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October 23, 2012 Email

Hello Family...and anyone else who reads this,

 

This past week has been interesting and a bit uplifting. Okay, so I will start with our investigator friends. We have picked up a new friend, Arianna. She is 23 and somewhat interested. We have had 2 lessons with her this past week and so far she seems open to what we are teaching. All she needs to do now is find out for herself whether or not what we are saying is true. That comes about through earnest studying and prayer. There really is no other way to know the truth. Do what James instructs us to do, if we have a question, ask the guy in charge because he has all the answers. Its pretty straightforward. We have taught a lot more lessons this past week. Gino is progessing slowly, he is in the same boat as Arianna. And we finally have another lesson with Gloria set up for tomorrow. That will be super awesome since we havnt seen her in a while.

 

I was telling father last week about the Spirit and how I need it so much with me as I teach. I have learned this week how truly important it really is. When you are teaching someone about Christ's Gospel, and you dont have the Spirit to guide you, you rely solely on your own knowledge and skills. We had a lesson like that and I really saw how hard it was to teach. I dont have much skill, so it was a confusing lesson, but luckily the spirit helped us out in the end and we left on a pretty dang good note.

 

To answer your question dad, transfers are two weeks from now. Gosh this past week has flone. It feels like yesterday I was writing you guys. It just keeps getting faster and faster, its scary. Sounds like everything back home is going pretty well I guess. I got your invite Britt, and I got your package Aubs, Thank you!! I will try to get letters out soon. Speaking of which, tell peeps to write me, I feel lonely some days. More news, next week pday is on Monday, I will explain why more next week. That is exciting that Molly's bf got baptized, will he serve a mission in a year? Will Molly serve a mission, she is 19 I think. That reminds me, the missionary applications have rissen from 700 to 4000.   !    Crazy stuff! To answer your question Britt, sure the sweatpants are warm you can send those, but not the running pants, and dont forget the jeans.

 

Last Sunday was pretty busy. We went to 3 sacraments and a choir practice and saw some people and it was busy. One of the sacraments though was pretty amazing. It was a special needs program and it was the last one they were doing since they were getting disbanded. They had a few special needs workers talk, but a lot of it was the special needs people singing. The singing wasnt the most talented, but it was pretty dang epic because of WHO was singing. It was a tear jerker, I held my composure, but there were a whole bunch of people in the congregation who could not. Gino was there which was perfect, Gods hand was most certainly in there somewhere.

 

Yesterday I had interviews with President Hiers. I asked him what I could do to get lost in the work. He basically said to love the people, that simple. I guess I knew that before, but it didnt quite hit me that hard until yesterday, the way I get lost is to serve. That is why I am out here, to help people. And I love doing that. President asked me if I had met some interesting people, I said yes. Then he asked if I had met some good people, I said yes. Then he asked if I had met some great people, I said yes. Then he asked if I had met people that I loved, I said yes. I can think of some of the people I have helped and realized how much I care about them and how much I have done for them. That is what I am doing, and that is why I am here.

 

This morning we went to the Brigham City Temple for a session. President Hiers was there which was neato. It was a good session and a beautiful Temple. It is snowing in the mountains right now, winter is getting pretty close. Wierd how when I first got here it was winter time.

 

I care about all of you and thank you for all of your love and support! See you on the other side!

 

Love,

Elder Connell

 

ps, happy birthday mom, you will get a package sometime

October 29th Email

 {  PLEASE WRITE HIM!!! THANKS :)  }

 

Hello everyone!

 

Im assuming all yall forgot that pday was today. It is only for this week so next week will be tuesday again like usuall. The reason it is today is because tomorow we have a mission conference. Elder Falabella is coming to our mission and speaking to us. That is why pday is today instead of tomorow.

