Pics & More!

Here are pictures of his living quarters. Patrik's 2 y/o brother was fascinated to see Patrik's toe in this pic. Is this something you really should show to your mother?
How cute, he has pics his siblings colored on the wall.
Party outside their apartment.
Lightsaber pic. ??
Which way is up?

So the other day E. Morales and I were working in an area and we decided to stop at a members house, we knocked a couple times but they didn´t answer, but we could hear that they were in there. So Morales yelled ¨Police! Open the Door!¨and out runs 18 year old Willy with his hands in the air shouting ¨I didn´t do it!¨ Oh it was funny and he will never hear the end of it because we had the 2nd counselor of the branch with us. So funny!

Remember the photo I sent of Jessica and Andre? Well they were part of the stake activitiy for Mother´s day, they performed a traditional dance to end it all and it was awesome. I´m going to see if I can get a copy of the video and send it up to you.

And saturday I had another interesting experience, I got on the bus on our way to an appointment and this, I believe he was a Jehovah´s Witness, (And they are no fun to talk to because the KNOW the bible backwards and fowards) recognizes that I´m a missionary and so he decided to start a conversation with me. So he asks me ¨Who is Jehovah?¨

I responded ¨Jesus Christ¨ which he immediatly counters with the typical Jehovah´s witness belief that Jehovah is the Father. So I explained to him that Jehovah means I AM and Christ declares himself to be the great I AM in the scriptures but to no avail. All he wanted to do was argue with me. So I said that I´m not gonna argue with you and left it at that. He then proceeded to ask me question after question about faith and finally went back to the Jehovah just before he exited. It sucked because my companion was sitting in the back and I was in the front so I had no back up.

But afterwards it was way cool because all the other passengers had been listening to me and sympathizing on my side so when he exited I felt prompted to explain our purpose as missionaries to them. I explained that we didn´t want to fight, but just to share what we know is true. then I just started talking about the Gospel and honestly I don´t remember very well what I said but I remember feeling really good, and that after I was done I had people asking me for pamphlets.

That was awesome.

Anyways Im gonna send you some photos now

Love ya, Elder Patrik Connole

From May 3

YAY! I´m looking foward to the pictures! My fast yesterday was that you could find a house before moving out there.

I got your package as well! thanks for everything that was sent :) my comp loved the snickerdoodles and so did the zone leaders that are spending the night at our place. I think it probably actually arrived a couple weeks ago but the last couple weeks we didn´t get anything because of transfers and cars not working. (This package took 6 weeks to get to him. You can imagine the freshness of the cookies. They were probably hard as rocks. I guess missionaries will eat anything! He received another package from my Mom that took only a couple of weeks, though.) But yeah I got a lot of letters this week obviously and I got a bunch that were sent to the MTC from like middle of feb.

As far as I can figure out for calling you, (im still not super sure) is that I call you sometime this week to figure out a time that works for both of us on sunday and the sunday I call you...thats all I know. Emailing the mission office is definitely a good idea.

Ah yes. at the end of this transfer the mission is splitting and we are getting a new president. From my mission they are taking Puno and Juliaca, (the cold yucky areas) and anybody found in that area next transfer will be part of the Cusco mission. I doubt I´ll change missions but my buddy, E. Rogers might because he is in Juliaca right now. And yes I know E. Kunz really well and I´ll be able to see him in a couple weeks when we have a multizone meeting.

The only time i´ve been in contact with the mission home is when I lost my wallet (did they ever get that resolved with you?) and they all spoke spanish at me, even the gringos. I have spoken some english because there is an american elder in my district and occasionally when I teach my companions some english. But really its mostly spanish.

Dad, I studied up on your suggestion and went a little farther, I´ll send you a letter about it later ;)

Lets see so this week, I did some sewing of my backpack that ripped, and I ate guinea pig stew. The meat basically tasted like wateredown chicken but it was fine, But it is tough to eat because they don´t ever ever ever strip the meat off the bone and I got the ribs, which are quite small.

The last 3 nights there was a huge fiesta in front of our room, like literally a huge platform with bass speakers 4x the size as Scott carpenter´s speakers like a yard away from our door. Tons of people drinking and ´dancing´ in a circle (more like a drunken shuffle) and they were all wearing their traditional clothes too. It was rather funny to watch.

