Baptism, Sickness & Christmas

Don´t worry about it. It was a lot of fun to hear you guys too. On mothers day I think the reception will be better if we did it night on mother´s day. I miss you guys a lot

I totally forgot to mention that the day before christmas we had a baptism! So here are some pics! 9 year old Sebastian Calderon he is from a part member family, the dad isnt a member but he was so excited to get baptized.

The night before the mission our ward mission leader went to fill up the ba`ptismal font and he overfilled it and flooded the chapel. hahahahaha so we went early and cleaned the whole chapel up for about 2 hours and refilled the font. When the Calderon family arrived we couldn´t find any baptismal clothing for a 9 year old. finally after a half hour of looking we found some small white pants and heis grandma brought a white shirt. so an hour a nd a half late we start the service and it went smoothly

Christmas was nice to call and hear everyone, but after that we went out to work which wasnt all that cool. Nobody wanted to talk with us. blech. whatevs we were obedient and we will be blessed for it.

Sunday was tough to get people to come to church. we only had 2 investigators show up. and to make it even worse the Calderon family had some problems in the morning and couldn´t make it to sacrament meeting. ARGH!!! His mom is a returned missionary and so is his uncle, and they couldn´t even make it to the sacrament meeting!!!!! So we will just have to confirm him next week.

oh yeah and before all that stuff I was sick in bed tuesday, wednesday and thursday which really sucked but at least now I´m like ready to go to work full time and I feel really healthy. My pensionist is now giving me what she is calling a "bland diet" which means, rice, potatoes and chicken and pretty much nothing else. its a good thing I like bland food right!

Did you get the letters yet?

I got a package from Grandma Judy just now so send her my thanks for the treats. and the powdered gatorade, that made me really happy.

Love

Elder Patrik Connole

Christmastime

Hey thanks for the pics. And thanks to Dad for the sports updates! Oh man my mind is going for a loop right now!

Ok...back to the missionary world.

This week we had our christmas devotional with the president. It was pretty fun because we had 3 zones there, one of which was my old one so I got to see my whole old zone and talk with them for a bit.

Oh it was kinda funny because the President gave us permission to go home for Christmas and we all we like wha? really??? then he was like "in your minds!" haha. But then I realized that I couldn´t do that because I don´t even know what my home really looks like...lol oh well I guess thats just how it goes.

My zone was in charge of giving a presentation of the birth of Christ according to the Bible while Selva Alegre was in charge of the presentation of the birth of Christ in the BOM. They both went over really well. A greenie elder was assigned to be the Angel Gabriel but at the last moment he flaked out and handed it to me like a day before. I made a valient effort to memorize all the lines and I almost pulled it off but I I totally blanked on one part. Haha. But it turned out really good, at the end we had everyone sing Joy to the World (Regocijad Jesus Nació). In Spanish the first verse "al recibir al rey" which means "to recieve the king" instead of "repeat the sounding joy" so we had King Herod come out and throw a tantrum shouting "But I´m the king!" hahaha

This week my comp and I gave the talks in sacrament meeting. Elder Muñoz talked about the importance of good traditions and related it to missionary work and I talked about how we have the new message of "good tidings of great joy which shall be unto all people" and that like the shepherds of old we too can go out and tell everyone that Christ really worked miracles, that He suffered and died for us, that He was resurrected on the 3rd day, and that today He is guiding His restored church through a living prophet.

It was a good day to talk about all that too because we had 6 investigators at church. One whose wife is a member and so are his kids and he has been going to church for 17 years and is too scared of change to get baptized. With another her husband is a member but she doesn´t want us to visit her until January. One is our baptism for friday, Sebastian Calderon, he is 9 years old and soooo excited for his baptism. His mom is a member, RM but the Dad (from Japan) is not a member and nor does he want to be. another one is a kid who lives in the room right next to us but he is going home soon and is recovering from an injury he suffered while working in the mines, and the last 2 are part of the family that own the house. The dad and the son who went to the stake conference. Really, really cool family we are hoping they all get baptized here pretty quick

Well times up...

TALK TO YOU AT CHRISTMAS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Love

Elder Patrik Connole

Progress

Hey all

so this week we had 3 investigators and half of a way inactiv family come to stake conference. It was a very very good stake conference so the 2 families and a couple others (who were practicing with the stake choir and yet didn´t show! ARGGHHH!!) really missed out. The whole stake presidency and President Fernandez spoke. President gave an excellent talk on how there are so many things that are just simply distracting young men from going on a mission that they are having trouble gettign them out. He talked a lot about how the mission is meant to learn how to follow the spirit and I can testify to that.
Just being here and trying to figure out what the Lord´s will for me and for all his sons and daughters here is tough work but it is so worth it.

We´ve been working with a 10 year old kid and we just got permission to baptize him so it should be this week or the next. He is a reallly smart kid but I think he has like adhd or something because he can´t sit still for 2 seconds. But he asks very profound questions and really understands the concepts well when we can actually get through to him. But he has been waiting 2 years to get baptized so now he is so excited that he will be able to do it.

Another guy that came to church is Jan Carlos. His parents are our landlords and he actually lives one floor below us. Way cool guy and he loved the stake conference and said he is for sure going again next week and will try to talk his family into going as well. We have him booked to get baptized the 24th and tonight we are going to share the video "together forever" with all of the fam.

We went out with our Ward Mission Leader to go visit some people (non of whom were home of course) and as we were returning to his house the whole neighborhood was out on the rooftops and in the street yelling something. Paul (the WML) all of sudden just tells us to turn around and walk away. I had no idea what was happening, but apparently Paul´s next door neighbor was in the process of getting robbed in broad daylight, but got caught mid robbery and some how escaped. I guess this has been a fairly common occurence in our area which might explain why people are so hesitant to open their door to us.

This last week we attempted to make an effort to contact more than we usually do but what really ended up happening was that the Lord blessed us with more lessons than contacts (36-34) haha.

We have 2 couples that we are also teaching now where either the husband or the wife is a member but they aren´t married. One of these couples wants to get married and baptized asap but can´t get everything together to get married. The other couple could get married at any moment but doesn´t want to get married until March for some reason. (they say its so they can invite all the family but we sense that this is just the tip of the iceberg) They are really really good people but they just lack a sense of urgency. Actually thats quite common in latino culture so why am I so confuzzled? Bah. And both couples arent coming to church regurarly either becuase of work. But I guess will just keep working with em for a bit longer so that they can live the restored gospel even better in their lives.

Love ya

Elder Patrik Connole

Getting Underway

Yes I bruised myself again because we were playing basketball and here in peru all the basketball hoops are a combo goal and hoop deal. so I was following my guy as he was driving to the hoop and I overran and hit a post leaving me with a dead arm all the rest of day and nice bruise for a couple weeks.

What I meant was that after spending all day at the mission house without having any sort of room, we decided to go rent a house where the people are not members. Its a little interesting because they don´t understand all the rules or anything. They often find our schedule rather strange and they always have a bunch of wordly distractions going on. Almost everyday when we go out to proselyte after studying they are playing american music which I just can´t help but enjoy a little bit.