 

This past week we have had a lot more lessons with our nonmember friends. We picked up a family of four last week, they are not super interested, but they are open to learn more about the Gospel, so pray that the Spirit is there to teach them. Arianna accepted a date for the 17, which is the same day that Britt is getting married HA! That was pretty exciting though. She doesnt fully have a testimony of the Gospel, but if she keeps her committments, then she for sure will. We also had a lesson with Gloria finally. She is still not doing well. She did not feel too well while we were giving the lesson. It is going to be hard to get her baptized right now. She still wants to, but it probably wont happen at this time.

 

That is the exciting stuff that happened. The unfortunate news is that we dropped some of our less actives. Toni was not keeping any of her committments and stood us up on several lessons. It was hard to drop her because some of the best lessons we had were with her. Brady moved to Wyoming so we cannot teach him any more. We did pick up a new less active friend, Danica. She is 17 and none of her family is active. She says she is atheist, but she seems pretty interested and open to what we say. We have another lesson with her tonight so we will see how that goes.

 

Tonight is pretty exciting because Cassandra is getting baptized. I dont know if you remember me talking about her. I taught her in Farr West, and she was probably one of the coolest conversions I have seen so far. She fell away for a little bit because she did not think she could live up to the committment, but now she is getting baptized. I am so excited for her!

 

Last night the mission had a missionary musical fireside that we went to. There was a choir of missionaries, I wasnt in it, and they sang, with little testimonies from missionaries in between each song. President Hiers wanted 1000 people there so we talked to all our bishops about it and invited everyone! Nobody from our stake showed...but there was 1000 people there so the goal was reached, but I dont feel like I contributed to it at all.

 

It was crazy, we went to 2 farewells yesterday, without even meaning to. To be honest the talks were not that good haha, was my farewell talk that bad?

 

Well Happy Halloween everyone! I will be in our appartment that night which will be...lame, but oh well. Hope you all have a good week! Dont forget to tell people to write me, because they are not. See you on the other side!

 

Love,

 

Elder Connell

 

ps. Last week it snowed on the mountains and in the valley. It is getting cold and I need my jeans. Can you please send that package asap? thanks!

Emails Since 9/11/12

September 11, 2012

Dear Britt,

CONGRATSS! on everything I guess. You're getting married in November! Way too exciting. So fall is that time for harvesting. I love fall, it is such a mysterious season. It is so interesting and the weather is nice and the trees are colorful. Its a cool season. Plus it has my BDay and Halloween and Thanksgiving in it so it deserves some respect.

Me and Elder Hayes are still gettiing along pretty well. He is a good companion, I wouldnt mind being with him another transfer. Two major things happened this week with our friends. Rosie who we were teaching has been passed off to the other mission now where she lives. It was sad, but it is for the best. She will get baptized, but when is the question. She also sent a facebook request so accept. The other friend was Toni. I have talked about her a few times before, but this last lesson has been the BEST. It was really just a normal lesson with her reading from the BoM, and we got talking about Faith. I dont know what we said, but she started bawling and crying. That is when we stopped talking and let the spirit talk to her, and boy did he! After about 15 minutes of her being taught by the spirit and crying, she stopped and told us how she was feeling. She said it like she was "remembering" the spirit and how it blessed her before. It was a way cool experience, those experiences that you pretty much live for. The spirit can change anyone who is open to it. Oh, and Brooklyn, the 9 year old, is getting baptized this saturday which is exciting.

Not much else going on. Jeremy was right. I can listen to anything that I feel comfortable with basically. And I do feel comfortable with most of TSFH {Two Steps from Hell...it's instrumental, beautiful music!} stuff and soundtrack stuff and piano music. For now I just want that TSFH CD, but eventually I would like an iPod with all that stuff on it. I found an iHome in our appartment and I am keeping it because nobody wants it, but i need an iPod for it to work. This was the big favor I wanted you to do, but dont worry about the iPod until after all the stress is gone. Just the CD for now will do. THANK YOU!

Love ya!

