The Hand of the Lord in a Pueblo almost nobody has ever heard of

I AM SUPËR EXCITED RIGHT NOW!

Well, I'm sure that you remember the goal I said about the Acambay (if not, I want to see a branch over there in that pueblo real soon), and I'm super happy to say that the Bishopric has the EXACT SAME GOAL AS I DO. The best part - Neither Elder Riveros nor I mentioned this goal to the bishopric. We went to a Family Home Evening over there and the Bishop said, "Well, welcome to the first meeting of the Acambay Family Group (Which comes before a Branch)!" He said it somewhat jokingly, but then in Ward Council, he mentioned that by the end of 2014 (preferably sooner), the Bishopric wants Acambay and Atlacomulco to be strong enough to be able to divide.

It's going to happen.

On Thursday, one of the assistants (Elder Emch, my old companion) and Zone Leaders came to help out the area. I went with Elder Emch, and we went over to Acambay. We did a lot of good things over there - taught and contacted some people, helped them out a bit, and when it came time to end the divisions (or splits, where companionships switch for a day) Elder Emch and I went over to the downtown to look for a less active member over there. As we were walking, a lady stops us and says, "I was baptized into the Church." She wanted to present us to all her family, and so we arranged that all up. The thing is, when we found her, we were supposed to be in that FHE. Were it not for the seemingly unplanned divisions that day, it probably would've taken a much longer time to find the sister. She brought her aunt and her cousin to Church on Sunday; she has more family over there that may be interested as well.

There's also a family of three that we're going to baptize up there - and, according to the members in Acambay, they will be the first people in Acambay baptized in the history of the Church there. This is going to get them just as, if not more than, excited am.

This and other miracles in Acambay that we've experienced, that we're experiencing, and will experience. I'm just super happy to be a part of this.

I love the mission so much right now. I have less than a year left now - in fact, a year from tomorrow, I might be landing in snowy Idaho. A scary thought, to be honest - but I know that this next coming year is going to be the best out of the two. I'm getting more into my stride, and I'm finding myself improving, if just a little bit, every day. More sensitivity to the Spirit, more ability to follow Him, more hope, more faith, more desire - I think I've finally met the missionary I want to be. I just need to be sure that I continue to know him better and assimilate him into me. Prayer, fasting, faith, study, and all that will help me out. I'm looking for the small things that I might not be doing best - maybe some small obedience issue (keeping my desk clean) (taking out the trash) (things like that) that will affect the bigger things. Studying the Book of Mormon (looking for references to Christ) or other scriptures on the busses rather than lazing around (letting my mind wander) (sleeping's okay; I need it). Exercising in the morning. Sleeping on time. Staying focused. All things that I'm working on, and things I'm progressing on as well. I'm improving, I see progress, and that makes me happy!

I studied Hope today, with the... well, hope that it'd help me develop that attribute. I then realized, "Silly you, you're just a bright ball of hope!" And then I thought, well, time to look for something else and keep my hope up.

Well, I've got my other e'mails to write, so I hope all goes well for all of you and we'll see each other soon! Thanks for your support!

Elder Newman

Acambay

A few months-ish ago, I said that I wanted to see a lot of progress in a small town called Acambay. Well, we've got a really good family of 3 that we're teaching up there, and on top of that, we're getting a lot more work done up there! But as we were teaching someone in a small town called Ganzda, it occurred to me that some people won't be able to make it to Atlacomulco due to the economy or time. As I thought about it, it occured to me that we needed a branch up there.

Then on Saturday, we went to the doctor to check my knees (nothing serious; I just got to keep my posture good and do leg excercises oh English y u so hard?) and Elder M was there for his back! If any of you remember or if I even shared that experience, he no longer needs to wear his back brace. Anyways, he knows a lot about church leadership, so I asked about the requirements to make a branch. He told me, and I began to think.

"Well," I thought, "it looks like we're really close to having a branch out there!" We could very well have one up there in two months, and this is our goal. On top of that, the assistance in Atlacomulco had been very low recently, low enough that even if there were enough baptisms in Acambay, we wouldn't have enough people to split the ward. On Sunday, a "staggering" 108 people showed up! It's amazing because it'd had only been lowering for a while.

Things can only get better!

Well, thanks for all your support, and we'll see each other in more or less a year!

Elder Newman

The Great Divide‏...

...was an episode of Avatar: the Last Airbender that was meh. But it was also what we did to Atlacomulco over the last week!

