week #14 conference week

Hola! 

Este semana fue bacan. He aprendido mucho este semana por que fue conferencia y también fue mi primera semana con mi nuevo compañero. I could probably write my whole letter in Spanish.. But yeah this week has been awesome!

Yeah don´t worry about the story, I have pictures and also have it down in my journal. I´ve been writing in my journal consistently, I can´t say that I have been writing every day but I have been writing consistently. There is a Elder, my zone leader, who has motivated me to write in my journal every day, so I need to get into a habit of doing so. He has written in his journal every single day of his mission which is awesome. He is close to finishing his mission, one more transfer after this one I think.

We actually had the opportunity to watch all the conferences live which was awesome. The morning sessions started at 1 pm and the afternoon sessions started at 5 pm. So it was more of a afternoon session and night session haha. We were also able to watch the Priesthood session live which started at 9 pm, it was a late night... 

Studying the Restoration of the Gospel everyday has been great. I have been learning a lot more and also improving a lot more of my teaching skills. It is definitely a story all the world needs to hear, but that´s what missionaries are for. It´s amazing to see the power of the story of Joseph Smith when you tell it to people who have never heard it before. But everyone takes the story differently. Satan has done a lot of work on people that´s for sure. But this story changes lives and I know without a doubt that it is true. There would be no way for me to teach doctrines if I didn´t know for myself that it is true. 

Everythings going great with Elder Alcantara. We get a long well. It´s a little hard to make plans and guide the sector but other than that everything´s good. Elder Villegas knew this sector like the back of his hand and knew a ton of people. But me on the other hand it is a different story. This experience has definitely been a good one and I have learned and grown a lot from it. I´m glad that I have this experience early on in the mission! He actually knows a good amount of English, not a ton but a good amount. He said that he learned English from school but also from watching Twitch.tv. 

I´m also fine with socks and everything and I learned this week that I can order garments through the bishop online. So I´ll just use my personal card and buy it online. And apparently it gets here a lot faster through the bishop. So this method is probably a lot easier and faster. So I´ll just do this. But if I need socks or anything I can just buy some, don´t worry about me! Honestly if you feel like you have to send stuff to me just send me food and if I do need anything I can just ask. And yes the Mamita does all the laundry twice a week which is awesome because in pretty much all the other sectors it is not like this.

Conference was great. There were so many great talks and I learned a lot. There were 3 talks that I really enjoyed from this conference. The first was from Brother Waddell from the Sunday Morning session. I really liked what he said about the vision of the tree of life. How we need to not just taste the fruit but we need to consistently partake of it. Satan is really good at tempting when we only are having a taste of the fruit. But if we are consistently partaking of the fruit and consistently doing righteous things Satan will have little to no power over us. I also liked that he said "No matter how far off the path we are we can come back." The second talk that I really liked was the talk from Elder Uchtdorf about faith and how he said "As we increase in faith we also need to increase in faithfulness." The last talk that I really enjoyed was from Elder Oaks about agency and opposition. In this life we will always have opposition to everything. He said that "Opposition makes it so we can grow how our Heavenly Father wants us to become." This life is a difficult one, there are so many different challenges, but it is promised to us that God will "consecrate our afflictions for our gain." Well I´m running out of time and need to finish up!

Love and miss you guys a lot!!!

Love

Elder Newkirk

My new companion and I

 Some of the cool things from Chile that I bought today. The pencil holder thing and also the 10 mil pesos is a wallet. 

The Chile Monopoly is my companions, it is pretty sweet. I´m thinking about buying one, but you guys probably won´t be able to play it when I get home because it is all in Spanish.