Monday, September 12, 2016

week #37 - still in Tal-Tal

Hey! Well I guess that we all thought wrong this week for transfers... I´m still here in Tal-Tal, but with Elder Fernandez for another transfer... Normally the max that you can be with a comp is only 2 transfers but now we are going into our third together. I guess there is something that we still need to do here in Tal-Tal. But it should be all good, me and Elder Fernandez are pretty chill now. Also Elder Phillips officially died this week and is going home. (If you don´t know when you start the mission you are a baby and are just being born and when you finish you "die"). We dropped him off at TurBus this morning at 4 am to head off to Antofagasta. To replace him is coming Elder Jaramillo. He is a really cool Elder that I met at the beginning of my mission because he was assistant to President Dalton when I got to the mission field. But yeah that is all that happened to us this transfer. The 3 of us are staying.

Yes bakan means awesome. Look at that you figured it out. Hope that you were able to read a little of it from help by Google Translate haha.

Here in Tal-Tal they sometimes have things going on in the plaza. I think they try to have some every once in a while. But honestly they don´t happen a lot but when they do it is usually on a Saturday or Sunday. And when it is on Sunday not a lot of people come to church. Here in Chile it really isn´t in their culture to get up and go to church every Sunday. Their culture is really different here and makes it a little hard. 

Yeah President Lemos is the one that we go out fishing with! He is also our papito for the missionaries here in Tal-Tal. We go to his house Monday-Friday to eat lunch, his wife cooks really well. They are a really awesome family. I´ll send a pic that we took with them this last week(I have a lot of pics to send this week and some of them I´ll be saving for other weeks). It was awesome that he was able to baptize Yerack as well. I´m not exactly sure if Yerack really has serving a mission in his mind right now but it was funny. Like everyone was giving Yerack a hard time yesterday in church to go and serve a mision. All of the classes that we had yesterday had a lot to do with missionary work. So we´ll see if he´ll make the decision to serve a mission. It would be really cool to see him go out and serve a mission! 

Speaking of baptisms this week we have 2 more! This Friday Williams and Jimena will be getting married. Then on Saturday we have the baptism of Williams and his son Ismael! Ismael picked me to baptize him this Saturday and Williams chose my comp to baptize him. Williams also chose me to confirm him on Sunday which will be my first confirmation that I have ever done, which should be cool to do!

Also this week we will be traveling to Copiapo on Wednesday. We have a conference in Copiapo on Thursday with Elder Bragg from the seventy. Should be awesome to be able to go down there. I´ll be getting to see my papito(trainer) again, Elder Villegas! He is there in Copiapo as a zone leader.

Also this weekend should be pretty crazy. Here in Chile the 18th of September is their big holiday. It is their day of independence. We have an activity in the branch going on Saturday for the holiday. There are a ton of different traditions that they do here for the 18th. They have some dances and some traditional games that they play. With a big bbq. Should be interesting but should be a lot of fun as well! But the streets should be pretty crazy, everyone will be doing bbq´s and will probably be drinking a ton..

To answer your question to where we go to send our emails and use computers I took a selfie to show you where.

In the church they bought a new ping pong table that we have been using to play a little bit here and there. I also have a pic that I´ll be sending of that. I also bought my own ping pong paddle and everything. We are also still playing a little bit of soccer on Saturdays. There are a ton of soccer fields all around town. We usually just play in the one closest to the church so that afterwards we go to the church to share a soda with everyone and share something with them. We can only play if is has a missionary purpose and will help the work. So that´s what we usually do.

Yeah I pretty much tower over everyone. Also like everything here is made for shorter people so I hit my head a lot on things haha.

Church was great yesterday. I had Gospel Principles class yesterday about missionary work, also Elder Phillips gave his farewell talk in the branch yesterday and this morning we dropped him off in TurBus at 4 am to travel to Antofagasta. But yeah I get a ton of practice with being a seminary teacher, giving talks, gospel principle teacher, and just a full time missionary. It really is great experience that I have learned a ton from.

To finish, there is something that I want you guys to listen to as a family. I sent this to mom as well. But there is a devotional called "Life is a Football Game" by Troy Dunn. It is a devotional that he gave at an EFY. I listened to it this week from Elder Abalos and I really liked it. It was a really great devotional. It is like an hour long so just listen or watch it when you guys have the time to do so, I definitely recommend it!

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

Love
Elder Newkirk

Ping pong in the church

Pic in papitos house

Elder Abalos got a number 2 piñata for his birthday because he is turning 22 this month. But he decided to use it for Elder Phillips going away for 2 years. 

The last selfie with Elder Phillips when we dropped him off this morning at 4 am.

Where we use internet


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