Family, 

Sounds like you all had such a great time up there, that is so cool that Lone Peak won the state championship for the third year in a row and that they finished number 1 in the country. Good for them, I hope that you enjoyed dancing for that Alyssa! I bet that was a blast! 

Wow, The heat down here is the real deal. I bake like a toasted cheeser and just sweat from my eyebrows and nose its pretty gross. By the time that we leave our pension and arrive in our sector I am just dripping with sweat. The worst is when i forget my handkerchief because I don't have anything to wipe all my sweat with. The ceiling fan broke this last week and so the pension has been sooo hot. I have walked into air conditioned buildings like two times in my mission and when I have done it i have felt freezing cold. 

Well the beginning of the week started off kinda rough. Our fecha fell from Adela and Tirsa. They started to show doubts about baptism and then the dad got back with his kids from Ecuador and then would not let us in the house to teach his daughters. The annoying part is that he and his wife are separated. But we trust that everything will be alright. We have a goal this month of 3 baptisms as a companionship. 

That picture I sent you of the baptisms of the hermanas of Zapahuira, were two sisters. Kata, and Isys. Well originally Kata the older sister was only going to get baptized, but the sister only had 1 church assistant, but wanted to get baptized with her sister on the same day. The hermanas weren't sure what they were going to do and how the bishop would react to that, so they were praying and trying to receive an answer and asked for some sign or feeling of what they were supposed to do. Meanwhile we were finishing a day of work and for some reason I told my comp that we were going to go to the mission leader´s house. So we went over there and then we started talking and then after a bit i informed him about the situation with Isys and Kata. He said immediately that we needed to baptize them together and I completely agreed, That was what we felt like we needed to do. So then we left the ward mission leaders house and started heading back to the pension. I then thought that I had better call and tell there hermanas and then about 3 seconds after they finished their prayers I called them telling them that we needed to baptize the 2 sisters together. We know it was an answer. The dad of the daughters is so happy and has seen the great change in his daughters and wants his other two kids to be baptized. He wants us to teach the son. We are excited. 

We were able to put another baptismal fecha for the 30th of March with the son of a less active family that we are working with. Tonight or tomorrow we will have another fecha for the 23rd of march with another kid of a less active family that we are working on reactivating. We have found some new families who are inactive this last week and we brought 11 less actives to church. We work with them and try and get referrals of people so that we can baptize. Right now we are really trying to take advantage of the time that we have together in Zapahuira. This Transfer is short, so it is only 4 weeks long! The transfer ends on the 24th instead of the end of the month! It is a bummer. I guess they are aligning up all of the transfers in the entire world so that they are all together. 

 I have been able to help out our ward mission leader a lot. Hno Irriarte. He reactivated this last fall, and has a lot of confidence in me. I have been able to help him and teach him about things and they have been great experiences. He is frustrated at times with the lack of support but we have been able to help Him recognize the hand of the Lord in our lives and the wonderful blessings we have been receiving. I am going to miss that family when I leave this sector. Jean the son has his mission call and will serve in Brazil. We do exchanges with Hno Iriarte and his son jean at least once a week and this week we will try to do it twice. They are very dedicated to the work of the Lord and sacrifice very much. We have stake conference the 16th of March and Walter F. Gonzalez from the Seventy will come speak to our stake. 

Thank you for all of your prayers and letters. This last week I was able to study a lot about the Plan of Salvation and really how critical the decisions we make in this life are. I hope that we can all become truly converted to the Lord, like the many of the general authorities said this last conference. I love you all so much and it makes me happy to know that you are all doing so well. 

Have a great week, 

Elder Newman