No Changes at Transfers

So yeah thanks for all the updates and stuff haha. Im attaching photos of the baptism we had on saturday. The guy who got baptized is the one wearing a belt. oh yeah and imagen 001 is my whole zone haha.

Anyways wow so transfers came and went with hardly any changes in the zone. Only 2 missionaries left and neither was my comp so the zone stayed basically intact which is good becuase now we can helpe everyone to keep progressing at the same rate.

Anways we were very excited about the baptism because that puts at 5 for the month which was the goal that Pte. Fernandez put on all the ZL and the assistents and so far we are the only ones to get to that goal. This kid was way cool. I found him on splits with our ward mission leader my first week here, he committed to baptism for the 12th but then we couldnt find him and he didnt come to church, finally we found him again turns out that he was just working ridiculous hours and couldnt do anything about it so we recommitted him and he came to church that week and got baptized the next. He has a lot of friends that are members and are either rms or on the mission so he really fits in well with the ward. His mom came to the baptism to and really liked it so hopefully she will want to follow suit here pretty quick.

Oh yeah Miguel already signed up for institutes that start today as well haha We have a whole bunch of members, mostly future missionaries that are helping us out every week now. They really have caught the missionary spirit. Like 15 dudes for the ages of 16 to 23 are helping us out all the time. 5 or 6 of which we have gone out and activated and they are now getting themselves worthy to serve missions. It so awesome to have the members there helping us out because they mean a lot to the investigators especially when the missionaries are gone. its so essencial.

Anyways we are so grateful and we are getting references from them as well of their friends who arent members and also families that part member families. We are seeing results. We had a fun experience at the baptism as well because the older guy Marcos Antonio that got baptized last week came to the baptism this week and was able to be a witness with his son in law for the ordinance. Way cool!

Love ya

Elder Patrik Connole

Best Week of Whole Mission!

Hey Fam!!!

So thanks for all the updates and what not, I got a package from mormor which Im not sure if I had mentioned that or not but yeah. Oh and my p-day shoes are on their last stand like about ready to die, idk if you could send me like $10-15 so that I can buy another pair...

Anyways this week was THE BEST WEEK OF MY WHOLE MISSION!!!! We had 3 baptisms in 1 fell swoop! yeah baby! It was so cool! I baptized 2 of of the 3, and Brandon (A 16 year old member) baptized his best friend, Cristian (also 16). Cristian was tight, he accepted a baptismal date and came to church 3 weeks in a row, got permission from his parents and loves everything that we have taught him. It was a very special expierence for those two.

So the older man is Marcos, he is 55 years old and everyone in his fam is member. A really cool story, before I got here everyone told us that nobody could baptize him becuase he was a big time drunkard. Like everyday drunk type of person. Anyways his son-in-law let us know that the drinking had finally got to him and had given him facial paralysis, yeah very hard for this gringo to understand him but we taught him the very first day the Doctrine of Christ (which is basically we teach that everyone needs to follow Christs example and be baptized as he was) and he accepted a baptismal date, and never looked back. He now wants to gety sealed in the temple to his family and go on a couples mission with his wife. His wife couldnt believe it, like at all. When we were in the font and I baptized him she couldnt watch. haha

Then after that I got to baptize 16 year old Alex. He actually contacted us! haha. We were hurrying to get to an apt. And he flagged us down with his mom who is actually an inactive member. They moved here from Cusco and have absolutely nothing because their house was swept away in a recent flood. So yeah really humble circumstances. But Alex got baptized in about a week and half. He wanted to get baptized so bad that when we missed an apt with him that he went looking for us! Way cool kid. and now the ward is rallying together to help this family out. His single mother is raising him and 3 other kids 1 of which is about a year old.

Anyways Im outta time but i just wanna encourage you all to give references to the missionaries because it really does work!

