Tired this week 3/18/13

Thanks for the email and the pictures that you sent, it`s always the best getting to see pictures of the family. It`s crazy how different everyone looks, mainly Ava. I don`t think I saw any pictures of Mom! I want to se the whole family! It made me happy to hear that the boys Jr. Jazz team won their last game, I liked the pictures too Joel can`t be hanging on the rim like that after he dunks it haha. St. Patricks day? Holidays here in Peru aren`t really the same like in the United States and you hardly even pay atention to the holidays that come and go, other than Christmas and Mother`s Day ha. 

So transfers were last week and there`s a new elder now in the apartment where we live, he`s not an american like I was hoping for haha but it`s okay. It`s weird to think about it because I live with three other latins, I`m yet to live with an american or have one as a companion. This next week were going to have transfers again because of some of the elders and sisters that are going home. It`s most likely that my companion leaves this change and i´ll stay with another compy. I`m excited for this transfer, they`re supposivley going to open like 24 new areas in the mission so that`s super exciting. In the stake where we`re at they`re going to open up San José it`s right there off the beach I got to tract there one day in the morning about 2 months ago. Its a straight up fisher town and it makes it kind of hard for the missionary work. 

Good news! This week on Saturday were going to have another baptism :D Laura is going to get baptized. We`ve been teaching her for about 2 months now, we found her with the ward directory and her mom is a member but she`s inactive. We set the baptism date on tuesday last week and she was prepared for the baptismal invitation, so we need some prayers headed our her way for Laura Garcia. We`re also hoping to see a couple more people be baptized that we have been teaching, we just have to set a baptismal date. We tried setting a baptismal date for another investigador that we have she`s named Bridget and her mom is a member. We invited her to be baptized on Saturday and she accepted but her mom says that she`s not old enough to make her own decisions. We`re going to try nd work a little more with that family. We`ve been working a lot with unactive members and we`re finding a lot of investigadores that way. We visited Iris this week a couple times and now we`re teaching her daughter Yorka. It`s awesome because Iris is super excited about the church, she went to this relief society activity the other day and she seems to be getting more involved in the church and has a lot of friends. Oh yeah and were still teaching Antonieta and her exboyfriend Carlos they`re "just friends" now from what they`ve told us haha. But anyways we taught them this weekend and Carlos got let go at his job and so he was all bummed out and down in the dumps so we watched a couple of mormon messages about Hope and tried helping out a little bit. We still have faith that they`ll get baptized, Anotnieta told us that she went to the catholic church the other week and the sacerdote was talking and told everyone that they shouldn`t get baptized in other churches and all this other craziness. Satan is working hard on her but we`re going to fast on Tuesday for our investigadores that we have, maybe you could pray for these people: Antonieta, Carlos, Laura, and Zaid! Other than that everything is going well here in the mission, it`s just raining a ton here in the city and nobody knows what to do when it rains because all the houses are built with flat roofs and everything gets flooded haha. It almost never rains, I don`t think I saw rain for like 6 months until this last week it really cleared the air up a lot but it makes everything super dirty because none of the streets are paved. But luckily my area has paved roads and it`s super calm and they`re isn`t much theft.

Today we didn`t really do anything for pday we just went to the institute building and played soccer and ping pong like always, because the zone always gets discouraged and wants to go to cool places here in Chiclayo but there`s not really anything here. Thanks for the letter and the pictures keep sending them! Love you!

-Elder Connelly

ps Sorry don`t have any pictures!

Baptism week 3/11/13

HAPPY BIRTHDAY DAD! Dang your getting viejo haha kidding, I almost forgot that it was your birthday. I liked the pictures of you guys at the pinewood dirby, it made me remember having pinewood dirby as a little kid. 