No I didn´t do anything at all to celebrate thanksgiving. LIke I hardly even remebered that it was thanksgiving. dang it.,,We were just so busy trying to get everything jumpstarted so that we can start having some success. So yeah. And the ZLs are being slow with the letters again so I´m sorry but thats just how it goes here sometimes.

Let Mormor know I got a package from her. With everything in it.

Hey how long does it normally take for the letters to get to you. From what I can gather it seems about a week and half to 2 weeks right?

Thanks for the pics! Sean is sooo tall!! and Wynter and Aidan are cute little bugs. I wasn´t able to listen to the audio, but i´m sure it was great.

And Idk about the mp3 I totally didn´t bring the cord for it haha. And the only things we are allowed to listen to are Motab and Hymns. Heck even then we can only listen on p-days. The president has gone kinda nutso becuase we aren´t baptizing like he has been wanting. 82 baptisms in november is not a lot for 164 missionaries. So he has been taking away a lot of stuff. We can´t get together to eat lunch on pday, we cant leave our zone. we cant do anything remotely entertaining other than soccer or volleyball (aka no go karts, rock climbing, sight seeing etc). So those of us who have been working hard and seeing the results because of it are really quite frustrated with those that aren´t

This week was once agian spent looking. Looking for members, investigators, less actives and leadership. We have been getting a lot of support from the members, (aka 6 references!!!!!) so we are very grateful for that and we had 3 investigators at church! Pretty exciting for only having been here for a couple weeks. Our main problem here is that right now everyone that we could be teaching are either crammed at work because its almost holiday season or they are crammed at school with exams or their kids are crammed at school with exams...ugh. Nobody has time!!!

Whatever I´ll just keep working, we have a few prospects that could get baptized here in a couple week and some of the references we´ve gotten have very good potential. We also are very excited that this ward is a lot more involved than other wards we have seen. They are willing to go to appointments with us, go on splits, go get people that want to come to church and actually have plans to get this area going. We are hoping by the end of this transfer we will be going good. The ward is chock full of RMs and tons of RS and quite a few young guys that are preparing to go.

Anyways enjoy the christmas season, I really miss the family traditions but I´m here doing the Lords work and very quickly I´ll be back!

Love you

Elder Patrik Connole

All is Well

So yeah. Opening an area is not exactly the funnest thing in the world. I´m still in Arequipa but I´m now in Puerta Verde in the Center Stake (Estaca Central) and basically I´m in one of the richest areas here. Most of the houses have intercoms and there are several gated communities. The members fortunately are willing to help out so hopefully we can pump them for references. Our Mission Leader is the bomb so yeah we are gonna just go to work

Monday since I didn´t have a comp, or an area, or a pension or anything lol so I chilled with my old zone until they figured out what do do with me. Haha. Tuesday was spent in trio all day and Wednesday I went to go get my newbie. There they informed me that I still didn´t have a room or anything so my comp and I went the assitants to find one. We searched for like 3 hours and couldn´t find anything within our price range. blah. So we went and chilled in the mission house until we figured out what to do. It was great! ate good food, played ping pong, played with his 4 year old son but I´m pretty sure my comp was very confused. After that we just decided to go to one of the rooms that was a little more expensive than what we wanted but cheap enough that it was alright. They aren´t members so now we are teaching them and wow they are awesome, they have a lot of questions but they are awesome.

Anyways by the time we got everything into the room ( we showed up with 8 elders plus the prez) it was about 8:30 at night and by the time we got everything into the room it was about 9:15. And then the president takes us all out to eat lol, at 9:30 at night hahaha, we got back to the room at about 10:20 and we unpacked stuff and put it into place until 11:30 or so. Totally breaking rules left and right but we had the president with us so I think it was alright. lol

So other than that we´ve just been trying to figure out where we are and where the members are and what not.

Elder Lowe called me and said that 2 of the kids we had been teaching got baptized on saturday one kid (bruno) we just barely met like 3 weeks ago and the other was Fabricio that just need to come to church and he would be good to go. and they should have a couple more coming up. Just gotta do the same here now

Love ya!

Elder Patrik Connole

Baptisms & Blessings

Elder Lowe's b-day, with Pension.
The sign
Oh yes! hehehe
Elder Connole, Liz, Elder Lowe
American Cake

I am thankful for,,,baptisms, good companions, the spirit being with me, any and all packages or letters that I recieve, anything that is remotely american, go karts, rock climbing, Predicad Mi Evangelio, el Libro de Mormon, escogidos, salchipapas, arroz verde, lomo saltado, family, and just being here on the mission

Anyways man what a crazy week. Wed, thurs, fri I was at a leadership training meeting from 8 am to 4 pm. Talk about spirtual and information overload! Anyways they told me that I am going to train again (a Latino) and that I am going to go re-open an area. I wasn´t very happy to hear that at first because I would have liked staying here in Villa Hermosa over Christmas and because we have a ton of upcoming baptisms this week and the next and the next. And now I have to go start from scratch. But im alright now because I realize that this is part of God´s plan and he has people preparing to meet me there and I will get to apply everything I just learned at the training thing right from the start. Right now I don´t have a comp because he wont get here until wed. heck I don´t even have a room or anything. so Im just waiting for the assistants to call me and tell me what to do. right now im still with elder lowe and his new comp so we are in a trio...So i don´t know what i´ll be doing for the next couple days..

But we did have a baptism on saturday of Liz! woo! We literally saw miracles happen with her. At first like 4 weeks ago her dad didn´t even want to give her permission to go to church (she is 17) but after praying and fasting he changed his mind completely. Then after she passed her interview on thursday he didn´t want to sign the baptismal record...more prayer...saturday morning we went up early to see if we could talk her dad into signing the darn thing and turns out that Liz had gotten him to sign it! So we looked at it and...he signed the wrong one! so we said a prayer and went to fill the font. Came back and it was all good.

The baptism went great, E. Lowe did it and I did the confirmation on sunday. sunday was nuts we had 12 investigators plus a couple less actives we´ve been working with go to church in all we had 146 people at church! a record! We had 15 people in our Gospel Principles class and its just going so good. I hope E. Lowe´s new comp is grateful for the 5 baptisms he will be having this week. Gah! 5! That is almost as many as I have had in my whole mission! But you know it its alright Im gonna just go to work and i´ll be having some baptisms in the next couple weeks or so.

Good News and Bad News (But Actually a Blessing)

Karlo

Walter
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Christmas items that would be very useful umm...socks are a bit of a need... several of them have holes. a deck of cards for boring pdays haha, ties are always a good option.The only things you shouldnt send would be perishable items or anything that would cost a lot. The packages have to be under $100 (i would suggest leaving it well under $100) because otherwise I have to pay like $80 in taxes just to get it....yah you´d be better off sending two small packages than one big one becuase big ones take forever to get here. My comp just got a halloween package that was fairly large about a week ago. So smaller is defintely better, and if you just say on the little declarations thing that its gifts or missionary supplies it gets through a lot better. And if you you put all around the package "Regalos" (gifts) it also should get through better I´m running low on contact solution but I have been looking for it here because I know it would be kinda hard to send off. If you are gonna send me a Christmas package I would suggest sending it off as soon as you can if you want me to get it on time becaus the office will be swamped around christmas becuase every elder is gonna get something and they can only receive a certain amount of packages at a time because of the dumb local laws here.

