Limit words not characters in Laravel

I'm using Laravel 5.7 and was wondering what the correct way would be to limit the number of Words, not characters in a description I'm pulling from the Database and outputting in a blade/view.

I currently have this working by adding the following in my Blade file (Notice the class Str is in the blade/view):

@php use Illuminate\Support\Str; @endphp
{!! (nl2br(e(Str::words($test->testimonial, '25')))) !!}

The above limits my paragraph to 25 words, but I realize I should probably be using the Str class in my Controller not Blade.

When I add use Illuminate\Support\Str; in my controller and not the blade I get the error that Str is missing.

Here is my Controller function:

use App\Testimonial;
use Illuminate\Http\Request;
use Illuminate\Support\Str;
etc...

public function index()
{
    $testimonial = Testimonial::all();
    return view('testimonials.index',compact('testimonial'));
}

How can I use the Str class in the Controller rather the Blade?

via Chebli Mohamed