More Updates?

Miss seeing Elder Connole updates?  Go to www.completeleeblog.blogspot.com to view the latest communications from him.  I am condensing things into one blog so that it makes my life easier.  :)  Feel free to subscribe to that blog to receive updates via email.

Transferred!

Sounds like his Mission President thought he was feeling good enough for a transfer.  We'll just pray that he keeps feeling better and better!

So ya I got changed. I am now in a fishing city called Ilo, its about 5 hours away from Arequipa. My new companion is E. Ramirez, also from Lima, like E. Sulcaray but a different part. I actually kinda guessed that I would be coming here, so I wasnt too surprised about the call. And the good thing about being Zone Leader is that you usually have a pretty good idea of who your companion will be. So yeah I will be here for 2 transfers and wow, then Im done. I know a lot of the Elders and Sisters already too, so it should be pretty easy to gain their confidence and get to work. 

Ilo tends to be kinda like Hunter where one month they do really good and the next month not quite as good, so we will be taking a look at that and see how we can get that to change so that we are baptizing every month.

Im gonna miss E. Sulcaray and all the cool people I met in Hunter. We had quite a bit of success over there and I dont see any reason why that shouldnt continue. And E. Ramirez and I will be having success here too. That I do know to be true.

Lets see so while I was there in Berlin we had a video night, where the ward, not us of course, watched a movie called Mr. Poppers Penguins, which I guess is a funny family oriented movie. The good part about it for us was that we got some references and we were able to bring a less active family that has a 9 year old son who hasnt been baptized yet, come. We also got free popcorn, soda and salchiconos. You know me, I like free food haha, actually I think all missionaries in general like free food haha. We had about 45 people there and I guess it turned out well from what the members told us. We didnt stick around very long after grabbing our snacks. The ´Lords work never stops. 

On Sunday it was also really nice because in my last Ward Council most of the council members, including Carlos who is now the new 1st counselor in the YM presidency, expressed their thanks and love for what I had done in the ward to help it progress. I had no idea that they felt some much love for me. They all committed to help E. Sulcaray out a lot more and to take care of the people in their organizations that we had baptized.

Anyways I dont have much time this week because of the transfers but I will have a better letter next week

Love ya

Elder Patrik Connole

Making Things Work However One Can

Lol thanks for the pics. Everyone here in the zone is excited for Bub. And they all say "Oh wow! He looks just like you! And so do the rest of them!"

Haha, my health is getting better everyday. I think the pills are helping out a lot.  So yeah, Pte hasn´t said much but he is most likey gonna keep me here in Arequipa where the good doctors are. He told me that he wanted to send me outside of Arequipa but if I´m still sick it just wouldnt be possible.

 

Anyways on to this week.

 

Monday after weeks and weeks of  promising the sisters that we would play some volleyball, we finally did. Actually only us gringos and my companion played because the latinos have about talent for volleyball as I do for soccer. (aka not much) But it was fun to do something a little different and something that I actually play well. At night our apointments all fell through and so we just contacted.

 

Tuesday, we had our district meeting. But E. Sulcaray and I didnt participate very much because we felt like we needed to talk with some specific Elders that were having some troubles. So we just kinda pulled them out and talked to them and tried to help them out. Hopefully they will start to pick it up. Then we went to our apointments and once again most of them fell through. We took a new convert Carlos around to show him where the members live and then he went with the rest of the YSA to watch the Peru vs Chile game on big screen. Chile and Peru are big rivals so everyone was hyped for the game. Peru almost always loses to Chile, especially when they are away. And once again they lost 4-2. We tried to get some work done during the game but EVERYONE was watching the game and EVERYONE was not in a good mood. So not a productive day

Skipping over to Saturday real quick because Im running out of time...we had 2 more baptisms. The 2 kids were great and really easy to teach.  The problem wasnt that they didnt want to go to church, they just didnt want to go to our ward! Grr. So after much fellowshipping we finally got them there and as you can see from the pics that we had a good turnout at the baptism. The 2nd counselor in the stake presidency baptized both of them because they are his nephews. So  it was nice to have him there as well. And he was there for the confirmations. Ha speaking of the confirmations, we stopped by early to make sure that they were getting ready to go and good to go. So we went to church and waited and waited and we took the sacrament and yeah we stopped waiting. But there was a problem...we both had to give talks! So I grabbed a member and we went to go find the family, and my comp gave his talk. (which he extended to be about a 20 min talk lol). The member (Renzo) and I got there just in time to see what was taking so long. Friends of the Dad were trying to get him to go play soccer. But as soon as the Dad saw us show up he put his shirt and tie on and thanked  us for getting him out of a tough situation. So we showed up right before 11 and confirmed them both. Whew.

 

Well thats all I got, talk to you next week!

 

Elder Patrik Connole

Thank You All!

Note from Mom...THANK YOU so much to all of you who joined us in fasting and praying on Patrik's behalf.  I can't properly express my appreciation that so many were so willing to do that for my son.  Blessings have already begun.  Thank you!

So I think I figured out the reason why I feel better today.  With how many people that are fasting and praying for me the Lord is bound to help me out. I am so touched that so many people would do that for me. Thank you to everyone. I am feeling a lot better in every respect.

The doctor said that I don´t have cancer or anything really dangerous so thats a good thing. Actually he said that my whole large intestine is fine except like the last 10 cm, which is really inflammed and so he is assuming that means that my small intestine is very inflammed as well. So I will be taking some expensive pills to get the inflamation down and see if that works. I have a 15 day treatment, which he said that it could heal it all up and I should be good to go, and if not they will have to do some more tests. But the Doctor still doesnt know exactly what I have nor how I got it.

In fact I had an interview with Presidente Fernandez  on Thursday and we talked about that. He wants to send me outside of Arequipa but if I don´t get better he wont be able to do so. So he knows exactly what is going on.

Anyways this week was awesome because we had a baptism! Kevin is the 19 year old nephew of the relief society president. He had been avoiding the missionaries for about 2 years now but finally God hit him upside the head that he needed to be part of this church and he came by himself and told us that he wanted to get baptized. He now has plans to go on a mission and is pretty much excited for everything that the church has to offer.

The same day of his baptism all his family members (members and non members) had a huge misunderstanding over a very small thing and were like fighting verbally and what not but Kevin told them all, "Hey! I´m supposed to be getting baptized in 15 minutes! Why dont you all just kiss and make up and lets go!" Which they did and E. Sulcaray and I had a laugh seeing so many tearstrained faces come to the baptism, especially after the scare.

Lets see what else happened this week. Tuesday we had our Zone Leader Council. There President told me that I was getting changed from here for sure. I don´t know how I feel about that, despite all the problems with the ward and how much time I have been here, E. Sulcaray and I have had a lot of success, and I will be sad to leave so many good converts.

Oh yeah and Tuesday we also had a meeting with all the bishoprics and their ward mission leaders, Presidente Fernandez invited us to be there. I hope that they really take what he said to heart because it was a good meeting and if the members start working good and we keep working good we could DOUBLE OR TRÌPLE

woops hit send on accident!

Anyways we could easily have 2 or 3x the amount of baptisms that we are currently having as a mission.