This saturday we one for sure for sure baptism and 1 other young girl that could get baptized. The fore sure bbaptism is a reference from the EQP, his wife´s cousin and they are all just way pumped with everything that we are doing for them. Her name is Liz she´s 17, loves to sing (we are gonna buy her a motab cd) and she is probably the maturest 17 year old that I have ever met. When we first met her we thought she was older than us haha. Anyways she got permission from her dad and everything so we are excited

The other is 20 year old Sandra who about 3 weeks ago just decided to come to church and then came the next week but she didn´t come yesterday so we have to find her and see what happened

Our apt flooded this week. Peru has a very bad habit of randomly shutting off the water and electricity all over the city. anyways they shut it off all day and apparently the pressure built up so much in our tubes that our poor broken sink just exploded. Unfortunately we were out proselyting so we came home to a river flowing out of our room. So that took about 2 or 3 hours to clean up but we have decided it was a blessing in disguise because our room is now very clean haha.

We also got called devils this week by a 7th day adventist. well kinda. he called the BOM diabolical so pretty close.

I´m gonna attempt to send pics. My camera has decided to stop working so I´m borrowing elder lowe´s

Love ya

Elder Connole

Swede in Peru! :)

So this week we should be having 2 baptisms. One of the kids we were gonna baptize this week didnt show up to church so we have to wait until next week.

Man we are sooooo busy all the time, like we are literally running from apt to apt and dont have any time to contact people. but we are teaching a whole bunch so that is the good part.

And the other bad part is that because we are doing so much stuff and the weeks are passing by so fast I cant even remember what we did all week. And at nights I hardly even have time to journal so its tough to remember anything at all.

Thursday was my companions birthday so he got a bunch of gifts and stuff, but nobody threw eggs or flour at him all week...boring haha. But friday we got together as a zone to celebrate and we ordered pizza delivery. The darn pizza took 2 hours to get to the house and by that time we were starving, like all of us and so we shoved the pizza down as fast as we could and rushed off to our apts. The only reason why we even stuck around for so long was because one of the American elders mom had sent him root beer extract and so we made that. It tasted sooooooo good! Its really sad that root beer doesnt exist hereand just to be able to try it after so long was awesome. (btw if you find root beer extract and send it to me I will be extremely happy)

Saturday we went with a member couple to go visit on of their friends and wow, what a factory product catholic she turned out to be. We tried explaining her about the importance of prophets but she was just like "but prophets are men, why do we need to depend on men when we have God?" And she was a very very firm believer in the orginal sin. The member couple has like a 4 month old boy and so we asked her if she believed that this tiny little gift from God had sins, and she was very firm in her opinion that he most certaintly did. Most people when we use that example agree that very young children dont have the capacity to sin. Ugh, heck we couldnt even get her to commit to pray about our message. All in all it was not a very fun expierence. I really hope that the members that we went with dont get discouraged and not want to present us to other friends of theirs. We told them that no effort is wasted and that it doesnt matter want the result is the important part is to open your mouth and preach the restored gospel.

Speakin of which on thursday we will be having an even that we are calling Bocas Abiertas, (translation Open Mouths) which basically consists of us and our ward missionaries teaching the members how to open their mouths and talk with their friends, and how they can help us in missionary work and how they can help us teach while we are with them. Then we will open our mouths and stuff it with food hehe, that will be the fun part

Anyways Im out of time and I will send pictures next of the baptisms!,

Love

Elder Patrik Connole


Nov. 8

So Bocas Abiertas failed miserably, everyone told us that they could make it and that they would be there, but in the end only 2 people showed up on time and about 15 came in total. Ugh. I don´t get it.

But there has been a lot of big news this week, as in 2 baptisms! woo! One was Walter Flores, a 16 year old kid that we met about 3 weeks ago and he gave a dang solid testimony about how he knew how he had just entered onto the path and that it is straight and narrow but with God´s help he will be able to enter into the kingdom of God. Heck it made his nonmember mother cry. I baptized him and it was a very special feeling througout the whole thingHe is way cool and will be one of 2 active priests in the ward.

Oh yeah speaking of which, the ward and the branch we are in charge of just got combined into 1 ward. The stake presidency felt like that this was the best way to help both areas progress and I totally agree. The branch barely had enough worthy priesthood holders to manage and the ward really only had about 40 or 50 people who go to church on a regular basis. So in both the ward and the branch they had like young kids my age running YM and YW, nobody except the Bishop or Branch Prez had counselors, so it was just a big mess. But now we have real leadership and everything is going to work out soooo much better.

The other baptism was Karlo and he actually lives in another area but we got permission from President Fernandez to teach, baptize and confirm him. He is the 'boyfriend' of the branch president´s daughter so we had a really good support system already built in. He got baptized early sunday morning and was confirmed the same day. I was able to confirm him.

And during all these baptisms and ward changes we were fasting so that just made it even more spirtually uplifting and awesome. Elder Lowe and I throughout the whole 24 hours had a very spirtual feeling, very similiar to what you feel while you are in the temple. There was no hunger nor were we even slightly preoccupied for our physical needs the entire time. We were seriously on a whole different level of spirtuality.

Oh yeah on Monday it was kinda funny because we went to go rock climbing again and this dude from Sweden who is here doing volunteer work came in. And so after a bit we started talking and so obviously I was able to share a little bit of my swedish background and some of the phrases I knew, and he told me that he thought for sure when he first saw me that I was a fellw Swede, hahaha I guess I can´t escape my heritage. Anyways so I gave him and his American friend from Michigan, a couple of pamphlets and directed them to www.mormon.org. They hadn´t ever heard of the Church and so they said that they would check it out.

Saturday night we were teaching a mom and daughter and the the daughter, Sandra is really progressing quickly and should be baptized the 20th, anyways we started the lesson at about 8:40 or so and we were planning on teaching until about 9:10 or so so that we could get home before our 9:30 absolute deadline. Unfortunately they had a lot of questions and the member who was with us is quite a chatterbox so at 9:28 we said the prayer and we told the member, ok now we have to run!!!!!!!!!!!!! and so we sprinted the 6 blocks back to the room and got in at like 9:33. oops...

This morning it was pretty cool because the stake president called us up to thank us for the work that we have been doing. I was in the middle of changing so I made E. Lowe answer it and so I´m sure Presidente Hale actually said a lot more but he didn´t actually get it all haha

times up!

Love you!

Elder Patrik Connole

Baptizing Karen!

Wow. What a great baptism and confirmation. We seriously witnessed miracles this week. I baptized her and we did it at like 7:00 at night so like it was freeeeezing because our font is outside and it does not have a heater. But honestly I didn´t even feel the cold all that much because of how strong the Spirit was. It was cold enough that I stumbled over her name several times but everything went extremely well. She gave a very good testimony afterwards. I know that the Holy Spirit of Promise was present at the baptism.

