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
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
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