It's a Crazy Life

Well, changes came and went and E. Sulcaray and I still together. 3 transfers with the same comp! But its all good because we work good together and we are good friends. We are getting a lot of greenies in the zone this transfer, (they come in on wed) so yeah it´ll be fun with a bunch of newbies. And all the elders who are training it will be their first time training so as ZL we have a lot of work to do to make sure that they are all do the job well. But I think it is good for the zone because we just had 2 missionaries that ended the mission (aka trunky haha) so we got some new blood in the zone now.

 

This week was kinda weird. I was sick for some of it and felt great for another part of it so idk. We got to work some and found some cool people that have some potential. We started contacted a lady in the street on Saturday morning but like 15 seconds after we contacted her, her bus came so she took off in that. Later on in the day we ran into her again and she gave us her direction and asked us to pass by the next day. So obviously the next day we showed up at her door (she lives at the very tippity top of the biggest hill that we have...but of course) and she recieved us very well and she told us "I know you kids have been sent from God to help me...why else would he have had you find me once again?" Sweet! She is a single mom who has a 19 year old girl and a 3 year old boy that live with her and a son who is married already. So hopefully we will get some results of that.

 

This Sunday was absolutely crazy at church. Like wow. We got there 5 minutes early and come to find out that the Bishop is at the hospital with his wife who had an emergency surgery, and that the 1st and 2nd counselor couldnt come. So we arrive and there are 2 Melchizedek priesthood holders running around trying to get the sacrament set up and the microphone in place and everything. But there wasnt anybody there to preside! Agh! Finally about 15 min late the EQP shows up and we could finally start the meeting. Whew.. Disaster (mostly) avoided. haha

 

Lets see what else happened this week. Oh yeah so another fun story. Our pensionist forgot to pay the phone bill this week so we were without a line. Well kinda, we couldnt make calls but we could receive them. Anyways that presented a problem because yesterday the asistents called us to inform us about the transfers and then we have to call everybody up to make sure that they know. So yeah, we came up with a brilliant plan that the pensionists son could just let us use his cell phone, and it would have been such a great idea except that he didnt have any more minutes left! argh! so we ran out at like 9:30 at night trying to see if there was some place to recharge his phone with minutes. Nobody has credit to do the recharge! So we went the RS president because she always has minutes, and thankfully she was able to let us use her phone, so we go hauling back to the room to pass indicators (I have know idea how you spell indicadores in english haha) and our 2 DL are calling to get the numbers passed and it was a total mess but we got the numbers passed and then we had to wait for transfers. They actually called us earlier than normal (aka 11:30 pm and not 1:30 am) so that was good and then we just had the normal craziness of all the transfers.

 

Anyways so craziness as usual for us but hey thats ZL life. NUTS!!!! haha

 

Love ya

 

Elder Patrik Connole

Another Good Week in the Field

Good to hear that Amanda is back, how´s she doing?

 

Lol I guess we will have to see about my accent. I hope that it isnt horrible, but I am sure that I will throw in a lot of spanish words as I speak, or at least as I think I will have to translate as I go, because thats what I do as I write you guys.

So this week we didnt get to work very much because we had zone leader conference and I just haven´t been feeling very good. But even with that God blesses us, we found a 22 year old kid named Carlos Quispe Yauri and he is da bomb. Like so cool. E. Stoddard and I contacted him while we were on splits and the next day right before ending the splits we went over to "teach" him. He had read the entire pamphlet that we had left him and marked everything that he didnt understand, he expressed to us that he hasnt been baptized yet and that after reading our pamphlet he gained a desire to do so...THAT JUST HAPPENED! What? Talk about people that the Lord prepares for us! Anyways we taught him about the covenant of baptism which only made him even more excited to get baptized and he commited to read the Book of Mormon and read the pamphlet (folleto sounds soooooo much better, pamphlet is just idk...blech). The next day (Sat) we showed up and he had read all of 2 Nephi 31 and the pamphlet and loved it. So we made sure he understood everything and since he hadnt prayed about it we commited him to doing it and he said he would come to church the next day. So we got to church a little late trying to bring another kid to church (also named Carlos Quispe haha) but without success. But we walk into sacrament meeting and who do we see? Oh yes...CARLOS! Woot! He was sitting with Emmanuel, who just got off his mission in April and they were already best buds.

 

Later that day we were on splits with the members and E. Sulcaray went to visit him and according to him, Carlos is awesome and had prayed and recieved an answer that the BoM is true, Joseph Smith is a prophet and that he needs to get baptized. Sweet! Bad news is that he might be going on a trip for a couple days. Good news is he might bring his whole family back with him so that they can see his baptism. So I guess we´ll have to see.

 

This week in Zone Leaders Conference we talked a lot about faith and how faith is both action and power. Normally we just think about faith being action and usually thats how it works for us but faith is also power and in order for it to be converted to power we must exercise enough faith as action on a belief until we accomplish something, then it is no longer faith, but knowledge and as Alma explains, when somebody knows something believing is no longer necessary. In Ether we always think about how the brother of Jared had so much faith that he could see Jesus Christ in his premortal state, but afterwards, in Ether 3:19 Moroni explains that it is "because of the knowledge of this man that he could not be kept from beholding" So yeah kind of a cool insight from Pte Fernandez, and he learned that from E. Christofferson.

 

Love you all!

 

Elder Patrik Connole

Moving the Work Along

Wahoo! I like to hear that the work is progressing in CA! Good stuff with the baptism (So I totally spelled that baptismo and didnt realize it until much afterwards) and the endowment session. Way cool.