Sunday we had her confirmation. Church starts at 8 so we got there right on time with a 9 year old girl and her younger sister of a family that we are teaching then we head off to another kid that wants to be baptized the 6th. about 8:15 or so church actually gets started and right when were about to close the door Karen and her mom show up, phew. Then when we get up to go do the confirmation, 3 more investigators show up. My companion acutally got to do the confirmation like on the spot it was kinda funny because the Stake Presidency was there and the Bishop had to whisper to him the words he needed to say, but after he got through that he gave an amazing blessing that I know that he wasn´t speaking for himself because he doesn´t even remeber what he said and spoke fluent spanish.
But more than anything I felt and all the others felt the Spirit just feel the room so strongly.

Afterwards Karen bore her testimony and it was awesome! When we went to lunch, (our pension is the 2nd counselor in the stake presidency) our pension said that they had never heard or felt such a strong testimony from a brand new member. The whole experience after 4 months or so of working with her, after so many setbacks, we finally made it to our goal. Now we have to work with her family. Her mom is funny.
She says that she knows the church is true and that she feels the spirit strongly in everything that we do, but "I´m Catholic and I´m not ready to change my religion nor do I think I can" AGHHH! So frustrating!

Anyways I´m out of time, but I love you all and thanks for your prayers!

Elder Patrik Connole

Woot, Woot!

KAREN PASSED HER BAPTISMAL INTERVIEW AND WILL BE BAPTIZED ON WEDNESDAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! If you can´t tell i´m kinda excited about it!!!!!

Turns out that the two elders who "interviewed" her really didn´t ever interview her. They just talked with her about who knows what for 3 hours or so. Finally our Zone Leader E. Novoa, just asked her all the questions and gave her a blessing of comfort which they both felt the spirit very strongly. Karen will also talk to the bishop tomorrow to finish off any doubts that she has. Today we are going to go buy her a huge picture of Christ to give her as a gift for her baptism. So yeah we are waaaaayyyy excited for her.

E. Lowe and I went on splits this week one time and he went off to go teach a new family that we´ve been working with and he found the 16 year old kid that hadn´t been with the family all that much, Walter, because he plays basketball for a club team and he is preparing to go to college. But anyways E. Lowe taught he the Restoration and gave a him a BOM and who shows up sunday at church? WALTER! And with his MOM! woot! They were a little late so they missed the sacrament but they loved everything else. Walter is going to practice with the YM and YW for a traditional dance that they will be doing and he is so excited to learn about everything. The rest of the family is a bit standoffish because they are super busy with studying and work and what not. but with little bit of time they´ll come around. The 17 year old kid is really busy because he is in the middle of finals so we have been teaching him in 5 minute lessons. Kinda interesting but its really fun. At first he got mad at us because we kept coming to teach him for the appointments we had with him but then we showed him how we were willing to change our way of teaching so that he could still do both of them. After a bit of explaining he said "well I guess I can listen to you...but I can´t go to church yet because I have classes on sunday..." Stupid university. Grr. But he should be start up a new semester in like 3 weeks are something so he can tweak his schedule a bit so that he can go to church.

Also kind of interesting the mom of the branch primary president has come to church the last two weeks without us even saying anything but we just haven´t been able to find her during the week to teach her! and right after sacrament she books it back home lol. But we got an apt. set up and we will pass by for her I think it should be fairly easy because she also has a son serving a mission in mexico, so just have to get her to feel the spirit by reading the Book Of Mormon. Every time people read the BOM they feel the spirit and 90% of the time they get baptized. When I get home I think I´ll be a little more diligent in trying to get my non-lds friends reading it. Missionaries LOVE references because they already have a built in resource to bring them to church, someone that they trust and what not. For example we started teaching the semi-boyfriend of the branch president´s daughter who unfortunately lives in another area and we just passed him over to the the other elders, but he is going to be baptized without any problems at all. Like we´ve had 2 apts and he already knows that it is all true.

Keep working hard and do what the spirit and the prophets say and I know that the Lord will be directing your paths and molding you to become who he wants you to be, just like I know he is doing with me right now.

Love,

Elder Patrik Connole

Week of October 11

So we watched conferance again this week, but this time in english so we both got a lot more out of it. I´m pretty sure this was one of the best conferences I´ve seen. I think it may have just been because I have the Spirit a lot more with me and we were in a room full of missionaries but honestly I learned a ton of stuff. The Priesthood session was awesome! Absolutely awesome and the MTC choir was soooo cool!

So something that I´d want would be like a box of licorice if at all possible. That doesn´t exist here either.

Thank dad for the sports updates me and the gringos were very excited to get them lol, and thanks for the pics, the kids are getting so much bigger!

Anyways this week it was extremely crazy. We started a new way of our weekly planning as a zone and it took about 3 and 1/2 hours instead of 2 hours to do. But it was really good because we were able to plan in a lot more specific and personal way for every investigator that we feel like will be baptized these upcoming weeks.

Speaking of people being baptized we had another baptismal interview for Karen and she was in there for 3 hours and...nothing! Argh! She keeps telling us that she knows its true and that she loves the church, she comes to Sacrament meeting every week and has read 1st Nephi through almost the end of Alma in the BOM. I just really don´t understand what her problem is. She is soooooo ready to be baptized just has to take the step of faith and be dunked! Argh! We´ve planned another interview with the Zone Leaders for this week because she really felt the spirit strongly at General Conference. Her mom was also there and felt good, we think that if we can get the mom excited about being baptized that they will both do it without any problems so we are gonna pass by every day and read the Book of Mormon until she really gets a testimony of it.

We also had something random happen, we happened to pass by during the week in the street by a former investigator and we invited him to the conference without thinking much about it, and HE CAME!! so crazy, we are gonna give him a call today or tomorrow to get him on track to being baptized because he escaped before we had a chance to talk to him lol.

Saturday we ate Domino´s pizza for lunch because we were there as 6 gringos and so we just stayed at the conference center and had it delivered to us. It tasted soooo good! I ate almost a whole box and my comp too. Everyone else was a pansy and could only it like 3 or 4 slices.

We´ve started working with some new families that love the BOM but they have a couple doubts about going to church on sunday because they work from like 7 am to 9 pm every day, (very common here) But we´ll get that resolved asap and good to go.

My comp had a special opportunity to annoint for the very first time in his life, or even take part of a blessing. It was kinda fun because it was obviously in spanish haha. I´m glad I had that expierence of doing it english before my mission than try to do it in spanish.

Anyways I love you all and I´ll be sending off snail mail letters today, Things should start to calm down a bit and get back to missionary standard normal (which is absolutely crazy lol)

Elder Patrik Connole

Stepping Things Up a Notch!

Im not surprised that not having tv is not a big deal because really we never watch tv. we are much more creative than that lol. My only thing (and I´m sure for Dad too) would be the sports. Other than that there are a bajillion other things that we can do.

The table is awesome!

Yesterday was pretty amazing because we went to our pension and did absolutely nothing other than watch conference on a 56 inch screen, eat food and play card games. Way nice to get a break and get energized so that we are ready to go get a working in the Lord´s vineyard once again.