Elder Connell

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September 18, 2012

Hey Britt,

I did get the tie, thank you! I sent a letter yesterday that you will get hopefully tomorrow. It has pretty much all the updates of what has gone on recently. And not much has happened since I sent that letter except yesterday we ran into this Jehovah's Witness lady who wanted to bash with us. I hate bashing, it makes me angry and anger comes from the devil. SO I dont like to bash and I avoid it as much as possible.

We had a baptism last Saturday that went very well. Brooklyn, the 9 year old, was baptized and all went according to plan. I hate repeating myself so you will have to find out the rest when you get my letter. Love ya Britt! Good luck on the wedding and get better!

Elder Connell

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September 18, 2012

Dear Father,

I am doing pretty good at the moment. I am still with Elder Hayes, I have been with him the past 5 weeks, have I not talked about him. He has been out for 4 months and is from San Diego. We are still getting along pretty good. Obviously not perfect, but no companionship gets along perfectly. Right now one of the most stressful things about being senior is finding things to do during the day. It is so hard with a small area, mostly lds, and during the day most people are not home. Tracting is pointless and it is so hard to think of who we need to see. Also working with people who do not keep commitments is annoying, but that is explained in my letter which I sent yesterday. This is kind of a difficult area to work in which is why we work with LAs so much and also poach a bit.

Right now we have like 4 or 5 nonmember friends, but like 2 of them are progressing. Most of the teaching we do is with our member friends and getting them to church. Right now we are teaching about 5 to 10 lessons a week. Kind of low for us, but everyone keeps on falling through which is also annoying. We did have a baptism last Saturday for a 9 year old girl that went very well.

We took some of our member friends to the Brigham City open house which was very good. They liked it a lot and I think it helped them at least a little bit.

Sounds like everything back home is...normal.. It seems like there is always one thing going on and it gets pretty crazy at certain times. Good luck with the wedding and baby and everything.

The Atonement is very cool. In fact without it, we cannot be saved. And the only way to access it is through ordinances. That is why, as a missionary, my purpose is to help people access the Atonement through ordinances such as baptism and the sacrament and the temple. I help EVERYONE come closer to Christ, not just nonmembers. The Church is true dad, how could it not be. I love you.

Elder Connell

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September 25, 2012

Hey Britt,

I like colorful cool looking ties {He asked for ties, I asked him what kind..}. I guess I prefer not stripes, but they are still good. Im not sure if its 20 lbs {<<How much he has gained thus far!! He needed it...he was a twig. Literally}. It keeps on changing with the winds. Last I checked I was like 15 lbs gained. I eat big dinners and work out every morning so I should hopefully be gaining more.

This past week has been pretty good. We picked up a new friend, Gino. That was cool. I made a profile on mormon.org. Kinda random but cool. Transfers is tomorow, but I am staying with Elder Hayes, so nothing is changing for me.

There are not many trees to change here, but there are some on the mountains and right now they are orange/red. It looks pretty rad. Your weedding is soon.. what do you mean surprises? What is he planning? Have you guys found a house already? Kitchens are pretty cool {haha, I love my kitchens...I made a comment about wanting a good lookin kitchen}

There is nothing wrong with the moon or sun here. Dont worry, there is still plenty of time before things end in the world. There are zombie bees in Washington though which is kinda neat, but dont worry. And anyways, if you are being righteous, then you will be saved or protected or whatever.{lol, I made a comment about the crazy looking sun and moon and how weird looking-but cool-it's been. I said it was as if the world is coming to and end soon! Which, I really don't think it is..but still. Weird.}

So ya, be sure to get that cd out asap cause it is so cool. Thanks Britt!

Love ya!

Elder Connell

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October 2, 2012

Hello Family,

I am doing emails a little different today, I figured that one email with all the details of whats going on with me would be good to send to everyone, and then shorter emails to everyone individually. Lets see if I like this better. First off, I forwarded to all of you this week's newsletter, read it and weep...for joy..I guess. It said to forward so thats what I am doing. Second, I have attached photos. Yes that is a lightsaber, and yes its mission approved. A member here had extra lightsabers so they gave them to us. The green one is a Count Duku style, kinda cool. Enjoy the pictures. I will take better ones when I get a cape.

