Week 66

Well this week we have done a lot of running around. I helped my comp open a few apartments and move some closetes and stuff like that. We were also trying to help Angel y Victor get ready for their baptism the 25th after church, but they ended up calling us the night before and told us that they weren’t going to be able to come to church. We are going to have to work a lot more with them so that they are actually ready to be baptized.

We also helped a kid that is 9 years old get baptized in San Lorenzo. There aren’t any missionaries there, so we went to teach him the lessons. He was baptized Friday and it was great. He was so happy. I think this little kid will help reactivate his mom and get his family going in the right direccion.

We spent Christmas Eve and Christmas with President and his wife. For a gift the whole office pitched in and we bought them a little leather thing that is used to carry mate and yerba around. They loved it. They gave us a mate and a bombilla (straw). Mine is red and has the migrations symbol on it.

I did a lot of cooking for everyone this week. I made grasshopper brownies, blueberry muffins and some orange julius. Yep, then I did Skype, which was super fun. I can’t believe that the next Skype call will be my last Skype call in the mission. It all has just flown by. I was able to talk a little  with the family of Elder Mendoza. They were super cool. They had a lot of energy and were all super excited to see him. Well that’s basically all that happened this week.

Chao! Elder Newman

DYC 88:22-24

Christmas Zone Conference..

 

 
Christmas Eve at the mission home...

Week 65

Well this week was fun. We had two concerts of Christmas, and we are doing a lot of stuff here in the office preparing for the group of 30 new missionaries that are going to be getting here.
 

We have talked to a lot of people inviting them to the concerts. One day we had an activity in our ward so we went around singing Christmas carols to the members, and we invited all of them to invite one of their friends or someone that wasn’t a member. It worked great, about 11 people came that weren’t members. We talked to all of them, and none of them lived in our area, but the other missionaries are going to go visit them.

We are also going to start up an open house in our ward for the 7th of January. We have a lot of plans and a lot of stuff that we need to do here in the near future.

Well that’s about it.

Love you all,
Elder Newman

Victor and Angel..our investigadores that might get baptized this 24.

Week 64

Well this week we were able to teach a lot of new investigators. We found 11 new investigadores. None of them seem to be too interested in changing their religion.

We have two baptismal dates for the 24 de Diciembre. They are brothers, and they seem to be pretty set on getting baptized, but they don't come to church, ahhhh! It’s the same old story. We have people that would love to get closer to God, but they are afraid of having to do stuff and changing stuff.

Like you saw in the videos and pictures that one sister sent, we are helping sing some songs for a Christmas event that they are going to do. We practiced a few songs yesterday where we have to sing super fast. Hopefully I will be able to keep up. Like I can say the words, but that's all I’m doing. I can’t sing them haha.

Anyway, we had an open church activity in a barrio que se llama San Lorenzo. We put 3 baptismal dates there for the 24 of December also. But there are no elders there, so we being oficinistas, we are going to go baptize and teach them.

We have seen a lot of miracles this month. President made the whole mission a promise that if we all worked really hard, that every companionship in the mission would baptize. He has had some great revelation. For a lot of people investigadores are just falling right out of the sky.

Well that’s about all I have to say for this week.

Love you all - Elder Newman

Week 63

Well not much has happened this week. We have been busy with working in our area and doing office work. I was able to do an interview with a guy named Sebastian to get baptized. He had passed through a lot of trials in his life, and in this moment he is living in a truck of a friend he has. He was super happy to get baptized, and he loves the ward. He feels like he just got accepted into a great big family he has always wanted.

This week we had 14 lessons, which was great. A lot of them were with new investigadores. We also went and did a capacitacion [training] for an open house in a barrio que se llama San Lorenzo [neighborhood called San Lorenzo]. They haven’t had missionaries in their ward for about a year or so. They are great people, but the area is a little dangerous. That’s why there are no missionaries there.

We also went to Heller to help sing. Apparently they think I can sing well or something. Little do they know, I know nothing about music. Well I don’t have anything more to say. Thanks for everything!

Love, Elder Newman

 

[He says he has tennis shoes. He's just wearing his boots right now. Haha.]

Week 62

Well we did have a Thanksgiving dinner. We planned it, cooked, and ate it all in one day. Well we just showed up when it was ready to eat, but we helped with the ideas of what we were going to eat. We made yams, ate sausages and meat, and some potato logs and some salad. It wasn’t like home, but it was a pretty good meal. Then we celebrated the birthday of one of their family members so we ate cake, then we went home. I was stuffed, so it’s somewhat the same as home. Haha.

As for our investigadores, we haven’t been able to teach much. We have taught a lot of people in the street, but they don’t want us to pass by after. We did get one to accept to hear another message in his house, so we put an appointment with him to go back. We passed by Samantha a few times. She was busy teaching special needs kids, and yep she still has the kid inside her. We are going to pass by her house tomorrow in the morning to see if we can teach them.

Then the family from Florida, nothing more has happened. We haven’t been able to get a hold of their cell phone, and there are no Elders in that area, so I don’t know what has happened to them.

We did a few capilla abiertas esta semana [open houses this week]. I have contacted about 50 people yesterday. I’ve never been rejected so many times in one day. But there were a few good references that we passed along to the Elders that were in charge of that area.

Well all is going good. I am super busy here in the office. I never have time for anything, but I feel great and I love the mission.