So yeah that is what is happening in my life I´ll keep you all updated as it goes I hit 21 months this weeek...crazy! And B goes into the MTC wow!!!! Awesome

Elder Patrik Connole

General Conference and General Hospital :(

Haha yeah we were all pretty excited about the Peru talk, its amazing how much progress Peru is making. Especially in Lima, that place has just boomed. But we are now the 2nd highest baptizing mission in Peru, we have gone from last place in all of the area from when I entered the mission to the 4th best in the area. Miracles are happening in Arequipa, we have up until now baptized enough people for a whole new stake. The stake I was last in is going to divide this month so that means we are 1 step closer to getting a temple. 

 

I really loved Elder Holland´s talk in Priesthood Session, wow, POWERFUL. and yeah I was definitely the only missionary in the whole "Gringo room"  (aka we gotta watch in english) that was taking any notes on Elder Anderson´s talk haha. I also like the talk by Tad Callister about the Book of Mormon. I wish that all of my investigators could have been there.  And the talk by McMullin about changing our teaching to be aligned with how the Holy Ghost teaches. That was a very good talk that I think will help us missionaries to be to teach with and by the Holy Ghost because he is the real teacher and he is the one makes the conversion process come to pass. 

 

So I was on a medical treatment for a while to see if  it could kill off a supposed infection that I have. But the treatment didnt do anything so I got a colonoscopy (I have no idea how to spell that basically they ran a video camera through my intestines) and they didnt find anything obviously wrong. So they took out some biopsies and they will have the results like on thursday. So yeah, I guess we will see what happens with that. 

 

I also need like $10 because somebody passed me a fake bill and I didnt catch it on time sooooo yeah that comes out of finances from the house...oops. You´d think I´d have all these bills down by now but I´m still living in a foreign land haha so yeah if you could get that to me that´d be great.

 

So this week Presidente Fernandez decided that it would be important for us to study an extra hour in companionship study for the next 3 months (aka pretty much all the rest of my mission haha) every day. Including P-day, Weekly planning days, and Sundays. Wow it is a TON of study but it will be good because reall ymost missionaries don´t study like they should and its something that we must do. We cannot declare the Lord´s word unless we have studied it right? So that is why we are writing an hour later now. But with that he did give us another 15 minutes to write the family! woot!  So now we have an hour of internet time. Which is definitely good now that B will be in the MTC starting next week. 

 

Haha now I dont know what all to write since I have more time. I might be able to start giving some day by day play back like Sp does. Yeah I can do that.

 

So Monday was...all day in the hospital waiting on Doctors to show up and tell that they dont know whats wrong and need to do more tests. Ugh I hate clinics they told made us waste our P-day. Not cool. 

 

Tusday we taught Kathy (a recent convert) the commandments again. It was a really good lesson because she remembered everything so it was really quick and simple. Then contacted like crazy men and picked up a few good apts. Went looking for some people that we had taken out appointments but they were not there, so we kept looking but really we just didnt have much success. 

Then we went down to were a member (José who is completely blind) was going to present us to a family and do a FHE in his house. Well its kind of a house. Its basically a small room, and a bathroom. It was very neat and cozy but so tiny. Anyways so we hooked up the television that he has (which funny enough doesnt have image on the screen, just audio) and we "watched" part of the Joseph Smith Restoration show. haha he was so excited that we would "watch" a movie with him. We just kinda sat there and smiled. We had to leave ahalf way through the movie and go to a "meeting" with the stake president. This stake president is just a funny dude. Like he just distracts himself automatically and starts talking about his family or his mission experiences or other things like that. But usually we can bring the convesation back to missionary work here in his stake and geta few things done.

 

Wednesday we had the multizona where Presidente Fernandez told us about the 2 hours a day companionship study and talked about the importance of study. That took up most of the day and so we didnt get much done.

 

Thursday we did our weekly planning, and then we studied and then we rushed around for our apointments, wehich most of them fell through. Bah. and we passed by all of our new converts to make sure that they would go to general conference. We found most of them and I think most all of them went.

 

Friday was all day at the hospital. Yeah I think I´ll skip that day.

 

Saturday was GENERAL CONFERENCE!!!!! Yay! We watched the first session in spanish because the english transmission wasnt coming in. Which is fine for me becuase I understand spanish just about as well as english but for some of the newer elders and the new sister we have it was a little tougher. Thankfully they got it fized for the rest of the sessions. We ordered pizza in between the morning and afternoon sessions. Domino´s pizza is sooo good here in Peru. Yeah good food for a good gringo day. After the afternoon session the Elders from Congata had 3 baptisms. The dad of a new convert and a mom and her daughter. It was a fun service because the whole zone stayed for the baptism as well as quite a few of the branch members. Congata is getting really close to move up to a ward, so that will be way cool when that happens.

 

Sunday was more of the general conference, we had 3 investigators show up for the morning session and we went to go get some more for the 2nd but they all couldnt go. so that was disappointing. But we will keep working. I just wish that more people could have gone and listened to the prophet and apostles and be just as spirtually edified as I was.

 

We kept working with Kevin who is getting baptized this week, we watched a movie about John Tanner on the D&C 4 disc set, and talked about keep the sabbath day holy, he commited to it and wants to be baptized on saturday. He is so cool and I will tell you more about him next week when I have a little bit more time

 

Love ya

 

Elder Patrik Connole  

Branching Out

(Okay, sorry about the really dumb pun in the title.  lol The following two paragraphs, he is commenting on his brother's dislocated shoulder and on his other brother playing flag football.  Little does he know that his little brother isn't so little anymore, although he is still as skinny as a toothpick.)

That was pretty gnarly from B there. How in the world do you do that pulling yourself out of the pool? LAME!

 

Yes I do laugh at the image of skinny little Derek running around with all those big guys hahaha but thats totally awesome! Hopefully he can be a difference-maker on the team.

 

I love miracles. Like so much. This week we went to pick people up for church and we came up blank. But then a few minutes before sacrament meeting ended a former investigator showed up to church. We had left him because he, well, just started to avoid us haha. We had talked to him about baptism and what not but he never would accept it. This week when we taught him the same day he told us "I went to church because I felt like God was calling me. I tried to resist because it was late already but I couldn´t deny what I felt. I really want to learn now and I want to get baptized soon." WOOT WOOT! Awesome! Turns out that his aunt who is a member had been praying and fasting that he would go to church this week and thus we see that God answers prayers. So yeah he could be baptized this week if he really gets hit hard with the spirit but more likely it will be for the 8th.

 

This week a member family from Quillabamba (its by Cuzco) came to church and after the meetings they asked us to give the mom a blessing which we gladly obliged and afterwards we asked them if we could go visit their friends that they were staying with. After a quick phone call they invited us to pass by. We headed over there and they presented us to this guy Willy. He was really cool. We had already contacted his house like 3 times but never found anyone. Anyways we taught him a little bit about the church and what not but more than anything we had the spirit with us and he committed to baptism as well. We had been asking and asking and asking everyone for references and finally the Lord blessed us for beign persistent.

 

We started working this week in a new part of our area. Well kinda, about 3 months ago Presidente Fernandez decided to take the 2 missionaries out of the branch and we were the closest once to the area. But it is far away and so we hadnt been going over there much but this week we just felt like we needed to do so. And so we called the branch president and (who is a BYU grad) he took us all around visiting the part member families and what not. We found a lady who is the sister of a couple that baptized in April. She has a lot of doubts but we were able to help her feel the spirit and she commited to baptism for the 8th. We couldnt go to the are to pick her up for church because its is just way far away and it starts an hour early in a different chapel but the branch went and picked her up and told us that she really loved it. So she is progressing very well.

