An elusive mystery, that I will always remember

[Note: Phillip’s current mission president, President Almonte, has completed his 3 years of service and goes home this week. His new mission president is also a native of the Dominican Republic. He is coming to Santo Domingo from the northern part of the island where he has been working for the Church Education System.]

I will share a highlight from this past week.

The final conference of Presidente Almonte. It began Wednesday morning with Hermana Almonte giving us some good advice. We have to be happy in the mission. We have to watch what we eat, and we have to clean off the mud from our shoes and iron our shirts.

Then Pres. Almonte gets up and delivers his `Sermon on the Mount`. The best talk I`ve heard from Pte. Almonte. It will definitely be one of my few memories of him after the mission. He went up to the pulpit, said he was going to go by the spirit. He told us to open up D & C 50. He said, “This is the constitution of mission work, you have 35 minutes, study it well.” We read it and then he went back up to the pulpit and explained the section verse by verse. He had some great insights. He said that every church preaches by the spirit, or the light of Christ. But the privilege to preach by the Holy Spirit, the third member of the trinity, belongs to only one church. La Iglesia de Jesucristo de los Santos de los Ultimos dias. To be worthy to preach with the Holy Ghost, you just need desire to be better. Ended off with some advice of always choosing righteousness. We all said our final goodbyes to them. My thoughts on Pte. Almonte: A spiritual giant, that I never really knew. An elusive mystery, that I will always remember as my first mission president.

The Best Definition of a True Friend!

The big story of the week! Baptism of William. Saturday morning we had the baptism interview. He came on time and everything went well.

We were just about to leave when we remembered to fill the baptismal font. We opened it up and it was absolutely filthy. Susisimo. With a tarantula crawling around inside! The shirt and shoes came off, the pants got rolled up, and we got to work. We cleaned it all out and it was all good for the baptism.

I got to baptize William. He was ready and it was a great experience and I really felt the spirit. All his ward buddies came which is important. Sunday was the confirmation. He didn`t have clean clothes and was wearing holy jeans and didn`t want to do it. However, his buddies changed their clothes so he could have some good clean clothes. That may be the best definition of a true friend: “Someone that will put on your dirty, holy jeans so that you can wear their clothes and look nice to be confirmed a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints!”