Hello Familia!

Thank you all for your letters it is great to get updates from each of you. Sounds like all is going well for you up there. More crazy adventures this week in the land of the desert!

This past week we had been looking for a bunch of new people to teach and it turned out really well. We were doing contacts in the street and we were just talking about the different way to do contacts. Then elder Stratford helped me remember the way that president Bruce said he would do contacts and i was to ask the people if they are a member, anyone in their family was a member, or if they had friends who were members. I am pretty good with talking to the people here and so i said well I am going to try it out this next door. So i knock the door, and opens up this 14 year old and i begin talking with him and ask him if he is a member of our church. He responds affirmatively and then we end up getting in the house and teaching him and he´s got little brothers who need to get baptized and parents who need to be reactivated. We did it a few more times in that street and we had great results. 

Wednesday morning we had a mini conference with President and Sister Bruce. It was awesome, we talked a lot about the study of the scriptures, and it has really changed the way i study the scriptures. The other morning I spent a half hour on 3 verses in 1 Nephi chapter 14. It was awesome. President will often study the scriptures with us and i am just amazed about what this guy knows from the scriptures. It is incredible. I could sit for hours and listen. 

Wednesday night we taught English to this new  young family we found. Its a guy and his wife who want to learn English. They are super cool and we will start bringing them to activities of the church. He showed me his pellet gun and we had a fun chat about pellet guns for a bit. He told me he goes out to the valley and he kills him some vermon some times some rabbits. He´s got a good ol scope on his and he takes his son to go with him some times. He takes some buddies to go shooting. Real guns aren't allowed here so they have air rifles. I talked to him about my hobby of shooting magpies in the backyard and how my family goes hunting and stuff like that. He really likes us and we are going to break the ice about the gospel this week. 

Thursday night after working I got back and my body just felt so exhausted. I was confused I told elder Stratfrord I hadn´t felt that tired since the beginning of my mission. So i went to bed and then I woke up in the early morning and i felt like i had a fever and i didn't feel very good. But i had told a hermana of our ward that we would go to her house in a valley next to ours to do some service for her. So i drank a bunch of water, went back to rest for a bit and then when i got up i felt a bit better so we went to meet the hermana who would take us to her house to help her with the service. She has a son on a mission in Brazil. So we get there and on the car ride i can just tell that i am not well, but i told myself i would give it a try. Ha-ha we were going to dig holes for her to plant some trees, so i carried over a big chisel thing and my comp had two shovels, and by the time i got to the place to dig the whole i felt like i was going to fall over. Ha-ha i told my comp i couldn't do it man. So i carefully tried to walk back to the house without falling over and then layed down while my poor comp dug holes. I was sooooo sick. Fever, stomach pain, headaches, chills, body aches, ah man it was awful. After elder stratford finished we went to the pension and rested. He got sick the next day and we were out all Friday and Saturday. We went back to that blasted clinica arica and they told us we had a stomach infection. Elder Statford got it too on Saturday morning. We decided that it was a bad completo  probably the tomatotes or something at this place we tried completos we never have tried before. Definitely not going back there anymore. I haven´t been so sick for the longest time in my life. But thankfully Sunday morning we woke up with a miracle we felt so much better. 

Stake Conference up here was so wonderful. They called a new stake presidency and i learned some wonderful things about those who are called for the Lord. It was a bit strange to see Walter F. Gonzalez and hear him this time in spanish as that is his native language. It was awesome and the guy was very funny. He gave a great message about strengthening our families and gave 3 suggestions. 

1. Have a great enviornment in the home. 

Pictures of the Savior, our family, the living Christ, proclamation to the world, scriptures magazines. etc. 

2. Use the blessings of the Priesthood. 

Honestly we should seek for blessings in whatever opportunity we can. 

3. Talk of Christ like nephi in 2 nephi 25. Talk about him and the gospel frequently. 

Stake conference was so wonderful, we were able to bring our investigator named Aldrin. He is 18 years old and is a stud. He really liked the conference and we are hoping to put a fecha with him maybe for this week or it will be the week after the transfer ends on the 30th. Aldrin is reading the book of mormon and is doing really well. We are super excited for him. Everyone in the district brought people to church, it was so awesome. I had a cool experience that made me think and i will write about quickly and then i have to leave.  As we went to go pick up Aldrin for conference. We got in a taxi to get to his house faster so we could get to the conference early to get better seats. As we are driving towards his house, I see 3 members of our ward with a car that is in the road and wouldn´t start and they needed help and waved for help from the taxi driver to give them a pulling start. I was faced with a choice if we stop or go straight to our investigator to get him to conference?  400 feet after we passed them I told the taxi driver to pull around and go back to where those men were with that cars. He pulled back and when we got there, he refused to help the member with his car who is also a fellow taxi driver and then drove away. We started to push start his car and it was not starting, and then we were able to get someone to help us pull the car and start it to get to the conference. The member ended up taking us to Aldrin who was all ready to go and we were so happy because we hadn't had contact with him for 2 days. It was such a blessing. 

Now I know that the blessing would not have been revoked, but i am so glad that we stopped to help these three old men who were in need trying to get to conference. There are little tests that come in our lives, little decisions, where both things are good, but one is better. 

We played soccer this morning as a zone and we played on a turf field for the first time It felt so good. I well send pics next week. 

Love you all. 

Elder Newman