We are excited that the branch has responded well to our offer of 2 days a week heading over there. It means a lot more walking for us and less time to eat dinner but right now it looks like very quickly we could be seeing some results. AKA BAPTISMS!!! haha. This week for general conference we are going to have a multi-baptism stakewide. We have at least 5 people that will get baptized at it and we could have upt to 12. We´ll see but E. Sulcaray and I are trying very hard to get the missionaries pumped about this activity

 

Love you all!

 

Elder Patrik Connole

Unconventional

Did I read that D is playing Flag football? wha?  Hahaha jk thats awesome

 

Ok so we had a fun week this week we had 2 baptisms but I only have pictures of 1 of them. We baptized the 10 year old niece of our RS president. She was way cool and really understood everything extremely well for her age. Her parents were really cool too and even went to the baptism. They would like to get baptized too but they are living together and are not married and the Dad just went on a verrrry long business trip so they arent gonna get dunked anytime soon.

 

The one with pictures is Carlos. He is that kid that I was telling you about and like really it was just awesome to get to know him and be able to baptize him, he was so excited about his baptism that he invited his younger brother to come all the way from cuzco to go to the baptism. So it was fun to have his family there for him suporting (idk how to spell that). The most interesting part was definitely the confirmation. All of Peru had like a regional conference I guess where Pres. Monson, Elder Christensen, Julie Beck and Walter Gonzalez all spoke to the 94 stakes of Peru. So like before the satelite transmission we asked the Stake Pres. if we could confirm the 2 of them, and he was totally fine with it. So like right before the transmission we confirmed both of them in front of the entire stake. It wasnt nerve wracking for us, but for the 2 of them it was a little bit scary haha. But it was interesting to do it like that and the spirit was a little bit different just because of the atmosphere. But definitely a highlight experience.

 

Other than that we keep working as hard as we can trying to bring more people to the church and help them enter into God´s kingdom through the baptismal covenant.

 

Thanks for the pics and the stories!

 

Elder Patrik Connole

PS. Pretty much the whole zone (well gringos) was so mad about the byu game except for one stinkin UofU fan...grrr...

In a second email...

So idk what happened to my other email but Im not sure if it got sent and now I dont have any time!!!! Let it be known that we had 2 baptisms and we confirmed them during stake conference!

 

Elder Patrik COnnole

It's a Crazy Life

Well, changes came and went and E. Sulcaray and I still together. 3 transfers with the same comp! But its all good because we work good together and we are good friends. We are getting a lot of greenies in the zone this transfer, (they come in on wed) so yeah it´ll be fun with a bunch of newbies. And all the elders who are training it will be their first time training so as ZL we have a lot of work to do to make sure that they are all do the job well. But I think it is good for the zone because we just had 2 missionaries that ended the mission (aka trunky haha) so we got some new blood in the zone now.

 

This week was kinda weird. I was sick for some of it and felt great for another part of it so idk. We got to work some and found some cool people that have some potential. We started contacted a lady in the street on Saturday morning but like 15 seconds after we contacted her, her bus came so she took off in that. Later on in the day we ran into her again and she gave us her direction and asked us to pass by the next day. So obviously the next day we showed up at her door (she lives at the very tippity top of the biggest hill that we have...but of course) and she recieved us very well and she told us "I know you kids have been sent from God to help me...why else would he have had you find me once again?" Sweet! She is a single mom who has a 19 year old girl and a 3 year old boy that live with her and a son who is married already. So hopefully we will get some results of that.

 

This Sunday was absolutely crazy at church. Like wow. We got there 5 minutes early and come to find out that the Bishop is at the hospital with his wife who had an emergency surgery, and that the 1st and 2nd counselor couldnt come. So we arrive and there are 2 Melchizedek priesthood holders running around trying to get the sacrament set up and the microphone in place and everything. But there wasnt anybody there to preside! Agh! Finally about 15 min late the EQP shows up and we could finally start the meeting. Whew.. Disaster (mostly) avoided. haha

 

Lets see what else happened this week. Oh yeah so another fun story. Our pensionist forgot to pay the phone bill this week so we were without a line. Well kinda, we couldnt make calls but we could receive them. Anyways that presented a problem because yesterday the asistents called us to inform us about the transfers and then we have to call everybody up to make sure that they know. So yeah, we came up with a brilliant plan that the pensionists son could just let us use his cell phone, and it would have been such a great idea except that he didnt have any more minutes left! argh! so we ran out at like 9:30 at night trying to see if there was some place to recharge his phone with minutes. Nobody has credit to do the recharge! So we went the RS president because she always has minutes, and thankfully she was able to let us use her phone, so we go hauling back to the room to pass indicators (I have know idea how you spell indicadores in english haha) and our 2 DL are calling to get the numbers passed and it was a total mess but we got the numbers passed and then we had to wait for transfers. They actually called us earlier than normal (aka 11:30 pm and not 1:30 am) so that was good and then we just had the normal craziness of all the transfers.

 

Anyways so craziness as usual for us but hey thats ZL life. NUTS!!!! haha

 

Love ya

 

Elder Patrik Connole

Another Good Week in the Field

Good to hear that Amanda is back, how´s she doing?

 

Lol I guess we will have to see about my accent. I hope that it isnt horrible, but I am sure that I will throw in a lot of spanish words as I speak, or at least as I think I will have to translate as I go, because thats what I do as I write you guys.

So this week we didnt get to work very much because we had zone leader conference and I just haven´t been feeling very good. But even with that God blesses us, we found a 22 year old kid named Carlos Quispe Yauri and he is da bomb. Like so cool. E. Stoddard and I contacted him while we were on splits and the next day right before ending the splits we went over to "teach" him. He had read the entire pamphlet that we had left him and marked everything that he didnt understand, he expressed to us that he hasnt been baptized yet and that after reading our pamphlet he gained a desire to do so...THAT JUST HAPPENED! What? Talk about people that the Lord prepares for us! Anyways we taught him about the covenant of baptism which only made him even more excited to get baptized and he commited to read the Book of Mormon and read the pamphlet (folleto sounds soooooo much better, pamphlet is just idk...blech). The next day (Sat) we showed up and he had read all of 2 Nephi 31 and the pamphlet and loved it. So we made sure he understood everything and since he hadnt prayed about it we commited him to doing it and he said he would come to church the next day. So we got to church a little late trying to bring another kid to church (also named Carlos Quispe haha) but without success. But we walk into sacrament meeting and who do we see? Oh yes...CARLOS! Woot! He was sitting with Emmanuel, who just got off his mission in April and they were already best buds.

 

Later that day we were on splits with the members and E. Sulcaray went to visit him and according to him, Carlos is awesome and had prayed and recieved an answer that the BoM is true, Joseph Smith is a prophet and that he needs to get baptized. Sweet! Bad news is that he might be going on a trip for a couple days. Good news is he might bring his whole family back with him so that they can see his baptism. So I guess we´ll have to see.

