Hi 3/25/13

It was really nice to get to talk to you guys today, even though it was for a little while. I was super nervous today when my mission president called me in to talk with him, and I felt sad to hear about the passing of Grandma Bonny. My mission president is really loving and helpful and I got to talk to him for a small moment because he was interviewing all the elders and sisters that were going home. It caught me off gaurd that´s for sure, but I was able to reflect a lot about what we learn in the church and how great of a blessing the Plan of Salvation is. If you can imagine how hard it is for the many people that don´t have that knowledge of the restored Gospel, and that our lifes continue after we pass away. Like you said about Grandpa Gary this life is such a small speck in comparison to eternity, but at the same time it´s so important for our eternal progress. Without Christ´s sacrifice God´s Plan for us wouldn´t be possible, because of Christ´s ressurrection everyone will be immortal and live again with a physical body. I´m sure Grandma Bonny has been able to be reunited once again with those that love her and her family members, and like it says in Alma 40 she´s going to be in a state of rest until the second coming of Christ. I´m going to write my thoughts about Grandma Bonny next week when i have a little more time to think about it and come prepared to the internet cafe to write everything down. 

To fill you in on what I´ve been up to this week has been really busy we´ve been getting everything ready for the new elders that our coming to our zone this transfer. We had to go to San Jose on Thursday to find an apartment and we were looking for an apartment all morning. When we found it we went back to Chiclayo and picked up all the furniture for the apartment and went back to San Jose to drop off the furniture, it´s a nice apartment and everything is new. There´s a lot of transfers happening right now in the mission, 34 new missionaries are going to be arriving tomorrow and so everything has been kind of crazy. My companion is getting transfered as well, so I´m staying in the area and a new elder is coming. Tomorrow is the transfer meeting with all the missionaries so we´ll see what happens, i´m kind of nervous for this transfer for some reason i´m not sure why. 

On saturday we had Laura´s baptism, it was a really spiritual baptismal service. All the members from the ward showed up and we watched a cool video of Jesus´s baptism and when Jesus talks to Nicodemus about baptism in John 3. This time when I got in the baptismal font to baptize it was special to be able to raise my arm to the square and say the baptismal prayer because you feel so strongly the spirit. Laura has been going to seminary as well and reading her scripts a lot, she´s super excited about the church and her mom needs to stop working on sundays so she can go to church too. Her mom is inactive and stopped going to church a while ago because of her work but were going to work with her mom a little bit and try and reactivate her. 

Thanks for all the support and love, and tell the family I say hi and that I say hi. Love you.

-Elder Connelly