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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