Elder Newkirk Chile Antofagasta LDS Mission Blog: week #72 - - baptism of Francisco

(first email I got)
Hey!

Good talking to you guys yesterday! So there isn´t any thing to talk about today because we talked yesterday! So cya later

Love

Elder Newkirk

(then got this a bit later) haha

Nah joke I´ll keep writing for this week that happened.

This week went really well. Francisco got baptized!! He also received the priesthood so that this next weekend he can baptize the rest of his family! The family still didn´t feel ready and stuff like that to get baptized but after Francisco´s baptism they are excited to get baptized. Sunday we passed by in the morning to take them to church and they told us now the rest of the family wants to get baptized! It was pretty cool. Just have to baptize the people that are ready to enter into the waters of baptism because if we would have just waited until the whole family was ready to get baptized then we would still probably have to work with them for a while until they all felt ready to go. We also have another family that only part of them are going to get baptized this weekend. They came to church this Sunday. The Ibacache family! There are 5 of them but only 3 of them came to church and 2 of them are going to get baptized this week as well. We actually had 8 investigators in church yesterday for being mother´s day I thought that it was pretty good. I thought that a lot of people wouldn´t be able to go to church for mother´s day but actually a lot of them came to church. There were a few that told us that they couldn´t for it being mother´s day yesterday. But it went really well this week! So this next weekend we should be having 4 baptisms!

Also this week we had the conference with Elder Texiera. Friday everyone went down to Iquique to travel to Antofagasta a 1:30am which was a lot of fun... Then we got there at like 8am and went straight to the conference. The conference ended at like 3:30pm and then just pretty much just hung out. Then I went out with Elder Alcantara to visit my first sector with him and we visited a few people. Then we returned home at like 9pm and got in the house at like 4am. So I was a little tired during the next day lol. But the conference was really good. Elder Texiera talked a lot about the Book of Mormon and the importance that it has in the conversion of the people. He invited us to focus on the importance that investigators have to read and to pray about the book of Mormon. The book of Mormon has power and changes people. I have definitely seen it a lot in my mission when people read the book of Mormon. So that´s about it on the conference. Pretty much just threw the hammer down with us in a couple things that we need to do a little bit more lol.

But yeah this week should be pretty busy as well because it´s the last week of this transfer and also have 4 baptisms. So should be interesting. Could be as well that we might have some changes going on! But we´ll see what happens next week on The Mission of Elder Newkirk.

Next month I´ll be heading down to Antofagasta again. Every month I have to go to leadership council so at least once a month I have to go down to Antofagasta.

So how baptism interviews work is that another Elder has to do baptism interviews in other sector. For example I can´t do baptism interviews for my investigators. We have to have our district leader(Elder Barney) do interviews for our investigators because it wouldn´t be right if we could do our own interviews. And we get to do the interviews for all the district leaders and if something happens and other sector needs interviews then we do the interviews.

Our sector is pretty huge. I think our sector is the biggest of Alto Hospicio. Like an hour walking from one end of the sector to the other.

But that´s about it.. I´ve actually been running a ton with Elder Pineda, like this morning we ran about 4 miles which was pretty good. Wish I had a good pair of running shoes though lol, but when I get home.

Well love you guys a ton! Thanks for everything!! Hope you have a great week!

Love

Elder Newkirk