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