Teaching Families

Eating at his pension's restaurant.

Patrik, Marco & Elder Chaca
Patrik & Marco right after baptism. (Obviously the date stamp is inaccurate.)

I got your package and $5 from mormor today, plus some dearelders. I was talking with another gringo the other day and he said that its better to send stuff in envelopes when ever possible because they go through customs better. so yeah. thanks for the blessing note.

So we had our last president´s interview with pres. davis this week. because they are done this thursday, and will be heading back to the states.

We´ve been teaching some kids of the ages 9-12 lately, 6 of them. 3 of them are all ready to be baptized but their paretns won´t give us permission...sound familiar??? This time however we have just started teachign the parents and I think that we will be able to eventually baptized the whole family :) (btw its really weird to teach them the law of chastity.)

We´ve also just started teaching the ¨husband¨ of one of the recents converts from last transfer. Husband is in parenthesis because they were never married, just living together for 5 years. Unfortunately that is quite the norm here, even amongst some of the members. Its a lot tougher to get married here, yoiu have to get your blood tested and all sorts of weird stuff like that...idk, so people just don´t do it. plus its tough to get a divorce so all of it is just easier to live together.

We had the opportunity to listen to a general authority this week in stake conference. Elder Mestre of one of the quorums of the seventy from Venezuela spoke to the stake this week. They had a special priesthood session, adult session, recent convert/investigator session and the general session in a huge Institute of Religion. Anyways they were all really good meetings, He talked a lot about the families and how they are so important in God´s plan for our salvation. Its so true, when I went on splits with on of the assistents to the president, (E. Villacis) he told me that finding, teaching and baptizing families should always be my focus and I totally agree, within the family is a built in support system and God wans whole families not just some individuals to return unto him.

The other thing the Elder Mestre talked about was the importance of the Temple and I can´t help but think how lucky we are in the States to have a temple so close to us. Especially in the west. How far is the temple from where we are living now? I´m sure it is waaaaaaaaayyyyy less time than what it is from here. Its a good 14-16 hour bus ride to Lima from here so its a lot tougher to get to the temple.

It was also kinda funny, in the adult session Elder Mestre used a phrase that I´m pretty sure that only the 4 Americans in the room understood. He was talking about Missionary work and how everyone should help out, and that we can´t just say that ¨todo esta peachy¨ ( everthing´s just peachy¨ I had to explain what peachy meant to my companion and why I was laughing lol.

Today we have an appointment with Marco´s family, so I´m pretty exctied for that, hopefully we can see the whole familiy dressed in white, just waiting to go to the Temple. And we are working with another part-member family that only the one son is a member (Franko) who is preparing to go on a mission. The parents go to church basically every week and are awesome when we teach them until we ask them when can we baptize them, and then they tell us, that they are going to wait until Franko goes on his mission. ARGH!

Anyways I love you all, and I would send you some more pics, but my dang camera needs new batteries and I haven´t been able to buy some good ones. Its tough to find duracells or energizers here. I´m thinking about, when I´m able to get some money of buying batteries with a charger. that´d be smart.

Elder Patrik Connole