Love

Elder Patrik Connole

Soccer & Such

Thanks for the pics, and thanks to Dad for the BYU updates and I hope everything goes well for the Cougs in the tourney! Oh and I sent a Dads email to me last week to a buddy and he said that he loves the way Dad writes and wants to meet him hahaha. Oh yeah I did hear about the Japanese disaster but not very much. A huge earthquake and tsunami and idk what else. Here in Peru everyone was going nuts because of it but the wave wasnt even all that big when it got here

Anyways this week was pretty good. Im sending pictures of the game we played on monday, lotta fun. We almost had a baptism but we couldnt get permission from parents in time so that he could get baptized this week so we are gonna baptize him this week and he is really excited for it. We are also gonna complete a family by baptizing the non-member father who has been an acoholic all his life. Finally he got facial paralyisis which humbled him enough that we could start preparing him to get baptized

We also might baptize another kid that we found this week. We were heading over to an apt and this kid, his mom (an inactive member) and his sister called us over and asked us where the chapel was. So we explained it to them and got to know them a little better. Turns out that the just moved here from a small town by Cusco and they are living on practically nothing. So we are now talking with the bishop and everything to help this family out. The son Alex really, REALLY wants to get baptized but he is gonna live outside of our area for a week so we gotta figure out a way to find him. The daughter (Alexandra) is kinda iffy and doubting the reality of God because of the things that they have been going through. But she is willing to listen. She didnt come to church but the mom and the son did.

We are trying to find a balance between keeping our area going and working with zone to keep them all motivated. Its tough to find the balance sometimes but we are doing a lot better.

Anyways doing well, and Im learning a ton about myself and the spirit,

Love you

Elder Patrik Connole

Busy, Busy, Busy

Wow so what a crazy week. But first of all thanks for the updates.

I have been getting the newsletter but it comes infrequently sometimes I get 2 or 3 at the same time but she has been really good about getting it to all us missionaries.

I did my fast for my investigators and zone and for the family in general. I had been thinking about Grandma more than anything.

Anyways so today we are getting all the missionaries together to play soccer. Like all of Arequipa so like a ton of missionaries. We pretty stoked to just get out and have some fun.

Last week was a blur absolutely nuts. I cant even write all the details but Ill give what I can. Tuesday was Zone Leader Council all day. from 8 am to 8 pm. Basically we had to give a report of what all went on in the zone last month and what were our plans to get better. The mission baptized a record amount last month and we are hungry for more. So Pte. Fernandez was very content but he openend our eyes a little more to what we were really doing. Basically in a nutshell we as missionaries are looking for the people that the Lord needs and wants in his church. We are preparing the future leaders of the church and the future kings and queens in the Celestial Kingdom...woah...never thought about it like that before!

Wednesday we went on splits to a smaller outlying town where the missionaries just started working there since January. Its called Characato and is very pretty. Lots of fields and what not. It actually kinda reminded me of Heber but a lot poorer. Anyways they are doing much better and are working hard to get the church established there. Its way cool because the have whats called a Casa-Capilla. Which means basicaly that the meeting house is where the missionaries live. Way cool.

Thursday went pretty well we got permission to baptize M Canazas, who is 12. The Dad works far away and is gone for long periods of time so we were grateful that God sent us in just the right time to be able to get the permission and the Dad also came to both the baptism and the confirmation. He felt the spirit too. It was crazy how quickly he accepted it because he is super catholic (or at least so he says lol). And so yeah it was a really awesome weekend. The first 3 pics are of this baptism.

On Friday there was a HUGE convetion of YSA, like 17 stakes huge. 600 YSA. Wow. Anyways President Fernandez arranged that we could take them all out and contact for a couple hours. So we as ZL went and explained to them what was gonna happen and brought them to the stake center, paired them up and sent them off. In that 2 hours 46 YSA plus 24 missionaries did over 500 contacts and found about 50 references for the missionaries in that area. Wow.

Saturday we had 2 baptisms because the Elders in Characato still dont have a font and so we did it together. Normally they just do it in the stake center but this time they did it with us because the girl who got baptized I actually contacted and started teaching her when I was in Puerta Verde with E. Muñoz. So yeah I was very excited for her and she was very grateful to us for finding her and helping her out.

So in the end despite not working a whole ton in our own area we did a lot and we are very
pumped for this upcoming week because yesterday a 10 year old kid came to church and wants to be baptized on saturday. Sweet! God does reward us when we are doing all that we can!

Love you all

Elder Patrik Connole