Best Week of Whole Mission!

Hey Fam!!!

So thanks for all the updates and what not, I got a package from mormor which Im not sure if I had mentioned that or not but yeah. Oh and my p-day shoes are on their last stand like about ready to die, idk if you could send me like $10-15 so that I can buy another pair...

Anyways this week was THE BEST WEEK OF MY WHOLE MISSION!!!! We had 3 baptisms in 1 fell swoop! yeah baby! It was so cool! I baptized 2 of of the 3, and Brandon (A 16 year old member) baptized his best friend, Cristian (also 16). Cristian was tight, he accepted a baptismal date and came to church 3 weeks in a row, got permission from his parents and loves everything that we have taught him. It was a very special expierence for those two.

So the older man is Marcos, he is 55 years old and everyone in his fam is member. A really cool story, before I got here everyone told us that nobody could baptize him becuase he was a big time drunkard. Like everyday drunk type of person. Anyways his son-in-law let us know that the drinking had finally got to him and had given him facial paralysis, yeah very hard for this gringo to understand him but we taught him the very first day the Doctrine of Christ (which is basically we teach that everyone needs to follow Christs example and be baptized as he was) and he accepted a baptismal date, and never looked back. He now wants to gety sealed in the temple to his family and go on a couples mission with his wife. His wife couldnt believe it, like at all. When we were in the font and I baptized him she couldnt watch. haha

Then after that I got to baptize 16 year old Alex. He actually contacted us! haha. We were hurrying to get to an apt. And he flagged us down with his mom who is actually an inactive member. They moved here from Cusco and have absolutely nothing because their house was swept away in a recent flood. So yeah really humble circumstances. But Alex got baptized in about a week and half. He wanted to get baptized so bad that when we missed an apt with him that he went looking for us! Way cool kid. and now the ward is rallying together to help this family out. His single mother is raising him and 3 other kids 1 of which is about a year old.

Anyways Im outta time but i just wanna encourage you all to give references to the missionaries because it really does work!

Love

Elder Patrik Connole

Soccer & Such

Thanks for the pics, and thanks to Dad for the BYU updates and I hope everything goes well for the Cougs in the tourney! Oh and I sent a Dads email to me last week to a buddy and he said that he loves the way Dad writes and wants to meet him hahaha. Oh yeah I did hear about the Japanese disaster but not very much. A huge earthquake and tsunami and idk what else. Here in Peru everyone was going nuts because of it but the wave wasnt even all that big when it got here

Anyways this week was pretty good. Im sending pictures of the game we played on monday, lotta fun. We almost had a baptism but we couldnt get permission from parents in time so that he could get baptized this week so we are gonna baptize him this week and he is really excited for it. We are also gonna complete a family by baptizing the non-member father who has been an acoholic all his life. Finally he got facial paralyisis which humbled him enough that we could start preparing him to get baptized

We also might baptize another kid that we found this week. We were heading over to an apt and this kid, his mom (an inactive member) and his sister called us over and asked us where the chapel was. So we explained it to them and got to know them a little better. Turns out that the just moved here from a small town by Cusco and they are living on practically nothing. So we are now talking with the bishop and everything to help this family out. The son Alex really, REALLY wants to get baptized but he is gonna live outside of our area for a week so we gotta figure out a way to find him. The daughter (Alexandra) is kinda iffy and doubting the reality of God because of the things that they have been going through. But she is willing to listen. She didnt come to church but the mom and the son did.

We are trying to find a balance between keeping our area going and working with zone to keep them all motivated. Its tough to find the balance sometimes but we are doing a lot better.

Anyways doing well, and Im learning a ton about myself and the spirit,

Love you

Elder Patrik Connole

Busy, Busy, Busy

Wow so what a crazy week. But first of all thanks for the updates.

I have been getting the newsletter but it comes infrequently sometimes I get 2 or 3 at the same time but she has been really good about getting it to all us missionaries.

I did my fast for my investigators and zone and for the family in general. I had been thinking about Grandma more than anything.

Anyways so today we are getting all the missionaries together to play soccer. Like all of Arequipa so like a ton of missionaries. We pretty stoked to just get out and have some fun.