On friday we had an emergency zone conference to teach us how to have baptisms every week and to put us on a 3 week teaching schedule for our investigators so that they get baptized but the key to the whole thing is the Spirit which only comes by prayer, obedience and having a missionary mindset all the time. My comp and I are pretty excited for everything thats is coming at us and we are trying to hit it all with as much young missionary energy as possible to get baptisms every week. That is definitely something you can include in your prayers.

Our mission president when he served has as many as 40 people going to church every week and up to 20 baptisms a week! We know its possible but the problem is that we have never seen it done so we don´t know how to do it. So basically we are walking entirely by faith because honestly I don´t know how I´m gonna be able to have that kind of success but I know its possible.

Lets see what else happened this week...oh yeah we planned a specific day and hour that Karen would be baptized, which will be this Friday, but the next day we had an appointment with her and she was just like "I still don´t feel very sure about it. I believe in the BOM and in Joseph Smith and the Church but I want the type of surity and conviction that I see in you" So I taught her (we were on spilts) about the need she has to really just pray, like really pray, and tomorrow we are going to talk about confidince in her decisions. She´s been kinda stressed out for her finals so I can understand that. But she still went the YSA activity and really enjoyed herself so hopefully everything will go good. At the YSA activity they are practicing a dance and we went to see how Karen was doing and we found her mom there, who always goes to church with her and always is present for the lessons but never reads the BOM so we read it with her right then and there and she committed to reading 3 Nephi 11. It was kinda funny because they brought us a huge thing of fries and hotdogs that we were eating while reading the BOM. ( well me and my comp anyways haha)

So thats all for this week,

Love you all and Im praying for all of you constantly!

Elder Patrik Connole

Baptism Pictures

Maria hugging Dad after baptism.
The whole family.

My comp and my ward mission leader.

So whats up with not having tv? wow. thats lame. But we will be able to watch the conference on sunday only, saturday is just another normal day for us. but still, a day off is a day off.

So we had change of plans and we went through with the baptism on thursday and she got confirmed on sunday! way cool! It was a very cool baptism because she got baptized by her brother and the spirit was very strong she bore her testimony in sacrament meeting and wow it was great. We had a couple other investigators at sacrament meeting one of whom is about ready to get baptized (Karen) and her mom was there and when we asked them how they felt during the confirmation they said that the felt it was true and they felt something special! YES! Progress!

Yesterday it was kinda funny because we were doing our missionary coordination meeting and we told him we put a baptismal date on this one lady that has been listening to the missionaries off and on for like 7 years, we told him that it was easy to get people to commit and he didn´t believe us so he was like, well put one on my mother in law. and after 15 minutes we did so! Haha he was quite amazed.

My new comp, Elder Lowe is from New Mexico, he´s great! really well prepared to teach and everything and he is really excited to be on the mission. He played football in highschool as a running back. And he is the very first missionary in his family so pretty cool.

Training is way different from what i was expecting. When I was getting trained we always did practices and I never understood why, but now I do. They really help. More than anything I have to set the example and show him how to be a good missionary rather than just telling him. I also have to teach him how to teach and contact and work with the members and everything! its a lot of work but its also a lot of fun I really enjoy it. and we are working hard ot get the area back into shape after it kind of fell apart with me not really having a companion or anything.

Anyways I´m doing awesome, learning how to teach by the spirit and lead by example, I´m gonna send some pics of the baptism.

Love ya,

Elder Patrik Connole

Making Things Work

Got both your emails and one from Dad the sisters both said, "aww how cute." lol, of course they did.

This week was pretty crazy trying to do everything myself. cooridinate with the members and with Elder Seminario, ugh I just about died. I was so tired sunday night, and I really have had time to write any letters, so I´m sorry but they will be a week later than I wanted to.

But really all and all I had a fairly good week. I got to almost all of my appointments and thanks to the members we had 6 people at church! 2 families and a young girl that we´ve been teaching her parents. Her parents...ugh I´mnot sure why they didn´t come But i´m gonna pass by tomorrow and see what happened.

I had one girl, Karen go through with her baptismal interview but apparently she still has some doubts about the BOM and Joseph Smith, she told me that she felt good about them both, but then she told Elder Seminario that really she hadn´t read it nor prayed very much. But its alright she still wants to learn and still has a ton of questions so we´ll get to go through with the baptism next month.

Maria (Franco´s sister) is good to go with her baptism, I´m gonna try to get her to change her baptismal date to the 9th of Oct. because if she gets baptized on the 27th of September she is gonna have to wait until the 17th of Oct. to recieve the Holy Ghost.

Oh yeah something interesting here in Peru is taht the elections are the 3rd and 4th, the same time as General Conference but the problem is that the have a law here that you can´t have any type of reunions during elections so we have to wait until the 10th to view GC and we don´t have anything on the 3rd and 4th like at all. So thats why Maria would have to wait until the 17th to get the gift of the Holy Ghost. As missionaries we aren´t gonna do anythingthe 3rd and 4th because the law won´t let us because of the elections. Woot! Free days! haha jk IDK what we are going to do. My pension has the BYU channel so I´m gonna go to their house to watch GC live so that will definitely be nice, and then the next week watch it again, maybe in English but I´m not sure.

Today we are going to go the Mission House and eat lunch with the President (the whole zone) and then from there go play soccer against another zone, except for Seminario and I because we are going to get training...blech. I wanna play soccer haha. But it´ll be good because I have no idea how i´m gonna work with the greenie without somebodfy giving me some ideas of what I should do.

Thanks for the pictures and the prayers. I miss you all and love you all. Keep working at getting the scripture study in because I know its super important to keep the family united.

Love,

Elder Patrik Connole

Companionless

So everybody liked the pics, thanks, they are pretty awesome!

So I am companionless until next wednesday, So I´ve been working with the members and with my DL who is also companionless until then,. But the new companion i´m going to get is gonna be a greenie so I will be training him, ah!!! We´ll see how it goes. It will also be a North American so we´ll see how good his spanish is.

I actually have eaten spaghetti here, they call it tallarín but the sauce they use is way different, its like orangish, but it still tastes good.

I have a ward and a branch, the branch has about 25 or so people that go every sunday, we actually just lost a 19 year old kid afte he comited suicide out of nowhere. Apparently his GF left him, lost his job and was having troubles with non member buddies and parents. So it really hurt a lot because he was friend of mine too.

In the ward there are about 40 or 50 people who go reguarly but they have 600 people on the the roster, so like 550 people are inactive which is really sad, but ufortunately thats the way it works a lot around here.

The weather here is a lot like az and it doesn´t change much. It has gotten a little hotter, but the nights are still chilly and it actually snowed on the mountain tops the other day.

There are actually quite a few sisters in the mission something like 30 of them and about 120 elders,

I´ve gained 4 kilos so like 8 pounds or so but really I don´t feel any difference, te biggest thing I´ve noticed is that everyone thinks I look older, like 23 or so. crap..

We haven´t really gone anywhere else super cool, but in the next couple weeks we are gonna go to a couple turist sights, one place is call the hand of God, which is a tree that has 5 trunks that looks like a hand, my ward mission leader when he served his mission here has pictures of it and it looks pretty cool

I have to see I certainly enjoy the city more, more things to do, And the people here are actually home a lot more because they ae working in the fields all day long. So more people to teach and baptize lol.

