Baptism, Sickness & Christmas

Don´t worry about it. It was a lot of fun to hear you guys too. On mothers day I think the reception will be better if we did it night on mother´s day. I miss you guys a lot

I totally forgot to mention that the day before christmas we had a baptism! So here are some pics! 9 year old Sebastian Calderon he is from a part member family, the dad isnt a member but he was so excited to get baptized.

The night before the mission our ward mission leader went to fill up the ba`ptismal font and he overfilled it and flooded the chapel. hahahahaha so we went early and cleaned the whole chapel up for about 2 hours and refilled the font. When the Calderon family arrived we couldn´t find any baptismal clothing for a 9 year old. finally after a half hour of looking we found some small white pants and heis grandma brought a white shirt. so an hour a nd a half late we start the service and it went smoothly

Christmas was nice to call and hear everyone, but after that we went out to work which wasnt all that cool. Nobody wanted to talk with us. blech. whatevs we were obedient and we will be blessed for it.

Sunday was tough to get people to come to church. we only had 2 investigators show up. and to make it even worse the Calderon family had some problems in the morning and couldn´t make it to sacrament meeting. ARGH!!! His mom is a returned missionary and so is his uncle, and they couldn´t even make it to the sacrament meeting!!!!! So we will just have to confirm him next week.

oh yeah and before all that stuff I was sick in bed tuesday, wednesday and thursday which really sucked but at least now I´m like ready to go to work full time and I feel really healthy. My pensionist is now giving me what she is calling a "bland diet" which means, rice, potatoes and chicken and pretty much nothing else. its a good thing I like bland food right!

Did you get the letters yet?

I got a package from Grandma Judy just now so send her my thanks for the treats. and the powdered gatorade, that made me really happy.

Love

Elder Patrik Connole

Christmastime

Hey thanks for the pics. And thanks to Dad for the sports updates! Oh man my mind is going for a loop right now!

Ok...back to the missionary world.

This week we had our christmas devotional with the president. It was pretty fun because we had 3 zones there, one of which was my old one so I got to see my whole old zone and talk with them for a bit.

Oh it was kinda funny because the President gave us permission to go home for Christmas and we all we like wha? really??? then he was like "in your minds!" haha. But then I realized that I couldn´t do that because I don´t even know what my home really looks like...lol oh well I guess thats just how it goes.

My zone was in charge of giving a presentation of the birth of Christ according to the Bible while Selva Alegre was in charge of the presentation of the birth of Christ in the BOM. They both went over really well. A greenie elder was assigned to be the Angel Gabriel but at the last moment he flaked out and handed it to me like a day before. I made a valient effort to memorize all the lines and I almost pulled it off but I I totally blanked on one part. Haha. But it turned out really good, at the end we had everyone sing Joy to the World (Regocijad Jesus Nació). In Spanish the first verse "al recibir al rey" which means "to recieve the king" instead of "repeat the sounding joy" so we had King Herod come out and throw a tantrum shouting "But I´m the king!" hahaha

This week my comp and I gave the talks in sacrament meeting. Elder Muñoz talked about the importance of good traditions and related it to missionary work and I talked about how we have the new message of "good tidings of great joy which shall be unto all people" and that like the shepherds of old we too can go out and tell everyone that Christ really worked miracles, that He suffered and died for us, that He was resurrected on the 3rd day, and that today He is guiding His restored church through a living prophet.

It was a good day to talk about all that too because we had 6 investigators at church. One whose wife is a member and so are his kids and he has been going to church for 17 years and is too scared of change to get baptized. With another her husband is a member but she doesn´t want us to visit her until January. One is our baptism for friday, Sebastian Calderon, he is 9 years old and soooo excited for his baptism. His mom is a member, RM but the Dad (from Japan) is not a member and nor does he want to be. another one is a kid who lives in the room right next to us but he is going home soon and is recovering from an injury he suffered while working in the mines, and the last 2 are part of the family that own the house. The dad and the son who went to the stake conference. Really, really cool family we are hoping they all get baptized here pretty quick

Well times up...

