week #17 - Back to good health and opportunities to give blessings!

¡Hola! ¿Como les ha ido?

Everthing here has been great. We´re back to being at 100% in health which is good. The sickness is still going around though and we have had a lot of opportunities to give blessings of health. There isn´t a lot of priesthood down here so we get to have a lot of opportunities to give blessings and serve the members!

This week was good, I think it was just a normal week haha. I don´t really know what is considered to be a normal week because the weeks are always changing. Yeah when we were sick we didn´t leave the house. We didn´t work on Sunday and also on Monday. We practically just slept and studied. Two days definitely makes an impact on the work but we still had a great week and found some new people to start teaching. 

Another thing that I have really started to realize recently that has hit me hard, this week, is how good that we have it. A lot of the people that we are teaching and meet everyday have a lot of problems. People here work so much with crazy schedules. There are some people that work from morning until night every single day and don´t have time for practically anything. But there are so many different problems with the houses and the streets and everything. The humility has really set in, it has been a humbling experience since the beginning, but it is something that I have been thinking a lot more about this week and as well in my studies. We are seriously so lucky to have what we have with where we live and everything. And we´re even more lucky because we have the gospel in our lives! I don´t know it´s just something that I have been thinking about this week.

With the people down here, there are a ton of different religions and a ton of different beliefs. I have learned so much about other religions and how others worship. There are a lot of weird, different things that religions do. But I can´t talk bad about other religions and stuff that people do so I´ll just leave it at that. 

Sounds like you guys will have a lot of fun in Florida this week. Hope Hailey and her teams does well this week in Summit! Can´t wait to hear next week how everything went!

Mi Español es mas o menos no mas, pero es mejorando. In the companionship we practically speak spanish all the time, very little do we speak English. My companion actually understand a lot of English but we don´t use English at all. It´s basically all Spanish all the time. I have definitely noticed though that English is getting harder and Spanish is getting easier. I can still write in English perfectly fine but when I talk in English it just feels weird, and even at times I have to translate in my mind Spanish to English and it just comes out weird. But I don´t have any problem with writing my letters every week. It´s only when I try to speak in English it is weird.

This P-day was actually pretty awesome, we didn´t do a lot but we ate some really good food today. Today we went to Centro again so that I could change some money and buy a speaker. We we did that and after that we went and tried a place that Hermana Malva recommended to us. It was pretty expensive but it was definitely worth it. It was a placed called Gran Chimu and they make Peruano food. I´ll be sending a picture of what me and my companion got. It was really good. 

Love you guys a lot and hope that you all have a great week!

Love

Elder Newkirk

week #16 -- Getting over being sick the past few days

Hola! ¿que tal?

I actually haven´t felt any earthquakes in my time here in Chile. People have said, "Oh, did you feel the earthquake yesterday?" but I haven´t felt anything yet.. 

Vanesa is doing great and attended church this sunday with us. I don´t know how long she plans on staying here in Antofagasta but if she is here for like another month she will be baptized 100%. But so far everythings going great!

I´m not sure how Hermana Malva is doing but I do know that there is a sickness going around because my companion and I have it too. It started yesterday for me during church. I threw up like 3 times at church. Yesterday wasn´t all that fun. And my companion started the sickness last night. I´m actually doing a lot better and I think I´m practically at the end of the sickness. Just need to get some energy back and get some food in me. But my companion is still pretty sick. I think it was probably just something that we ate, but who knows here in Chile right?

Thanks for sending the package to me, hopefully I´ll be getting it soon! We´ll have to time how long it takes for me to get the package haha.

With you comment on the Restoration, "Joseph Smith claimed he seen Heavenly Father and Jesus. Not many can claim that so boldly as he did. Probably why many people dont think he did what he did." It´s true, but God knew that people wouldn´t believe in some kid that had this vision so that is why he showed to him the Book of Mormon. All the evidence is in the Book of Mormon, everything about the Church is all weighted on the Book of Mormon. All someone needs to do is read it and pray about it and they know that everything about the Church and the Restoration of the gospel is true. Like you said the gospel is perfect but people aren´t. We have to have a testimony in the gospel not in the people, if we only had a testimony in the members we would fall away from the church in a heartbeat. 

Sounds like the competition in Stockton was pretty lame. But hey they got first in everything right? Haha, yeah it sounds like this competition was pretty lame and that not a lot of teams went to it. But good luck in Florida at the end of this month! 

