Family, 

Wow what a crazy week that we had! This week was super busy this week but we had tons of success and we saw many miracles. Monday all day and Tuesday morning we where sending missionaries and receiving them from all of the north of Chile. We are really excited about our new zone. There are some great missionaries who have arrived and there is a new excitement that you can feel of the work with these missionaries here. We had our zone meetings on Wednesday and it went very well. It rained and hailed on Wednesday!!!! The people told me that it was the first time it had hailed in like 40 years. It was crazy weird but awesome to see rain. 

We spent most of the week looking for new people to teach. We are now working with the members to try to get references from them. But we are still working with the two families. Alicia and Sebastian came to church yesterday with us, they are searching for an answer and i know that as we read the book of Mormon with them it will come. 

We had a baptism on Saturday of a kid named Edmundo. He was an investigator of some of the elders in Antofagasta but he moved up here and then became our investigator. The missionaries here in the zone are doing very well. We are meeting our goals and the work is increasing and growing now. 

President Dalton arrives here in 4 days. I am really excited to get to know the new mission president and to be able to learn from him and see what his vision is to help the work continue on and move forward. The broadcast last night was incredible. I absolutely loved it. I am sure that when President Dalton gets here he has been trained on the new and improved structure and i am sure that we will see some changes over time. The messages were so inspired and it was so wonderful to see all of the missionaries seated in the Marriott center and to hear that there are now 70,000 missionaries currently serving. It makes me so happy. There is nothing that brings me such satisfaction. 

The week just seems like a blur it goes by so fast. I will make sure to bring my journal next time to give some more details about the week. But i love you all so much! Have a great time at the family reunion! I hope that you all enjoyed the broadcast and that you have each felt the excitement of the work and the great time in which we live in to share the gospel. 

We are trying to baptize 20 people as a zone and we are going to do it. As a mission the goal is to baptize 150 people in a month. If we get 150 we will break the record for the most people baptized in one month. Also as a mission we have a goal of baptizing 670 people. That will be a record in Chile for the first 6 months, and we will have baptized more in 6 months than the entire  Antofagasta mission in 2009. We are very goal oriented and we are seeing miracles as we exercise the faith necessary to accomplish what the Lord wants us to do and to hasten the work and help these lost children return back to their heavenly father. 

the Hail was super crazy. I took some video of it, so when you receive my picture card you will see it. We are working so hard. Elder McCusker and I are honestly killing each other ha ha. Blisters, Sore feet, tight legs, ha ha we have it all. One time we were doing our companionship prayer and I was saying it and then i finished and then elder McCusker was just sitting there and he never said amen, I was just waiting and then about 15 seconds later he said Amen. Then the  other night I was praying and in the middle of my prayer I just stopped. Elder McCusker thought i was maybe having some spiritual moment or that I was just meditating or something. I had literally fallen asleep as I was praying with my companion. I was so tired.  Ha ha it was funny and we get some good laughs out of it. 

We are sad that President Bruce is leaving but we are also excited for president Dalton to get here. We know that he will arrive with much energy and excitement for the work. We just had a quick mini conference from the assistants and it was awesome. Everyone is doing so well and we are super excited. We may have a baptism this Saturday. We are preparing one of the members of the family. I know that you are all doing well. I know that the Lord is blessing you and that he will take care of all of you. The pics from Yankee Stadium look unreal. Elder McCusker was dying when he saw the pics. I hope that we can go to one in summer of 2014. But I love it here being a missionary. There is nothing better. I love being able to not worry about anything other than baptizing and saving souls. I hope that you all have a blast at the family reunion!

Love, Elder Newman

Family,

I am 20 years old. Man I am getting old. It is crazy to think that i finished my teenage years ha ha.

 We had such a great week and we are doing very well up here in the driest desert. Monday night we were planning, and we really wanted to do something awesome with the zone to get things pumping and help them get excited and do great things this month as president and sister Bruce prepare to leave and return back to their home.

We had planned a few things  and then i told my comp. Elder, lets break some boards man. He was pumped because he always wanted to do it and we were really excited for the zone. 