New Year's Eve, Elder Emch, my old companion and one of the Assistants right now, called me and said, "Hey, you gotta divide the area for Sister misionaries that will be coming and get them a house and a map and x amount of things." Told my companion, and the next day, off to work, searching for pretty much everything. It was pretty stressful, getting the money to get their house rented, the furniture that was necessary (everything), get some things fixed up, all while taking care of the Area at the same time. It was quite a bit of work, filled with stressy things and whatnot. BUT THEN THIS HAPPENED

I bought a nice little coat. I know that it's real because I still find little twigs and those spikey things - thorns - you find on plants in it. I think I've gotten most of them out. It's really warm and nice.

But anyways, about the division some more: What an answer to my prayers! There are a lot of less active members here in Atlacomulco, and the weekly assistance has been on a general downward trend. Maybe it's just because of holidays and whatnot, but even so, I was quite worried about the wall of work that was facing us. We couldn't find time to go to pueblos that we needed to visit, and we weren't getting many people to church each week. But now we're four missionaries, and that makes everythign a whole lot easier - we divided the area in half, and the sisters have plenty of people to visit, so now Elder Riveros and I only need to find people for ourselves, which will be a lot easier for us since we know the area so well.

Also, 4 people that I'd never even met came to church because the members brought them. I was delighted! So, now we've got people to teach in one of the pueblos in which I've wanted to see a lot of progress.

On New Years Eve, we watched another movie - the last one until next Christmas - called Turbo. It's pretty funny, but I'm sure that it'd be even better in English, as one of the central characters is a Mexican, saying things like "Santa Maria!" "We can go to bautizos, confirmaciones, quincenarias..." amongst other things. Always better in the native tongue, I say. My companion is agreed - movies are better in English, which he's working on learning. It's just to hard for me to speak pure English with him though, so that makes it harder for him.

Also we ate some Rosca de Reyes last night.  I pulled out one of the many muñequitos. (Tiny plastic baby baked in a sweet bread--whoever finds it in their piece gets to host next year's New Year's party!) Luckily, the Bishop and his family understand - and to be honest, I don't think they really hold to that tradition too strongly.

Well, that's that for this week. Atlacomulco is now a much smaller area, and we've got just as much work to do - but over a smaller area, which makes it easier.

Thanks for all your support and I hope all of you can have a good 2014! This year's going to be great!

Elder Newman.

¡Feliz año!‏

Well, Christmas went better than I'd expected. On Christmas Eve, we were allowed to watch "Rise of the Guardians" and "Monsters BYU" I mean "Monsters University." While I was watching the first, I was paying a little bit more attention to the animation than the movie itself, and I was thinking, "Oh, I gotta be a part of this!" Later, during Monsters, I couldn't help but notice how good everything looked there as well. Pixar's animation has improved greatly. Unfortunately, nobody wanted to talk about the animation afterwards, just the movies. Lame.

I'm pretty sure my decision to be an animator can't be changed anymore. It hasn't been changed in over a year, so that's a pretty good sign.

I'm glad you enjoyed the Skype call, Mom! About the pencils, I FINALLY FOUND THEM! A little expensive, yes, but probably cheaper than sending them in mail. By that, I mean if you want to send me more pencils, you can - I have 6B, 4B, 2B, HB, 2H, 4H, and 6H. So if it's not any of those pencils, I will more than gladly accept them.

Anyways... the pueblo was absolutely dead on Christmas and the 26, too. There was nobody in the streets, and it took us forever to find a taxi to take us back home at night. So I'm expecting New Year's to be pretty much the same. And it helps to know that the stuff in the journal was forgettable - it means I probably didn't miss anything. I hope y'all enjoyed your time with Jacob - I'm  sure he's realized, just like I did, just how valuable the time with the family is and how rare it becomes after we reach that point in life.

Anyways, about the things I've been doing recently.

Last night, was pretty good.

We'd had an appointment with a less active family in a small town a little far from Atlacomulco. We got into the Taxi, and the guy tried to help us find their street, but in the end, we couldn't find it. going off of what someone else had said, he dropped us off at an elementary school. As Elder Riveros and I began to try to figure out how to get to their house, the taxista backed up and signalled for us to come over.

"I was curious of where it was, so then I went looking for it and found it. Hop in! I'll take you over there." So he did and he dropped us off at the street. We found her apartment, knocked the door, got in, and then the family gathered together.

Then we taught the lesson to the less active family. Being the first time we'd found them (the sister was very nice in guiding us to her house - no trickery nor any of that! She also didn't turn us away, say she didn't want anythign to do with the church, didn't say she was still Catholic, and all sorts of other helpful things), Elder Riveros and I decided to teach them lesson one. so, we did.