This weekend is General Conference and I will be going which is exciting. The only problem is that we dont know who to take as of now. We were going to take a nonmember girl who wants to be baptized, but she cannot go. And the reason she is not baptized is because her parents dont want her to, sad deal. And Gino will be out of town for a while, so we cannot take him. We will have to find a less active person to take. I am so excited to go to General Conference! If you remember last conference we could not go because we gave all of our tickets away, but this time we are going.

We had a lesson with Gino the other day, which went pretty good. Every other week he is on DEX which is a medication that makes you super hyper and unfocused. He was on it during the lesson, so we just talked to him for a little bit. They are going out of town, so the next lesson will be like a week from friday or something, he shouldnt be on DEX then so we can have a good lesson with him.

Do you remember Gloria? We taught her a while back and she wanted to be baptized, but right now she is on Kemo. She is sick ALL the time, so we have not taught her for over a month! We are still trying to work with her, but right now she is too sick.

That is pretty much it as  far as nonmember friends, but there are many less active friends! Toni is still not going to church which is frustrating, I really dont know what else to do there. Brady is moving along again. He is in the process of repenting and we are trying to get him to read the scriptures. It was cool though because he said he met someone the other day and they had a good gospel conversation. Brady felt pretty good after that, he felt like a missionary talking to someone about the gospel. He said that they were going to watch general conference together. You see, miracles do happen, every day! All of our other less active friends are pretty much the same as they always were.

So here is a neat experience that happened last night. There is a family in our area where we were teaching the nonmember husband, but he was pretty much uninterested right now. But the wife, who is a member, still wanted us to come over and teach their family home evenings to help her kids out. We have been doing that for several months now which has been pretty good, but yesterday their neighbors came to their house to drop off some dinner. We talked to them and kind of set up a time to see the wife. We possibly found a new investigator through all of this family home evening teaching. The Lord works in mysterious ways, and because of it mirracles happen all the time. Most of the time we dont notice them, but if we humble ourselves and look for those mirracles, our eyes can be opened to all the glorious things that God has done and what he knows and has planned out. It is all so cool and so complicated, I love it!

That is pretty much all that is going on. I plan on having a good birthday I guess. We have zone conference that day so who knows what will happen. Thank you family for your love and support! I lovee you all! See you on the other side!

Love

Elder Connell

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October 9, 2012

Hello Everyone!

So many of you have asked about the same things. I will start with General Conference since that was the most recent and most important. The few days before conference were very VERY frustrating. We asked every single person that we are teaching which is like 12 if they wanted to go to conference, and we could not find ANYONE. It was making me very angry how hard satan was working. We ended up going, we just invited some members to go with us, we had tickets and didnt know what else to do with them. We went to the Saturday afternoon session which was very good. We sat on the main floor kind of in the middle to the side a little bit. They were pretty good seats, but President Monson and the Apostles were still very small and I had to watch the jumbo trons anyways. There were tons of good talks that I enjoyed very much. I took a bunch of notes and stuff. It was a very good conference. The one that kind of sticks out to me is Elder Oaks talk saturday afternoon. How important families are and having loving parentS. That is so true from what I have seen on my mission and back home. I have met a ton of people out here who are divorced and sometimes remarried. Most of the people we are teaching have some kind of background in divorce or something like that. Families are definitely ordained by God.

President Monson's announcement on the age change was definitely very cool as well! 18 for males and 19 for females, wow. I have been thinking about that a lot and its the fact that God chose this particular time to change the age limit so that a lot more missionaries can serve. There will be so many more sister missionaries going out which is awesome! God knows what he is doing, and he certainly has a plan to bring all his children back to him before it is too late.