TALK TO YOU AT CHRISTMAS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Love

Elder Patrik Connole

Progress

Hey all

so this week we had 3 investigators and half of a way inactiv family come to stake conference. It was a very very good stake conference so the 2 families and a couple others (who were practicing with the stake choir and yet didn´t show! ARGGHHH!!) really missed out. The whole stake presidency and President Fernandez spoke. President gave an excellent talk on how there are so many things that are just simply distracting young men from going on a mission that they are having trouble gettign them out. He talked a lot about how the mission is meant to learn how to follow the spirit and I can testify to that.
Just being here and trying to figure out what the Lord´s will for me and for all his sons and daughters here is tough work but it is so worth it.

We´ve been working with a 10 year old kid and we just got permission to baptize him so it should be this week or the next. He is a reallly smart kid but I think he has like adhd or something because he can´t sit still for 2 seconds. But he asks very profound questions and really understands the concepts well when we can actually get through to him. But he has been waiting 2 years to get baptized so now he is so excited that he will be able to do it.

Another guy that came to church is Jan Carlos. His parents are our landlords and he actually lives one floor below us. Way cool guy and he loved the stake conference and said he is for sure going again next week and will try to talk his family into going as well. We have him booked to get baptized the 24th and tonight we are going to share the video "together forever" with all of the fam.

We went out with our Ward Mission Leader to go visit some people (non of whom were home of course) and as we were returning to his house the whole neighborhood was out on the rooftops and in the street yelling something. Paul (the WML) all of sudden just tells us to turn around and walk away. I had no idea what was happening, but apparently Paul´s next door neighbor was in the process of getting robbed in broad daylight, but got caught mid robbery and some how escaped. I guess this has been a fairly common occurence in our area which might explain why people are so hesitant to open their door to us.

This last week we attempted to make an effort to contact more than we usually do but what really ended up happening was that the Lord blessed us with more lessons than contacts (36-34) haha.

We have 2 couples that we are also teaching now where either the husband or the wife is a member but they aren´t married. One of these couples wants to get married and baptized asap but can´t get everything together to get married. The other couple could get married at any moment but doesn´t want to get married until March for some reason. (they say its so they can invite all the family but we sense that this is just the tip of the iceberg) They are really really good people but they just lack a sense of urgency. Actually thats quite common in latino culture so why am I so confuzzled? Bah. And both couples arent coming to church regurarly either becuase of work. But I guess will just keep working with em for a bit longer so that they can live the restored gospel even better in their lives.

Love ya

Elder Patrik Connole

Getting Underway

Yes I bruised myself again because we were playing basketball and here in peru all the basketball hoops are a combo goal and hoop deal. so I was following my guy as he was driving to the hoop and I overran and hit a post leaving me with a dead arm all the rest of day and nice bruise for a couple weeks.

What I meant was that after spending all day at the mission house without having any sort of room, we decided to go rent a house where the people are not members. Its a little interesting because they don´t understand all the rules or anything. They often find our schedule rather strange and they always have a bunch of wordly distractions going on. Almost everyday when we go out to proselyte after studying they are playing american music which I just can´t help but enjoy a little bit.

No I didn´t do anything at all to celebrate thanksgiving. LIke I hardly even remebered that it was thanksgiving. dang it.,,We were just so busy trying to get everything jumpstarted so that we can start having some success. So yeah. And the ZLs are being slow with the letters again so I´m sorry but thats just how it goes here sometimes.

Let Mormor know I got a package from her. With everything in it.

Hey how long does it normally take for the letters to get to you. From what I can gather it seems about a week and half to 2 weeks right?

Thanks for the pics! Sean is sooo tall!! and Wynter and Aidan are cute little bugs. I wasn´t able to listen to the audio, but i´m sure it was great.