I´m feeling a lot better healthwise, I think the mission nurse finally found some pill that is helping out a lot. Idk if that means that Im healing up or if its just not hurting anymore or what but for now I´m good to go.


So this week we were able to play a 7 on 7 gringos vs latinos and total win for the gringos! haha the latinos were not not so happy that we beat them lol. The main reason that we scored on them so much is becuase they didnt have anybody that played goalie so we´d just fire at will and I´m sure if they woulda had a better goalie they woulda beaten us.

This week we were climbing our wonderful (not) hills and we passed by a guy who was chipping away at the hill side to expand his house. So we offered to help him, which he accepted and we helped him and his brother chip away at stone for an hour and got a lot done. Afterwards we presented ourselves and left them with a Book of Mormon to read. They gave us lunch too! Here in Arequipa that means a for sure baptism lol. So we were pretty excited. The next day we came back and committed the guy (Victor),his wife (Yeny) and his younger brother (Miguel) to baptism for the 10th of Sept. Unfortunately Victor and Yeny are not married and have a 2 year old child, so we will talking to them about that soon. (like todayish) But anyways we came back on saturday and Victor was being all like tough-guy-not-wanting-to-recognize-the-spirit type, but Miguel and Yeny both comitted to come to church and so he changed his tune. We got them to church the next day and they loved it so much that they didnt want to leave after it was all done and they wanted us to come back asap to visit them. So we got another apt. today and we will teach them about the importance of marriage in God´s plan.

So remember how we have been working with all these kids that belong to this "gang" haha, we are now working not only with these kids but with their parents as well. Actually most of them are single mothers so that explains in part why they dont have so much control over their kids. But they have been able to recognize the difference in their kids lives so they are really taking what we teach pretty seriously.

Lets see other big news, as a mission we baptized 155 people this month which is awesome especially since it was a 4 week month and not a 5 weeker.

We had a FHE with a lady who almos got baptized 8 years ago in Chile with the RS president, and it was a very powerful lesson. We have been trying to get this lady to understand that God is calling her and she needs to do her part in the calling. We watched the movie "Only a Stonecutter" and we think that she is finally understanding that God doesnt expect us to just passively accept what happens to us, rather we should be actively trying to do evrything possible to fulfill with what God wants us to do.

Other than that this week was kind of a blur, but we did work hard and we have been having a lot more success finding people to teach this week.

Anyways I´m outta time again but I love you all and I love all the letters :)

Elder Patrik Connole

So Yeah...(lol)

Hey way cool about the baptisms in the ward! thats awesome! Every member a missionary!

So the today´s email is coming a little late due to...VISIT FROM ELDER DALLIN H. OAKS!!!! So yeah we had a meeting from about 7:30 until about 9:30 and then we had to get back to the area and what not. So yeah really cool stuff we got to shake his hand and we also got to listent to him, his wife, E. Hallstrom of the presidency of the 70 and E. Uceda of the area presidency. Good stuff. They all talked about the importance of learning and then doing. If we just learn and don´t do then it doesnt serve for anything that they instruct us. E. Oaks also talked a lot about being an instrument in the Lord´s hands. So yeah it was awesome!

So yeah that was the most important thing that happened this week other than another baptism!! woot!! But I dont have the photos so I´ll send them next week. oops. Anyways this kid is turning 15 tomorrow and he is the best friend of a new convert (Elmer) that we baptized a couple weeks ago. So that was a lot of fun but the only problem was that there wasn´t very many people there, especially leadership because of E. Oaks visit. (E. Oaks did a training of all the leaders in Arequipa) His name is Carlos, his nickname is Messi (For those of you who are not soccer fans, Messi is on of the best players in the soccer world) so the ward is pretty excited because the stake soccer championship is in September hehehe. 2 of our new converts also got the priesthood this week so that was also pretty exciting.

oh yeah and last week playing soccer I totally scored a goal!!!! Usually I play goalie so I have in total...2...but hey. Even better was that I got it off of a pass from another gringo player and it was from about 20 feet out.

We got 5 new investigators from references this week, some of which seem like they should progress really quickly. We have been teaching a lot teenagers lately and the gang the they belonged to is slowly dissipating (sp). The spirit has really made an impact on these kids, so much that they want their friends to join too, and we even had a single mother who has her 14 year old drug adict and acoholic come up and beg us to help her son. So we promptly committed her and her son to baptism. So we have got a bit of work cut out for us but the spirit guides in every moment. I can feel the Saviours love for these kids inside of me and I really want to help them out. It is a sucky feeling to see some of these kids not want to talk to us and others who keep falling but they all have their agency.

That mom who presented us to her 14 year old, asked us if we could watch some movies with the kid about the consequences of drugging and drinking, but we know that the Lord´s way is to hate the sin, love the sinner. And to show our love for this kid (Lisandro) we just have to help him realize that he is really a child of God and that God really loves him and wants him to return to His presence. By opening Lisandro´s eyes and showing him what he really can become we are helping him to put goals down and make plans to accomplish them. He came to the baptism of Carlos and I hope the spirit touched him there. He couldnt make it to church nor his mom, but we will keep working with him so that he too can make the changes in his life to qualify for eternal blessings.

I love this work and I can feel my testimony growing every day as we have spiritual expierences. I know that the Lord is preparing me for all my life time and helping me learn how to gain eternal life.

My prayers go out to everyone you talked about as well as all my family so that they know that God will bless them according to their faithfulness.

Love

Elder Patrik Connole

Note from Mom: Isn't my son amazing??

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