week #44 - Slow week, but still working hard to get things done!

Hello, what´s your name? 1, 2, 3. How are you? Well that´s what I hear a lot here in Chile in English from almost everyone haha.

No this week was pretty good. Another week a little slow. Not too much work, well I mean we are working hard everyday but just a little hard to get things done. It felt like a lot was just falling but it was still a good week. Yesterday was good though, we had 4 investigators in church yesterday. Cambri and Matias(Yerack´s and Carlitos´s brother and sister, who still aren´t baptized), Valeria, and Barbara. So that was good that they came to church! It´s a little hard for people to get up in the morning and go to church. A lot of people don´t have the habit of getting up early on Sunday´s to go to church, so it makes it a little hard.

Yup another cambio here in Tal-Tal, should be a good one. Elder Jaramillo´s new companion is pretty cool his name is Elder Oliveira. He´s pretty funny and jokes around a lot which makes things a little fun.

Most recently I have been seeing the hand of the Lord more and more in his vineyard. For example this week another miracle(well I think it´s a miracle) happened. Valeria, who is one of our investigators, is living with her husband(well not really her husband because they´re not married) who is a member of the church(Rodrigo). They have started coming back to church and participating again. Valeria hasn´t wanted to get married with Rodrigo because she was scared of getting married with him. But yesterday we heard that they were planning on getting a date soon to get married so that she can get baptized. We honestly didn´t do like anything but they are progressing and planning on getting married now! It´s cool to see how the people change thanks to the Spirit and that hand of the Lord.

We come into contact with a lot of people that the Lord is preparing everyday. But everyone has their agency to choose whether or not to accept. It´s sad because we have what everyone in the world is looking for but there are a lot who don´t accept it or who don´t find it. That´s why we have to be ready in every moment to share the gospel. I have learned a lot about this on the mission. Before the mission I don´t think I really shared, shared the gospel with anyone. I think of all the opportunities that I missed and maybe the opportunity that I had to change someones life or to help them receive salvation and live with their heavenly father again with their families.... 😶

The weather here has been starting to change a lot. A lot of sun and a lot of sunscreen. It has been getting pretty hot during the day and cool in the nights. Just wait until it´s hot all day long even at night... 😓 but yeah I have burned just a little bit, but not too bad. A little tan as well, even though I don´t tan like at all. I do have a line though when I wear normal shirts from my white shirts that I wear everyday.

Yeah in Tal-Tal it´s ocean to mountain. So there is a little climbing throughout the day. Definitely keeping me in some shape. Normally I´m pretty tired to do a lot of exercise or workouts in the morning but if I do anything I just lift some weights, pushups, situps, the normal. We have also been playing a little of sports. Like today in the morning we played some soccer but as missionaries we can only play as goalies. Also this Friday we´ll be playing some Basketball for a change!! Finally!!! There are a lot of youth in the branch that play and the President asked if I could go to mutual to play a little with them and maybe teach them a few things which should be pretty fun!

Hey Happy Birthday Hailey!! Hope you had a great 16th. Looks like you guys had a lot of fun! That would be cool if you guys got some passes to go up snowboarding this season. Definitely miss the snow here and wish I could go as well!

I honestly have no clue about elections that happened here. I only saw like a ton of different signs of people running for different positions and after voting the people doing a caravan of cars honking horns for the person that won. So next Tuesday are the elections? Sounds like it should be pretty crazy. I haven´t heard too much about it but I have heard a little bit. Hope that we get some good leadership as well!

That´s cool that Damonte is 1st in their divisional, hope they do well in playoffs!

Well this week should hopefully be a good one! I also hope that you guys have a great week! Love you guys!!!!

Love
Elder Newkirk!😎

This is a giant whale bone that a dude has outside of his house that I took a pic of as well. It´s like a chest piece of a whale.

Elder Pineda and I when we went over to the Puntilla, in the back is where all the fishing boats are and it was a pretty cool view.

week #43 - Still in TalTal -- finding a golden investigator.

Hey como estan? 

No transfers for me this one! I´m going to stay here in Tal-Tal with Elder Pineda again. 6 more weeks. But there was a transfer in our house. Elder Abalos went off to Iquique as zone leader. Elder Jaramillo´s new comp is a brazilian. He was in my zone in Antofa but I didn´t get to know him that well. Anyways that´s what happened with the transfers here. 