Last week was a blur absolutely nuts. I cant even write all the details but Ill give what I can. Tuesday was Zone Leader Council all day. from 8 am to 8 pm. Basically we had to give a report of what all went on in the zone last month and what were our plans to get better. The mission baptized a record amount last month and we are hungry for more. So Pte. Fernandez was very content but he openend our eyes a little more to what we were really doing. Basically in a nutshell we as missionaries are looking for the people that the Lord needs and wants in his church. We are preparing the future leaders of the church and the future kings and queens in the Celestial Kingdom...woah...never thought about it like that before!

Wednesday we went on splits to a smaller outlying town where the missionaries just started working there since January. Its called Characato and is very pretty. Lots of fields and what not. It actually kinda reminded me of Heber but a lot poorer. Anyways they are doing much better and are working hard to get the church established there. Its way cool because the have whats called a Casa-Capilla. Which means basicaly that the meeting house is where the missionaries live. Way cool.

Thursday went pretty well we got permission to baptize M Canazas, who is 12. The Dad works far away and is gone for long periods of time so we were grateful that God sent us in just the right time to be able to get the permission and the Dad also came to both the baptism and the confirmation. He felt the spirit too. It was crazy how quickly he accepted it because he is super catholic (or at least so he says lol). And so yeah it was a really awesome weekend. The first 3 pics are of this baptism.

On Friday there was a HUGE convetion of YSA, like 17 stakes huge. 600 YSA. Wow. Anyways President Fernandez arranged that we could take them all out and contact for a couple hours. So we as ZL went and explained to them what was gonna happen and brought them to the stake center, paired them up and sent them off. In that 2 hours 46 YSA plus 24 missionaries did over 500 contacts and found about 50 references for the missionaries in that area. Wow.

Saturday we had 2 baptisms because the Elders in Characato still dont have a font and so we did it together. Normally they just do it in the stake center but this time they did it with us because the girl who got baptized I actually contacted and started teaching her when I was in Puerta Verde with E. Muñoz. So yeah I was very excited for her and she was very grateful to us for finding her and helping her out.

So in the end despite not working a whole ton in our own area we did a lot and we are very
pumped for this upcoming week because yesterday a 10 year old kid came to church and wants to be baptized on saturday. Sweet! God does reward us when we are doing all that we can!

Love you all

Elder Patrik Connole

Growth

Thanks for the pics and the BYU news! that is so awesome, im so psyched!

Anyways wow crazy stuff this week. Sorry the gringos are distracting me with NBA news and BYU news and what not. So sorry lol.

But yeah, we were trying so dang hard this week to help a 20 year old girl to get baptized, she has family that are members and she likes church and everything but she just doesnt wanna get baptized it was so frustrating. argh! On Friday we decided to give her one last chance. So we were there with her cousin and aunt who are members the spirit was strong and everything. She hadnt been reading the BOM which is absolutely essential for conversion and so we just had her open it up randomly and read from it. all 3 passages talked about repentence and not hardening your heart when the spirit speaks to you then we asked her, So what is the Spirit telling you to do?

Follow Christs example

So will you follow the example of Jesus Christ and be baptized as he was by someone who holds the authority of God?

She took a huge pause and said very bluntly...No

Wow talk about spirit killer.

But its all good everyone has agency and thats basically what I learned. It sucked but sunday we had a bunch of people come to church, 2 of which members brought and another 2 came all by themselves, and we got good news that a couple we have been teaching wants to be married so we will have a ceremony on the 25th. So tight.

This zone is starting to explode, the whole stake is getting involved and we talked to the stake president on tuesday and he said that they are talking with the general authorities to divide the stake. That is a huge ginormous step towards a temple here in Arequipa. That is our goal as a mission that this year there will be an announcement and plans made for a temple here in Arequipa. Oh and if the stake divides that generally means an apostle will come so we might have the opportunity to listen to another apostle which would be awesome!

Keep up the good work as member missionaries and I know that the Lord will bless us even more abundantely

Love

Elder Patrik Connole

Pictures & Baptisms

So I´m sending you pictures of the 2 baptisms we had this week, its kinda nice to get to a new area and have baptisms right off the bat. I even got to baptize one haha, it was really cool at the baptisms and the confirmations because the families were all there and they could see how it all goes. The first baptism was of Fernanda who was going to another ward, we taught her for the first time on monday and commited her to baptism for that same saturday, she was so excited for everything, and her mom now wants to baptized as well, unfortuntately she isn´t married to her husband! grr.