And Idk about the mp3 I totally didn´t bring the cord for it haha. And the only things we are allowed to listen to are Motab and Hymns. Heck even then we can only listen on p-days. The president has gone kinda nutso becuase we aren´t baptizing like he has been wanting. 82 baptisms in november is not a lot for 164 missionaries. So he has been taking away a lot of stuff. We can´t get together to eat lunch on pday, we cant leave our zone. we cant do anything remotely entertaining other than soccer or volleyball (aka no go karts, rock climbing, sight seeing etc). So those of us who have been working hard and seeing the results because of it are really quite frustrated with those that aren´t

This week was once agian spent looking. Looking for members, investigators, less actives and leadership. We have been getting a lot of support from the members, (aka 6 references!!!!!) so we are very grateful for that and we had 3 investigators at church! Pretty exciting for only having been here for a couple weeks. Our main problem here is that right now everyone that we could be teaching are either crammed at work because its almost holiday season or they are crammed at school with exams or their kids are crammed at school with exams...ugh. Nobody has time!!!

Whatever I´ll just keep working, we have a few prospects that could get baptized here in a couple week and some of the references we´ve gotten have very good potential. We also are very excited that this ward is a lot more involved than other wards we have seen. They are willing to go to appointments with us, go on splits, go get people that want to come to church and actually have plans to get this area going. We are hoping by the end of this transfer we will be going good. The ward is chock full of RMs and tons of RS and quite a few young guys that are preparing to go.

Anyways enjoy the christmas season, I really miss the family traditions but I´m here doing the Lords work and very quickly I´ll be back!

Love you

Elder Patrik Connole

All is Well

So yeah. Opening an area is not exactly the funnest thing in the world. I´m still in Arequipa but I´m now in Puerta Verde in the Center Stake (Estaca Central) and basically I´m in one of the richest areas here. Most of the houses have intercoms and there are several gated communities. The members fortunately are willing to help out so hopefully we can pump them for references. Our Mission Leader is the bomb so yeah we are gonna just go to work

Monday since I didn´t have a comp, or an area, or a pension or anything lol so I chilled with my old zone until they figured out what do do with me. Haha. Tuesday was spent in trio all day and Wednesday I went to go get my newbie. There they informed me that I still didn´t have a room or anything so my comp and I went the assitants to find one. We searched for like 3 hours and couldn´t find anything within our price range. blah. So we went and chilled in the mission house until we figured out what to do. It was great! ate good food, played ping pong, played with his 4 year old son but I´m pretty sure my comp was very confused. After that we just decided to go to one of the rooms that was a little more expensive than what we wanted but cheap enough that it was alright. They aren´t members so now we are teaching them and wow they are awesome, they have a lot of questions but they are awesome.

Anyways by the time we got everything into the room ( we showed up with 8 elders plus the prez) it was about 8:30 at night and by the time we got everything into the room it was about 9:15. And then the president takes us all out to eat lol, at 9:30 at night hahaha, we got back to the room at about 10:20 and we unpacked stuff and put it into place until 11:30 or so. Totally breaking rules left and right but we had the president with us so I think it was alright. lol

So other than that we´ve just been trying to figure out where we are and where the members are and what not.

Elder Lowe called me and said that 2 of the kids we had been teaching got baptized on saturday one kid (bruno) we just barely met like 3 weeks ago and the other was Fabricio that just need to come to church and he would be good to go. and they should have a couple more coming up. Just gotta do the same here now

Love ya!