To fill you guys in on this week since I don´t have to much time to write. We baptized this week which made us pretty happy, the baptismal service turned out well and it was spiritual. I baptized and we didn´t have any problems luckily she got dunked completely the first time. She is a bigger lady so I was little nervous that we were going to have problems but it all turned out okay ha. We were nervous that we weren´t going to have a baptism because she didn´t show up for her baptismal interview on Thursday and when we called her she didn´t sound very excited about being baptized. In the end everything came through and our prayers were answered :) So i´m staying another two weeks with my companion, I´m glad because we get along well and I´m not ready to have another comp yet and having to guide the area and the zone haha. Until then I´m going to enjoy the time I got with my companion. We´re working hard with a lot of people, mainly inactive members and teaching the people in their family that aren´t members, it´s a pretty good plan reactivate and baptize at the same time. It seems to work really well in this area, we don´t have the support we would like from the ward as far as references go and contacting in this area doesn´t help so much. We found a sweet family yesterday in the afternoon while we were tracting, the spirit never lets you down. I was studying with my comp this morning about the spirit and how we need to learn to listen to the spirit, and act. A lot of time we feel the spirit and either assume that it´s our conscience or we reject the promptings that it gives us. I have had that happening a lot to me in the past couple of weeks, the spirit speaks so quietly to us and if were not listening we might miss a prompting from the spirit. So the sisters that came with us in our group to peru went home, that was weird. Other than what i´ve written nothing crazy has gone on, but I´m happy and everything is going well with me :) oh yeah we went and played pool again today that was pretty fun. We still got to go and buy food for the week and pick up missionaries that are coming to chiclayo from jaen that are going to get transfered. Keep in your prayers Laura, Zaid, Antonieta, Bridget, Miguel Angel, and Carlos please! I know that your prayers are helping :) I love you guys a ton and we´ll talk this next week byeee!!

-Elder Connelly

Por fin bautismo! 3/4/13

How´s it going? Wow those pictures that you sent of Bryce are awesome, haha. It made me remember high school dances and prom, it´s crazy how time flys. Happy Birthday Bryce :D Sorry I can´t really do anything other than write you happy birthday in my email. Promise that it i´ll be a lot cooler the next time you have your birthday because i´ll be there to wish you happy birthday. That´s cool that Bryce went to prom I like his tux and vans that he wore, Bryce has gone some long hair right now and looks soo mucher taller than I remember him it´s weird. His date is cute, I don´t recognize any of the kids that were in his group only the Mott kid and Miller kid wow they look completely different a lot more mature. Sounds like Joel did a good job on his oral book report, you guys really went all out on that :) 

As far as I am going, I am really good :) healthy and happy. I´m super excited because we are going to baptize this week, we´re going to baptize Iris. I don´t know if I wrote about her in my last letter but she´s 46 and has been listening to us for about a month and half. She´s really special and super receptive and completely open to our message. In the zone all the elders are working really hard and if ever thing turns out well and if it´s God´s will we should have 9 baptisms, pray for us this week please! And pray for Iris. We´re still teaching Antonieta and her friend Carlos, they went to church yesterday and we taught them Saturday night. Carlos told us that he wants to be baptized but Antonieta isn´t quite sure yet, there´s these lame neighbors that she has that have told her that if she gets baptized in the mormon church everything will turn out bad for her :[ satan is working hard to keep her from getting baptized. She says that she thinks it´s the right thing to do but she´s worried about the change that she is going to have to make and what might happen to her life if she decides to become a member. We´re there working hard with her and we fasted this week for them. Speaking of fasting I had a cool experience. I decided to also fast to strengthen my testimony of the first vision and Joseph Smith and during my fast in the gospel principles class that we teach to the new converts and investigadors in the second hour at church we watched the video of the restoration. We talked about the power of the prayer and watched that video and every time that it gets to the part where Joseph Smith leaves to the grove to go pray I get a really strong feeling/impression and the goose bumps ha, but I know that it´s the spirit testifying that what Joseph Smith saw is true. It´s pretty crazy to think about all that happened to him and all that he had to go through to restore the primitive church and the gospel back to the earth. 

We had the zone leader council this week and it was super awesome. They talked about the gathering of israel and how God is hastening His work in these last days. It´s crazy because in July the church is supposed to be creating 58 new missions and by July the number of missionaries serving full time should get up to 70000 if i´m not mistaken, we´re at about 55000 I think. In the book of mormon in one of the chapter headings in 3 nephi I can´t remember what chapter, it says that God was going to begin gathering israel in the last days when the book of mormon is translated and brought to light to convince all jew and gentile that Jesus is the Christ. I feel pretty blessed to be able to particpate in the gathering of israel and help others to come to Christ helping them make the first steps back to their Heavenly Father. 