Not too much happened this week. Just going out and hitting the pavement and working.

So I don´t remember if I told you guys before or anything but my comp, since he´s been here, has a bad ankle from playing soccer. So for these past weeks we have been going to a physical trainer who has been seeing my comp for free. I´m pretty sure I´ve told you this. But anyways we started talking a little bit about the church and about religion and stuff. Then he started telling his opinion on how Jesus is the savior of the world and that he believed that he came and visited the Americas, he was pretty much explaining the Book of Mormon. It was really crazy because he pretty much said it right on the dot. This is the first time that this has happened in my mission. So we left him to read in 3 Nephi 11 where Jesus is coming down to the Americas. We passed by the next day and he said that he read all of it and even more. 2 pages back and 2 pages forward to get more context. Now that almost never happens. Not to criticize the Chileans or anything but almost never do the people keep their commitments to read or do anything. So that put us in shock once again. It´s really weird how prepared the Lord has made this investigator, Guierrmo is his name. So we´ll see what happens with this investigator but he´s pretty awesome!

Also this week we had a activity for seminary in the beach. It was pretty fun but there was a dead sea lion on the beach so my comp and I took a selfie with it. It was a pretty fun activity. We planned like a treasure hunt type thing with the dominios(forgot the word in English).

But other than that this week has been pretty normal. The sunday school class got canceled this week for the elections which was weird, the first time I´ve seen sunday school and qourums canceled. But the streets got pretty crazy after everyone figured out who got elected. 

This week we have the talent show but other than that, that´s about it. Not a lot going on here. Sorry I don´t have like any time to write today so I´ll just leave it here. We´ve got to go pick up Elder Jaramillos new comp.

But looks like you had a great week! And hope you have a good one this week. Also Happy Birthday Hailey on Sunday!! Hope you have a fun party!!😁 Love you guys!!

Love

Elder Newkirk

Last district meeting of this transfer with the group of 4. Elder Jaramillo, Abalos and Pineda!

We left out working with one of the youth in the branch. Carlitos or Carlos. It´s Yerack´s brother.

With the dead sea lion

week #42 - baptism of Ivette - 14 member lessons goal accomplished

Eyyy, your Spanish actually wasn´t that bad at all!

Pero FELIZ CUMPLEAÑOS Dad!! Hey hope you have a great birthday!! Save me some cake!

Umm, about Moses.. Looks like I spoke a little too soon because we learned this week that he really doesn´t live where we were teaching him. He lives in the other sector of Tal-Tal... We found him while he was in his uncles/mom´s house but he really doesn´t live there. So he´ll be taught by the other missionaries. But hey he´s still really great! 

Also this week we had Ivette´s baptism!! It was awesome! Ivette is super good in the church and already has a calling. The only thing is that Elder Abalos stole my baptism and baptized her. She chose him to baptize her because he was "the first missionary that she got to know." But at least I was able to do the baptism by fire! But yeah everything went well in Ivette´s baptism!

Also this weekend I did my first baptismal interview. As district leader you have to do the baptism interviews of the other missionaries in your district. So I was able to do one this weekend because the other missionaries will be baptizing this week. It was pretty cool to do an interview.

Another awesome thing that happened this week is that we had 14 lessons with a member present. As a mission we put a goal to have 14 lessons with members every week and this week we actually hit it. We have been working a lot with the members here. The members here are super awesome and are willing to go out and leave with the missionaries. We were also able to do a division this week. A division is when me and my comp split up and leave with a member older than 16 to do visits. It makes it so we can visit a lot more people and get a lot more work done. But we have been working pretty hard here in Tal-Tal.

Sounds like you´re having a good time with the motorcycle. Sounds like fun riding around Lake Tahoe and everything! Thanks for the pic as well!

Well on the mission I´m not suppose to read other materials other than the list. Remember the 4 books that we bought. I´m suppose to focus my studies on the scriptures, preach my gospel, and the missionary library(which is those 4 books). But definitely after the mission I want to read some books and stuff and learn more doctrine haha. But if you want to pass it to me on onedrive you can. But the thing is, is that I still haven´t found my usb. I'm  thinking that I´ll try to buy a new one.