The first two nights we stayed at another room but sunday night we didn´t and surprisingly i slept well because i was so exhausted.

Love ya, thanks for your prayers and all that you sent

Elder Patrik Connole

Weeding is Fun????

Here is a picture I received in the mail from his Mission President.

So I thought we weren't getting an email letter this week, yet here is one a day later than usual.

I have no idea what is up with the mother´s day phone call. I´ll have to ask someone who speaks english. Itll be on the 9th.

Holy COW, that is a waaaaaay long time to wait...July 28th??? wow. (Referring to friend who is being postponed going to MTC once again.)

I didn´t get moved anywhere, so Im still in Belen with a new companion however. Elder Morales from Costa Rica, he is also the new DL. I think he is gonna be a hard worker. I sent off a letter yesterday with some pictures, hopefully it gets to you in time. I´ll write a letter this week but Im not sure where to send it. So yeah. We didn´t get any packages or letters this week either due to transfers

We had a service project this week in the chacra, which is basically a little farm, but it was a half hour walk from town and just in the middle of now where. We basically took out a bunch of rocks from their field and attacked weeds with a machetti (that was the fun part) It was a lot of work, and I think we are doing it again this week. (Time to invest in a machete, I guess!)

I took a picture of their guinea pigs, they are HUGE! Holy cow! I didn´t know those critters could get so big

Im going to be working really hard this transfer because I really want some success as far as baptisms go. I know that the results dont matter as much as the effort but with great effort comes great results!

These two are ready to be baptized have a really strong testimony, their mom is a member but the dad is super Baptist and wants them to be baptized baptist. We met with huim on saturday and resolved a few more of his doubts but still no permission. We going to work really hard with him this week, and hopefully get it!
I love you all and I cant wait to talk to you in not too long :)

Best Day Ever!

Here is what Patrik does when he has a little down time...
Excerpt from snail mail letter: Things have been coming along great, wasn't conference awesome? I didn't get much out of the morning sessions because I had to listen in Spanish, like I understood the words and what was going on at the moment but it didn't record very well on my brain's play back tapes. I think it was mostly b/c it took most of my concentration to actually understand what was being said rather than being able to look for pormptings from the spirit and be able to make other connections. When I listened in English, I got way more out of it and for that I am grateful.

I love you all and I love to show off the pictures I have to everyone. :)

And, here's his latest weekly email:

we didn't get any letters or anything today because the cars that bring them werent working or something, as best as I can understand.

I have a request from s farris that you send, basically whatever you put on the blog to him. Everyone loves the blog BTW

Glad you liked the tie, its pretty sweet lol. Oh and Denny's middle of the night is so much fun, once every couple weeks we would do it.

I'm sure Amanda will be just fine, she is surrounded by good lds kids, and good people in administration. Just remind her to not forget me ;)

No photos this week but I did print some off that i'll be sending later on. its pretty cheap to print them off so don't worry about cost.

And I'll definitely keep you all and a new house in my prayers this week and until you do find a good one.

Thanks for the pics!

Hey do you happen to know if A Garner ever made it into the MTC?

And just a couple heads up I have currently with me enough contacts to last me through mid october and for my bday the only thing im gonna ask for (well for now) is a photo album with pictures of everyone back home cool?

So anyways this week we had a really good week, we found 20 new investigators which matches a zone high and we got a lot of people preparing for baptisms. Now if we could just get them to come to church thatd be even better. We stopped by 6 different families this week and none of them came to church. We were really hyping up church this week too because it was stake conference.

The other American elder and I went on splits this week and we had the best day Ive ever had. We just worked hard, were completely obedient and talked to everyone. Im learning better how to talk with everyone. By everyone I mean everyone. I'll I have to do is open my mouth and words are there for me to say. Sometimes I catch myself saying things that I had no idea I knew how to say. But yeah this is the Lord's work and thats why I'm here to help his children return to him

One thing I learned in conference is that we are most definitely sons and daughters of God, and we should take that more literally. We have the Gospel of Jesus Christ to guide us through any troubles that we have and we know what we need to do in this life to have an eternal family. This is the most precious knowledge that i can think of, it saddens me that so many people cant grasp that this is exactly what they need right now, and for eternity

Can you believe Ive been out here for 5 weeks already? Holy cow! Transfers are next week and monday is travel day so I dont know if I'll have email time or not...Wow time flies!