Tuesday morning we went early to a place similar to home depot and we bought the wood. This time i made sure we bought the correct type and that it was cut in the way it needed to be cut. We then went over to the church and then met with our district leaders and then after that they broke off in their districts for a little bit and then they got together with us. We started with an inspirational video and then after we went into the cultural hall I gave the whole pep talk and how it relates to missionary work and the things and personal things that keep us from doing our best

All 20 members of the zone broke their board. Even the Sisters! The whole zone roared when the first sister broke her board. After everyone had finished we finished with a few scriptures and statistics. One of the things i told them that the chance of being a missionary in the world is 0.000008% and it is not by chance that we are here. The Lord has a great work for us to do, and we each are here to do great things in MCA. The meeting was so great, everyone was so happy and had such a great time. The zone left revived, pumped and unified. It was a great experience. 

During the week we saw so many miracles. The zone has been setting so many baptismal dates with their investigators. This past week the zone set 15 dates. We have 5 confirmations already and we have 21 baptismal dates. We are going to break the record here in Calama. We are working so hard. 

With our investigator Alicia, we went to her house we were teaching her and her daughter. We started and Elder McCusker gave a wonderful opening prayer. We looked at her and she had tears in her eyes. We were teaching her about the plan of salvation, and started to talk to her about what she feels when we come over. She explained that she feels the spirit every time that we come and that it feels so good. We had a great lesson I taught about the atonement and it went well. We were able to set a baptismal date for the 29th of June. The only problem was that we weren't able to get her to church or Sunday so we will see what happens.

Transfers are today and many elders and sisters are leaving. The zone changes a lot. But we have great missionaries coming in and we are very excited. Elder Stratford is going to train. He is so excited. I am excited for him to. He is really becoming an awesome missionary. We went on a exchange last night with him and his companion. It was good to work with him. 

We had our baptism on Saturday!!!

After the baptism the hermanas made some cheesecake, and brownies for me and Hermana Mendez from Mexico. We share the same birthday. So i got some cake! Ha ha it was great!

I confirmed Carlos, he will be a great member. He is 15 years old and definitely a possible future missionary.

I am doing very well. I have a blast with Elder McCusker every single day,  we are the best of friends. We will stay together one more transfer and we are both very happy. 

Love you all!

Elder Newman

Familly, 

This past week was very busy and crazy. I have never been so tired my entire mission. But i absolutely love it. We both push each other so hard and we are doing great things here in the zone. We work so very hard. 

This past week we did a few exchanges. Elder Mccusker and I went to a sector and the companionship had an opportunity to set two baptismal dates. He went with one elder and set one of the dates and then i went with the other and we set a date for the 15th. One of the things that i have learned as a zone leader is to make sacrifices. We make so many sacrifices for the zone, and the missionaries do not know it, however the Lord knows it and he blesses us. 

Wednesday the whole zone went down to Antofagasta to say goodbye to sister and president Bruce. We got there and then first we took pictures and then we had a short video and then listened to sister and president Bruce as they said some final words and talked for a little bit. After that one by one each missionary went by and gave president and sister Bruce a hug and then he told us a few things. Elder Mccusker and I were the last to say goodbye. It was really hard. I am sad that they are leaving. But it will also be great to get to know and work with another president.

The parents of one of the families that we are working with, asked us what we were doing on July 13. They told us that they were getting married on that date and they wanted to invite us to their wedding. It is a huge blessing. We weren't able to set any baptismal dates with those families yet. We have a date for this Saturday. We also may have 1 more. We are hoping that these families can be baptized by the end of this month. We will baptize the parents of the other family hopefully after their wedding. 

Transfers are next week. Elder Mccusker and i are both confident that we will stay together. I have been reflecting a lot about progression.  We cannot just say that we are good because we are keeping the commandments and that is it. We must improve every single day. As we read the scriptures we can look and analyze where we are, and make goals to make changes in our lives to become more and more like the savior. We have a great work to do in this life. We have been called at this time, to prepare the world for the second coming of the Lord. We must refine ourselves and strive everyday to live and improve in the covenants that we have made. I love you all so much. Thank you for the birthday wishes! I cant believe that i am going to be 20 years old. I am grateful to be here in MCA. I wouldn't be anywhere else. Have a great week. 

