Family, 

Thank you for your letters. It sounds like you are all having a great time. I know you are doing great work at home. Have a good time at Prom Alyssa! I am sure that you will. It is hard to believe that the school year is finishing up there that is so crazy. From the picture of the house you sent me it looks like the grass is really green! Also the tree in the front yard looks really pretty. It is crazy that it is getting warm up there and colder down here. The season difference and time difference always gets me mixed up ha ha i forget that we are in different seasons. 

We are now entering the last week of this transfer. I cannot believe the speed of this transfer. I do not like how everything gets faster. The weeks pass by faster and faster and the transfer feels like it has been 2 weeks long. It just flies by.

On Wednesday we had interviews and they went so well.There was a group that went in the morning and the afternoon.  We were there in the afternoon group and this time they were in the mission office instead of at a church. So we got to have the interviews in president's office. But he told me that he is hardly ever there though because he always travelling around doing stuff for the mission. But anyways usually interviews are 10 minutes long so they are really short. Sister Bruce has a little timer she does and acts like the secretary of a bishop knocking the door when the time is up. But while I was there I heard president Bruce tell sister Bruce to put me as the last interview. I got about 20 minutes ha ha.  

While other missionaries were in the interviews we played preach my gospel jeopardy. Ha ha it was good. All the questions were from Preach my gospel. My interview went so well. Whenever I leave interviews I just feel so good and happy, I am really going to miss President Bruce. He gave me some great counsel and also told me I would be leaving this transfer to be a zone leader. He said he didn't know where he was going to send me yet but he said that he wanted to get me and another elder or two in some of his zone councils so that he can teach us some more things before he leaves. I am really excited.  I am trying to finish up well here in Angamos. So this will probably be my last week here in Angamos, I cannot believe how fast it has gone and how short of time i have here.

Our investigator Mariluz will be baptized this Saturday the 4th. She is doing really well, and i am confident that everything will work out. But the adversary always tries to do anything he can to keep the people from being baptized and receiving the holy ghost. She is about 34 years old and she was born catholic and than later a evangelical so she has been learning a lot and also about the culture of the church and how things work. But she loves the church so much and just tells us she feels so good every time she comes to church and she says she is so happy. Right now we are tyring to find the other investigator who can progress towards baptism. We haven't found the one that we need but this week we will dedicate most all of our time to finding finding finding. 

Yesterday we ate dinner with the American family from Denver. Their daughter who just finished winter semester at byu came down to visit for a couple of weeks. The dad has a accounting degree and works for a mine company and manages all products and finance. They will return back to the united states in just over a year when his contract is finished. They were really nice and it was cool to talk to an american family. Apparently this isn't their first time in Antofagasta and they had come when their kids were really young. Ha ha i am not sure i would ever come here to live but apparently they came for the job. We ate a type of steak, chicken, and chorizo, potato salad, grilled onions, and a cheesecake. All of it was really tasty and i enjoyed it a lot!  

I love you all so much and hope all is going well! I am happy to be here in Antofagasta and I am enjoying every second of being here. I love the Lord and am grateful to be in doing this amazing work! As i finished the book of Mormon this month i am amazed by how much more i learn every time that i read it. That book has had such a profound impact in my life and i am certain that it will continue to be an important part of my life forever. I hope all is well up there in good ol Alpine and that you are all in good spirits! Keep a smile on whatever you do! And don't take any wooden nickels for pay cause then you'll get slivers in your fingers! hahahaha

Elder Newman

Family, 

Well I am sure that you heard we were robbed. It was crazy. Here is the full story for those of who didn't hear anything.

Friday morning I get up, do my exercise, shower, and then I go to start my personal study. I needed something in my backpack and so I go to grab it and its not in its usual spot. So I begin to think that maybe i moved it into another spot.  I ask Elder Silvester if he had seen my backpack and he says no.. and then I said "Where is your backpack" At that moment I went over to the window and then checked it and i could push it open and I realized that we were robbed. It appears that someone didn't close the window tight and that they opened the window and then unlocked the door and entered in.  No one heard anything.  I am sure that Heavenly Father made it so that we slept through it because if I had woken up and got a hold of one of them who knows what I would have done.  