I love you all and your in my prayers

Elder Patrik Connole

Random Stuff from Peru

No package yet, how did you send it again? I forget...if it wasnt via USPS its nigh on impossible to get it the other american elder just told me the other the day

I have another package request and that would be if I could get another ultimate disc, it doesnt have to be anything special but i would like one. Im going to have all my companions sign one and then have the other to play with.

Heritage will be fun for bub, I honestly loved being at wyview, the distance wasnt really to big of a problem, but the most important thing is being able to make good friends and if you have a good ward all the better.

As far as college costs go I didn´t spend much on transportation because I had that bus pass that i got for like $100 that lasted a year and then I always had friends who were willing to give me rides to go eat or to the movies. The biggest thing was food outside of my meal plan. Like on dates or just going to dennys at 2 am. That was a lot of money. I was able to buy a lot of my personal stuff that i needed with my meal plan and I spent some money on like movies but it was usually at the dollar theater. And mormor took pretty good care of me with a lot of other random stuff I needed, but yeah the biggest thing was eating out a lot , that was took up a lot of my spare cash.

I got a ton of dear elders this week so thank you to everyone, I´ll write everyone back as soon as I can manage. Speaking of which, Mom I have a favor to ask, Im gonna send all the letters to the USA in one big package to you and then if you could send them all out every which way. Because it costs me about $2 to send a letter to the states, so it´ll be cheaper to just send a manilla envelope to you. Don´t worry I´ll address them and what not all you gotta do is stamp em and send em.

Elder Cedron and I have been getting a lot more baptismal dates but we cant get hardly anyone to come to church, it sucks. There are a lot of families that we are teaching that have a lot of conflicts or deaths in the family and so we teach them, help them and a lot of them do their prayers and reading but they won´t come to church!!! argh! We had a multizone conference on friday and they talked a lot about working with members and getting baptisms, apparently last month the entire mission only got like 12 baptisms which is fairly pathetic around here. so they focused a lot on we aren´t here just to help people live better lives, we are here to help them with the covenants to enter in the kingdom of God, there is no other church that can do this because we are the only ones with the priesthood.

Fried Bananas are most excellent as are (I know you are going to believe this) Onions with lime and something else, I´m not sure what

Love ya!

Elder Patrik Connole

Frisbee in Peru?

Last week after emailing you we went to a park to hang out and there was a british woman there, so Elder Kearl (the only other American in the district) and i talked to her about the church a little be and gave her the website of www.mormon.org, it was kinda funny because her name is Kate Monson so she was quite surprised when we told her who the Prophet is. Also come to find out that she plays ultimate! so Kearl and I threw the disc around with her for a bit too, but it was really nice to talk in english and to talk about ultimate with somebody who actually played it. I taught her how to do a vegetable duel and she said she is totally going to use it when she returns home. it was also funny to listen to E. Kearl speak in english, he kept forgetting words or would just automatically use a spanish one and then correct himself.

We have a couple kids that we are teaching Jessica and Andre but since they are under age they need parental permission to baptize them, they have a strong testimony and are so ready for baptism but we can´t get permission from the Dad yet.

As far as GC went I listened to all 5 sessions, but the morning sessions I listened in spanish, so I didn´t get too much out of them. I noticed there was a lot of talks about parenting and keeping the youth on track, which made me glad I have good parents who do that. I really liked E. Bednar´s talk about the three things you can do to be a bettter parent and I thought I could also apply it in my lessons with investigators too.

Yesterday morning we went to a like village association meeting and we spoke in front of about 160 or so people, invited them all to the conference and bore our testimonies about prophets. I hope that the seeds we planted will grow into a desire to listen to the restored gospel. I love sharing what I know and everyone really thinks its fun to listen to a North American white kid that speaks ok spanish. They really appreciate me learning their language to bring them this message that I know can help them.

I love you all and I hope Easter and conference went well

Elder Patrik Connole

Photos from Peru

I didn't get any explanations on any of these pictures, so I suppose your guess is as good as mine!