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