 

This week in Zone Leaders Conference we talked a lot about faith and how faith is both action and power. Normally we just think about faith being action and usually thats how it works for us but faith is also power and in order for it to be converted to power we must exercise enough faith as action on a belief until we accomplish something, then it is no longer faith, but knowledge and as Alma explains, when somebody knows something believing is no longer necessary. In Ether we always think about how the brother of Jared had so much faith that he could see Jesus Christ in his premortal state, but afterwards, in Ether 3:19 Moroni explains that it is "because of the knowledge of this man that he could not be kept from beholding" So yeah kind of a cool insight from Pte Fernandez, and he learned that from E. Christofferson.

 

Love you all!

 

Elder Patrik Connole

Moving the Work Along

Wahoo! I like to hear that the work is progressing in CA! Good stuff with the baptism (So I totally spelled that baptismo and didnt realize it until much afterwards) and the endowment session. Way cool.

I´m feeling a lot better healthwise, I think the mission nurse finally found some pill that is helping out a lot. Idk if that means that Im healing up or if its just not hurting anymore or what but for now I´m good to go.


So this week we were able to play a 7 on 7 gringos vs latinos and total win for the gringos! haha the latinos were not not so happy that we beat them lol. The main reason that we scored on them so much is becuase they didnt have anybody that played goalie so we´d just fire at will and I´m sure if they woulda had a better goalie they woulda beaten us.

This week we were climbing our wonderful (not) hills and we passed by a guy who was chipping away at the hill side to expand his house. So we offered to help him, which he accepted and we helped him and his brother chip away at stone for an hour and got a lot done. Afterwards we presented ourselves and left them with a Book of Mormon to read. They gave us lunch too! Here in Arequipa that means a for sure baptism lol. So we were pretty excited. The next day we came back and committed the guy (Victor),his wife (Yeny) and his younger brother (Miguel) to baptism for the 10th of Sept. Unfortunately Victor and Yeny are not married and have a 2 year old child, so we will talking to them about that soon. (like todayish) But anyways we came back on saturday and Victor was being all like tough-guy-not-wanting-to-recognize-the-spirit type, but Miguel and Yeny both comitted to come to church and so he changed his tune. We got them to church the next day and they loved it so much that they didnt want to leave after it was all done and they wanted us to come back asap to visit them. So we got another apt. today and we will teach them about the importance of marriage in God´s plan.

So remember how we have been working with all these kids that belong to this "gang" haha, we are now working not only with these kids but with their parents as well. Actually most of them are single mothers so that explains in part why they dont have so much control over their kids. But they have been able to recognize the difference in their kids lives so they are really taking what we teach pretty seriously.

Lets see other big news, as a mission we baptized 155 people this month which is awesome especially since it was a 4 week month and not a 5 weeker.

We had a FHE with a lady who almos got baptized 8 years ago in Chile with the RS president, and it was a very powerful lesson. We have been trying to get this lady to understand that God is calling her and she needs to do her part in the calling. We watched the movie "Only a Stonecutter" and we think that she is finally understanding that God doesnt expect us to just passively accept what happens to us, rather we should be actively trying to do evrything possible to fulfill with what God wants us to do.

Other than that this week was kind of a blur, but we did work hard and we have been having a lot more success finding people to teach this week.

Anyways I´m outta time again but I love you all and I love all the letters :)

Elder Patrik Connole

So Yeah...(lol)

Hey way cool about the baptisms in the ward! thats awesome! Every member a missionary!

So the today´s email is coming a little late due to...VISIT FROM ELDER DALLIN H. OAKS!!!! So yeah we had a meeting from about 7:30 until about 9:30 and then we had to get back to the area and what not. So yeah really cool stuff we got to shake his hand and we also got to listent to him, his wife, E. Hallstrom of the presidency of the 70 and E. Uceda of the area presidency. Good stuff. They all talked about the importance of learning and then doing. If we just learn and don´t do then it doesnt serve for anything that they instruct us. E. Oaks also talked a lot about being an instrument in the Lord´s hands. So yeah it was awesome!

So yeah that was the most important thing that happened this week other than another baptism!! woot!! But I dont have the photos so I´ll send them next week. oops. Anyways this kid is turning 15 tomorrow and he is the best friend of a new convert (Elmer) that we baptized a couple weeks ago. So that was a lot of fun but the only problem was that there wasn´t very many people there, especially leadership because of E. Oaks visit. (E. Oaks did a training of all the leaders in Arequipa) His name is Carlos, his nickname is Messi (For those of you who are not soccer fans, Messi is on of the best players in the soccer world) so the ward is pretty excited because the stake soccer championship is in September hehehe. 2 of our new converts also got the priesthood this week so that was also pretty exciting.

oh yeah and last week playing soccer I totally scored a goal!!!! Usually I play goalie so I have in total...2...but hey. Even better was that I got it off of a pass from another gringo player and it was from about 20 feet out.

We got 5 new investigators from references this week, some of which seem like they should progress really quickly. We have been teaching a lot teenagers lately and the gang the they belonged to is slowly dissipating (sp). The spirit has really made an impact on these kids, so much that they want their friends to join too, and we even had a single mother who has her 14 year old drug adict and acoholic come up and beg us to help her son. So we promptly committed her and her son to baptism. So we have got a bit of work cut out for us but the spirit guides in every moment. I can feel the Saviours love for these kids inside of me and I really want to help them out. It is a sucky feeling to see some of these kids not want to talk to us and others who keep falling but they all have their agency.

That mom who presented us to her 14 year old, asked us if we could watch some movies with the kid about the consequences of drugging and drinking, but we know that the Lord´s way is to hate the sin, love the sinner. And to show our love for this kid (Lisandro) we just have to help him realize that he is really a child of God and that God really loves him and wants him to return to His presence. By opening Lisandro´s eyes and showing him what he really can become we are helping him to put goals down and make plans to accomplish them. He came to the baptism of Carlos and I hope the spirit touched him there. He couldnt make it to church nor his mom, but we will keep working with him so that he too can make the changes in his life to qualify for eternal blessings.

I love this work and I can feel my testimony growing every day as we have spiritual expierences. I know that the Lord is preparing me for all my life time and helping me learn how to gain eternal life.

My prayers go out to everyone you talked about as well as all my family so that they know that God will bless them according to their faithfulness.

Love

Elder Patrik Connole

Note from Mom: Isn't my son amazing??

More Baptisms

Thanks for the info for the mission. I´ll get that taken care of asap.

Tell Dad that I´m pumped for the dbacks!!!

Well this week we totally had 2 more baptisms! Woot! We baptized them on wednesday, and at the baptism the ward gave them a picture of the temple in Lima to help remind them of the goal to be a forever family. The biggest problem that we had been having was that the Dad was quite the achoholic until the missionaries found him. But after severa sets of missionaries We were finally able to help him get over the adiction (mostly) and be ready to get baptized. At the service it was really cool because the 15 year old daughter who lead the way about 6 months ago getting baptzed, gave a very simple but powerful testimony challenging her parents to prepare to be able to go to the temple and get sealed as a family. Really really awesome.

