Commitment & Agency

Why not buy Brazil jerseys? haha they were cheaper, sometimes on P-day we go to a huge out door market and just look for cheap soccer jerseys and so yeah. We´ve actually found some pretty sweet ones.

So we had a baptism this week. Jann Carlo. We had it with the zone leaders who baptized the two primary age girls that I interviewed. Jann Carlo is the son of our landlords and he is awesome! Like every night he would be reading his Gospel Principles book or the Book of Mormon or sometimes both! Anyways next week he should get the aaronic priesthood and then we´ll take him out to go to appointments and strengthen his testimony. We are working with his parents but man they are a lot tougher. Basically its because they aren´t willing to put in an effort to actually read the Book of Mormon nor will they pray. They keep telling us that they want to know which church is true because there are so many congregations but they aren´t willing to do their part!!

Y´know thats really toughest part of being a missionary is that you are completely depending on other people to exercise their agency and go through with the commitments that we give them. If they do it they get baptized. If they don´t they don´t. Seriously we would baptize 95% of the people we talk to if they would just follow through with what they say they are gonna do. So as missionaries really our major responsibility is to help people to actually make and keep commitments. because if they do that they prepare themselves to get baptized.

2 weeks ago when we put a baptismal date on Jann Carlo he wasn´t sure if he could prepare himself so quickly but we promised him if he would do his part, God would prepare him and he would be ready. And that we would be with him through every step. And guess what, he quit smoking, got an answer and was baptized on the day that we committed him too. We were actually a little worried that he wouldn´t pass the baptismal interview because he had the smoking problem. But God works miracles in the people that really put in their effort.

And now these same principles apply in my life as a missionary and the lives of every person. If you really commit to do something and then do your full 100% effort you will succeed. God will provide the rest. Its the same with salvation, if we live the gospel 100% then God´s grace is sufficient to apply mercy and forgive our sins so that we can enter into His kingdom. Just like Nephi teaches right? it is by grace that we are saved after all we can do. I know that if you have a righteous goal and you really put in your effort then you will be able to fulfill it and fill the satisfaction of doing so. Goals are so important in our lives and now that I´ve been out for over a year I need to make some goals for how i´m gonna finish.

We also got into a discussion this week with some crazy old guy who knew the bible inside and out, like really understood it well. But really who took us more as a couple young bucks that he could try to force his religious belief based entirely on biblical substance. Thank goodness we have more than just the Bible. We have the BOM, D&C, POGP and the words of living prophets. If we didn´t have those I would have left that conversation very confused.

Anyways thats what I learned this week and we were excited about the baptism, we should have a few more coming up where we will be making incomplete families completed with goals to get sealed in the temple

Love you and thanks for everything that you do for me!

Elder Patrik Connole

A Week of Miracles

I´ll be waiting on the pics. I can´t wait to see them. A few missionaries here also got word that Skype was ok to use but I didn´t hear about it until afterwards...drat. Mother´s day we will have to do it. ;)

Anyways wow what a powerful week. We just expierenced miracles. The most amazing one was that this week we contacted a woman who has been inactive for 15 years or so and was going to another church. But we gained her confidence and we were able to set up an apt. with her family for the next day, tuesday.

So we got to the apt, not really knowing who was gonna be there nor what we were gonna say. Her husband and 10 year old daughter were there. Anyways so we just introduced ourselves and had them do the same. Wow they just started telling us all the difficulties that they are going through with their older daughters who got married and had kids young. they just feel awful. So we explained the importance of family prayer and reading the scriptures together. and they commited to do so.

The next apt we passed by and the dad wasn´t there so we just talked with Dominga, the mom, and she said she was now very confused as to which church she should go to. We told her that the spirit was trying to touch her heart and if she prayed and asked God he would tell her where to go.

Came back on Saturday and she hadn´t prayed. So we explained to her 1 Nephi 19:36 which explains about the importance of applying the scriptures to ourselves. and then we asked her and her husband if we could kneel in prayer and if she would ask God where to go. So we did. After she ended her prayer we just kneeled there in silence feeling the spirit. It was soooooo strong. wow. After what seemed an eternity but was probably less than 2 minutes, the spirit prompted me to ask her which church she felt like she should go to. She said "I think I should go to the Church of Jesus Christ"....WOAH!!! thank you Heavenly Father!!!

And guess what, Sunday morning, a little late, but in time for sacrament, the whole Flores family shows up in their sunday best and absolutely loved the whole thing!!!

We also should have a baptism this week. Remember how we are living in an investigators house? well one of them wants to get baptized, Yean Carlos. He has had a smaking problem but like we comitted him to quit in a very spiritual lesson about the word of wisdom. He hasn´t smoked since but relapse is always a possibility. He came to church by himself as well.

So as a DL I am in charge of calling the missionaries in my district every night and making sure that they are alright and that their investigators are progressing. And I am in charge of doing all the baptismal interviews for those in my district...yikes!!! Thursday I have my first one!!!!

So the pic is the volcano misti with SNOW

And the other are the brazil jersies that we bought

Elder Connole

15 Minute Blessing!

Thanks for all the pics. I can hardly keep up with everyone! They are all changing so fast! Especially the youngest ones. I also can´t believe that I´ve been out for almost a year!

Anyways all this week once again I went to training meetings for 3 days at 8 hours each day. But this time it was because I´m gonna be a new District Leader...which is a kinda scary thought but I know it will be good for me because whenver I´m put in more leadership type situations I usually do better. Presidente Fernandez talked a lot about how we as leaders need to be the examples. Its gonna be hard because like literally every single on of our investigators except for 1 went on vacation...actually wait one family came back today so I guess we´ll see. We´ve started contacting like crazy though and we´ve found quite a few people that have some potential

The 9 year old that we baptized last week got confirmed yesterday and the mom was sooooooo emotional. Hahaha I don´t blame her too much though because she has been waiting a long time so that her son could go through with this step that is so important in his life.

I´m staying here in my area with E. Muñoz which means that if we make it all the way through this transfer together it would be the first time in all my mission that I´ve had the same companion for more than one transfer.

Oh that reminds me, the other elder that I trained, (Elder Lowe) yeah he was there at the training meeting too because he is now training and he also is a DL! What a power house!

We had an intersesting expierence the other day we were contacting and we knocked on a door and out came an older gentleman. Really nice but agnostic and he said that he didn´t want to talk to us because he thought he would make us agnostic too which he didn´t want to do lol. Poor guy he was miserable. But anyways we talked to him for a little bit and as we were talking the guy´s younger brother showed up with all his family on a visit. The brother invited us in and we taught them the first lesson and challenged that whole family to be baptized which they accepted! Only problem...they live in another area...whole different stake...but we are gonna send the missionaries over as fast as possible! (the agnostic guy still didn´t wanna listen but it was a very interesting way for the Lord to present us a family who was ready to listen to the gospel)

You may notice that this letter is a bit longer than normal and its because...we now have 45 min of computer time!!!! YAY!!! So really 15 min makes a HUGE difference. I´ll try to be even more detailed in the future with some more stories and more pics and what not. Oh and if we behave ourselves next month he might extend it to an hour! That´d be so awesome.

So thats all for this week, remember that prayer is powerful and that if you ask you shall recieve, so ask for the good righteous things that you really need. The Book of Mormon is amazing and should be read daily and even more important you need to apply what is written there because it was written for our time and for us. Heaven Father loves us and he wants for all his children to return to his presence and only throught the restored gospel is that possible

Love,

Elder Patrik Connole

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