Wow, crazy what happened in the with the whole stake change, that´s a pretty big change! You´ll have to keep me updated on what happens to the bishopric and everything. But that´s awesome that President Farr in the stake president of the new stake and that Bishop Steimle is second counselor!

Otherwise everything is going great, other than getting sick. This week we contacted a lot of future investigators and we are also working with a lot of less actives. With the ward, the focus right now is in reactivation because there are a lot of less actives in the area. Usually the attendance every Sunday is around 50 but in the records there is about 300-350 members in the sector. So that leaves a lot of work to be done. With the list of less actives we have been able to contact a few of them and also their families, which a lot of them aren´t members. There is a lot of work to be done in this ward!

Also yesterday I had to give my first talk in Spanish. They chose me, my companion, and the mission leader to give talks. My talk was on baptisms for the dead and it actually went really well even though I was pretty sick. People actually said that they could understand what I was saying too, I don´t know if they were just saying that to be nice but yeah haha.  

This P-day has been really lame because we have been sick, just laying around all day. Our Mamita is awesome though, she made us stuff to help with us being sick and everything. The only thing that we will be doing today is emailing. After this just go back to the house and rest so that hopefully we´ll be good to go for tomorrow! Definitely hasn´t been fun but hey everythings all good! 

Hope all you guys have a great week! Love and miss you guys a lot!!

Love

Elder Newkirk

week #15 -- Golden investigators

Hola!

Everything once again is going great. A lot of walking this week but always we get to talk with a lot of different people. A lot of people don´t really like to listen to the gospel. But we always meet great people every single week. This week we came in contact with an old investigator who we thought moved to Tocopilla. But she is still living here in Antofagasta for another 2 months and wants to be baptized here! A lot of her family is LDS but she has troubles at home with her husband so she is moving to Tocopilla to live with her family who is LDS. But she is super awesome and already had a testimony before we taught anything. Definitely a golden investigator.

Hopefully everything goes well with the job hunt. (Editors note -- Some may read this and wonder what is going on but it's nothing right now  -j) But wherever the Lord wants you, that´s where you´ll be. I have learned that a lot in the mission. As missionaries you are constantly changing locations and constantly running into new people. The Lord knows everything and knows where we need to be to the exact second. It´s funny how the Lord will put someone in front of you that you´ve been wanting to contact or run into someone who needs your help. It is happened so much in the mission it is crazy. I know without a doubt that the Lord has us in locations that we need to be.

Hmmmm in my studies. Well I started to read the Bible a lot this week. A lot of people here have a lot of knowledge about the Bible and I have never read through the Bible in its entirety. So yeah that is what I have been doing. This morning I was reading the story about Lot´s wife and how she turned into salt. This story is actually really short but you can learn a lot from it. So Lot was visited by holy messengers who told him that Sodom and Gomorrah was going to be destroyed and to leave to the mountain with his family and told them not to look back. Well Lot´s wife turned around and looked back and when she did this she turned into salt. Sometimes in life things look good just to try a little but it is actually just a huge trap that will lead us to be like Lot´s wife... Dead (spiritually). There are also a lot more that we can learn from this story. I have also been studying lesson 1 about the restoration everyday like I have said. Always learn something more everyday from studying lesson 1. I thought that I was going to be really bored of studying lesson 1 every single day but it has actually been really good. 

Can´t wait to see the photo book!

Love you guys a lot! Thanks for everything! Hope you guys have an amazing week!

Love

Elder Newkirk

A new shirt that our zone made for all the missionaries in the zone. This doesn´t happen like at all in the mission but yeah it´s sweet! 

An old picture of me and Elder Villegas with Hermana Malva´s sons. (Well Matias isn´t her son, he is her nephew but he lives with them)

 Matias(left), Elder Villegas, Nico, Me

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.

Week #13 - Transfers this week, getting a new companion, and Baptism!

Hey!

Everythings still going great. Yesterday, being Easter, just felt like a normal day for us. It really didn´t feel special or anything, just another day as a missionary. But it sounds like you guys had a good Easter!

But looks like I don´t need to write you guys anymore, Hermana Malva can do it. Haha no just kidding but yeah the baptism happened and I had the opportunity to baptize which was an awesome experience. Also in Thursday it was Chile vs Argentina so we decided to wear our Chile stuff. It was pretty awesome. But the bbq is super rare and I think it was my first one. It was really good steak, but that doesn´t happen a lot trust me.