I feel fine, this last week was a little bit of a trunkie week because my comp had his bags all packed up and didn´t want to do anything.

On saturday we had a really fun activity where each organization brought a different dessert and the bishopric judged the desserts. The young women won, followed by the young men and then the relief society but it was nice to see the ward repond and bring some references, we got About 5 out of it and about 35 or 40 people showed up.

I almost forgot! We had Elder Christofferson come out and speak to us on tuesday. Wow what an amazing experience! we got to go shake his hand and he reallly helped us get energized and know how to work with our investigators better, with more love and with the spirit.

Love ya, and I wish I had more time to write, but I don´t blech

Elder Patrik Connole

PS I read a Liahona article the other day that said that families should start reading the preach my gospel manual daily with their scripture reading...just a thought

BYU Fan

Here is Elder Connole doing a service project on the day of BYU's first football game of the season. This was his idea of being a true blue fan. lol

Today I had all natural apple pie for breakfast hehe

Thanks to Dad for the amazing sports updates! I´m excited for BYU and the Cards and the Dbacks that everything is getting better! My comp was pretty pumped too, being from AZ and all. Max Hall went to his highschool but he never met him, too young lol.

So Elder Grow and I have been trying really hard to apply what they have been teaching us lately, which is basically find more people and put more baptismal dates. This week we found 25 new people and we put 17 baptismal dates! So in total we have 22 people preparing to be baptized, some are a lot closer than others, ie some need to get married , others go to church, others just need to pray about it, but we are pretty excited about all of it.

We´ve been working with Yason a lot to try to get his grades up and to be more obedient with his parents, but he didn´t come to church on sunday because he just didn´t get ready on time to go so that was kind of a bummer. But we are still going to work with him a lot to get him ready to go.

We have another teenaged girl, I don´t know if Í´ve told you about her. She was Catholic but never really felt like God was there and she has been asking why God just left humanity alone. She also has a bajillion questions some of them weird, some of them good. but basically she loves the Church because God does talk to us, and we have answeres to her questions. She told us that she feels like the Church is true but still has some questions. Her baptismal date is for the 20th, which is a sacred day for missionaries (AKA P-day) but I´d much rather have a baptism than a full p-day.

My companion has told me that he is going home next week. Basically because he just doesn´t want to be here. and he´s really frustated that he already isn´t home. So i´ve been trying to do everything to get him excited about being a missionary but his mind is set and he´s going home. So basically I´m gonna be by myself for 4 weeks without a comp.

Love you all and I´ll send off letters to you next week

Elder Patrik Connole

Catching Up!

I got a little behind with the posting since baby arrived, so here are some updates!

In this picture the elders are doing a service project. In the first

These two pictures are of a Catholic Church.

These two show the soccer injury!

So we ended up not speaking at the high school because we werent the bishop lol. and I´m pretty sure that people make the cat calls because they really don´t see too many gringos dressed up like me haha. Thanks for all the pictures,

So today we did get to play soccer with a lot of missionaries from that are in arequipa and the president played with us. I played goalie, I did a pretty good job on everyone except for one guy who scored 5 goals on me...oh well he was really good. I also got out in the field for a bit and some how scored a goal haha. I was just running up and Elder Rendon tried to kick a goal but it ended up short so hit it in with my shoulder because it was bouncing like crazy. I also managed to get a black eye because my mad goalie skills. The elder who kicked it was like 3 feet away and he kicked it as hard as he could. obvioiusly he didn´t intend to hit me in the head but stuff happens in sports. Somehow my disc got lost too. ;( So if you could send me one that would be great!

I did get a package from mormor, so thanks to her. And I really enjoyed the pretzals.

This week we´ve been tryting to apply what the president has asked to do and `put a baptismal date on everyone that we teach. if they don´t accept we just leave them..Its been kinda tough to leave a few of them but tthats what the president has asked us to do and he is the one that represents the Lord for us. But we did find a lot of new investigators that were very willing to do it.

Love ya

Elder Patrik Connole

Hey

Glad to hear that all is good with the fam. Why on earth is all this college sports craziness happening while I´m gone?? Agh! I´m going nuts! Its going to be so weird when I get home and everything has all been changed!

So basically these week we were supposed to have a baptism of Santiago, but basically we went to go find him for his baptismal interview and he was drunk, yelled us and told us not to bother him anymore. Apparently he is mourning the loss of the mother of his daughter because she basically just dumped him for another guy, and he is kinda blaming the church for it. So Elder Aguilar and I were quite devastated for him. It was pretty tough.

We´ve been having to work with another elder a lot this week becuase his companion went home for a bit to fix some things at home. So he has been solo and since my comp and I are the only other elders we´ve had to go pick him up bring him to our area, try to work in his area and make sure that he has a companion at all times. Its been tough to get much work done in this manner.

But we were knocking doors the other day and this guy came up to us and was like ¨I wanna change my life and I know you can help me¨ We were just like uhhhh ok! lets do it! His name is Huber and he has a drinking problem. He will drink for like 3 or 4 days straight get hospitalized and then not drink for like a few months but then fall into the same hole again. He wasn´t able to go to church sunday because work called him in but he has some really sincere desires to change his life. He has a brother-in-law who is an active member that lives near by and so he wants to change his life and be like him.

Yesterday we did have 6 investigators at church! Yay! 4 in the ward and 2 in the branch. One of them was a girl¨(Karen) who is 18 and has a tooooonnnnnn of questions. especially about the afterlife so we are gonna go teach her the plan of salvation on sunday night. While we were talking with her she was like ¨I might be a missionary, what are the requirements?¨ Haha. And this is her 2nd time at church so we should be able to baptize her in the next couple weeks. The problem is finding her because she studies so she isn´t home a ton, and the other problem is that because she is a girl we can´t go into her house unless there is a another guy with us. So yeah.

Another one was the younger brother of Marco Antonio, (the guy I baptized 2 months ago) Jason, so it was kinda fun that he brought him

Anyways I think thats it, but I love you all

Love,

Elder Patrik Connole

Hi!

Anyways today was transfers and I´m staying here in the same area. But my companion Elder Aguilar left to Tacna and re-open an area there. He will also be the DL there. My new companion is Elder Grow from Mesa, AZ. I´m the senior companion because this is only his third transfer. So yeah. The new district leader is an Elder from my group who is really cool. Elder Seminario.

Yesterday E. Aguilar and I went on splits, he went with a kid who is going to argentina on a mish in a couple months, and I went with Marco Antonio, (the guy I baptized). Anways, you don´t even know how amazing it feels when he was bearing his testimony to a couple of people we were teaching. He said that when when he got baptized it changed his whole life. He had always believed in God but never really followed the commandments, but after we taught him and baptized him he siad he feels like he is walking in a new life, happier and with way more peace in his life. It still gives me chills because the Spirit was so strong as he was bearing his testimony. We were teaching a young single mom about baptism and he basically told her ¨look, I got an answer from God and I followed through with it, Elder Connole baptized me so why don´t you let him baptize you as well?¨ Lol

Marco also said that his new goal is to have an eternal family, and so he has started bringing his 15 year old brother to church! His parents are a little...odd, but now that they have their son´s example in their life they are opening up a lot more.