We started looking through everything and realized the stuff that we lost. I lost my backpack, scriptures, camera, hymnbook, watch, ipod, and a few things that were inside my backpack. Friday we had to go cancel credit cards of Elder Silvester's stuff, his wallet was in his backpack. And we had to go to the Police to report everything that was stolen and what happened. Also a member from the ward called us telling us he had found elder Silvester's patriarchal blessing on the ground along with some other papers. So we went over and picked that up. It was just some papers that they had taken out of elder Silvester's backpack and the ward member list that i had in my backpack. All in all it stinks that we got robbed, but they are just things.The thing that does stink is to lose my scriptures and the pictures of the people that I took in Arica. 

This week was great. We are still trying to do everything that we can to find people who will progress. We taught Mariluz on Wednesday and she told us that while she was reading the Book of Mormon she said that she felt a peace and happiness that she had never really felt before and she said she knew that God had answered her prayer. She got the answer she was looking for She accepted the challenge to be baptized and she will be baptized on May 4th! 

Throughout the week she has told us of the many spiritual experiences she has had, and she has recognized how to receive personal revelation and that many times it can come from the scriptures. We were teaching her on Saturday and she started to ask me how we in the church feel about things of the world. And I explained a little bit about how we live in the world but we are not of the world. She then told me that where she lives some men offer her to drink and to party a little bit and she told them no because she doesn't want to hurt her spirit. They told her "You are weird Mariluz". She also explained the law of chastity perfectly and we haven't even taught her these things. She was ready to accept the gospel and she told us that she recognizes that she came to Antofagasta Chile for this reason. 

The other day we were walking in the street, I went over to go contact this lady and I thought she was Colombian so I start talking to her in Spanish and she tells me doesn't speak Spanish very well and she says something like she speaks English. So we start talking to her and we find out that she is from south Africa!  Her husband worked in the mines in south Africa but they got moved here to Chile and so they are here with their son and she does not like it very much. 

She has been here since last year and has struggled to try to learn the Spanish language. We talked to her for a bit and made an appt. for another day. She said that she was so excited to get to know us and that we made her day. We taught her and her husband the restoration on Friday, IN ENGLISH! It was so difficult for me. I actually let Elder Silvester take the lead because everything that I teach wants to come out in Spanish and then I have to re translate it back in English. Its quite weird. We gave them a book of Mormon and they said that they would be interested to read it. We hopefully will meet up with them again this week. They asked a lot of questions. They also wanted to drop of us off at our next appointment which was very nice of them. 

This morning as a zone we had a nice little activity. We went to our capilla and played some ping pong and ate some food. It was just a little small activity. I guess we cant have like a sports activity unless we meet our goals. We haven't played futbol in a while. Since Arica. I hope that we can meet our goal as a zone this weekend so we can have a sports day or something next P-day. But we played ping pong ha ha i hadn't played ping pong for a year. It was a good time. This morning we had to go to a store to buy some paddles so we could all play. It is starting to get cold here in the mornings and at night. It is definitely not like Arica  I love you all so much! Thanks for all the letters! Have a great week!

Elder Newman

Family, 

Thank you so much for all of your support. I love you all so much and am grateful for a great family who loves the Lord and are dedicated to this High Calling we have of preparing the world for the Second Coming of the Lord.

Our week went quite well this last week. Every Monday night we have sector attacks here in Antofagasta. They have opened quite a few new sectors here in Antofagasta.  It is when the whole zone goes into the sector and we looks for new investigators and for people to add to their teaching pool. This last Monday night we went and did this sector attack and it was amazing the number of good people we were able to find in a short amount of time. In 1 hour and a half we found a less active, and 4 new investigators and taught 3 lessons. Our sector isn't quite like theirs ha-ha if it was we would be finding 30 new investigators a week. I trust that the Lord is preparing people for us to find, we just have to be worthy of the spirit to be led to them. 