We also had a fun experience this week with the Presidente. We had the ZL council this week and after playing soccer all day monday and then having a lot of things to talk about on tuesday, we had...ceviche! You´ll have to ask Carol about the ceviche but it was really tasty and it didnt make me sick. So that was good. Haha, oh yeah it was funny because during the game on Monday one of the new ZL managed to facture the president´s pinky toe, so he was walking around without shoes on during the whole training. Luckily it wasn´t too bad of a facture and should heal up pretty quick lol.

About 2 months ago we left a part member family because they werent going through with their compromises and so we had to leave them. But this week we were contacting over there and we ran into the oldest son who isnt a member (yet) and like when we had tried to teach him before he wouldnt even come out of his room to talk to us. So yeah we just tried to be his friend and were able to gain his confidence. There was a stake activity going on in our chapel so we asked him if he wanted to go, which he accepted and we were able to bring him over to that and introduce him to the members and we showed him around and when we got to the baptismal font he started asking us about what he needed to do to get baptized. OH YEAH! So we challenged him to get baptized on the 27th and he accepted and so we are working hard with him now. He is a bit shy about praying out loud but no worries he´ll get there. He is 19 so we have a potential missionary candidate a year from now and on top of that he has 3 younger brothers, on of which we gotta baptize too. So send some prayers for Davey :)

Love ya

Elder Patrik Connole

"The Gang"

Yep I need the Stake pres and bishops names. As far as house info I need the phone number and direction, lol I guess I have the direction but I dont remember the phone number.

So yeah in the AMAZING French Toast the recipe was: 1 large can of evaporated milk, 6 brown eggs, some sugar, salt, and cinnamon. We couldnt find vanilla...and I´m not sure if nutmeg exists here. And lol yeah the reason why the french toast was so AMAZING was becuase nobody had EVER had it before. My pensionist liked it so much that she made it this week for us and the whole family haha. The bishop´s kids went out and bought all the ingredients and had it for sunday lunch lol. Good stuff!

So this week we had 3 baptisms!!!! woohoo!! we were really only thinking about having 1 but the spirit works on people and they get hooked. The kid, Elmer, is 16 and belonged to a gang a couple weeks ago. Now his mom tells us that he has completely changed because he comes home on time and doesnt go out in the middle of the night and is reading the scriptures. We are actually picking apart this ´gang´ 1 by 1. I think the bishop is very worried about this though, since there are a lot of YW in the ward. But I really see these kids making some big time changes in their lives. We baptized Cristopher a while ago and he gave us the reference for Elmer. Now Elmer brought 2 more of his gang buddies to church and surprisingly enough they really liked it a lot. And they behaved themselves well and participated in the classes. We have an apt with them on wednesday. Their names are Braulio and Carlos.

The other baptisms were Julia and her daughter Keysi. Julia is da bomb she had been to church 3 times already and said in her testimony that since the very first moment that we entered into her house she has felt a change in herself and in her 2 kids. We were basically waiting on both the kids to get excited for baptism but as I was in divisions with our District Leader teaching them, we felt the need to interview Keysi and Julia and baptism them on Sunday. So we did it. Her son Frank is gonna need a little more help, just because he is an 18 year old kid lol. But we are working on him, he needs to gain a testimony of the Restoration and he´ll be good to go. The whole family got up early sunday morning for their baptism and even though the water was quite cold they both were able to go through with it. Now Julia and Keysi are participating the stake traditional dance festival for their age groups and are so happy. Keysi whined a lot about the cold water because E. Sulcaray promised her that the water would be warm haha but she is still very happy with everything. And really its mostly thanks to the YW that she got baptized. They did a very good job with fellowshipping her.

We should have the baptisms of Roberto and Lourdes Arhuire. Roberto had a dream that told him to get baptized a few weeks ago but they have passed through a couple of difficulties to get baptized but finally they should do it.

Oh a tidbit for Dad. The DL who did all our 5 interviews this week has about oh...1 week as DL lol. And talking with him for a bit during splits turns out that his Dad also served in South Korea! Wha?

So yeah this is Elder Connole signing off :) Love ya!

Spreading the Gospel with French Toast

I bought 1 shirt, but its not that great of a shirt...so I only bought 1 haha, its fine and works but its just not the same as the states lol. And it was a little bit more expensive than I was thinking.

Ok so this week was quite interesting. This week ended transfers so we had a few changes in the zone, One elder, Elder Fox, had been with me in both zones the whole time that I´ve been zone leader. He went to my first area in Moquegua as ZL, so its gonna be weird not having him. They flip-flopped a couple elders in the zone as well which was weird but oh well, whatcha gonna do?

Anyways this week we had 6 people (actually 9 if you coun the 7, 6 and 3 year old) at the sacrament meeting and they all loved it. They were 3 families, well kinda, all three families came without the dad because the dad works out of town, Ilo or in USA. But they all loved it. One family was very special in particular because we met the 16 year old son (Elmer) as a reference from a new convert, Cristopher. Cristopher actually brought Elmer to sacrament meeting last week and this week we committed him to baptism for the 6th (this sat!) and he loved the idea so much that he started talking it up to a couple friends and his mom. When we finally met the mom on saturday we had an awesome lesson where we taught them about the plan of salvation. The spirit was there so strongly and when we asked Elmer´s mom, what she felt she should do, the Holy Ghost revealed to her the truth of this to her and she told us she wanted to get baptized with her son! She came to church on time the next day with her sons (the other one is 6) and a friend as well. The only problem is that we think that she is not married...and her husband works in the states and only comes every 8 months...so I guess we´ll see.

And we had a ward activity on friday. We did a Dessert Festival and who knew that Elder Connole´s AMAZING French Toast would be such a hit?? Haha everyone loved it and they all asked me for the recipe haha. We had about 15 investigators there and they all really liked it, so hopefully we will see some results of this activity.

We almost had 2 baptisms this week but they dad and mom had a fight and he went off to drink...yeah not good. We worked so hard to try to help them realize the importance of repentance and forgiveness and we tried dang hard to save the baptism too. To the point that we asked the president if we could stay up late and visit them with the bishop. We were there with them from 10:00 until midnight just trying to help them out. They are really cool still but they gotta work some things out first I guess. Its so frustrating sometimes to see people only want to do it their way, and not the Lord´s way, but thats why we fortify their faith.

Love ya

Elder Patrik Connole

Shoe Recommendations...

Yes, the pair of shoes that has hold up best has been the Hush Puppies. The Rockports are like trashed haha, but the Hush Puppies are going strong. That has been pretty consistent as I´ve seen with other missionaries too. There is also a shoe that E. Stewart has that you can buy at missionaryshoe.com (I think). It is a Brazilean made shoe that is pretty much indestructable and pretty comfortable. So idk if you wanna give that a shot

I dont have much time today, distractions are abound today, sometimes it isnt so fun to be a ZL. But really I like it a lot, I´ve baptized a lot more people as a leader, I honestly think that God inspires me even more and I can learn even more from all the missionaries. Its interesting because I´ve discovered that it is even more important that when you are in a leadership position to be even more humble. Learn from everyone and apply it. I´ve seen very good missionaries who simply just dont progress and be leaders because they just wont accept help from others so their progress stays at one level and they dont get any better.

Anyways so this week was CRAZY we had to divisions a lot and try to help a bunch of missionaries with their investigators. We had a part member family (daughter new convert and parents no members) tell us this week that God had revealed to them through a dream that they needed to get baptized on the 30th and woohoo! we were about ready to live them behind because they just wouldnt accept a baptismal date! But yeah they are pumped for the baptism.

