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