Monday, March 21, 2016

Week#12 3 months into the mission!

Today´s been good. Went and did visa stuff for my companion, cleaned the house, played ping pong, ate empanadas, but didn´t have the chance to go hiking today. I´m hoping soon but I´m not sure when. I actually have the exact opposite of great pictures, I don´t have any. I think I´m going to not send all the pictures that I have in one week but start to spread them out a little more so I actually have some pictures to send every week. But yeah sorry, don´t have any pictures for today. 

This last week was great, not a ton happened but it has been good. One thing that happened is that the baptism on Saturday will be happening which is awesome. So the story is on Saturday we went to visit the family to see if Soledad (the girl who is getting baptized) was ready to be baptized for this Saturday. She said she still didn´t know and still had some doubts. But yesterday after church something changed for her, I have no clue what happened but she now wants to be baptized this Saturday. So yeah we have a baptism on Saturday! 

With the question of if we made some solid contacts, yes I believe that we have. One thing that Elder Cook said when he came to the Antofagasta mission before I arrived is that the key for this mission is through the teens. I think this week we contacted 5 teens and I think they are all curious. A lot of the teens have really good questions and are searching for the truth. With the adults they have strong beliefs in whatever they believe in. One of the teens this week actually speaks a little bit of English, he was a foreign exchange student who went to New Zealand and learned some English for 4 months. We only talked with him outside of his door, but talked with him for a good 30 minutes, he is super cool and also plays Hearthstone haha. But all the teens that we contacted are awesome and definitely are key. They are key because after the teens join the church the parents usually see a change in their kid and want to know why. So that is when the family opens up and we can start teaching all the family. It is really great and cool to see happen!

I guess there is one interesting story that happened to me this week. We went to try and contact someone to see if they were home. They weren´t home but the father was. He said that he wasn´t interested at all in any religion so we told him that was ok and that we wanted to leave him with a pass a long card. He said that he didn´t believe in anything that we gave away either. He started a conversation with us on how there isn´t any sin in this world and a lot of different weird stuff that he was just trying to confuse us with. I really didn´t understand all that was being said but my companion explained everything after, because I still don´t understand everything in Spanish. But yeah basically the conversation ended with him and us saying see ya in judgement day, shook hands, and left. So yeah that was pretty interesting. 

Yeah mom told me about Hermana Malva looking mom up and stuff on Facebook. She has a son right now out on a mission serving in Peru, but all of their family is awesome.

How proselyte works for us is if we have a name and a house we go and visit. We have lists of old registries of people that we can visit, references, people we contact in the streets. But as long as we have a name and a house we visit the person to see if they want to listen to the gospel. It really just depends on the area and everything on how you contact people. We don´t do a lot of contacting people on the street. We usually just go and knock on houses of people that we have names for. But yeah we don´t set stuff up in the street or anything like that.

Yeah we have ward council after church on Sundays, when we can we go to them. Like this Sunday we couldn´t go because we had a meeting with someone but the ward mission leader was there to talk for the missionaries. We also have meetings with the ward mission leader every week which is great too. 

I haven´t gotten too many messages from others but from a few people yeah I´ve gotten messages.

Things from my studies, great question. Haha no I´ve just been reading through the Book of Mormon, Preach my Gospel, and Jesus the Christ. Preach my Gospel I have been studying how to be a better missionary and also how to teach lessons better. In the Book of Mormon I have been learning a lot about my question of how to become a better missionary. And in Jesus the Christ I have been learning a ton more about the life of Jesus and the time of him. Jesus the Christ is a great book. But honestly I don´t have anything super specific and don´t have all my books on me right now. 

For companion study you read pages from the mission manual, plan lessons for the day, there is a booklet for new missionaries and trainers that we do, and also do practices with lessons and inviting people to do things. That is basically companion study in a nutshell. 

We have a set schedule for studying. We have one hour of personal study everyday, right now we have 2 hours for companion study because we have to do the first 12 weeks manual for new missionaries and trainers, and about 1 hour for language study. Depends on the day how much time we actually have but this is what is scheduled to be. 

Sounds like it will be a busy week for you guys but sounds like is will be fun!

Yeah I heard about Grandpa O, scary. But yeah it sounds like he is doing better though! 
That´s also good that Grandma N is getting better and is able to walk around with a cane now.
Why did everything happen when I left? Haha
But I will definitely be praying for them both!

Oh one thing that I forgot to mention is that if you haven´t seen the video for Easter that the church has put together you should. It is really good and you can just find it on lds.org, it is only 2 minutes long. We have been sharing this video with a lot of different people, it is really good!


Love you guys a lot! Hope you guys have a great week!

Love
Elder Newkirk


EDITORS NOTE: We are sharing some pics that Sister Malva in Antofagasta sent to us. Technology is incredible now days. 

Elder Newkirk and Elder Villegas eating lunch

Elder N and V's mamita who does their cooking and laundry.

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