19 Years and Counting

     Hi everyone!

     So this week I gained an all new perspective on missionary work,
and the importance of humility. I feel like we all know that humility
is not only important, but essential in our spiritual progression. We
show humility by putting our Heavenly Father's will before ours.
Stated very simply by Elder Holland, "you can have what you want, or
you can have something better." Words I have taken to heart as of
late. In recent events, circumstances have compelled me to be humble,
something that I struggled with. To make a long story short, this week
I chose to "have something better," so to speak. I really can't
describe how scary it was, at first, to let Heavenly Father know that
I wanted my will to align with his, and forget any desires that I had
previously. However the blessings I have received since have been
amazing. The Lord truly knows us personally, and wants us to be happy.

     This week Elder Fuchigami and I have seen tons of miracles, and
just want to highlight a few. A small miracle (that's really a big
one) is that we have been safe all summer! I am grateful for the
guidance of the Spirit and our name tags lol In our finding efforts
this week, we did a lot of work trying to find and meet with media
referrals, as well as a list of less active members we received from
the ward council. Every time we stopped at an address, we wouldn't
leave that block until we had a successful contact, and we were able
to get one every time!!! It was so cool. The blessing that we receive
when we simply try really our best are some of my favorite (if you can
have favorite blessings... Haha).

     On Saturday we met a man named Luke who is from Belize, and we
thought he was an investigator, when in actuality he's a member! Luke
is pretty much deaf and blind, and we have a really hard time
communicating, but you can just feel the spirit that he has. He just
exudes positive energy and although we didn't have a standard lesson
with him, he showed an immense amount of love towards us, and spoke
very highly of missionaries as a whole. To top that off, he came to
church yesterday!

     Speaking of Sunday, after church we were working in a town called
Calumet city, trying to get in contact with the Cordova family. They
called us a couple weeks ago and said that they'd love to join our
church! THE WHOLE FAMILY!!! We found their home and met the first
member of the family, who calls himself Pacman, a really big dude who
was pretty chill. They will be having us over for dinner in a few
days, and I cannot wait to begin teaching them.

    It was also my birthday on Thursday! That was fun, some sisters in
our district baked me a cake, and I really appreciated it.

     Today for P-day we played futball again with Robin, and it was a
lot of fun, like I've never played like on a soccer team before (so I
suck pretty bad) but I'm learning!! It's super exciting to see
improvements and changes in how to play. We also washed our car,
inside and out, by hand. I washed the outside while my companion
washed the inside, and may I say, for a mission car, it looked brand
spankin new. That is of course until a bird targeted the top of it..
On the inside we vacuumed, organized all of the pockets and storage
places, cleaned the dashboard, etc. We also got a new air freshener
that's sort of tropical scented, it's pretty good. Anyway that's about
it for this week, transfers are coming up soon, in the next couple
weeks I believe, but I'm not quite sure. I love you all and the
spiritual support that I receive from your prayers. You all will be in
my prayers (as usual).

Love,
Elder Fa'afetai Phipps