And the other young girl, her name is Maybé (my-BAY) haha, she should have been baptized last week but her house flooded becuase there has been SO MUCH RAIN!!!! so we got her dunked this week lol, we almost didn´t get it done because like we did it on sunday before sacrament but there is another ward that meets before us, so we asked the other elders to fill the font. So we went down to double check and they hadn´t done it. So we started it and just prayed that it would fill up enough by the time we got back with Maybé, fortunately by the time we got back it was full enough to baptize her and everything.

The ward has been helping us out a lot so we are very grateful because we have to a lot of things as Zone Leaders to do so yeah, but its going good and now I gotta go because we gotta hit up the office to drop off the baptismal records and what not.

TTYL,

Elder Patrik Connole

Rainy Days & Miracles

I always share my pics because everyone loves seeing such a huge family.

So I got transferred...which is why im writing so late. and because I just got calledas a zone leader! WHA? yeah it was a total surprise because just last week the was zone leader conference in which all soon to be called as zone leaders went to, but I didnt go. But at 1 am this morning guess what I get a call and the zone leaders tell me that im heading to manual prado, (which is in arequipa and is the zone with the most missionaries in the mission) to be a zone leader. Another funny thing is that my comp is E. Frias who was in the CCM with me. He is awesome and I cant wait to get to work with him.

Anways this last week I think for E. Muñoz and I our hard diligence despite the contstant rain finally started paying dividends as we found 6 new families to teach. Seriously a miracle because I dont think Ive found 6 families in a whole transfer up until yesterday. 4 of these families are really quite amazing and i believe they have some good potential to get baptized.

One family in particular came to church all by themselves and we had never even talked to them. turns out that they have been having a lot of struggles lately and they decided to come to church in search of blessings from God and just try to get closer to Him. They used to just live together in the house of the wife{s mom but the mom kicked the husband out because of some bad habits and idk what else. (that mom is lds) anyways they felt the need to come to church and so they did with their 2 little kids. E. Muñoz and I just figured that they were less actives but the bishop thankfully told us that they aren{t members and that we should teach them.

We had an extremely spirtual expierence therein the class room as we explained to them the blessings of living the restored gospel and the blessings of making the baptismal covenant with our HF. just such an intense expirience as the spirit testified to this struggling couple that God loves them and that this is the right path for them. They accepted a baptismal date right away and the dad got extremely emotional during the closing prayer that he gave. very heartfelt.

love ya

Elder Patrik Connole

No Ugly Missionaries...

Alma 5:14 or Alma 48:17 or 1 Nephi 3:7...I have a lot of favorite scriptures so yeah.

Lol i guess other families don´t wrestle, haha but even the fact that the family is so big and that we all look alike just kinda makes all the latinos laugh.

Yes thank you I got hte family pics. S looks like he has gotten stretched out haha. I showed them to my pensionist and she loved them and says that the family is muy linda, I think the translation would be very cute.

thanks for the pics. the ireland map that D made was quite impressive.

Lets see, this week was pretty crazy, of course it rained all week but i guess thats normal here. I don´t like it one bit.

We changed rooms this week so now we are no longer in the house with all nonmembers, except the guy we baptized last month. We moved into our pensionist´s house and it is so much better. because the room is on the first floor and its a bit bigger and the people who live there understand our sacred calling as missionaries. Plus having pension and room in the same place is so much better. The only downside is that the shower is small enough that we have to kinda hunch over so we don´t electrocute ourselves. And the water isn´t really hot either, luke warm. but I guess I´ll just deal with it.

We were kinda disappointed this week because we only had 2 investigators in sacrament meeting. ugh. one of which was edwin who is our baptism for this week. the other we were just walking in the street and we ran into a crazy old guy we talked to a week ago and were just like hey you wanna go to church with us. He was like alright lets go. so we went lol. It was quite funny because he had a pack of marlboros in his front pocket but he was there at least haha.

We were talking with a brand new investigator this week and one of the things that was bothering him was that he had never seen an ugly missionary....Wha??? afterwards E. Muñoz and I just laughed about it.

Transfers are next week, time is just flying by way too fast.

Anyways love you all and I´ll talk to you next week.

Elder Patrik Connole