it has huge Western influence as well as its Eastern traditions.  Pretty cool.

Here is a funny story.  My companion and I went into a Common Shop to buy an ink refill for my companion's pen.  He looked at some other pens while we were there.  He found the very pen that he owned, and showed me.

Then, like a kleptomaniac (jk) he slips the store's pen into his shirt pocket not realizing that it wasn't his pen.  I did not see him do this, so we walk out of that store with stolen merchandise.

Later at night, my companion pulls the pen out of his pocket, but he sees his real pen sitting on his desk. They are the same pen, but his pen has a white tip at the end, while the stolen one had a blue tip.  He compared the two, and when he realized what happened we rushed back to the store to pay for the pen, but it was closed.  My companion  says he did not sleep well that night.  We were able to return in though, the next day.

Here is my companion's own words on the events that transpired: "I've never stolen anything in my life, but apparently I have subconscious thief tendencies, so who knows what I've stolen so far in my life?" Funny story.

Right now, our ward has a goal to have 2 baptisms before Christmas.  Speaking honestly, there are some naysayers in our ward whose names will not be recorded, but I am not one of them.  Our ward has not seen a baptism in almost 2 years, but it's about to change.  I am sure of it.

We also got to eat dinner with a family in our ward this past week.  They made us steak!  It was the most delicious thing I've tasted in a long time.  What a blast.  The people in our ward are amazing people.  Surely their faith towards missionary work and in God will be rewarded in no time.  I still don't totally understand why this area is weak for missionary work.  I think it is our geography, our area is extremely small.  But I know we can accomplish the goal here.  We need it, the people deserve it.

There was no storm here!  We had a level 1 typhoon warning only, which is really weak.  Just some gusts of wind and nothing more.  Hopefully James is okay over there in the Philippines. Hope to hear more from him and that area soon.

Mom, thanks a lot for finding those books for me.   JP helped me pick one out. I will tell you which one it is.  JP has given me some awesome advice for learning Chinese so I'm really grateful he did this before me.

Anyway I love you all. Thanks for praying for us! I've added some pictures

Love,
Elder Phillips

My old Zone Leader named Elder Lee.  He is from Hong Kong. I took some pictures with him before he left.






My companion and I with a recently re-activated man.





The Au Familie's son named Jing Jing or Jacob.  Jacob has really gotten to like me because I've been to their house three times now.  He's a great kid!



I sent some pictures of our steak dinner at the Au house, it was just such a special and rare moment.  I could not pass it up.





Another picture is of a Catching Fire poster.  So sad I have to miss the opening of it.  The poster was inside a movie theater that we could see from Mcdonalds.




An Investigator!



One is our Halloween special.  Elder Lee actually looks like he is wearing a costume, the rest of us just look like goons.



One is with the Poon Family.  I might have already sent it, if so my bad.  We ate with them a while ago they were super nice.  Great family.



The rest are various pictures we took at Star Avenue.  It is a big tourist attraction in Hong Kong, but I've never been so we went.  There's a statue of Bruce Lee in a couple of the pictures.  While we were there a lot of mainlanders wanted to take pictures with the foreigners.  They kicked Elder Lee out of the photo because he was Asian.  Poor elder Lee.



 Anyway that's all for now. Bye!

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