Agh! time goes so fast!!!!

Love you guys

Elder Patrik Connole

Spiritual Experiences Better Than Great Indicators

Haha I can just imagine Dad scaling the McDonalds play thing hahahaha

My intestines behave most of the day except in the mornings. I think it is just because I am NOT a morning type person anyways but idk.

So as you can tell we had a baptism this week of Cristopher. He is a cool kid, he knew the gospel was true from the moment he heard it. We actually met him about 4 weeks ago but we could never get him to church. Finally last week we got him there. He loved everything and got along really well with the other two 15 year olds. In fact he loves the gospel so much that he is giving us references of all his friends and is trying to work with his family as well. So hopefully this little seed will produce a lot of fruit. :)

We were super excited on sunday because we had a family of 3 (minus the Dad who works outside of Arequipa in a fishing town called Ilo) come to church. The lady went to church last week and loved it and this week we were able to get her 18 year old son and 13 year old daughter to come. Thankfully the YW took good care of the daughter and Frank (the 18 year old) participated extremely well in the gospel principles class and in elders quorum. (even though in elders quorum we talked about eternal marriage he really liked it a lot). Then later on in the day we had an apt with them and after watching a video about Brigham Young´s conversion, Frank asked if he could do the closing prayer. He did a very ferverent (sp) prayer and asked very specifically about everything we had been teaching him. After the prayer we stayed on our knees and asked him how he felt. He said "peace". And when we asked him where that comes from, he started thinking and you could literally feel the spirit feel the room so much as the Holy Ghost testified to him that all of this is true. He started to cry and tell all of us how he had been feeling before we came that his friends had started to take him down a bad path and he just wanted to do what was right. We asked him what he wanted then, and he told us "I want to do God´s will and follow his plan for me". We testified to him that God did love him and put us in his path to show him this great plan. We testified to him that God wanted him to serve a mission and be a leader in His church. Frank and his family will be getting baptized very soon. We can only find Frank on the weekends because the rest of the week he is at college, but I know that he just received a solid witness from the spirit that this is the true church.

We also found another girl on sunday as well. We had contacted her a couple days before and we found her that day. She is 19 and after we helped feel the spirit she started to trust us enough to tell us that she had basically been abandoned by her parents. Like they took off with her younger siblings and she has no idea where they are or how they are doing. She said that there was always problems in her home with her parents fighting and what not, and she had always protected her younger siblings and now she feels so alone and worried for them and she just doesnt know what to do. She expressed to us about her hopes and dreams of having a carreer and a family and everything but now she was stuck with a disabled aunt and had to be with her nearly constantly. We testified to her of Christ´s love and how much he wanted her to be happy and that is why we had come. We challenged her to get baptized and she accepted it. We are gonna make sure that the YSA come and help us to get her some friends and turn her life around.

We also had Zone Conference which was awesome. This week we didnt have the greatest indicators but we did have a lot of spiritual experiences which is definitely a lot more important. I love this work and I´m so excited for Brayden that he will soon be a part of it too.

Love you all

Elder Patrik Connole

Upcoming Baptisms

(In response to his brother getting his mission call)

WAHOO!!! Thats AWESOME!!!! Finally!!! haha.

Way cool. I cant hardly even write now because I´m so excited.

I need more BFC por favor, its not super urgent or anything but I dont have anymore left.

Oh yeah and I just realized that the mission is planning on sending me home to AZ with President Richardson, and that wouldnt very good lol. Can you send me the new ward/stake info. I need the ward name, bishop´s name, stake name and the stake preisdent´s name. And I need the new home address and the phone number too. Otherwise they will be sending me to good ol´ AZ

Anyways this week for me was fairly interesting we had Zone Leader council where we talked about hope and what that really is. So we will be trying to apply that in the zone. We had a planning session/zone meeting from 9 am to 4 pm (w/out lunch...I almost died, thankfully we were able to find some Doritos). So we didnt work that much this week BUT we did have 4 people at sacrament meeting. 3 of which we brought ourselves. One lady, Julia Huanca loved it! She stayed for the whole 3 hours and really felt the spirit, so much that she commited to bring her 18 and 13 year old kids. YES! I smell some baptisms coming up!

Another guy that we brought is 40 year old bachelor Marcos. He is a pretty rich guy and is covered in tatoos but he really wants to get baptized. We arent sure if he really understands what all it implies, but we will be talking with him quite a bit this week to make sure he gets it.

The other one was a 15 year old kid named Christofer, he is really cool and has a testimony of the church and of Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon and everything BUT this was the first time we got him to church, stinkin kid, but he came and also stayed for the whole thing but he really liked it a lot. Now we just gotta go get permission and we could dunk him this week.

We went on splits on sunday with the YM president and a kid who is going on the mission soon, I went with the YM president who just got back from the mission and was assitant for 3 months. Anyways long story short we found this 17 year old kid and the kid is soooo excited to baptized that he wants to do it ASAP. So we depending on if his parents are cool or not we´ll get him baptized too.

Love ya all

Elder Patrik Connole

Not Typical

Weeeellllll.....turns out that I only got halfways better...on Tuesday I got sick again so this time I went to a doctor, yeah it was pretty bad. Turns out I had an infection in my intestines that had been a problem for a well, so they games me some pills put me on a very boring diet (chicken and rice with nothing else) for 3 days and now I think I´m good to go.

So today for the 4th of July, President Fernandez has invited all the zone leaders to a soccer game and a barbeque. SWEET! Its gonna be great!

Anyways so since this week my comp and I were both sick we didnt get all that much work done. But we had a couple fun experiences in the little time that we did have. We started visiting a family whose daughter is a new convert and it seems to me like the elders before us thought that they werent married and just living together, BUT after a closer examination they are civily married but not married by the Catholic Church separately. So after finding this out we surprised them by challenging to get baptized on the 9th. They definitely were not expecting that, they thought that maybe in a like 2 years they would get baptized. Anyways they are gonna think and pray about it and hopefully we will be able to get them dunked soon. I really believe so. Their names are Roberto and Lourdes.

Another cool experience that we had was on Saturday. We had contacted a family a few days back and went back to visit them. The mother, Julia, let us in and the basically forced her 18 year old son out of his room to come and listen to us. That is something that very rarely happens her in Peru. Most parentes are not very imposing on their kids after they turn about 12. Anyways grumbling 18 year old Frank came out and told us very flatly that he didnt want to be there and he didnt believe in God or anything. We knew that was a lie but we just started talking to the kid and seeing what he likes to do. Turns out he is a break dancer and so I was able to tell him about Dad and Bub and my comp also dances too. So he really opened up and we were able to commit both of them both to baptism. The mom bawled in her prayer and told God thanks for sending us to bless her.

Love ya

Elder Patrik Connole

Playing 3 Week Catch Up!

June 13
Good for the Mavs, its about time they won a championship, the Heat will be very hungry next season for wins. GO DBACKS!!! That series with the Giants will probably be a very important series in the season possibly a big turning point everyone will be hyped up for the game.

So this week was kind of a tough week because I was a little bit sick. Not fun, but we still got some work done. First of all Richard and Ana are awesome, they have decided to take out a loan so that they can buy their own house, get married and baptized. They werent able to go to church on sunday because of a family commitment but they know the church is true, we just gotta get them the means to get married an baptized.

