More Baptisms

Thanks for the info for the mission. I´ll get that taken care of asap.

Tell Dad that I´m pumped for the dbacks!!!

Well this week we totally had 2 more baptisms! Woot! We baptized them on wednesday, and at the baptism the ward gave them a picture of the temple in Lima to help remind them of the goal to be a forever family. The biggest problem that we had been having was that the Dad was quite the achoholic until the missionaries found him. But after severa sets of missionaries We were finally able to help him get over the adiction (mostly) and be ready to get baptized. At the service it was really cool because the 15 year old daughter who lead the way about 6 months ago getting baptzed, gave a very simple but powerful testimony challenging her parents to prepare to be able to go to the temple and get sealed as a family. Really really awesome.

We also had a fun experience this week with the Presidente. We had the ZL council this week and after playing soccer all day monday and then having a lot of things to talk about on tuesday, we had...ceviche! You´ll have to ask Carol about the ceviche but it was really tasty and it didnt make me sick. So that was good. Haha, oh yeah it was funny because during the game on Monday one of the new ZL managed to facture the president´s pinky toe, so he was walking around without shoes on during the whole training. Luckily it wasn´t too bad of a facture and should heal up pretty quick lol.

About 2 months ago we left a part member family because they werent going through with their compromises and so we had to leave them. But this week we were contacting over there and we ran into the oldest son who isnt a member (yet) and like when we had tried to teach him before he wouldnt even come out of his room to talk to us. So yeah we just tried to be his friend and were able to gain his confidence. There was a stake activity going on in our chapel so we asked him if he wanted to go, which he accepted and we were able to bring him over to that and introduce him to the members and we showed him around and when we got to the baptismal font he started asking us about what he needed to do to get baptized. OH YEAH! So we challenged him to get baptized on the 27th and he accepted and so we are working hard with him now. He is a bit shy about praying out loud but no worries he´ll get there. He is 19 so we have a potential missionary candidate a year from now and on top of that he has 3 younger brothers, on of which we gotta baptize too. So send some prayers for Davey :)

Love ya

Elder Patrik Connole

"The Gang"

Yep I need the Stake pres and bishops names. As far as house info I need the phone number and direction, lol I guess I have the direction but I dont remember the phone number.

So yeah in the AMAZING French Toast the recipe was: 1 large can of evaporated milk, 6 brown eggs, some sugar, salt, and cinnamon. We couldnt find vanilla...and I´m not sure if nutmeg exists here. And lol yeah the reason why the french toast was so AMAZING was becuase nobody had EVER had it before. My pensionist liked it so much that she made it this week for us and the whole family haha. The bishop´s kids went out and bought all the ingredients and had it for sunday lunch lol. Good stuff!

So this week we had 3 baptisms!!!! woohoo!! we were really only thinking about having 1 but the spirit works on people and they get hooked. The kid, Elmer, is 16 and belonged to a gang a couple weeks ago. Now his mom tells us that he has completely changed because he comes home on time and doesnt go out in the middle of the night and is reading the scriptures. We are actually picking apart this ´gang´ 1 by 1. I think the bishop is very worried about this though, since there are a lot of YW in the ward. But I really see these kids making some big time changes in their lives. We baptized Cristopher a while ago and he gave us the reference for Elmer. Now Elmer brought 2 more of his gang buddies to church and surprisingly enough they really liked it a lot. And they behaved themselves well and participated in the classes. We have an apt with them on wednesday. Their names are Braulio and Carlos.

The other baptisms were Julia and her daughter Keysi. Julia is da bomb she had been to church 3 times already and said in her testimony that since the very first moment that we entered into her house she has felt a change in herself and in her 2 kids. We were basically waiting on both the kids to get excited for baptism but as I was in divisions with our District Leader teaching them, we felt the need to interview Keysi and Julia and baptism them on Sunday. So we did it. Her son Frank is gonna need a little more help, just because he is an 18 year old kid lol. But we are working on him, he needs to gain a testimony of the Restoration and he´ll be good to go. The whole family got up early sunday morning for their baptism and even though the water was quite cold they both were able to go through with it. Now Julia and Keysi are participating the stake traditional dance festival for their age groups and are so happy. Keysi whined a lot about the cold water because E. Sulcaray promised her that the water would be warm haha but she is still very happy with everything. And really its mostly thanks to the YW that she got baptized. They did a very good job with fellowshipping her.

We should have the baptisms of Roberto and Lourdes Arhuire. Roberto had a dream that told him to get baptized a few weeks ago but they have passed through a couple of difficulties to get baptized but finally they should do it.

Oh a tidbit for Dad. The DL who did all our 5 interviews this week has about oh...1 week as DL lol. And talking with him for a bit during splits turns out that his Dad also served in South Korea! Wha?

So yeah this is Elder Connole signing off :) Love ya!

Spreading the Gospel with French Toast

I bought 1 shirt, but its not that great of a shirt...so I only bought 1 haha, its fine and works but its just not the same as the states lol. And it was a little bit more expensive than I was thinking.

