Family, 

Glad that you all had a great week.  Cant believe that October is already ending. Well this week was super fast and super busy. But a great week doing different things. I got here to Antofagasta on Monday.

Monday I spent the day helping with what i could and then that night I applied for my international drivers license. It was really easy and it came in like 3 days. They send it from the United States. I got it yesterday in the mail and I was able to drive today. It felt weird for the first few minutes ha ha I felt like I was being disobedient or something.  It was like riding a bike, it came back in a second. We had to drop off a missionary and his parents at the airport. It was a good time. 

This week has been pretty weird being in the office. Especially the first couple of days. I felt really strange not being outside all day long looking for investigators or planning lessons and things. But I am feeling more used to it now.

We planned out our transfer the other day and then reviewed the schedule with president yesterday. On Monday we are leaving to Arica.  We get on a 12 hour bus ride.  We will go work with the zone leaders up there. There are three zones, we will return back on Friday, and then the week after that we will work with the zones in the south of the mission. I am really excited to be able to work with the zone leaders and really apply what we have been talking about and help them see it first hand. 

Thursday the new missionaries arrived to the mission. We picked up a group of 15 missionaries. It was really fun to see the energy and excitement they have to be able to go out and do the work of the Lord.

One of the missionaries named elder tippets is from Logan Utah. These missionaries went to the Mexico MTC. When he saw me he came up to me and said, Elder Newman! Sister Jones said "Tell elder Newman hi for us when you get to Antofagasta". I guess brother and sister Jones are now serving in the branch presidency in Mexico! How cool is that. It was awesome to hear that they are serving down there and to hear that they still remembered me. They were so great, I really loved them as my Branch President in Provo MTC.  It was crazy to see all of these missionaries. It truly feels like that was such a very short time ago that was me arriving to the MCA. Time has flashed before my eyes. 

Yesterday we spent most of the day with president and the other office elders planning a few things for this transfer. Elder Villarroel and I had a long meeting with president and sister Dalton talking about things that we are going to do as a mission and things that can do to improve. There is a senior couple who got to the mission a couple weeks ago. They are awesome. They are Elder and Sister Garrison. They are so great and super nice and funny and it is enjoyable to be around them. Today is our preparation day and we spent the morning deep cleaning the apartment and then we had a BBQ. 

Life is great. I am loving every minute of every day!!!!  I am really excited for these upcoming months and the experiences I will have and the things that I will learn. I am so grateful for the opportunity that I have been given to serve and to learn.

This is the Lord´s work. There are many who are prepared to receive the gospel. As we are prayerful and look for opportunities the Lord will put people in our place and give us opportunities to share the gospel and introduce them to the plan of happiness.

As we face choices in our lives we can make one decision. To win or to lose. Every difficulty, every trial, every sorrow, or unjust thing, disappointment, temptation or any opposition we have the opportunity to decide apply the gospel of Jesus Christ, win, and be happy and become more like him, or follow the instincts of the natural man and lose and be unhappy.

I love you all and I hope that  you are well and are continuing to progress and make a conscious effort "to try a little harder to be a little better."  Thank you for your examples to me. 

Elder Newman

Family, 

This week was a blur. Super busy and hectic. But life is great! Happy Birthday to Grandpa Newman and Grandpa Huntington! I have always thought it is so cool how they have the same birthday. What great grandpas I have. 

To be honest I cant really remember this week. It was a blur. Haha but I will try to do my best. 

During the week I practice the piano with the extra time that i had for the interviews and then for stake conference. It went really well. I have been so blessed to improve my skills while I have been here as a missionary.

We had to drop some missionaries off who had finished and were heading home on Wednesday. We had 3 from the zone that finished their missions. That Wednesday night we were working and then preparing for our English class and President Dalton called us with some questions about the zone and some areas and things. He ended up telling my companion our transfers. I am going to Antofagasta again. My companion is a Chilean. His name is Elder Villaroel. He is awesome, and he has 2 transfers left. I am excited to learn a lot from him and learn from his experiences. I am super excited! We are going to have a blast working together and we are going to work our tails off.  I am going to be travelling a lot doing exchanges with the zone leaders and then going with President and Sister Dalton for zone conferences and stuff. It will be great! We will plan with President Dalton, teach at the leadership councils. Stuff like that. It will be an adventure!  

He is with Elder Burnett right now but he will get here later this afternoon and then tomorrow will make a plan for this whole next transfer as to what we are going to do. We are going to be travelling a lot on the Bus. But i am excited for the adventure.

Elder McCusker is going to stay in Calama for one more transfer and he is going to switch wards to a ward named Rio Loa and the sisters that were there came to central norte. He is really excited to be able to open up a new sector and to be able to work with a ward and to have so many resources. It had been difficult with the challenges that we faced in our last ward with 6 missionaries in our ward and with the small area and amount of members that we had. We had to be creative. But he is going to be the only companionship of missionaries in that ward and he will be able to work with many people in that ward. 