Stay happy, Love You ALL!
Elder Newman

Well here are some pics, the two kids are family of the President and the Hermana Casariego. The pics with the banners are for the new movement illuminate the world, or something like that. I don’t know how it is in English [Light the World]. The ones with food is clearly Thanksgiving dinner.

Their names are Nina y Calvin. They were great fun. They don’t speak Spanish, so they would always talk with us and their parents. Jaja. They are from the states. The son of President served a mission there and went to college there, found a wife, got married and currently lives there but they came to visit their grandparents...and the kids were born in the states.They were great to have here in the mission home!

I made the stick figure during pday when I didn’t have a computer to write jaja.

The table is what we had for the capilla abierta.

Week 61

Well, a few things happened this week. It was transfers, so it was pretty crazy for the office. I sent my old comp Elder Elwood home, that was fun. Before he went home we got special permission from President for him to go down to the river where we have the Neuquén thing to take some pictures. I took a few pics too.

Then another big event took place. We were able to help Edarlinda get baptized. We had to do it like three times because the guy doing the baptism didn’t say it correctly, but she got baptised all the same. Now we are going to see if we can baptize the rest of her family. Keep them in your prayers.

We haven’t been able to contact that one family that is from Florida. I’ve been trying to call, but they are not answering. I hope that their phone was just on silent, but I don’t know what happened. For me they were so prepared, but for some reason right now we can’t make contact with them.

We also found a new family. I can only remember the mom’s name, Symantha. She was great with child, and it looked like she was ready to pop. I was thinking about trying to scare her a bit to see if I could make a crazy missionary story, but I thought twice and decided against it, jaja. They are really cool. She loves the Plan of Salvacion, and when we teach them we are going to keep our messages centered on families.

Well that’s basically it. I’ll send some pics of all this stuff. But until next time, love you all
- Elder Newman

Week 60

Well we started off this Saturday/pday really good with a baptism. It wasn’t our baptism, but we went to it to support the missionaries in our district. They are doing great. They have baptized like 3 people here in this area. Me and my comp are working pretty good. We finally have some people that want to be baptized. We might have a baptism this next week so I’m pretty excited.

Well me and Elder Mendoza are together again for the fourth transfer. You could basically say we are married because we are going to have shared a house for about 8 months now, and he has never left my side. It’s almost weird how long we have been together. Luckily we are good friends. If not it would be super hard to last another transfer together.

Anyway nothing really different has happened this week. We have some late nights doing transfers and preparing for this week. And when I say late nights, I mean like we get back at the pension at 10 or 10:30, so it’s not super late. Jaja

Well that’s all I have for this week. Hopefully this next week I’ll have more to talk about.

Love You All - Elder Nuevohombre

Elder Clemens’ last pday in the mission. We celebrated by going to this really good restaurant in Neuquen. They have the best steaks!

 

Week 59

Well this week was somewhat fun. I was in migrations a lot, and we did a lot of stuff to make missionaries legal. This last week I made a goal to talk with at least one person while I am doing the stuff I have to do in migraciones, and what happened was pretty cool.

I found a family that lived in Florida before they came here. They were doing their tramites [legalities], so I started talking to the dad. He was born in Mendoza, and he went to the states to learn English. There he met his wife who is from Costa Rica. They have two kids that are named Andreas y Sabrina. They are 16 and 17 years old. I talked to them about ‘merica and some things back home. Then I asked them if they attended a church. They said they used to be Catholics, but from them reading the bible they found out that the Catholic Church was wrong about a lot of stuff. So I asked them if they had ever talked to missionaries like us and they said no, and I invited them to hear what we have to say about the Bible and God and everything else. They said ok, and we switched cell phone numbers. Later that day he called me and invited me to have lunch with his family, but it was outside of my zone so I couldn’t go. But I went and talked to President, and he gave me special permission to go and teach this family.

I went with another gringo, Elder Bursach. He cooked us a bbq, and like as soon as we got there he asked us if there was anything that we couldn’t drink. We said wine, coffee, and tea, and he asked why. We were like well it’s a commandment from God, but he hadn’t ever heard of that. So we said we could explain it to him. So we went inside and we taught him the Restauración and also the Words of Wisdom. Then we ate lunch.

Then after lunch he had a question about a verse in Genesis chpt 1, where it says LET US make man in OUR own image, and he asked why it said that. We explained to him how Christ was with God in the beginning and how it wasn’t God that created the world, it was God being like the supervisor and Jesus Christ that created the world. We used the Bible a ton. Then we answered his questions about the Sabbath day and why its Sunday. We taught the Plan of Salvation and the gospel of Jesus Christ and introduced the Book of Mormon to them. They promised to read it, and they accepted to be baptized when they feel they have received an answer that this church is the true restored church of God on the earth today. We were literally there for 4 hours answering questions, showing them references in the Bible and Book of Mormon, and talking about this gospel.

They basically believe everything that we believe, they just drink a cup of wine every now and then. They are just dry Mormons. The bad thing is they are not in my area, but I’m going to see if I can’t get special permission for them to come to the church and we can teach them in the church in our area. They said they are going to try and get into the routine to go to church every Sunday, and they are hoping to start this next Sunday. They are going to get baptized! It’s great.

We also taught English to a few people. None of our investigadores showed up, but we taught two members. I have a few pictures of that.

It's weird we had three gringos in the English class, but the only Latino was teaching the English.

 And I found a baseball field.

Well that’s it for this week.

Love you all,
Elder NuevoHombre