I´ve been trying really hard to try and invite almost everybody to be baptized because really thats why I´m here, to give people the chance to recieve the saving ordinances of the Gospel in their life. It´s gotten a lot easier and I feel a lot better as I do it more often. Before it was kinda scary to invite someone to be baptized but now I can do it in the street if I wanted to. The other day we invited a family to get baptized if God answered their prayers, and we invited them for them 25th of Sept. They accepted and the Dad said, I´m pretty sure God want´s us to get baptized as soon as possible.¨ We were just like um yeah!!!

We also invited an 18 year old girl, Karen, to be baptized I honestly wasn´t sure if she would accept it or not. She has a ton of questions, some of them a little weird but some really good ones too. She´s been to church twice and has liked it, she feels like in the Catholic church she hasn´t been able to find the answers to her questions but here she does. She also said that whenever she talks with us she can tell there is something different about us. We have an assurity (sp?) when we talk and there is just something the shines in our faces. And she really likes that. Anways we invited her to be baptized and at first she didn´t want to accept a specific date, but after we showed her how goals are necessary in life and that she could be baptized on whichever day she picked a date for the 20th of sept. the only problem is that thats a monday, p-day but its a baptism so we´ll do it that day

Anyways thats all for now

I love you all and I miss you a bunch!

Elder Patrik Connole

Challenge of the Week? Thinking in English!

The first paragraph will probably not make any sense to most people, so an explanation is in order. We are getting ready to send E. Connole's younger brother off to college and are trying to find all the stuff that should have been left over to send with him. Unfortunately we aren't having much luck! I was very pleased to find that the one box we did manage to uncover had the Swedish cheese cutter in it. Swedish cheese cutters, you must understand, are not easy to come by (unless you are in Sweden) and thus highly coveted. He understands he would have been in deep water had he lost that one! LOL

Um...think I left another box in Kris´s room´s closet. Man I can´t think in english any more. Of course I kept the cheese cutter, thats a vital life line, that really everyone should have. My pension I´m sure would love to get one.

We lost like 44 missionaries or so to the Cuzco mission. This week we are getting 24 and losing 12. We´ll keep increasing until we have a 150 or so missionaries in the mish once again.

Yes I did get pictures :). This last week I´ve been eating 2 lunches because our district leader was getting training so we had his comp, Elder Sanchez with us. So we ate at our pension then his. It was pretty cool.

I didn´t resell some of the texts because, A) some of them it was their last year of use and the classes got new texts, B) some they only took back a certain amount and I arrived too late. So yeah.

So my zone leader has been pretty crappy about getting us letters, and they are same for this new transfer. but we have a new district leader who is my new comp. so it should be better, Elder Aguilar. His parents are mexican but he was born in Cali. So he speaks both languages fluently. So far he seems pretty cool.

I´m sad to hear Kunz and Rogers are having a tough time. Puno and Juliaca have always been tough areas, they are a lot colder and there aren´t too many members.

We should be having a couple baptisms here pretty quick. We have a part member family that is more asctive than half the members. but they have been wanting to wait until their son comes back from his mission (and has yet to recieve his call) I´ll keep you updated obviously.

Saturday was the baptism, E. Chaca and I went on splits so that he could talk we the investigator a little more about the baptism and i went to fill the font and get everything ready. When I got back they told me that she doesn´t want to be baptized yet. She wants to wait until her boyfriend gets baptized too. They both have dates for the 14th of next month so we´ll see.

Santiago another possiblity has yet to be able to change his work or schedule to get sundays off. so until he can fix that he will be stuck in limbo.

The new president is pretty crazy. He has some really big plans for the future, starting now, like 10 baptisms minimum every month, 90 contacts a day, stuff like that. Right now we are doing 1 or 2 baptisms, and about 20 contactacts a day. So if we can get to this goal it´d be awesome.

Love ya!

Elder Patrik Connole

p.s. Keep me updated on Jessica & Andre if you can.

For some reason, I can't get the picture he sent to upload today. I will try it again next week!

Baptism Possibilities, Rapper, Changes and Instant Oatmeal

Jessica is the 16 year old girl that we were teaching in Moquegua that we couldn´t baptize because her father wouldn´t let her. For mothers day she and her little brother did a really cool dance and I asked for a copy of the movie they took. She speaks english pretty fluently so you can talk with her all you want.

Does Dad know a Brian Arnold who works for Swing Golf? Apparently he was a companion to my new president, If so that would be kinda cool!

This week was crazy. We had interviews with the new president and a multizone meeting. President Fernandez is awesome, I can´t wait to seee how the mission is going to change, he has a great vision to change how the mission Peru Arequipa is viewed. He also made pdays longer! Which is why you are receiving this so late today. We went to some cool waterfalls as a disctrict and I´ll send you pictures next week. Oh next week is transfers so I´ll be getting a new comp. because Elder Chaca is going home. Crazy how fast this transfer has gone by. Like seriously.

We had some kinda funny experiences this week. We were outside of the church talking to a member on saturday and this decked out sports car, blasting rap music passed by. But lo and behold there was 50 year old man driving this thing all by himself. Oh man we laughed so hard.

We are planning 3 baptisms this week. I know right? 1 is Santiago who only needs to get his work changed so that he can have sundays off. He has been working his butt off too to be able to do it. The other are a couple single moms. Veronica and Mari. Veronica is fairly excited to be baptized, but she hasn´t been praying and we need to teach her the plan of salvation. Mari we have a tough time teaching because we have to do it with her neighbor, who is a member, but the three year old son is so wild and crazy. But Mari is also quite excited to get baptized, but we havn´t taught her very much. So she is a bit iffy.

We have been working really hard these last couple weeks so that E. Chaca can have some baptisms in his last week. Walking around a lot, but it has been a lot of fun.

Oh and we totally enjoyed the instant oatmeal! E. Chaca loved it and we are going to enjoy some more tomorrow.

Anyways yeah thats what has been going on. A lot of changes, and a lot of hard work. But really i´ve really been enjoying myself here in Selva Alegre

I love you

Elder Patrik Connole

Mission to Split, etc.

Yeah I can´t believe i´m a week short of 1/4 way done too...its gone by so fast and honestly its because i´m always busy. My companion E. Chaca goes home in 2 weeks! craziness!

So this husband, Santiago is progressing extremely well, the only problem is that he is having troubles getting his off day changed from thursday to sunday so that he can come to church. Once he gets that fixed we´ll be able to baptize him. So that is pretty awesome!

We have another family who is seriously considering waiting until their son gets back from his mission before they get baptized. But at least they want to be baptized. They are basically members just not baptized. So we´ve been meeting with them once a week or so to try to grow a desire to be baptized a little bit faster than that. I´m really not sure why anyone would want to procrastinate their baptism if they really knew how important it is in their lives.

We had a whole family, minus the father who is never home, come to church on sunday! well they came to sacrament meeting anyways. But they really liked it!

