Reflections on the Atonement

TEMPERLEY, Argentina -- Hola hola hola! How is my wonderful family doing this beautiful sunny (or maybe snowy for you) Monday? I hope this email finds you all doing well with big smiles on your faces. Life is So good... no? Yep. Life is good! 

This week was good. A little tricky at times, but good. We found a few new investigators and are praying that they can start progressing. It’s interesting to be a missionary because you can’t rely on yourself for anything. You have to rely on others for EVERYTHING! It’s been a learning experience for me for sure. We have to rely on Heavenly Father and the Holy Ghost to teach and find, we have to rely on the people we find that they will choose to come unto Christ and progress and then we have to rely on the ward to befriend these people. 

Long story short... I have learned that in the church -- in the gospel -- we are not alone. We always are working in unity and helping one another. We can’t think just about ourselves. Nope, we need to serve and help others. That is how we are going to make it back to the Celestial Kingdom, together. :) 

The Atonement was on my mind a lot this week as well. 

First off, wow, how blessed are we to have the Atonement!! Priceless! Hermana Calderon and I have been working with lots of people and all of them are completely different! We have a less-active with schizophrenia, an investigator with a crazy family, members who have health or marriage problems, and of course, people whose hearts are so hard they can't even receive our message right now. Everyone is different but EVERYONE can and needs to use the Atonement. 

My whole life, I have learned about the Atonement and how important it is. And yes, it is important, but I don’t think I really understood how important it is until I came on my mission. It is a gift from our Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ! We need to take advantage and use it daily. 

I read this morning in Alma 7:11-13. He died and suffered for all of us so we can be happy and learn to become like him. This week I have increased my understanding of the Atonement, and I am so grateful for my big brother, who died for me. 

What a blessing. I feel blessed to be a missionary who gets to share the message of the Atonement with these people here in Argentina. 

I really saw the Atonement in action this weekend, when the elders had a baptism of four people! It was amazing to see these families change and come unto Christ. If I were to show you a picture of these people I am sure almost all of us would think, ¨hmmm... really? Are they ready?¨ 

And that’s where the Holy Ghost and the Atonement come in. 

God knows who is ready -- not me or my companion or anyone else. It was amazing to see these people take out all their piercings and change into white and enter the waters of baptism. The Spirit was so strong I can’t even do it justice by describing it. Happy day we have four new members in Banfield 1!  We are also on the search to bring more to the fold :) My favorite part!! Well, I hope you have a wonderful week!

Exitos y cuidense!! Te amo! 

Con amor,

Hermana Newman :)

Baptism and daily bread

TEMPERLEY, Argentina — Hola familia, Feliz Febrero!!
 

Can you believe it is already February? I can't! Craziness! I always say this but it is true... time is just flying. Transfers are next week already. Wow.

Hermana Calderon and I are hoping to stay together one more transfer at least in this area, but you never know. I will update you on that next week.

This week has been great. We just got done bowling with our district. Way fun! I haven’t been bowling in forever, and of all places I got to go in Buenos Aires!

We are at a different cyber again today in another city because of the activity and unfortunately, they won't read my camera card, so I can’t send pictures. Bummer, because I have some I wanted to send.

Especially because... Evelyn was baptized and confirmed this weekend! Wahooo!

Everything went well and it very nice.I am having a hard time describing it in English ... in Castellano, easy... it was muy lindo!! (very cute).

I love baptisms. They are wonderful. Always something crazy, but you can always feel the Spirit. My first baptism with Jennifer was crazy because nobody showed up until like 5 minutes till.

This time, people came on time, but we almost flooded the church. Ha-ha no joke.

We went running at the church that morning so we could turn on the water to start filling. My companion said it would be fine to leave and come back after we had showered and gotten ready. I thought, "Ok it should be fine. In Maryland it took 2.5 hours to fill." Ha Wrong-o! Here, the fonts are much smaller. We got to the church and I opened the door to see how the font was. Bahhhh! Water to the very top. I had to quick take off my shoes and go a little ways in to start draining the font. Oh dear. Good times :) Got to love being a missionary!

But yes, everything went well and she was happy as can be.

What a blessing it is to be baptized. I can’t remember a ton about my baptism to be honest, but I can remember how happy I felt. That’s how I feel every time I see my investigators go into the waters of baptism. We have some other investigators that we are working with. Right now, a few of them are being stinkers and not progressing, but we are praying that they will kick it into gear soon.

One of my favorite parts of this week was just seeing the Gift of the Holy Ghost in my life. There were many times, but I can remember in particular two times where the Spirit led us somewhere we needed to be at the right moment.

First, we were walking around deciding where to go and who to visit, because our plans and backup plans fell through. Hermana Calderon and I both thought maybe we could visit a potential investigator nearby. We were almost to her house when a sweet little old lady said, ¨How are you doing? Who are you girls?"

We explained that we were missionaries of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and that we had a message to share with her. She invited us to sit down and share it with her right then and there in front of her bakery. We shared a short message about the Restoration and she invited us to come back in the following week.

My favorite part was just before we left she said, ¨Thank you hermanas. I was feeling really sad and was praying for someone to help me feel better. You are an answer to my prayers. I know that God sent you over here today."

Yes. Yes m'am!! We are here for a reason! I can’t even describe how I felt. What a wonderful experience. I love that we can be put in the right place at the right time.