Ok so this week was quite interesting. This week ended transfers so we had a few changes in the zone, One elder, Elder Fox, had been with me in both zones the whole time that I´ve been zone leader. He went to my first area in Moquegua as ZL, so its gonna be weird not having him. They flip-flopped a couple elders in the zone as well which was weird but oh well, whatcha gonna do?

Anyways this week we had 6 people (actually 9 if you coun the 7, 6 and 3 year old) at the sacrament meeting and they all loved it. They were 3 families, well kinda, all three families came without the dad because the dad works out of town, Ilo or in USA. But they all loved it. One family was very special in particular because we met the 16 year old son (Elmer) as a reference from a new convert, Cristopher. Cristopher actually brought Elmer to sacrament meeting last week and this week we committed him to baptism for the 6th (this sat!) and he loved the idea so much that he started talking it up to a couple friends and his mom. When we finally met the mom on saturday we had an awesome lesson where we taught them about the plan of salvation. The spirit was there so strongly and when we asked Elmer´s mom, what she felt she should do, the Holy Ghost revealed to her the truth of this to her and she told us she wanted to get baptized with her son! She came to church on time the next day with her sons (the other one is 6) and a friend as well. The only problem is that we think that she is not married...and her husband works in the states and only comes every 8 months...so I guess we´ll see.

And we had a ward activity on friday. We did a Dessert Festival and who knew that Elder Connole´s AMAZING French Toast would be such a hit?? Haha everyone loved it and they all asked me for the recipe haha. We had about 15 investigators there and they all really liked it, so hopefully we will see some results of this activity.

We almost had 2 baptisms this week but they dad and mom had a fight and he went off to drink...yeah not good. We worked so hard to try to help them realize the importance of repentance and forgiveness and we tried dang hard to save the baptism too. To the point that we asked the president if we could stay up late and visit them with the bishop. We were there with them from 10:00 until midnight just trying to help them out. They are really cool still but they gotta work some things out first I guess. Its so frustrating sometimes to see people only want to do it their way, and not the Lord´s way, but thats why we fortify their faith.

Love ya

Elder Patrik Connole

Shoe Recommendations...

Yes, the pair of shoes that has hold up best has been the Hush Puppies. The Rockports are like trashed haha, but the Hush Puppies are going strong. That has been pretty consistent as I´ve seen with other missionaries too. There is also a shoe that E. Stewart has that you can buy at missionaryshoe.com (I think). It is a Brazilean made shoe that is pretty much indestructable and pretty comfortable. So idk if you wanna give that a shot

I dont have much time today, distractions are abound today, sometimes it isnt so fun to be a ZL. But really I like it a lot, I´ve baptized a lot more people as a leader, I honestly think that God inspires me even more and I can learn even more from all the missionaries. Its interesting because I´ve discovered that it is even more important that when you are in a leadership position to be even more humble. Learn from everyone and apply it. I´ve seen very good missionaries who simply just dont progress and be leaders because they just wont accept help from others so their progress stays at one level and they dont get any better.

Anyways so this week was CRAZY we had to divisions a lot and try to help a bunch of missionaries with their investigators. We had a part member family (daughter new convert and parents no members) tell us this week that God had revealed to them through a dream that they needed to get baptized on the 30th and woohoo! we were about ready to live them behind because they just wouldnt accept a baptismal date! But yeah they are pumped for the baptism.

Agh! time goes so fast!!!!

Love you guys

Elder Patrik Connole

Spiritual Experiences Better Than Great Indicators

Haha I can just imagine Dad scaling the McDonalds play thing hahahaha

My intestines behave most of the day except in the mornings. I think it is just because I am NOT a morning type person anyways but idk.

So as you can tell we had a baptism this week of Cristopher. He is a cool kid, he knew the gospel was true from the moment he heard it. We actually met him about 4 weeks ago but we could never get him to church. Finally last week we got him there. He loved everything and got along really well with the other two 15 year olds. In fact he loves the gospel so much that he is giving us references of all his friends and is trying to work with his family as well. So hopefully this little seed will produce a lot of fruit. :)

We were super excited on sunday because we had a family of 3 (minus the Dad who works outside of Arequipa in a fishing town called Ilo) come to church. The lady went to church last week and loved it and this week we were able to get her 18 year old son and 13 year old daughter to come. Thankfully the YW took good care of the daughter and Frank (the 18 year old) participated extremely well in the gospel principles class and in elders quorum. (even though in elders quorum we talked about eternal marriage he really liked it a lot). Then later on in the day we had an apt with them and after watching a video about Brigham Young´s conversion, Frank asked if he could do the closing prayer. He did a very ferverent (sp) prayer and asked very specifically about everything we had been teaching him. After the prayer we stayed on our knees and asked him how he felt. He said "peace". And when we asked him where that comes from, he started thinking and you could literally feel the spirit feel the room so much as the Holy Ghost testified to him that all of this is true. He started to cry and tell all of us how he had been feeling before we came that his friends had started to take him down a bad path and he just wanted to do what was right. We asked him what he wanted then, and he told us "I want to do God´s will and follow his plan for me". We testified to him that God did love him and put us in his path to show him this great plan. We testified to him that God wanted him to serve a mission and be a leader in His church. Frank and his family will be getting baptized very soon. We can only find Frank on the weekends because the rest of the week he is at college, but I know that he just received a solid witness from the spirit that this is the true church.