We also found an investigator who is l ike 35 years old or so, and has been listening to the missionaries off and on since he was 15. He has ton of wordly knowledge about the church, has spent a lot of time researching the church on the internet and has found a lot of ´how to combat the mormon missionaries´ type websites. He has a lot of good beliefs that line up with the church´s, and a few cooky ones as well. But we wrote down his questions and we are trying to answer them the best we can.

Tomorrow the mission splits and we lose E. Kunz and idk about E. Rogers to the mission Cuzco. So kinda sad. This friday we also have another multizone meeting for the new president and probably an interview with him. If you could get any info about E. Rogers for me that´d be awesome!

Love you

Elder Patrik Connole

Teaching Families

Eating at his pension's restaurant.

Patrik, Marco & Elder Chaca
Patrik & Marco right after baptism. (Obviously the date stamp is inaccurate.)

I got your package and $5 from mormor today, plus some dearelders. I was talking with another gringo the other day and he said that its better to send stuff in envelopes when ever possible because they go through customs better. so yeah. thanks for the blessing note.

So we had our last president´s interview with pres. davis this week. because they are done this thursday, and will be heading back to the states.

We´ve been teaching some kids of the ages 9-12 lately, 6 of them. 3 of them are all ready to be baptized but their paretns won´t give us permission...sound familiar??? This time however we have just started teachign the parents and I think that we will be able to eventually baptized the whole family :) (btw its really weird to teach them the law of chastity.)

We´ve also just started teaching the ¨husband¨ of one of the recents converts from last transfer. Husband is in parenthesis because they were never married, just living together for 5 years. Unfortunately that is quite the norm here, even amongst some of the members. Its a lot tougher to get married here, yoiu have to get your blood tested and all sorts of weird stuff like that...idk, so people just don´t do it. plus its tough to get a divorce so all of it is just easier to live together.

We had the opportunity to listen to a general authority this week in stake conference. Elder Mestre of one of the quorums of the seventy from Venezuela spoke to the stake this week. They had a special priesthood session, adult session, recent convert/investigator session and the general session in a huge Institute of Religion. Anyways they were all really good meetings, He talked a lot about the families and how they are so important in God´s plan for our salvation. Its so true, when I went on splits with on of the assistents to the president, (E. Villacis) he told me that finding, teaching and baptizing families should always be my focus and I totally agree, within the family is a built in support system and God wans whole families not just some individuals to return unto him.

The other thing the Elder Mestre talked about was the importance of the Temple and I can´t help but think how lucky we are in the States to have a temple so close to us. Especially in the west. How far is the temple from where we are living now? I´m sure it is waaaaaaaaayyyyy less time than what it is from here. Its a good 14-16 hour bus ride to Lima from here so its a lot tougher to get to the temple.

It was also kinda funny, in the adult session Elder Mestre used a phrase that I´m pretty sure that only the 4 Americans in the room understood. He was talking about Missionary work and how everyone should help out, and that we can´t just say that ¨todo esta peachy¨ ( everthing´s just peachy¨ I had to explain what peachy meant to my companion and why I was laughing lol.

Today we have an appointment with Marco´s family, so I´m pretty exctied for that, hopefully we can see the whole familiy dressed in white, just waiting to go to the Temple. And we are working with another part-member family that only the one son is a member (Franko) who is preparing to go on a mission. The parents go to church basically every week and are awesome when we teach them until we ask them when can we baptize them, and then they tell us, that they are going to wait until Franko goes on his mission. ARGH!

Anyways I love you all, and I would send you some more pics, but my dang camera needs new batteries and I haven´t been able to buy some good ones. Its tough to find duracells or energizers here. I´m thinking about, when I´m able to get some money of buying batteries with a charger. that´d be smart.

Elder Patrik Connole

A Baptism

Above, Patrik with President & Sister Davis before they head back home.
Patrik with Elder Chaca.
At the plaza in Arequipa.

Hey do you think you could send me a copy of what you wrote down from when Pres. Richardson set me apart?

This week was a very spirtual week, I witnessed several miracles and several answers to prayers. On Monday, we had a lesson planned with Marco Antonio but when we got there, he wasn´t there. So after debating for a bit E. Chaca and I decided to offer up a prayer. We prayed individually and we both got a distinct impression that we needed to stay put. Within 5 minutes Marco arrived and we were able to teach him. It was amazing.

Over the next couple days we taught him the rest of the lessons, and got him ready to be baptized. Saturday was the day of the baptism. We cleaned the baptismal font, started the filling process, went to our morning appointments, ate lunch and got to the chapel once again at about 115 or so. 200 is the baptism, after getting everything set up, we threw the disc around until about 220, when members started arriving. about 230 everyone was there except for Marco. So my companion took off with a member to go find him. About 300 my companion arrives...with MARCO!!! Yay!

Anyways first off they had some talks and what not, and the whole time i´m thinking, wow. Heavenly Father sure has put a lot of trust in a 20 year old kid to baptize and fulfill this covenant with the Lord so that he can live eternally in the presence of God. I really have the authority to do this...wow!

Then came the the moment of truth. I was very nervous as I got to the steps but as soon as my feet touched the water it was all forgotten...mostly because the water was ice cold but hey.

Anyways we went through with the baptism, Marco felt the spirit super strong, as did the rest of us. He gave a great testimony about how he had made a promise to the Lord that he would bring many souls unto him a few years back, and that now he could actually do it.

He repeated these feelings after being confirmed and ordained to the office of a priest. This past week was one of the most spiritual of my life. Friday we also had a Multi Zone conference, with a lot of tears because it was the last one for President and Sister Davis. And we also had a very powerful lesson with the Branch President´s mother.

All in all it was an amazing week. and now I´m going to send you some pics

Still Immersed

What he looked like after the birthday cake and egg smearing. Nearly the whole district.


Eating guinea pig.

So my my pension is quite aweosome, its the 2nd counselor in the stake presidency and he is a dessert chef. yep. I´m gonna gain some weight this transfer. lol. He´s super tall, like a good couple inches taller than me, and loves basketball. He asked me if I could ask you to send him like video recordings of NBA games, and he said he´d pay to get them, and to ship them here. So idk if you can dow anything about that or not.

My district is entirely Latino other than me, so I won´t be speaking much english for a while. I speak a little bit of it with my companion while he´s trying to learn, its really funny because in english we have a ton of sounds that they can´t pronounce. Like right now he´s trying to learn the er sound, like nerd, and it always comes out like uhhh. its sooo funny.

We found a family this week and had a funny experience. In this family there are the grandparents, 3 aunts and a couple granddaughters. Anyways one of the aunts is super catholic and very loud about it. One of the granddaughters is about 18 and she´s a bit rebelious, as in she wears short shorts, has mulitiple piercings, stuff like that. Anyways we asked them to read the Book of Mormon because it was the Word of God and this lady literally shouts at her niece, ¨You hear that? Listen to these young man, they know the Word!¨Read this book you sinner!¨ Oh it was sooo funny. The poor girl was so embarrassed.

We have a possible baptism this week, I´ll let you know if it goes through or not, his name is Marco Antonio and he´s solid so I´m pretty sure it´ll be good.

It gets cold here at night, so I´ve resorted to wearing my thermals under my white shirt so I don´t freeze.

I´m gonna send you some pics now

Love ya,

Elder Connole