Tuesday our district meeting went really well. I talked to the Hermanas and Elder Sylvester about how our own experience with the Atonement of Jesus Christ is what gives us the motivation to do this work. Having experienced it in our own lives and having Charity allows us to let ourselves go and to lose our self in this work even when there are hard days when it seems everything is against us, only atonement motivated missionaries will be able to keep going when it is tough. The lesson went really well and almost every single one of the Hermanas thanked me for the lesson so I suppose it went well. 

We have been able to find some new people to teach. We have been blessed to find some new areas to do contacts where Elder Sylvester hasn´t been before and we also received some references this week that i believe will result out. Our two investigators Oswaldo and Mariluz are progressing really well and I believe will be baptized around the 1st week of May. Mariluz is reading the book of Mormon, I gave her one of my highlighters so she could mark up her book of Mormon. The first time we taught her after she had read a chapter she read Moroni 7 and had marked many verses and had many questions, she is a great investigator and every lesson we teach with her is so great because it is so interactive and it is like a journey as we ask her questions and she asks us questions. Yesterday at church we had a great fast and testimony meeting and when we entered the chapel a random member asked her if she wanted to come up and sit closer to the front with her. We agreed and we all went up to the front to sit with her, and the member was from Queensland, Australia. She was born in Chile, but moved to Australia and found the gospel over there. She was back here visiting with her husband and kids. She bore her testimony and it was powerful and she was so sweet to our investigator and it was a great blessing because mariluz felt very comfortable and welcome. We also had our other investigator Oswaldo at church and the testimony meeting was so great and very spiritual. After church we taught mariluz and she had a question about the sacrament and when we can take it and how it works with those who have sinned and what are the prerequisites for taking the sacrament. We are trying to help her recognize an answer from God that this is what she needs to do in her life. I asked her that if she had any evidences that this was what God intended for her to do, she said about 3 months ago she wanted to go to a church and one day she was passing in a micro (bus) and she was one of our churches and the people were leaving it on a Sunday afternoon and she said that she really felt desire to go and enter in the church but was nervous to do that alone, then she said that 3 months later she one morning was praying and then we passed by and she said she felt something good when she saw us. I am so grateful to the Lord for preparing people for me to teach, there is great satisfaction in working hard and then finding the people that the Lord has prepared for us, and to see them progress and their testimonies grow. 

Friday night we had a talent show in the ward. The six missionaries in the ward had an act that we did together. Elder Sylvester has his own ukulele and he played a song and then we did a dance that we created, ha ha it was pretty lame but it was fun and we had a good time. The dance wasn't the greatest, its for sure that Alyssa has the dancing skills in the family, You ll be able to add the video I´ll send home with the sir knight collection ha ha. 

On Saturday I felt prompted a few times that we needed to go to military housing butIi was a little reluctant, but when we went I knew we needed to go to this certain less active family and when we got there the wife was sick and we ended up giving a blessing. I was glad that we could minister to the wife and help her with the blessings of the priesthood, i hope that we can help this family to activation. 

Sunday we had the best food I have had in my entire mission. We always eat with member family's on Saturday and Sunday here in Angamos. Holy smokes some of these houses that we have been into are huge! We ate with this family and the food was soooo good. While we were waiting for the food to cook , she gave us a piece of pizza, and then we ate a type of steak, ribs, potatoes, salad, and some flan which is a Chilean dessert. Ohhh man it was sooo good. I ate so much food and tried to take advantage of the food because I knew that I was not going to eat like that for the rest of my mission. I was stuffed like a pig. So I weighed myself the other day and I was around 199.  I saw Elder Smith the other day and he told me I looked skinnier, and so yes I probably need to put on the weight again. I am trying to eat whenever possible. 

I love being a missionary. I love this work, and the many blessings the Lord has given me to serve here in Chile. I have seen great changes in myself as I look back at how the time has passed. I understand now what it truly means to be a disciple of Jesus Christ, to honor the covenants we have made, and to strive to build the kingdom of God. I testify that the Church is true, that the Book of Mormon is the word of God, that indeed a man can grow closer to God by reading it than any other book, That we have a prophet on the earth today, and that our Redeemer lives. I love you all so much, and I love the people of Chile.  