Yeah the last fishing trip, like all the fish were pretty small. Guess it just wasn´t a good day to fish. But yeah Elder Jaramillo did a good job cutting my hair. Hey it was free haha..

So we got transfers coming up this Saturday. I have a chance to be leaving but I also have a chance to stay here. I guess we´ll see what happens next week. But if I get transfered I´ll be leaving Monday to my new sector. But only God knows right. I actually really like it here in Tal-Tal. I would honestly be fine with staying here and I would also be fine with leaving to get to know a new sector and new people.

Hope you guys have a good week! Love you guys!

Love

Elder Newkirk

Elder Abalos stealing my baptism

Pic of us after seminary eating ice cream.

baptism of Ivette

Here´s a video of a magic trick that we will be doing for the branch talent show. Don´t ask me how it works because I don´t even know how it works haha. The talent show will be at the end on October so hopefully I´ll be able to stick around for the talent show!

week #41 Fishing and a haircut!

Hey whats up?

This week was pretty sweet. Not too much happened but we actually found a lot of new people to start teaching. Me and my comp have been working really hard here and we have started to see a lot of blessings and miracles going on here in Tal-Tal. We have started to work a lot more with the members here and a lot of them have been leaving with us to go visit people which has been really cool. 

This week we found 7 new people to start teaching. One of them that we met this week is a teenager who is 17. His name is Moses. We met him knocking on the door for one of his family members who was a member of the church but we ended up going in and sharing with him. He and his family are a part of a Evangelist church which is called like the Brazilian mission church. Idk it has a weird name. But anyways this church he said that he was planning to serve a mission. Then we asked him if he wanted to serve a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ. From there he was interested and we taught him about the Restoration. He told us that he was going to fast and ask God if the Book of Mormon was true and if this really is the Church of Jesus Christ. The first time that anyone has ever been so receptive and willing, to the point of fasting! It was really cool! We haven´t been able to follow up on what happened yet because he went on a trip to Concepción with his Church. So let´s hope that everything went well!

The other people that we started teaching this week have also been pretty good but nothing really worth sharing haha. 

Like you said about my comp. It´s a great trait to talk to everyone but there´s also sort of a limit not to scare people and I don´t think my comp knows that limit sometimes... But maybe that´s why we have been able to find a lot more new people to teach haha... Every comp has their good traits and I have learned a lot from every comp that I´ve had. But I mean that´s how it is.

Sounds like you guys had a pretty fun week with Mom´s birthday and going to a pumpkin patch. But I didn´t get any pics of the pumpkin patch trip that you guys had but I did get a pic of Mom´s birthday dinner. Wish I could have been there! 

Not any service projects this week but I think me and my comp will be planning on doing some service soon in a auto shop to work on some autos which should be a lot of fun. Also to be able to learn some new things. We have a member who is starting to come back to church who has an auto shop and told us that we could come over whenever we wanted to help him out. But the service that we usually do is pretty fun!

From what Elder Abalos told me is only the little kids do Halloween. Apparently not a lot of teens do it. But I guess I´ll find out when Halloween comes around. But I do know that our mamita is making come costumes for her daughters so I imagine that they somewhat celebrate it.

Have fun at Homecoming Hailey! Should be fun! Hope that Damonte wins their homecoming game!

Great idea to listen to the conference talks again! I started to do that as well but I miss placed my USB with the talks on it and haven´t been able to find it so I haven´t been able to listen to a lot of the talks yet. Hopefully I´ll be able to find my USB this week so that I´ll be able to listen to the talks as well! 

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

Love

Elder Newkirk

So we went fishing again this morning with the first councelor in the branch and our branch mision leader. There´s a pic of me almost kissing a fish with Jesus(Branch mision leader) holding the fish. Also a pretty cool pic of the sun rays showering over Tal-Tal.

 I got my haircut last week by Elder Jaramillo. None of the haircut places were open and I really needed a haircut. Elder Jaramillo told me that he has cut hair a couple times before so I decided to put my trust in him and he cut my hair. There is a before and after pic. But he actually cut my hair really well!