Sunday was almost extremely disapointing because everyone that had committed to come all started falling one by one until we were singing the sacrament hymn and 21 year old Anni Barrios (who was almost the last person we expected to show up) came in ushered by the other elders from the ward that meets right before us. We have been teaching her for about a week and a half, but she would never (and still hasn´t) read the Book of Mormon, she will always read the pamphlets but not the BoM. She is a non-practicing 7th day adventist but has really enjoyed what we´ve taught her. So she is on track to get baptized if we can just get her to read the BOM.

On sunday we also taught a 17 year old girl named Shirley. When we contacted her we were knocking on her door just when she came up and she looked a little bit surprised and asked us who we were looking for. So as usual we told her "we are looking for you!" which was true but we just didnt know who it was, and so she decided to listen to us, and we told her a little bit about the message and she commented that she usually didnt like to talk to people who bring religious stuff to her door but that she wanted to talk to us. Yesterday we found her again and she told us that she was basically agnostic but her family was all crazy religious which really bugged her. So we just starting explaining that God really did love her and that He wanted her to feel of His love, which is why He sent us. Then we explained most of the message of the restoration of the gospel and we asked her if she would pray about it. We knew that she was starting to gain confidence in us and starting to feel the spirit when she asked us how would she feel after she prayed. We testified to her that she would feel God´s love for her and in that moment we committed her to baptism. It was very cool to see her accept all the invitations that we left her and it will be awesome to see her spiritual journey to God get under way.

We also were able to activate our pensionist´s 21 year old son who had been inactive and hanging out with the wrong crowd for about 4 years. But now he is excited to come to church and wants to prepare himself to serve a mission. We will keep working with him.

We should be getting a visit from Elder Nash this week. He is the Area President for right now but will be getting released at the end of the month. So you´ll get an update from me about that next week.

Love you all!

June 20
Happy Fathers Day!!!!!!!!! Sorry Im writing so late, my companion E. Webb got changed and now I am with E. Sulcaray who came from Ilo, which is like a 5 hour bus ride so he didnt get here until about 4ish. Im sorry you had a lame Father´s Day, hopefully the kids and mom give ya belated Fathers day this week. Anyways I dont have a ton of time but I´ll get in what I can.

We had Stake conference this week and Presidente Fernandez came to it. We brought a 12 year old kid that we should be bapizing this week and the first half was really boring so I let him read my BOM during it. The second half was much better because the Stake President and our Mission President were a lot better speakers. Presidente challenged all the investigators to get baptized this saturday at 4:00 from the pulpit. And the Stake President told a story about how we need to follow the spirit. He worked as a taxi driver for a time and one time he didnt follow a prompting and ended up getting held up and robbed. Oops. It was quite a funny story in retrospect but definitely not in the moment.

This week we also had the privilige of having Elder Nash come and speak to all the missionaries. Wow it is always awesome to feel the spirit that a 70 brings to the room. He talked more than anything about making the atonement our objective. In order for us to really get all the benefit of the atonement we need to live the gospel to the fullest. In every respect. We must prepare ourselves every week to partake of the sacrament and be an example of the believers. As missionaries we must represent Christ better and remember that everything that we do is to be obedient in order to help another gain sufficient faith to be able to repent, be baptized, recieve the gift of the holy ghost and endure to the end. Everything from getting up at 6:30 to eating breakfast to contacting to whatever we do. Christ always helped others to live the gospel and bring them those blessings. We have been called to represent Christ and do what he would do here.

E. Nash also got us to remember that the ONLY way to recieve a full remission of their sins is by living the restored gospel to its fullest. We must bring this knowledge to all others. Every single child of God must be baptized by the priesthood authority of God and recieve the Holy Ghost by that same authority or it is impossible for that person to enter into God´s kingdom because he or she we ill not be able to benifit from the atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ. In fact those who simply do not live the commandments as they should makes them have to pay the price for their own sins, and makes Christ´s suffering in vain.

He also talked to us a lot about D&C 84:106 (I think) where it says something along the lines of whoever is strong in the spirit take along with you he that is weak so that he may be strengthed as well. This we apply to the investigators because their testimony is weak still so we must be there by their side to help them until they are sufficiently strong to do it for themselves and then they will do it by themselves all their life.

We also learned about the importance of study (and you all know how much I dont like studying), but really the study is to help us be strong and convert us more and more to the gospel. I am grateful that E. Nash came and helped us out. I understand now how essencial daily gospel study.

Love you all!

Elder Patrik Connole

June 27
Hola fam, so I have this elder in my zone that doesnt believe that I was a cheerleader, because he claims to have known them all, and so he wants photo evidence haha, could you take some photos off of my facebook or something and send it over for me?

So yeah this week was awesome even though my comp E. Webb got changed. My new comp E. Sulcaray and I had 3 baptisms! a 12 year old named Alex who is the nephew of the Relief Society President. The other 2, Luis and Stephani, are the nephews of the Primary President. Luis is 13 and Stephani 11. We actually really were not expecting to baptize Luis and definitely not Stephani.

Alex we actually met my first week here and finally after a lot of encouragement and just building this kid up we were able to help him decide to get baptized. Luis we got to know last Tuesday, we were actually really surprised that he wanted to listen but after the 2nd lesson (a Friday) he told us that he felt like he should get baptized the upcoming saturday. Then we were worried about getting permission from his parents but it turned out to be quite the opposite, not only did they give permission they went and bought him a suit! wow! Stephani we actually didnt even meet until last week on monday. We had an apt scheduled with Luis at like 630 but he wasnt there and she answered the door. We asked her where Luis was and she told us he just hadnt gotten home yet but not to worry because he was still very excited about his baptism. Then we asked her and what about you? When do you want to get baptized? after thinking it over for about 3 seconds she responded "Can I do it on saturday with my brother?" ........we were stunned for a second and then we replied "well we think so but we are gonna ask our mission president first." So we came back a little bit later, taught the kids about the restoration and ran home to call Presidente Fernandez. He gave us the OK and we taught both the kids all the rest in the next 3 days. way cool experience.

I was sick most of the week so I wasnt able to work as hard as I wanted but I am back to mission normal now. This week we will be working hard and trying to keep finding people to baptize this week. Actually I try to do that every week but we gotta make up for last week lol.

Love ya, thanks to mom for the fam pics

Elder Patrik COnnole

God Guides Us to Where We Need to Be!

Anyway as for me this week was full of amazing spirtual experiences and I´m pretty sure I wont be able to tell you all of them. Let it be known that God does guide us to the places and people where we need to be even when we dont have any idea what He has in mind.

So last night we went out to work (we didnt work all morning and most of the afternoon because there was elections again and so therefore its illegal to go out and proselyte) and we were finding lots of people that just wanted to talk with us but they refused to recognize the spirt that they were feeling. So we felt like we were wasting time for about and hour and a half. Finally after all that we were feeling discouraged but we felt the need to be diligent and to knock on one last door. I had an impression that this was the house that the Lord had prepared people to listen to us. So we knocked and this 20 year old girl comes out and my comp E. Webb says "We are representatives of Jesus Christ and we are here to baptize you like Jesus was". Her answer was "Really? I know I need that in my life". She invited us in and we taught her and her Dad about baptism and they both commited for the 25th of June. Wow so cool.