Haha I thought that I told everyone that I wouldn´t be back for 2 years but I guess they forgot. When I´m thinking about missionary work and am focused I don´t have any hard time with missing things of the past but when I think about it yeah I definitely miss it. Definitely miss the video games, music, and movies. It is pretty hard. Last night we went to one of our investigators houses so that Elder Villegas could say his goodbyes and take píctures and they were watching the new Deadpool movie. Man I really miss movies. But no it really isn´t that bad, I don´t have to worry about the old life at all.

Yeah I saw those snow pictures. That´s crazy, end of March and all that snow. Definitely wish that we got snow or even rain. I like the cold weather so hopefully that the weather will change soon and will be a little more cold here but I highly doubt it because it is always hot here.

Yeah transfers are this week. This transfer was 7 weeks because of the change in the MTC´s of 3 weeks now instead of 2 weeks, but they are usually every 6 weeks. Usually a trainer stays with his hijito for 2 transfers for training so we weren´t expecting a transfer. But he has been here for 6 months so I guess his time is up here in Gabriela Mistral (this is our sector and ward not sure if I had mentioned this before). Elder Villegas is going to Arica as a Zone Leader right now though which is pretty awesome. But as I am writing this right now we are still together. He leaves tonight at 9:30 and my new companion arrives at 9:45. I don´t really know him all that well I only know his name and where he is from. His name is Elder Alcantara and he is from Spain. He was born in Peru but only was in Peru for 3 years so yeah he is from Spain. He has 7 months in the mission. And that´s just about all I know about him. Hopefully we will work well together and that he´ll be a good trainer to finish my training. But the thing is, is that he is going to be new to this area as well, I will be the one to have to make plans and to guide the sector which should be interesting and hard. I think that I will definitely learn a lot from this. Should be a good humbling experience.

We actually went on the hike this morning which was pretty cool. Was really, really crazy but was cool. A lot more happened that I won´t say right now, it is a story for after the mission... But don´t worry everything is good now and I have pictures and even a video that I will try to send to you guys. Hopefully the file of the video won´t be too big to where I can´t send. But yeah it was fun and I definitely learned a ton from it.

Thanks for sharing D y C 11:12-13. It was something that I needed for today, thanks! But I´ll try to read that talk one day when I have time to do so.

EDITORS NOTE: This is the talk that I shared with Jordan. https://www.lds.org/general-conference/2015/10/the-holy-ghost-as-your-companion?lang=eng

Your story in Tahoe is so true. Happens a lot to missionaries everywhere in the world. Especially here...

So we had zone conference in Thursday with President Dalton. Now we are studying lesson 1 about the restoracion(I forgot how to spell it in english) for 30 days straight and practicing with our companions everyday. I didn´t really realize how powerful the first lesson about the restoracion of the gospel through Joseph Smith. It is super powerful, we watched a video of an example from a conference with a ton of different apostoles. Elder Cook was being taught by these two men about lesson 1 and even Elder Cook felt the spirit super strong and cried a little. Even though he has probably heard this lesson thousands of times. So for the next 30 days our focus is on studying lesson 1 and nothing more to become more powerful teachers because lesson 1 is the most powerful of them all. I know that the church of Jesus Christ is true and I know that through Joseph Smith it was restored. The story of Joseph Smith and the first vision is so powerful and can bring anyone to the knowledge of the truth.

Will definitely miss you as well for the Priesthood session of conference. But I can´t wait for conference, there is a room for gringos in the stake center to listen to conference is english haha. Should be good!

Love you guys so much! I´m always praying for you guys! May the Lord bless you mucho!

Love
Elder Newkirk

Baptism!

Baptism!

Hike in Antofagasta with Elder Villegas

View from the top of the hike! WOW what a view!

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!

Here is where the video is -- https://www.mormon.org/easter?cid=HP_SU_3-13-2016_dMIS_fSPC_xLIDyL1-A_

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.

Week# 11 weekly update from Elder Newkirk

Hey! Everything´s is still going great! Yeah you guys are now 4 hours behind instead of 5 because I don´t believe there is a time change here like there is in the States. Haha I wouldn´t call the weather nice, it is hot everyday. But is definitely is more humid heat, it isn´t dry at all that I have noticed. I haven´t had to use lotion at all and my hands have never been this smooth as they are now. But it might be a completely different story in different areas of the mission.

