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