Saturday morning we had an apt every half hour from 10 until 12:30 and every single one of them fell through. And we just had one person left to see if she was there but it was only 10:30 and we had told her at 12:00. But we decided to go there anyways. Knocked on the door and she was waiting for us and when we asked if we could go in and teach her and her husband we were able to do so. We were able to commit them to be baptized but we have to get them married first. They were awesome.

We also went and taught Richard and Anna on Friday night. They have been progressing extremely fast and came to church last week. They are living together and so we taught them about the atonement and the law of chastity. They understood it extremely well and they had told us a few nights ago that they wanted to get baptized. So the spirit was there so strong and we just asked Richard "So when do you really feel like you should get baptized". "Well for me I want to do it tomorrow. what is it that I have to do to get baptized?"..."Um...you either gotta not live together and live in separate houses or get married." and so he turns to his "wife" and says " you know what you are gonna go live with your parents until we can get married." Wow. that was so aweosme. Now they are still talking about what they are gonna do and the elections kinda screwed up everything but i´ll get you more info as we keep teaching them this week. PRAY FOR THEM!!!!

Love you and I coulda written a whole lot more but there is no time.

Elder Patrik Connole

EMERGENCY TRANSFERS!!!!!

First off hows g-ma? I´ve been praying for her.

Alright so yeah some of the scripture clues were pretty good some of them I still cant figure out. haha. I´ll let you know next week which ones. That is if I find them...because guess what EMERGENCY TRANSFERS!!!!!

Ugh. not fun. So on Wed. morning E. Stewart and I were planning like normal...and at about 9:45 the assistents call me and they told me I had an emergency change and that I was going to Hunter as ZL. My first though was...This has to be a joke. But unfortunately it was the truth...So yeah I am now in Zona Hunter, its still in Arequipa but on the other side. like 45 to an hour away. And to make it even better the took out both of the old ZLs and put me in with one of the elders who was a DL here. Oh man wow. So yeah, I have no idea why the change was made. In fact all I know is that I´m here for a reason and I just gotta work like a crazy man and do the Lords will not mine.

This new stake is struggling quite a bit, as well as my ward, so we have our work cut out for us but Im always up for a challenge. We started working in the area and found some really cool people. One guy and his wife told us straight up that we were an answer to their prayers. We gotta get them married (not an unusual thing) and then we had a baptism on Sunday that the elders who were here left us. It was a 9 year old kid, named Douglas (prounounce DOO-glaas) who comes from a less active family. We are trying to convince the Mom and Dad that they now have to go to church every week and we are having some success but they need a lot of help that we cant give so we are depending a lot more on the Ward Council.

But yeah other than than that we haven´t been doing much other than getting to know the area and trying to find people to teach and baptize. I cant believe its my birthday tomorrrow, its come up so fast I guess we´ll see if my pensionist does anything special for my bday.

So I love you all and you´ll get a better email next week as the crazines (hopefully) dies down.

Tell Grandma my thoughts and prayers are with her.

Elder Patrik Connole

Getting Married is Difficult!

Wow, more craziness! With all that ward moving. I just got a package of letters from the YW of Orange Glen Ward, which I guess no longer exists lol. And I got packages from you and from mormor. I figured out most of the scripture hunt but there were a few that stumped me and my gringo comp.

This week was very sleepless because we had to go do some late night checks on missionaries and baptismal interviews that went until late. But even though we were dead tired we went out and worked hard, and more effeciently. On friday I was on splits with E. Garcia and in the morning we went ot go look for our plan A and B but neither of them were home. So we decided to go contacting. Very first door we knocked on Pedro answers the door, and after about 2 min of talking to him in the door he just let us in and let us teach him. As we were teaching him his cousin came in and the look on her face when she saw that we were in there was...AWESOME her whole face lit up and she just stopped what she was doing to listen to us. They both accepted a baptismal date for the 28th and they really love everything.

On saturday we had another way cool experience, we were heading over to an apt with a family (which didnt go well) and this guy starts yelling at us from the top of the roof and indicating that when we were done we should go visit him...alright that is an obivious yes! So we went up after talking to that family we headed over to him. Turns out to be a family of 3 who also want to get baptized. They could be on the 28th as well but we´ll see. They were also very very cool

We also have another family who the missionaries have been working with since January. But they arent married and here in Peru it is SOOOOOOOOOO hard to get married here. You have to have your original birth certificate which you can only get at the place where you were born. so basically, if you come from some remote place in the jungle or some little town in the middle of nowhere its pretty much impossible to get married with out making a huge trip that costs a lot. And most of those people dont have the money to go get it. and not only that you have to do a whole bunch of stuff in the city to get it all done. BUT they have everything ready and are going today to get everything finished and they will be married NEXT WEEK! so cool! they are very excited

Love you

Elder Patrik Connole

After the Mother's Day Phone Call...

Haha Im glad that it went well, sorry I got on so late, I was running from internet place to internet place and finally we remembered that one of the members had it so we went there and he was happy to help out. thanks for the pics

So Idk what we can do with the camera, no I didnt find it, went back and looked but its gone. long gone. I had taken a few pictures that werent baptisms but there werent very many. So yeah I could definitely buy one here but idk how much it would be. I could look around but im assuming itd be about the same price. I think i just lost a few pics of my comps and what not but ill have them on facebook, no biggie.

Anyways I pretty much told you everything that went on for my week. Today at about 1 am the assistents called up to tell me about transfers and what not so im like reallly tired. I had people calling me from about 1 to 2 or 2:30 with questions and stuff and then again all morning long. Man its tough flying solo as a ZL but I thnk i got most everything figured out and should be good to go until tomorrow. hopefully haha.

My new companion is Elder Stewart also form Arizona, also has 8 siblings but he isnt the oldest. I guess he has like 12 nieces/nephews a few of which have been born recently so kinda similiar to what im expierencing right now. I think we will be able to work really well together.

Yesterday I was with the bishop (obispo) most of the day and it really amazes me at how sensistive he was to the promptings of the Holy Ghost. We were able to really work well together and help out a couple people to be understand more about the gospel and be more excited about getting baptized.

It was tough to get anyone to come to church because it was Mothers day and all. Arequipa is SUCH a party city. Like any tiny little thing that they can celebrate the make a huge drinking fest out of it. With tons of really bad music haha. But its even worse on big holidays like mothers day or christmas. So yeah I spent a lot of the day keeping away from large groups of drunk people. Thankfully nothing happened and we could work. I really cant understand how people can just do that, but I guess thats just because I´ve been born and raised in the gospel and most of my friends are good members as well. Im so grateful for that blessing in my life.

The president decided to re-open an area here in the zone which means that the biggest zone in Arequipa just got bigger. 15 COMPANIONSHIPS! Wow. 2 companships are the asistents so we dont have to worry about them very much haha. Except for when they call me right after sacrament meeting with some sort of request for baptismal clothes or interview or both haha. But its all good as missionaries we will do anything just to get a baptism. Any sacrifice is worth it to help someone else make an eternal baptismal covenant with our Heavenly Father.

Anyways love you guys and ill talk to you next week!

Elder Patrik Connole