On a random note I ran into that black dude I was teaching in the second area I was in from the US. I talked to him for a little while and he told me that he had been reading the BoM that I gave him, too bad though because I wasn´t able to teach him more. He never really progressed but it was cool to get to teach in english. Today we went to and played Billards in our area with some of the elders from our zone. It was fun, it was different because all the pockets were really small and it made it tougher to play. Speaking of Billards, you guys never bought a pool table right? Haha. 

Anyways that´s pretty much all that I have to write about this week, I´ll try and keep you updated on everything that happens. I love you guys soo much. Until next week! :D

-Elder Connelly

PS Don´t have any pictures...sorry next week!

Happy Birthday Bryce! 2/25/13

`m glad you guys got my package I was nervous that you weren`t going to get what I sent, I didn`t want to say anything because I wanted it to be a surprise but I`m glad that the package got to Utah haha. I sent some things that I thought you guys would like. Be careful with the hats I sent :) and with my plaque! Bryce is going to prom? That`s sweet, i forget that he`s a junior now. Are they going to have it at the capital building?? I remember Prom the last time I went as a senior and Cameron Rafati played, haha that feels like forever ago. 

So to fill you in a little on whats going on in our area were finally going to have baptisms!! Yaaaa. We`re teaching a coupld of different people one of them has a baptismal date for March 09th and were going to put a baptismal date for the end of this week. We`ve been working a ton with Antonieta and she had been scared about the answer that God was going to give her about the Book of Mormon but we had been praying a lot for her and this week we visited her and she told us that she`s been recieving her answer little by little and that randomly she felt that she needed to get baptized. It was awesome to hear her say that, we`re excited for her keep her in your prayers so that she can get baptized on Saturday! I had a cool experience with the Holy Ghost, about a week and half ago we were tracting in one of the more wealthier parts of our area and I felt like we should knock this yellow house so we knocked the door and this guy came out and told us that he didn`t have any time and that he didn`t want to listen to us. Lately I had been feeling small promptings from the spirit and everytime I felt the spirit I tried to act on what I felt with out doubting. I was kind of discouraged because just about every time that I thought I felt the spirit i didn`t see any results, I was little confused. We went back to that yellow house where we had knocked the door a week and half ago because the guy that came out of his house told us that we could come back and visit. We showed up to the house and his brother came out and we asked him if we would be able to talk to him and he invited us in, we talked a little about the restoration and he is really interested in the restoration of the Gospel. We gave him a book of mormon on friday and he was really sincere and told us that he would read it and ask God. He didn`t make it to church on Sunday but it strengthened my testimony of acting on the promptings of the Holy Spirit, even if we don`t see the results right away the Lord knows what he is doing. Sometimes I feel the spirit and maybe ignore the prompting I felt but it`s always important to act on that still small voice that you hear. We`re teaching this other lady named Iris and she`s somebody that really has a strong belief in God she has gone to church two times and we watched the Jesus`s baptism with her. She told us that she felt the spirit and knew that she needed to be baptized, she doesn`t share the same beliefs as the Catholic church and none of her kids have been baptized. She wants us to help her son Marco out so we`ve been working hard with him but Iris is the one that is more interested in the church. 