Love, 

Elder Newman

Family, 

Thank you so much for all of your prayers and continual watch over my mission  First of all I want to tell you all how much I love you and how grateful I am for a wonderful family and parents. With everyone I meet, I realize how blessed I have been in my life to have so many wonderful people surround me. I know that your continual prayers help us and this week we have seen some success and miracles. 

This last week we have been trying to find some people to teach, and we received some wonderful blessings as we received references from some members and also found some. Our investigator Oswaldo was in the mines all this last week so we weren't really able to work with him. He said before he left that he would be baptized on the 13th if he could resist smoking while he was up in the mines. He said that while he was down here it wasn't a temptation but when he was up there it was harder for him. We sent him with a picture of us with a poster saying si se puede which is yes you can and also some things he could do when temptations came along. We have been praying for him and fasting and we hope that we will see good news tomorrow when we see him. 

As we were able to find new people to teach, none of the appointments we had set were for this week. So the entire week we had been working and trying to find people to be able to bring to conference. We had found a few new less actives to work with but were still looking for a solid new investigator. Our investigator that we brought to church last week, Mariluz, had to take someone else´s shift for work on Saturday and Sunday and so she wasn't going to be able to come to any of the sessions of conference. I was a bit bummed knowing that the opportunity to be at conference was going to be such a wonderful experience to listen to the prophet and feel of the spirit. 

Conference was so wonderful I absolutely loved it. I entered conference with many questions that I had in my life at the moment, and I promise you that every single one of them was answered. I am so grateful for the messages that were given, and It felt like some of them were specifically written for me. Also as I was watching and listening to certain talks I thought about our investigators and how certain talks would be perfect for them. 

Sunday afternoon after the first session had ended, I was discouraged because none of our investigators that we had been working with could even come to 1 session of conference. In whatever moment of extra time we had before of after conference all I wanted to do was go work in our sector and keep looking for the souls that are ready to be baptized. But as we were in between the two sessions on Sunday  I was watching the world report and then the cellphone starts ringing and then I look down at the phone and I see mariluz's name. As I talked to her she asked me where we were and I told her that we were at conference and then she said that she had gotten of work early and that she wanted to come to conference. My heart filled with Joy and gratitude to my Heavenly Father for the miracle that had just taken place and I had never felt so happy. We went and picked her up with a member and then brought her to conference and she liked it very much. She asked me if she could buy a Book of Mormon, of course I gave her one and she was so very excited. Also a less active that we are working with showed up to the 4th session and brought His wife. I was so happy and felt so indebted for the wonderful blessings and miracle that we saw. 

This morning we went and taught mariluz and we taught her about the restoration. She told me that the morning that we contacted her she was praying to Heavenly Father looking for direction in her life and she wanted to be able to get to know Him better, she said that as she was going down the stairs from her house later that day and when she saw us she felt something that she had never felt before. Then I came up and talked to her and she said that she knew it was an answer from God. She also talked to me this morning about how she had always wanted to be a missionary. She is very excited to be able to continue to learn and I hope that by the end of this month we can baptize her. 

So the 2nd counselor in our bishopric played football at the university of Miami. He moved to Florida when he was a kid, and ended up playing football with Ray Lewis. He was on the same team as Ray Lewis! It was crazy and we were able to talk about football a bit. It was awesome. Our pension is pretty nice, I will take some pictures of it, it is basically like a small house. Elder Sylvester is doing well, I am trying to do everything I can to help him catch the excitement of the work. He is a great teacher and has a lot of potential as a missionary. I hope that we can have some great growth here together in Antofagasta. 

General Conference was amazing. I cant believe how fast it goes by. It goes so much faster as a missionary. I enjoyed every single session, and watched the last session in spanish with our investigators. It was quite different to see the face of the speaker but to hear it in spanish. We had our little gringo room still where we all listened to it in english, I brought some munchies to eat while i took notes as well. President and Sister Bruce watched conference from their house, but the office elders were with us for a few of the sessions. Every single talk was just inspired and so well given. I loved every single one. Thank you for all of your prayers and for all that you do. I am excited to see how things pick up here in Antofagasta. 