This week was pretty good. Yesterday we had Stake Conference and for this conference we got to listen to the President of the 12 Apostoles who gave a transmission to all of Chile. It was super cool because he gave his talk to us in Spanish, it didn´t have to be translated like other talks. I had no idea that he knew Spanish like he does haha. He talked about the importances of the commandments and especially tithing and temples. It was a really good talk for the people of Chile.

About the baptism, we should know this week if it is going to happen on the 26th or not. She doesn´t know whether she wants to be baptized or not. She is 14 but a lot of her family are members who just became active again in the church. The funny thing about people in Chile is when we meet them, and this is what happened with this family too, is we don´t know if they are members of the church or not. When Elder Villegas and the companion before me started teaching this family they had no clue that they were members. In the second lesson they asked them to be baptized but they responded that they were already members of the church. It happens a lot here, there are a ton of less actives. The statistic here in Chile is every 1 in 10 members are active. But yeah she is a part of this family but doesn´t know if she wants to be baptized or not. She likes the church and has attended a lot with her family but doesn´t know, but I think that she will. But yeah that´s the update on the baptism.

Yes, I got my haircut from Sebastian, he did a great job! I was actually surprised because he didn´t use fancy equipment or anything. But I am super picky about my hair I know, but he did good. He told me this week that he wants to open his own barber shop in California near the Warriors stadium and whenever the Warrior´s play he would close up shop and go to the game haha. But first he has to finish high school. He left high school after the first year and is going back but during the night. He is honestly the best, he also comes with us at times which is awesome!

I got my Valentines package finally haha. I honestly don´t think it takes that long but it honestly just depends. Elder Villegas told me that one of his old companions received a package for Halloween in December so I honestly think that it just depends.

Haha you guys are already thinking about the Skype in May, you guys are more trunkee than I am! Trunkee is when a missionary misses home or thinks about home a lot or about the future of leaving the mission or anything.

My shoes have definitely taken a beating, I´ve just been wear the slip on shoes pretty much all the time. I use the other shoes when I go to church or to conferences or anything nicer when I have to wear a suit because these shoes are a lot more clean and not beat up like my other ones. 

Our church building isn´t big but it is nice and works well for everyone. It is definitely a lot smaller than the home ward, but the Stake building is actually really nice and more like the home ward.

For teaching actually lessons we usually get around 15 lessons a week. But is honestly depends on the week and if people want to hear from us or not. We talk to a lot of different people in the streets but it really isn´t an actual lesson.

The question about my Spanish again... Haha. No spanish is definitely getting a lot easier. I still have a hard time understanding some of the people here though. There are some people who actually pronounce their words and I can understand the concept of what they are saying, not all of the words but the concept. But there are others who don´t pronounce anything and I can´t understand, I might be able to pick out a few words here or there but I have no clue what they are trying to say. I´m getting a lot more confident in speaking Spanish now though, I can get my point across mas o menos. But once I start to understand what everyone is saying it will get a lot easier from there. I definitely know that at points that I have the gift of tongues, there is absolutely no other way that I would be able to learn Spanish this fast. I took 3 years of Spanish through school and remember nothing of it. I have learned probably 100x more Spanish in 2 1/2 months than I did in 3 years of Spanish in school. It is really crazy!

So one thing that I learned for myself last night is that our sector is pretty dangerous especially in the night time. My companion has told me that our sector is pretty dangerous but I never believed him because I hadn´t seen anything really dangerous. But last night right outside out house someone got robbed. The guy who got robbed was in a wheelchair. The robber knocked him out of his wheelchair and robbed him. This happened during our planning for the next day and we heard a lot of shouting going on outside. It was pretty crazy. Also Elder Villegas told me that on new years there was a huge fight outside with columbians and chileans with knives at like 5 am. So yeah out area is a little dangerous but it´s fun! Don´t worry about me!

Love you guys so much!

Love

Elder Newkirk

This is the only photo that I have to send this week. Next week I think that we are going on a hike that I will get some really cool pictures of Antofagasta! So next week I should have some more to send. But this is a pirate ship that we found today, they do tours in it! I really wish that we could be able to do it but it´s a rule not to get in boats or to swim or whatever the rule is. But the pirate ship is super cool!