We had our interviews on Saturday. It went really well. President is awesome and I am super excited for the work that lays ahead. He talked to me a lot about what i would be doing and what he expected in me. He told me that he and the Lord have a lot of confidence in me. 

Yesterday and this morning we said goodbye to a lot of the people that we have worked with. I am going to miss a lot of these people. We have had so many great experiences in calama. I have truly learned so much since i have come to this great city and i am so grateful that i was given this opportunity to come to Calama and have all of these wonderful experiences. 

It was interesting one of the experiences that i have had. About a week and a half ago I found myself praying to really see missionaries as who they can become and the potential that they have. This is something i am still striving to work at and strive and I pray that the Lord will help me and bring this to pass. 

There are many around us that we serve, and that serve us. Our Heavenly Father knows our true potential, as servants and children of God. Imagine if we could only have a portion of what he sees and the love that we can develop and devotion to helping each of those around us reach their potential and continue to follow the savior. I know that as we strive to see people as they can become, instead of seeing their current faults and weaknesses, that the Lord will bless us to work miracles and help those around us do great things.

Also as we look to study the gifts of the spirit, and seek for what our own gifts are, the Lord will help us identify them and will help us develop them, for our own benefit, but more importantly for the benefit of his children so we can become more effective tools in his hands.

I love you all. I am excited to serve these missionaries, and to work with them. I know the Savior lives and loves each one of us. I ponder about the infinite love and hope that he has in each one of us. He has hope in every single person that we see, that they can one day become like him and enter into the kingdom of His Father. 

I hope you have a great week. Onward and Upward. 

Elder Newman

Family, 

Wow it looks like Boston was a blast! No comment about the Boston hoodies. Haha dad I am proud of you. It sounds like your Yankee shirt brought a little bit of the curse of the bambino back into Fenway haha. Haha just kidding but i am glad that you guys had a great time, Fenway Park looks really cool. I definitely want to go there someday to check it out. I am sure that you all had a great time spending time together and getting to see the grand kids. Crazy to think that i still haven't met some of them. 

Well another great week come and gone. On Tuesday of this week we had our zone training meeting for Calama. It went really well and the missionaries left pumped to go work. The boards went well ha ha there were a couple hard ones in the batch, last time was better but in the end everyone broke their board. In the meeting we talked about several thing but one of the things that i really tried to help them understand was the importance of love and Charity. I love doing things like this. I love working with a group of people and striving to motivate and inspire them to do their best and achieve their potential. It is truly one of my passions. On Thursday we got up early that morning and we took a 2.5 hour bus ride to Tocopilla to do the meeting there. It also went really well, and we stayed there till the next day doing exchanges. We had some great exchanges and the elders and sisters are doing great work in Tocopilla. A new branch president just got called there and he is a awesome. The work is really going to kick up and I know that with time president Dalton wants to open up another branch down there and then create a district. 

Friday night we had a Family Home Evening with Alina and her family. She brought over a friend of her son and his mom and we ended up watching Joseph Smith Prophet of the Restoration. The movie was powerful and it was a great night. The investigators names are Ingrid and Joseph. They came to church yesterday and loved it. We had a great day in church yesterday. The ward attendance jumped up to 112 and as 3 companionship's in the ward we had 10 people there. It was awesome the Lord is blessing us so very much and the zone is also doing incredibly well. 

Last night we met with the Stake President and he asked me to play the piano for stake conference this weekend. We also may do a musical number Elder McCusker, Elder Wegner, and I. Anyways this is the last week of the transfer. Ha ha alright this time we are quite certain that one of us will be leaving. I believe that it will be Elder Mccusker. We have interviews on Saturday, and then that night they will call us for transfers. It will be sad to not be with Elder McCusker but that is life. 

I am doing awesome and am loving every minute. We are doing great up here in Calama and I hope that each one of you are doing well. Have a great week!!

Elder Newman

Family, 

What a incredible weekend. There is nothing that is like General conference. I am glad that you all enjoyed it and had a great time. Every talk was inspired and i received great instruction. 

This week was super busy and went super fast as always. Thursday we went to our mission leadership meeting. It went well and Elder McCusker and i left there with some great plans for our zone training meeting this week. We are super excited for the things that we have planned. 

Yep we are going to bust some boards. We are stoked and it is going to be even better than last time. Haha sometimes I just have to get energy out.  I am not out there cracking some helmets on the football field.  I am real excited. 

General conference was incredible. There were so many talks that I loved and that really gave me great direction. I received many answers to my questions. Elder Hollands talk was incredible. It really is so true. Sometimes we think that general authorities just have their lives perfect and hardly pass through difficult things. But it is quite the opposite. It was powerful to hear his testimony of the Atonement and how it helped him overcome his struggle with depression. President Uchtdorf talk in priesthood session was also great, along with president Eyering. the focus on missionary work was incredible. 

Family. I am so terribly sorry but I don't have a lot of time. But I love you all so much and hope that each one of you are doing well. I hope that each of us can apply the things that we learned this past weekend and act on the promptings that we received. 

Have a great week. 

Love,

Elder Newman