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