At first, I felt like we'd been rushing it - or perhaps better said, messing it up. We briefly explained the first three principles, then explained the earthly ministry of the Savior a little bit more detailed. We then reched the Great Apostasy, and we spent more time on it than normal, explaining how God had known it was to happen and how things had been corrupted and changed and that the reformers tried to fix it all up, but without the guidance of God, they only managed to cause more confusion, especially in the United States. We then threw in a short video of the Restoration.

The video itself was very powerful, but even more powerful were the questions we made afterwards.

We asked the Mother how she'd felt, and told us that the part about the Great Apostasy really impacted her. She hadn't remembered all the details nor that all that stuff had happened - nor that God wasn't surprised about the Apostasy at all, and that even in the old testament they'd known it was going to happen. I was surprised - I thought we'd spent too long explaining that.

We then asked her older daughter how she'd felt during the video. She said that she'd felt like she was in Joseph Smith's position - she too, was very confused about religion. She wasn't sure which was the truth, since her father is from one relgion and her relatives on her Mom's side are from another. I could tell that she was seriously confused and concerned about the subject. I quickly opened to Moroni 10:3-5 (for those of you who might not know what it says there, you can find it online at lds.org) and read her the verses. I then bore my testimony, that I know that God will answer our questions about the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon, because I too have done so. I've asked God as well to receive my own personal witness if the Book of Mormon is the truth, and he has told me unmistakably "Yes." I then promised to each and every person in that room that they too can know - they just need to kneel and pray to God and ask him if it really is true. I then felt the Spirit touch me, and I felt my own conviction in my testimony. It was fantastic.

We then noticed it was almost 9:00, so we wrapped things up and headed out. As we were walking to find a taxi to take us back to Atlacomulco, a taxi stopped nearby. The driver was the same driver that had taken us over to that part of town, so we hopped in. Since it was the third time we'd crossed paths, I contacted him (something I should've done the first time we crossed paths). I'm positive God has something planned for him, otherwise we would't have found him not just twice, but three times.

Anyways, I've got to go, but I'm not saying goodbye - I'm just waiting until the next time! (Something one of our investigators always says.)

Thanks for all your support,

Elder Newman

I Was Going to Send Something...

... a video of me, my companion, and one of the Elders in my District playing-singing "O Holy Night" at the Christmas conference we had on my Birthday, but then G-Mail was like "BOO YOU! IT EXCEEDS 25 MB!"

I then promptly responded "OK" because that was the only option available to me.

The reason why it's so special is because I was playing the violin. Not Lindsey Sterling level, but more like "20-year-old that practiced about 3 days after not playing the violin for about 5 years more or less" level. Which is actually semi-decent - good enough that the missionaries were shouting "AGAIN!"

That all came about because I told the President in my interview with him that I would like to play a special number with my companion in the Ward, then he asked if I could play, I said yes, and then I asked if we could play in the conference, he said yes and gave me permission to play during the week. I then arranged with one of the members in the ward to let me borrow his violin - which is amazing that anyone in the ward even has a violin. We got it tuned up, I practiced, and then I played only 3-ish sour notes in the performance! So that was fun. I really enjoyed being able to perform with the violin again, and if we have time, I'm going to go play it again today. And on Christmas. And every P-Day while I'm still in Atlacomulco. Really, it was a miracle that the song came out as well as it did.

Anyways, because I can't give you the video, here's a cool little Christmas card I drew today:

I can't cursive. But yeah, there's a ton of symbolism in the Star of Christmas.

Well... That's about it for this week. Tomorrow we get to watch movies with the rest of the missionaries - Monsters University, I've been told, and another one which I'm not sure about. So that'll be really weird to watch while as a Missionary.

Yeah, and about that Christmas package...

The postal system got into it, regardless of the double last name and "lic." that Dad always throws on there. Next step: throw on pictures of the Virgin of Guadalupe. You can find it online.

BUT DO NOT FEAR NOT ALL WAS LOST! I got my journal (they ripped out the note that you'd written in it...), the CD, the mini Book of Mormon, and I think that's all there was. The drawing supplies - gone. And if you sent a mini PME that's gone too. (Family photo album was also stolen.)

BUT THAT'S OKAY BECAUSE HEAVENSONG IS A FANTASTIC ALBUM! :D I'd just like to know what the note said...

Well, that's about it. Thanks for all your support, prayers, and other things you may or may not do for me.

¡Que cada uno de ustedes tengan una gran Navidad! (May each of you have a great Christmas!)