Elder Newman

Newman Family, 

Well here I am writing from downtown Antofagasta!  So we have another girl in the family! Wow! Congratulations to Nate and Lindsey. I don't know what I'm going to do when I get back and all of these little girls are going to want to play barbies instead of boys playing baseball. I guess the Newman days of 10 baseball games a week is now going to change into 10 dance recitals a month. Ha ha.

This place is quite the big city. Monday after we emailed we were in the biggest rush. We were running from place to place trying to get everything done that we needed to. When i got to the bus terminal Francisco and his whole family were there. They were really crushed that i was leaving. Poor little Francisco was crying, but i talked to him and the family on Saturday night on the phone and they were all doing really well. Elder Stratford baptized Him and the family is so very happy and doing well. Our two other investigators that we left will get baptized on the 13th. 

Tuesday morning I got here to Antofagasta. My companion is Elder Sylvester. He was trained by one of my buddies Elder Congleton and is from San Antonio, Texas. He is a huge spurs fan. He went to BYU before the mission at the same time while I was there and we get along quite well.  Elder Sylvester played sports in high school and likes a variety of things. 

This past week all we did was look for new investigators and new people to teach. This sector is the second biggest sector in the entire misson. It is absolutely huge. I have never seen a sector so big. So we do walk a lot. But there are some parts in the sector that we do not even go because it requires to take a bus to get there and it is the rich part. The challenge that we are facing right now is increasing our teaching pool. They had a few investigators one that may get baptized on the 13th, but the rest we are recreating and looking for new ideas. This sector is known as one of the "tough" sectors in the mission but I am bound to change that belief. We are looking to baptize 2 this next month. The sector is actually quite green, I am very surprised about the amount of green that is in this sector. It is even more green than arica. You can look at it on google earth. Look for the street Angamos and then look for the Stadium in Antofagasta and everything south of the stadium is our area. We have met some family's who are super nice. And holy smokes.. Some of these houses are Massive! We eat lunch with members on Saturdays and Sundays so we get fed really well. The Stadium is right on the edge of our sector and Sunday there was a big game between Antofagasta and another team and we could hear the stadium erupt when something happened. 

This zone needs some help. Needs some reconstruction.  The last few months the zone has put goals and has not completed them, the month before they only completed 50 percent of their goal. Working with 8 hermanas is pretty crazy but good. They like to talk a lot on the phone ha ha and after talking with 4 sectors and 10 minutes each my brain is about to turn into gloop. 

Saturday we found a investigator in the street and we invited her to church. She said that she would come and then we went Sunday morning and when we got there she was waiting ready to go. It was a huge blessing. There are a bunch of military who are housed in a area and so we have been looking over there too. There is this massive hotel casino thing in our sector next to some ruins and a lot of people work in it. Sunday in church i met this couple named the Deans. They are from Denver Colorado and are American. The Husband works in accounting for some company down here and just makes bank and the wife is here along for the journey. As i told them where I was from she asked me if i knew the Hubert family. Ha ha i laughed and we talked about the connection a little bit. Crazy how small the world is right? You will have to tell the Hubert family in our stake that I met the dean family. Anyways sister dean is going to the states this Friday to visit her kids and asked us what stuff we would like from the states and just told us to write it down. Ha ha how crazy!

Our pension is pretty good. We saw this massive spider in it the other day. It was pretty creepy. Speaking of spiders the other day we were coming back down from an appointment and then i look down on my shirt and there was this massive spider on my shirt! It was huge! I flicked him off and he left a mark of brown stuff in my shirt. Dang spiders. 

As a mission right now we are reading the book of mormon together in 1 month. It requires a lot of time and we have to read about 20 pages a day, but it is awesome I love it. I am learning great things. I am excited for this coming week of conference it will be great. Anyways thank you all for your support! I love you all so much! I will get you an address of our pension next week and send some sweet pictures! 

Elder Newman