Elder Newman

Hello Family, 

Tuesday we had our district meetings and then after we met as a zone. It was awesome. Elder Mccusker and I talked then we made goals as a zone and then we listened to Elder Hollands talk about the first and great commandment. It was a powerful meeting and the zone left excited and with energy for the month. Honestly we have seen great changes in the zone since we have been here. As we strive to love these missionaries and help each of them the zone has had more unity and elders who were struggling are now having success and are working hard again. 

We had to go to Antofagasta on Tuesday night so that we could make it for our zone council meeting with president on Wednesday. Our Buddy Elder Congleton is in the office right now as historian. He does a ton of things in the office and he buys us bus tickets for when we travel. Well since now we have connections in the office Elder Congleton hooked us up with the bus seats that are legit like beds. There are two levels on the buses here, its nuts. But basically you could say that congo hooked us up with first class seats. 

So we get to the bus terminal, and we are waiting for our bus, thinking that it arrived late, and then we realize that it was at a different terminal! Haha Elder Congleton bought the tickets for the wrong terminal. So we were pretty bummed about the whole first class thing not working out ha-ha. I guess you could say its like Jerry Seinfeld when he is on first class seats hahaha. 

Anyway the office had to buy other tickets and then we went on a normal bus. But we got to Antofagasta at about midnight. We slept at the pension of the office elders and the assistants. The pension is so sweet, it overlooks the ocean. I will send a cool pic i took. We helped them prepare some of the food that we were going to eat that next morning. 

Elder Burnett, who is an assistant, he was Emily old boyfriend. I love the guy he is a stud.  He played offensive line at Riverton and I played him my senior year in the playoffs. We are quite certain that we hit up against each other a few times.

Anyway he is a pretty big boy, his arms are huge. And He wanted to arm wrestle me. He has arm wrestled a lot of people throughout the mission and has never lost. Ha-ha so basically he had this whole pre game pump up and i am just sitting at the table waiting and he comes out and he just looks massive. We go at it and I beat him in about 20 seconds.  Everyone was pretty shocked ha-ha i am pretty sure he was too. But we had a great time. It was fun to be with them that night. The zone council went great and it was great to be with president and sister Bruce. 

On Thursday I hit my year mark as a missionary. It was pretty crazy. I am getting old in the mission. Thursday night the family that we are teaching wanted to give us some tacos that they had made. So we ate some of the tacos and they were pretty good. Anyways that next morning we get up for prayer and Elder McCusker tells me that he feels awful. I knew immediately that he had food poisoning. The poor kid was sick the whole day going to the bathroom and throwing up. I went with one of the other elders to get him some meds so that he could feel better. So we lost an entire day of work in the pension. But i studied the scriptures a lot that day and it was awesome. I am studying the life of Christ right now and i am learning wonderful things. I love it. 

Saturday morning we went and did some service for one of our investigators again. We helped him paint some of the iron he has so it doesn't rust as he is building a second floor onto his house. 

Both of the families that we have are doing pretty well. We want to set baptismal dates with them this week. We found out that the parents of one of the families is not married but they do want to get married so we will have to get that process done. We are basically opening this sector, which means that we are opening a part of the sector where no one has been or worked before. So we are looking for more people to add to our teaching pool. We are doing many contacts and are going to start working with the ward member list to find more people. But we are working super hard. Elder McCusker told me this is the hardest he has worked his entire mission. By the end of the night we fall asleep so fast, we are super tired.

Anyway this week we are going to.....Antofagasta.. again ha-ha. We have the last zone conference with President and Sister Bruce. The zone conference is combined with Antofagasta and Calama. I am sure it is going to be amazing.

 Also this weekend we have stake conference up here, and a seventy is coming from Argentina. It will be great.   I love you all so much! I am so grateful for the opportunity i have to be here in Chile. I am learning so much everyday and am striving to become a better tool in the Lords hands.

Thanks for all the letters and the support I receive from each of you! If you could pray for the families we have that would be great. The are the Carvajal family and the Molina family.  I have gained about 6 pounds of the 20 I lost this last week. So that is great. I am really kicking it into gear now and eating like a machine. Anyways I hope that all is well! Until next week!

Elder Newman