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

He's Alive!

{I edited out a few personal things here, so if some of this doesn't seem to flow quite right, that is why.}

Hey, I´M ALIVE!!!!

I couldn´t access my myldsmail email for the last bit. They just got it back up and running. {...} So much frustration. Still no baptisms either.

Thanks so much for all the pictures, and the sports updates. {...}

On the bright side I am no longer in Moquegua, I got transferred to Selva Alegre, which is part of Arequipa, its SOOOO much bigger than Moquegua, its ridiculous. Malls everywhere the houses actually look like houses instead of bamboo huts or adobe shacks. My new companion is Elder Chaca from Lima, Peru. Its his last transfer so my new job is to keep him from going trunkie LOL. My district is only 4 elders and 2 sisters. I already knew the sisters because one was in the CCM with me and the other was in Moquegua with me my first transfer. The ride was about 4 hours in a bus from 630 to 1030, but I´m here safe and sound.

Lets see, I don´t have my camera nor my journal which I usually bring, but next week I will. So I don´t remember super well everything that has gone on the last three weeks. HEre are a few highlights that I do remember. For my birthday, I got cake in the face, followed by 6 eggs and probably a pound of flour. I have a picture I´ll send later on that will make you laugh because its pretty ridiculous how messy I am.

Other than my birthday things were pretty normal, we taught lessons, walked a lot, we´ve been having more success bringing people to church, I think we averaged around 5 or 6 the last couple weeks. We just started teaching a guy who is dating, but not living with (which would be totally normal here) an LDS gal in another ward, and wants to be baptized asap, he´s come to church without us doing anything the last 2 weeks as well so we only need to get the lessons taught and baptize him.

{We went for over 3 weeks without any new news either in the mail or via email, so it was so good to hear from him again! From a snail mail letter also received today, we learned that he and his companion have been teaching a couple of teenagers with some success in getting them to church and wanting baptism. Will keep you posted. They also had the opportunity to teach their bishop which he found to be a bit intimidating even though the bishop is only in his 30's... As he says, "I mean it's the bishop, right?!"}