We also found another girl on sunday as well. We had contacted her a couple days before and we found her that day. She is 19 and after we helped feel the spirit she started to trust us enough to tell us that she had basically been abandoned by her parents. Like they took off with her younger siblings and she has no idea where they are or how they are doing. She said that there was always problems in her home with her parents fighting and what not, and she had always protected her younger siblings and now she feels so alone and worried for them and she just doesnt know what to do. She expressed to us about her hopes and dreams of having a carreer and a family and everything but now she was stuck with a disabled aunt and had to be with her nearly constantly. We testified to her of Christ´s love and how much he wanted her to be happy and that is why we had come. We challenged her to get baptized and she accepted it. We are gonna make sure that the YSA come and help us to get her some friends and turn her life around.

We also had Zone Conference which was awesome. This week we didnt have the greatest indicators but we did have a lot of spiritual experiences which is definitely a lot more important. I love this work and I´m so excited for Brayden that he will soon be a part of it too.

Love you all

Elder Patrik Connole

Upcoming Baptisms

(In response to his brother getting his mission call)

WAHOO!!! Thats AWESOME!!!! Finally!!! haha.

Way cool. I cant hardly even write now because I´m so excited.

I need more BFC por favor, its not super urgent or anything but I dont have anymore left.

Oh yeah and I just realized that the mission is planning on sending me home to AZ with President Richardson, and that wouldnt very good lol. Can you send me the new ward/stake info. I need the ward name, bishop´s name, stake name and the stake preisdent´s name. And I need the new home address and the phone number too. Otherwise they will be sending me to good ol´ AZ

Anyways this week for me was fairly interesting we had Zone Leader council where we talked about hope and what that really is. So we will be trying to apply that in the zone. We had a planning session/zone meeting from 9 am to 4 pm (w/out lunch...I almost died, thankfully we were able to find some Doritos). So we didnt work that much this week BUT we did have 4 people at sacrament meeting. 3 of which we brought ourselves. One lady, Julia Huanca loved it! She stayed for the whole 3 hours and really felt the spirit, so much that she commited to bring her 18 and 13 year old kids. YES! I smell some baptisms coming up!

Another guy that we brought is 40 year old bachelor Marcos. He is a pretty rich guy and is covered in tatoos but he really wants to get baptized. We arent sure if he really understands what all it implies, but we will be talking with him quite a bit this week to make sure he gets it.

The other one was a 15 year old kid named Christofer, he is really cool and has a testimony of the church and of Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon and everything BUT this was the first time we got him to church, stinkin kid, but he came and also stayed for the whole thing but he really liked it a lot. Now we just gotta go get permission and we could dunk him this week.

We went on splits on sunday with the YM president and a kid who is going on the mission soon, I went with the YM president who just got back from the mission and was assitant for 3 months. Anyways long story short we found this 17 year old kid and the kid is soooo excited to baptized that he wants to do it ASAP. So we depending on if his parents are cool or not we´ll get him baptized too.

Love ya all

Elder Patrik Connole

Not Typical

Weeeellllll.....turns out that I only got halfways better...on Tuesday I got sick again so this time I went to a doctor, yeah it was pretty bad. Turns out I had an infection in my intestines that had been a problem for a well, so they games me some pills put me on a very boring diet (chicken and rice with nothing else) for 3 days and now I think I´m good to go.

So today for the 4th of July, President Fernandez has invited all the zone leaders to a soccer game and a barbeque. SWEET! Its gonna be great!

Anyways so since this week my comp and I were both sick we didnt get all that much work done. But we had a couple fun experiences in the little time that we did have. We started visiting a family whose daughter is a new convert and it seems to me like the elders before us thought that they werent married and just living together, BUT after a closer examination they are civily married but not married by the Catholic Church separately. So after finding this out we surprised them by challenging to get baptized on the 9th. They definitely were not expecting that, they thought that maybe in a like 2 years they would get baptized. Anyways they are gonna think and pray about it and hopefully we will be able to get them dunked soon. I really believe so. Their names are Roberto and Lourdes.

Another cool experience that we had was on Saturday. We had contacted a family a few days back and went back to visit them. The mother, Julia, let us in and the basically forced her 18 year old son out of his room to come and listen to us. That is something that very rarely happens her in Peru. Most parentes are not very imposing on their kids after they turn about 12. Anyways grumbling 18 year old Frank came out and told us very flatly that he didnt want to be there and he didnt believe in God or anything. We knew that was a lie but we just started talking to the kid and seeing what he likes to do. Turns out he is a break dancer and so I was able to tell him about Dad and Bub and my comp also dances too. So he really opened up and we were able to commit both of them both to baptism. The mom bawled in her prayer and told God thanks for sending us to bless her.

Love ya

Elder Patrik Connole