Next was right after that visit, we decided to visit a less active member: Hermana Galvez. Such a sweetheart. We began talking (also about the Restoration) when we heard a knock at the door. Her neighbor had come over to visit. So we invited her to sit down and talk with us. We talked about families, prophets, Jesus Christ, the Atonement, apostasy, all of it. At the very end, we told her that she could know all of this was true by reading the Book of Mormon and praying to Heavenly Father to know for herself. Right as I was about to mention the Holy Ghost she said, ¨I feel something in my chest. I feel peace and happy. I don’t know what it is but I like it. ¨ I just gave her my big ol´cheesy Hermana Newman grin and explained that it was the Spirit testifying to her.

I feel like I am not doing a very good job at telling my stories or expressing myself today. Sorry. I hope you can understand what I am trying to say. Everything is going well here in Argentina. We have had some rainy coolish weather for a few days, which has been quite lovely. Working hard and trying to bring more people unto Christ.

How are you all doing? I hope sooo great. I miss you all and love you even more. Hope you know it!

Before I go I want to share a little video with you.


I had the opportunity to share and translate this for some people in my ward yesterday because it is not available in Castellano. I love it! Such a great message and reminder of the small things we need to be doing daily. Just like we need to eat, we need spiritual nourishment as well. It's a process, for sure, but I know that if we do the small things EVERY DAY and make them our priorities, we can and will be blessed and will become closer to our Heavenly Father and Savior.

Remember who you are, who you represent. Go out and give it all you got! Have a wonderful week.

Love ya - Chau!

-Hermana Newman

Have I done any good? Service, sincerity, and the Atonement

COLUMBIA, Md. — Well, here we go. Starting off yet another week. Week 6 of the transfer. Yikes! :) Transfers are next week. If I don’t have my visa by next week I will be lucky enough to spend my 5th transfer here in Columbia, Maryland! 

This week has flown by (most do for me here on a mission). We had tons going on this week. Lots of activities, service opportunities, church, normal lessons and mission conference. Unfortunately, I can’t tell you about everything, because that would just take forever and a day and I don’t think I can type fast enough for that. SO I will tell you bits and pieces of my week. All summed up ... It was wonderful!

When you get bored in companionship study, you balance books on your head while studying your language.

We started the week off with Elder Carlson (of the 70) and his wife coming for a mission tour and having mission conference with us. WOW! What a powerful speaker and motivator he is. I got so many wonderful insights and I just love personal revelation. I am sure every single one of us missionaries there got something different from his message, but all directed to us personally by the Spirit! 

I was going to tell you about some of my favorite parts and what he said, but like a silly girl, I left my notebook in the car :/ bummer. But I will try next week to bring it and share some of his thoughts. But yes... just fabulous!

Saturday we started the morning off my doing service! Yep... I am going to say it again. I LOVE service! It was kind of funny because the whole time I was just thinking about Mom and Brittany. The reason why? Because I was stuck inside cleaning when I wanted to be outside: P 

I wanted to rake leaves and help with the outdoors stuff, but we were asked to help in the kitchen. Good thing my mama and sis taught me how to clean real good because I spent the next hour or so on hands and knees scrubbing the tile. Feels good to get down and do some service. If you want to feel good and happy in your life (which I would assume you all do) GO SERVE SOMEONE!

Saturday night we had an activity with our investigators and some people in our branch. Marcos, our branch mission leader, thought it would be good for our branch to know our investigators. So each investigator was invited to a member’s home for dinner to chat and get to know each other. Then after, we all met up at the church to watch a movie (Finding Faith in Christ) and have dessert.

It went soooooo well! Our investigators came and loved it. They loved the branch and seemed to have a great time. Well, even better, they came to church on Sunday. It’s amazing what a little love and friendship can do.

Every Tuesday, we have our District meeting. As part of it, we go around sharing our miracles of the week. We see soooo many miracles in the Gospel. So since today is Tuesday, I would like to share Hermana Crotzer and my miracle of the week. The Riveras :) 

Oh if you could only see my face right now. I just can’t stop smiling. I have been working with these girls since I got here. Their Mom is a less active of many years. She was baptized when she was 9 and fell away at age 11. Anyways, our goal has been to really get them involved in the branch and Young Women’s. Well let me tell you — it worked. 

This week, we forgot to remind the girls about mutual but guess what? They went, even without us reminding them. Then on Saturday, they went to the dinner and movie activity at the church. And to top it all off, they came to church and stayed for all 3 hours on Sunday! Bah! 

I have been here a long time for sure. And I am not sure why I am still here, but I know this family has got to be one of the reasons! I need them, and they need me. The oldest daughter we are inviting to baptism and setting a date for hopefully this month. :) I love seeing miracles.

What happens when you serve in a stateside Spanish mission: country pride for all sorts of countries.

One of my favorite things about serving a mission is watching people change. I get to watch people change and use the Atonement of Jesus Christ all the time. It has helped me to understand the importance of the Atonement and why we all need to use it daily. If you don’t have a testimony of your Savior and what He did for you personally, I beg you to go pray! Go pray and ask for the confirmation. I testify that God lives, He loves us. He gave us a plan to return. Central to that plan is Jesus Christ. I know He died for me personally and you all as well. This Gospel is real. It takes work but it is worth it! God promises us all He has if we follow our Savior Jesus Christ.

This letter is getting long, so I will stop now. I hope you all know how much I love being a missionary. No matter whether it is here in Maryland, down in Argentina, or back home in Utah, once a missionary, always a missionary. Go out and find your missionary moment.

Love you with all my heart! Have a great week!

Con Amor,

-Hermana Newman :)