Today in the zone we played soccer with the elders at the institute building and ping pong again. Oh I was going to ask you guys if I could pull some money out to buy a memory card for my camera, I don`t know how but my memory cards have broken so I need a new one and I`m not sure how much the window is going to cost that we broke :/ if I do take money out ill be careful to only take out what I need to take care of the things I need to fix. Tomorrow is zone council so we have to plan for that after we go and buy food! I got to go right now! But I love you guys I hope you like the package i sent! see you later :D

-Elder Connelly

ps my comp is in the yellow shirt in the pictures i sent

Hiii 2/18/13

Good to hear from you guys, I missed having some pictures :( haha kidding it´s okay. That´s funny that you wrote about the fight club thing that´s going on at Alta, I still remember seeing some of those fights in high school it´s pretty lame ha. That was huge what happened to that kid in high school, I´m suprised they´ve payed him for what happened. Sometimes stupid things that like that happen, but it´s part of life. That´s too bad that you´re feeling sick right now, hopefully you´ll get better soon. It´d be tough to be sick and pregnant at the same time I think, I´ll keep you in my prayers :)

 

This was one of those weeks in the mission where all your appointments fall through and you get a little discouraged, happens sometimes haha. That´s what happened to us this week, we had a lot of appointments scheduled this week but pretty much everyone that we were going to visit either wasn´t home or didn´t have time to listen to us. Luckily we have quite a few people that our progressing and will soon be baptized. We have a baptismal date for the end of this week on the 26th, her name is Antonieta. We couldn´t find her this week but she told us last week in our lesson when we set a baptismal date that she would be baptized on the 26th if God answered her prayer about the Book of Mormon. We´re going to try and find her tonight I think and see what happened, keep your fingers crossed ha. We´re also working with two young people that haven´t really ever gone to church but their mom is an inactive member of the church. We found them a couple of weeks ago with the ward directory because one of our appointments fell through so we were looking over the ward directory and found their grandma first and talked to her. Then we found out that the whole family has been baptized except Laura (15) and Zaid (10), we talked to them on friday night about baptism and the Holy Ghost. We invited them to be baptized and they accepted and also went to church yesterday. They already talked to their mom about everything and she said that they could be baptized, so were excited to see how all that works out. We didn´t end up getting permission for Rubi to get baptized, we´ve tried teaching the whole family but the little kid that the mom has is super wild. In our lessons he´s always jumping from the furniture onto my head or doing something crazy, he reminds me a lot of my little brothers.

 

So on Valentines Day since we can´t do anything, we got up on the roof of our apartment with our dinner and the kitchen table and at dinner on the roof haha. We talked for a long time between us four, it was pretty funny haha. We´re yet to fix the window becase we just haven´t had any time to do it yet. I hope it doesn´t cost to much I think it i´ll probably cost 60 to 65 soles, we have to split it between me and another elder that was playing in our apartment with me. Today with the zone we went to the institute building and played soccer, ping pong and foosball I hadn´t played foosball in forever so that was pretty fun it reminded me of the foosball table we used to have in the Hackamore Circle house where we lived. There was transfers this past week so there´s a couple of new elders in the zone, my better friend Elder Cabrera that was my companion in the La Unión is leaving the zone it´s kind of a bummer. But he´s headed to Cajamarca which will be cool.

 

But other than that, that´s pretty much what is new with me. We have a new office now, it´s a lot smaller but it´s really nice. Here´s the address: Los Alamos 128, Urbanización Santa Victoria, Chiclayo, Peru. So anything you send now should be sent to this new address, thanks for the packages you´ve sent :D it was the best to get some jerky and that candy. I dont have any new pictures to send, but next week I will :D Love you guys until next week...

 