Me and my comp have another investigator that has his own gym and does physical therapy. We decided to visit him this week to look at my comps ankle because it has still been hurting him a little. So we went over there and he did some muscle strengthening stuff with this machine which was pretty funny because my comp was yelling because it felt weird and hurt a little. I took a video of it hahah. Also there was a basketball coach at the gym that I started talking to and he pretty much wanted to draft me to play on his champion league team haha. I told him that I wish I could!

week #40 -- great conference this past weekend -- service for a member of the ward

Buenas dias! Como les ha ido?

What a great conference weekend right? I really enjoyed a lot of the talks from this conference. Before the mission I remember how I only liked conference because I could stay home in PJs and sleep on the couch... But now I really enjoy conference and I actually understand the importance of listening to our prophet and the apostoles. I love listening to the talks this conference. I hope that you guys were able to watch all of conference and if you didn´t you should go back and listen to them! I was actually able to watch parts of the conference in English. I had to watch conference in Spanish the Saturday morning session and the Sunday morning session. For these sessions the primary were using the room to watch conference as the primary. But all the other sessions I was able to watch in English. I´ll probably go back through and listen to the talks from these sessions in English so that I´ll be able to understand everyone 100%. Also I feel the spirit a lot stronger in English because it comes straight from the voice of the prophet and the apostoles. 

This conference there were quite a few that I really enjoyed. I don´t have my notes with me and none of the talks are posted in reading form yet on lds.org so I´m not able to take quotes or anything. But I really enjoyed the talks from Elder Oaks about missionary work and how we can find ways to share the gospel with people. I also really enjoyed the talk from Elder Uceda about prayers and his story while he was out on his mission. And I think my favorite talk was the one from Elder Nelson about how we can find joy in every situation through Christ. No matter what we are going through in life we can have joy and happiness. We should always choose to be happy because really happiness is a choice. There were also a lot of other good ones! I could probably sit and talk about every talk given haha.

Well bueno as District Leader here in Tal-Tal it isn´t that much. Our district is only a district of 4 and we live with the other 2 missionaries. Normally as district leader you have to call for numbers(or results for the week), prepare a class for district meeting every week, but more than anything is to help the missionaries out so that they can improve. Be a motivator and just be there to help the missionaries in your district out. But yeah definitely busy here in Tal-Tal but I really enjoy it and opportunity I have to learn a lot. Like I said to mom in my email this week it would be a different story if I had a normal life but as a missionary I´m just 100% focused in the church and have no other responsibilities other than the church.

Everything is going well with the new comp(Elder Pineda). We have actually been working pretty well together. Usually at the start you just have to get used to your new comp. I have actually been learning a lot from him as well. He is really good at talking with everyone. He seriously talks to everyone in the streets. We have met a lot of great people thanks for him starting a conversation. He is my first companion that actually talks with everyone so I´m learning a lot. Normally my other comps and I usually just say hi to people we pass in the street. But with Elder Pineda we have met a ton of new people and a few really cool people. So this is a really good thing for me because I never really felt comfortable just to talk to random people in the street but now it is something that is normal. There is definitely a reason why we got put together and I´m learning a lot of good things from him. There is always good things that you can learn from every comp. But no one is perfect either so every comp has there bad things. 

Yeah the pic that I sent last week is Yerrack´s family. The Becerra family! They are a really cool family.

Yeah the 4 of us missionaries eat with the papitos every day. We are with them for a good part of the day but not all day because our sectors are the city split in half. We have one half of the city to proselyte and they have the other half. When we are proselyting we don´t see them(which is a good chunk of the day), but everything else we are pretty much with them.

Well hope you guys have a great week and that Mom has a great birthday! Feliz cumpleaños mama! Love and miss you guys!!!

Love

Elder Newkirk

We did a service project this Wednesday for a member. He has a piece of land that he wants to start building a house on but...... His piece of land is on a mountain of rocks. So we helped out flatten some of the land there and pick out some rocks. It was actually a lot of fun. Even though in the pictures it really doesn´t look inclined, it really is haha! 

Ummmmmm I may have recieved your Halloween package already... I didn´t know it was for Halloween so I just opened it. I haven´t eaten anything yet I promise. I wanted to ask you guys if you wanted me to wait to eat it on Halloween?

So when we went to Copiapo a few weeks ago I was able to buy some thing there and guess what they had! Mac and Cheese!!! So I finally made some mac and cheese this week. It´s been soooooooo long!