Thank you everyone for your birthday wishes. It was pretty good. We had zone conference that day and they had me wear a ribbon to signify that I was the "Birthday Boy". It wasnt my style, but sister Hiers told me too, so I guess I had no choice. It was pretty good though. I did get the package you sent mother with the boombox. That does work thank you very much! I was looking at the reciept and it says that you bought a shopping cart, did you buy a shopping cart? Anyways since there is still time, It is getting a little chilly and I would like you to also send my waffle shirts, the black, brown and white ones in my drawer, those are warm. All my clothes should still be in my dresser unless you moved it all.

We have not really taught any of our investigator friends lately. We really only have 2 progressing right now that we are teaching...well more like one. Gloria is still sick and it is hard to get a hold of her, so we have not seen her in a while. Gino has been out of town for a while, but we have a lesson this Friday which I hope will go well. Everything seems to be going the same with our less active friends as well since most of them have been out of town or whatnot. We did teach someone new the other day, Bree, and her boyfriend. The lesson was the other night and went okay. Her boyfriend is less active and he served a mission...not fun. He had some pretty tough concerns that he was throwing at us like how he has prayed and read and done everything he was supposed to his whole life and he felt like God was not there. Im gonna be honest, I feel like that too sometimes, but thats the point, its a trial. We experience that so that we can grow. Christ was even alone at one point in his life and that was not easy for him either. We just have to endure, and our Father will see that sacrifice and bless us tremendously in the end. Bree seemed a bit more accepting though. Her issues were similar, but not as deep and she seemed happier after she prayed and when we left. We also took some vodka off their hands lol.

It is starting to get a bit difficult finding more people to teach. I have been in the area for over 3 months now and I feel like I have tried everything. I havnt, but it feels that way. It is just a matter of keeping at it and somehow it will all work out.

I cannot think of anything else to write so I will end it here. I may write a letter home some time if I find the time. I love you all! See you on the other side!

Love,
Elder Connell
P.S. if anyone else wants my emails let me know so that I can send them to them

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October 9, 2012

Hey Britt,

Also, I am a bit low on letter receiving at the moment, can you encourage peeps to send me some love? Thanks!

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October 16, 2012

Hey Britt,

Maybe you could get me a John btw talk idk, whatever you feel is best I guess. I gave you cds? I dont think I had a CD case besides the lime green one, but that may have video games in it. I didn't have many CDs, which one are you looking for? I am getting the pictures to you right now, so hopefully it will work this time.

I got your wedding invite yesterday! Ha thanks for it, I will keep it with all my other photos.

I just need warm stuff to sleep in, I have a jacket for outside, but not jeans that fit. DONT BUY CLOTHES, just send mine from home.

Also tell people to write me. Thanks Britt!

Love ya

Elder Connell

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October 16, 2012

Dear Family and everyone,

Hello, this week has completely and totally uneventful it seems. I will tell you why. This past week within 3 days, we had 7 lessons cancel on us. It was a bit aggravating, but its all good because we pretty much rescheduled most of them, so this week will have a lot more lessons. Yesterday was probably the most eventful day of the week because we had 2 lessons and some service. We have been trying to keep busy by talking to people and setting up more and more lessons with new people. We will actually be picking up 2 or 3 new investigators this week which will pretty awesome! I think we will be teaching a lot of people by the end of the transfer, of course by that time I will probably be leaving the area.

Haha, Britt you asked about crazy missionaries. There are plenty of crazy missionaries here, it is fun to serve with and around them. We like to see other missionaries every now and again so that we keep sane haha.

Did I mention that we are kind of teaching a kid who is into satanism? We have been teaching his less active girlfriend, and he has been over a few times when we have come over. He is a very confused young man. He prays to God and Lucifer? His beliefs are totally wacked and we are trying to help him get on the right path. It is pretty unique to teach someone like that because their views are so different from what I have heard or experienced ever!

Not much else has happened this week. Im sorry I am not writing much this week, but there really isnt much to write because not much has really happened. Hopefully next week will be a lot more eventful. See you on the other side!

Love

Elder Connell

P.S. encourage people to write me :)

.................Pictures to come!