-Elder Connelly

Transfers 2/12/13

This week was transfers and....I´m not getting changed and neither is my companion. So we´re going to be together one more change, i´ll have been with him longer than any other one of my companions unless they transfer him in the middle of this transfer. I like my compi so it´s okay that i´m with him for four months haha. This week was interesting we had all sorts of things happen to us, like on wednesday we were tracting in our area and we knocked a door and this half naked man opened the door. He was only wearing a shirt and whity tities, it was really awkward and me and my companion didn´t know what to say so we kind of panicked (I think thats how you spell it) and told him we´d come by another day when he was busy...We have been contacting and trying to find new people to teach, we´ve found some pretty great people. On Saturday we had exchanges with Elder Sampson and did splits with him, we were working in his area. It was funny to be with him in his area teaching and contacting, it freaks me out seeing him in Peru but we had a good day and it was cool to get to work with him. The girl in our area that´s supposed to get baptized this weekend might not get baptized because we have to get permission from her mom so that she can get baptized, hopefully her mom can give her permission. Her mom says that she shouldn´t get baptized again because she was already baptized catholicly but I think we´re going to talk to her mom this week and explain everything to her. We had this bomb really spiritual lesson this week yesterday with Antonieta, one of the people we are working with. She didn´t go to church on Sunday but we had seen her in a really long time and we dropped by her house to visit her. She told us that she had read the book of mormon but that she hadn´t prayed to God yet about the book because she was afraid of recieving an answer and having to have to change her life and be baptized. We explained to her all the blessings that she could recieve if she recieved a confirmation of the book of mormon and had a testimony. She aggreed that she needed to know if the book of mormon was true. My companion and I testified of the truthfulness of the book of mormon and told her that we knew that God was going to answer her prayer, it really brought the spirit to the lesson. We invited her to be baptized on the 23th of this month she said she would be baptized if she recieved that spiritual confirmation from God. Were going to be working and praying so that she can be baptized, maybe you could keep her in your prayers :) This other lady that we are teaching named Iriz went to church on Sunday we´ve only taught her two times but she´s super creyente and wants to know more about the church. She cares a lot about her son Marco and wants him to be able to learn correct principles. There´s a ton of investigadors that we´ll be able to progress with a little bit more time and a spiritual confirmation from God. Thanks again for the packages that you sent me I liked a lot everything you sent me I got the medicine for my nose and the candy :D Tell everyone that got their mission calles congradulations! That´s awesome, its so crazy how many people are leaving on missions now. Oh did you hear that the pope retired from his position leading the catholic church, it´s been 600 years since a pope doesn´t die as pope and retires, I thought that was pretty interesting. Anyways I love you guys and hope to hear from you next week!

-Elder Connelly

Fotos

1 and 2: Weekly planning...hahahaha

3: Visita de trabajo ...

ps. Keep your eyes on the mail I sent something to you guys :D

Hey 2/4/13

In our area we finally were able to put a baptismal date on one of our progressing investigadors Rubi, she´s 14 and has gone to church now 2 different times and reads the book of mormon and prays. We´re working a little bit with her family but she´s pretty much the only one in her family that show´s us that she´s willing to follow Christ. She´s got her baptismal date for the 16th of Feb, keep her in your prayers so that she can get baptized :D We´ve also been working with Antonieta and Carlos, they´re about 26 years old and good friends. We found them through one of our investigadors that we had that wasn´t progressing. We´ve had some of the most powerful lessons with these two people and they show a true and sincere desire to know more about the church and at one point be baptized. We had a lesson with them on thursday and talked about the book of mormon with them and left a chapter for them to read. They haven´t really had any doubts up until the lesson we had with them on Saturday when we showed up at their house at about 8pm. They told us that they had read that part of the BoM together and had prayed together, after praying they opened up the bible to a random page to see what it said. Sadly they opened the bible up to a part in the old testament where it talks about false prophets of all things...They told us that God wouldn´t call prophets anymore because it wasn´t needed. We had to explain to them why prophets and apostoles are so important, and why Christ organized a church. At the end of everything it came down to the answer that they needed to recieve and Antonieta anxiously told us "why don´t we read a part of the BoM together and pray after" it was pretty cool to hear her say that so we read a small part together and then got down on our knees and prayed. After the prayer we took like 3 minutes of silence to see what the holy ghost would help us to feel. I felt strongly the impression of the spirit after the prayer, but Antonieta and Carlos didn´t seem to feel anything. They said that they need to pray again and ask God, we have a lesson with them this week on Tuesday I think so we´ll see how that goes. Keep them in your prayers as well :D

Today with the zone we went to this place called the Quipampa in Lambayeque it´s pretty much like Cajamarca, it was super sweet really green and the weather was cold and rainy. It felt good to get out of the dusty hot weather and up into weather colder and wetter. Youll have to see the pictures I sent to see what it looked like. 

So that is pretty much what happened to me this week, ill keep you guys filled in on what is going on here in the mission whenever anything worth writing here happens to me :) Love you!!!

-Elder Connelly