Elder Patrik Connole

Baptisms & Blessings

Elder Lowe's b-day, with Pension.
The sign
Oh yes! hehehe
Elder Connole, Liz, Elder Lowe
American Cake

I am thankful for,,,baptisms, good companions, the spirit being with me, any and all packages or letters that I recieve, anything that is remotely american, go karts, rock climbing, Predicad Mi Evangelio, el Libro de Mormon, escogidos, salchipapas, arroz verde, lomo saltado, family, and just being here on the mission

Anyways man what a crazy week. Wed, thurs, fri I was at a leadership training meeting from 8 am to 4 pm. Talk about spirtual and information overload! Anyways they told me that I am going to train again (a Latino) and that I am going to go re-open an area. I wasn´t very happy to hear that at first because I would have liked staying here in Villa Hermosa over Christmas and because we have a ton of upcoming baptisms this week and the next and the next. And now I have to go start from scratch. But im alright now because I realize that this is part of God´s plan and he has people preparing to meet me there and I will get to apply everything I just learned at the training thing right from the start. Right now I don´t have a comp because he wont get here until wed. heck I don´t even have a room or anything. so Im just waiting for the assistants to call me and tell me what to do. right now im still with elder lowe and his new comp so we are in a trio...So i don´t know what i´ll be doing for the next couple days..

But we did have a baptism on saturday of Liz! woo! We literally saw miracles happen with her. At first like 4 weeks ago her dad didn´t even want to give her permission to go to church (she is 17) but after praying and fasting he changed his mind completely. Then after she passed her interview on thursday he didn´t want to sign the baptismal record...more prayer...saturday morning we went up early to see if we could talk her dad into signing the darn thing and turns out that Liz had gotten him to sign it! So we looked at it and...he signed the wrong one! so we said a prayer and went to fill the font. Came back and it was all good.

The baptism went great, E. Lowe did it and I did the confirmation on sunday. sunday was nuts we had 12 investigators plus a couple less actives we´ve been working with go to church in all we had 146 people at church! a record! We had 15 people in our Gospel Principles class and its just going so good. I hope E. Lowe´s new comp is grateful for the 5 baptisms he will be having this week. Gah! 5! That is almost as many as I have had in my whole mission! But you know it its alright Im gonna just go to work and i´ll be having some baptisms in the next couple weeks or so.

Good News and Bad News (But Actually a Blessing)

Karlo

Walter
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Christmas items that would be very useful umm...socks are a bit of a need... several of them have holes. a deck of cards for boring pdays haha, ties are always a good option.The only things you shouldnt send would be perishable items or anything that would cost a lot. The packages have to be under $100 (i would suggest leaving it well under $100) because otherwise I have to pay like $80 in taxes just to get it....yah you´d be better off sending two small packages than one big one becuase big ones take forever to get here. My comp just got a halloween package that was fairly large about a week ago. So smaller is defintely better, and if you just say on the little declarations thing that its gifts or missionary supplies it gets through a lot better. And if you you put all around the package "Regalos" (gifts) it also should get through better I´m running low on contact solution but I have been looking for it here because I know it would be kinda hard to send off. If you are gonna send me a Christmas package I would suggest sending it off as soon as you can if you want me to get it on time becaus the office will be swamped around christmas becuase every elder is gonna get something and they can only receive a certain amount of packages at a time because of the dumb local laws here.

This saturday we one for sure for sure baptism and 1 other young girl that could get baptized. The fore sure bbaptism is a reference from the EQP, his wife´s cousin and they are all just way pumped with everything that we are doing for them. Her name is Liz she´s 17, loves to sing (we are gonna buy her a motab cd) and she is probably the maturest 17 year old that I have ever met. When we first met her we thought she was older than us haha. Anyways she got permission from her dad and everything so we are excited

The other is 20 year old Sandra who about 3 weeks ago just decided to come to church and then came the next week but she didn´t come yesterday so we have to find her and see what happened

Our apt flooded this week. Peru has a very bad habit of randomly shutting off the water and electricity all over the city. anyways they shut it off all day and apparently the pressure built up so much in our tubes that our poor broken sink just exploded. Unfortunately we were out proselyting so we came home to a river flowing out of our room. So that took about 2 or 3 hours to clean up but we have decided it was a blessing in disguise because our room is now very clean haha.

We also got called devils this week by a 7th day adventist. well kinda. he called the BOM diabolical so pretty close.

I´m gonna attempt to send pics. My camera has decided to stop working so I´m borrowing elder lowe´s

Love ya

Elder Connole