Elder Newman

P.S. Proof I played the violin:

Well That Was Fun

Small towns that we visit frequently: 2, really. Acambay and Santiago Acutzilapan. They're both about 40 minutes away from Atlacomulco, and there are other pueblos that we visit on occasion. Well, Santiago Acutzilapan we don't visit that much, really. We spend most of our time in Atlaco and Acambay. 

Typical day:

6:30 wake up, do exercise, chower, make breakfast.

8:00 Personal study. Right now, I spend half an hour reading Preach my Gospel and the other half hour reading the Book of Mormon.

9:00 Companioniship study. We study things that we feel we can improve on as a companionship, share what we learned, and read the missionary manual. We also plan lessons and important things.

10:00 Language study. I help my companion learn English while I try to find something new about Spanish. Kinda hard.

10:30 Out to work. We typically don't have any appointments in the morning, so this is when we go look for where people live, draw in the downtown, and get other necessary tasks done.

2:00 is when we eat for an hour. Lately it's been caldo de pollo. Getting kinda tired of it, but that's okay.

Then it's the afternoon, when we typically have all our appointments and all the visits that are fixed.

During the whole day, whenever we're on buses and taxis going from one place to another, we try to contact the driver or the passengers to try and get some more investigators. During the day, we visit everyone, from members to less active members to investigators.

9:00 we go home, plan, and get ready for bed, and by

10:30, I like to be in bed, trying to sleep.

And that's my day!

Also, I might be able to play the vioplin today, if we've got time (I sure hope so).

Anyways, Acambay is doing... okay. The family home evenings are helping, but the people's Catholic roots go suuuuuper deep. When the members first moved to Acambay, in fact, the people there caused a lot of problems for them just for not being Catholic. Pretty scary stuff, in fact, but it's calmed down quite a bit - the Lord blessed them a ton with their agriculture, and now the people go to them to buy some things. One family grows tomatoes there, something all the locals had said was impossible. They got a little bit of respect for that. So yeah, I'm thinking it may be a couple months.

Anyways, in regards to things out here, we've got a baptism planned for the same day when we've got a special Christmas conference and my BIRTHDAY! :D :D :D :D :D :D :D His name's Mario; he's about 80 or something like that. He loves everything about the Church, and he's trying to get his family members to join in on the fun, too!

I've got less than a week left of being a teenager! ...FINALLY. Man, that was tough, but hey, on to the next level, right? How much harder can level 20 be than level 19? Or 13? (Watch me eat my words - also, for those who don't know, I complete on the 20th)(Lol spanish)

But now I don't have time I just wanted to share the good news and now I bid y'all farewell

Farewell

Elder Newman

Dec. 9, 2013

Interesting thing... I'm starting to feel the "cold" of México. And I don't like that, because up in Idaho, y'all would be wearing shorts in this weather, as the members give it hard to me for not putting on a cold-weather coat and I'm like "THIS ISN'T COLD C'MON PEOPLE!" and then I'm like, "Fine, I'll put on my coat BUT ONLY SO YOU'LL STOP PLANCHING (bugging) ME." So then I started putting on my light coat and now the members are saying I need to cover my mouth so the cold air doesn't do me any damage.

NAH BRO. IF I CAN'T SEE MY BREATH, I DON'T NEED TO THINK ABOUT PUTTING ON ANYTHING LIKE THAT. *le sigh*

Anyways, in other news, I got two packages last week! The one with the Ensign and the Christmas package. And I loved them both! Continue to love, in fact. The gummy worms, however, didn't even last an hour and I'm striving to save the Reese's for Christmas. Let's see how long I hold up. Also, I absolutely love the CD. It sounds amazing, and I can't wait to make those Peanut Butter Cookies.

I saw the Christmas Devotional - how beautiful it was! I loved the parts where Elder Nelson was surrounded by the children and they were singing. An investigator we had there, named Mario, was enchanted by the broadcast as well. I love all the people we're working with out here in Atlaco - they're all so kind and loving, and they all have a strong testimony. Mario's going to get baptized soon, and he's already planning on bringing all his family to church as well.

We're beginning to see a lot of work in a pueblo called Acambay, so I'm happy for that. Elder Riveros and I have a goal of seeing a Branch put in over there, but in order to do that, we need to break the false tradition of nobody ever beeing baptized in that Pueblo - all the members over there were baptized in other parts of the country  - or the United States. But that's okay - we've got everything set up to see the growth of the Lord's kingdom over there, and we're setting up even more!

Thanks for all your support, love, and care! Enjoy that magical white powder for me! I miss the stuff!

Merry Christmas!