June 4th, 2013

Dearest Family,

Hello, my new area is pretty good. We are walking which is a bummer, but the area is small enough that it isnt so bad. There was not much work going on when I got to the area, but we have picked up a date and several new potential people this past week. We have been working hard and putting our faces out there. This saturday we have a baptism for a girl named Elisa. She is 11 and totally solid. She knows everything and is super ready to be baptized. We are also teaching this guy named Kurt who accepted a baptism date for the 29th. He isnt totally commited yet, but he is progressing and I believe he will be ready by that day. He is already recognizing his answers for church which is solid.

We are doing some good work here I am excited! My new companion is Elder Singleton who is from Washington. He is almost exact opposite from Elder Weidner which is kind of funny, but it takes a bit of adjusting to get to used to it. He is very obedient though which is awesome because we are seeing some great success from the work that we are doing.

I dont think that I told you last week what I am now doing. I am serving in Clinton West which is part of the Hooper District which is piloting a new program that the church is going to start in the near future. This is very exciting because I have already seen results from it and I have only been doing it for a week and still trying to figure it out. I am now an online missionary. I have an ipad for myself and an iphone for the companionship. I also have a facebook account that I use regularly. This new technology is being tested and tried by about 45 missionaries total. Which means 45 out of about 70000 missionaries are apart of this trial period and I am one of those. Im so excited! Okay so let me explain more in detail whats going on. With the ipads, we can go online to facebook and lds.org. Facebook is being tried right now and its purpose is to further the work. We do this by friending all the people in the area and also in other areas. We use it for finding and we can also teach lessons on there. Also on the ipads we have our area book and planner all on there. It is pretty cool and very effective when doing work in the area.

Okay so yesterday we actually had a meeting yesterday about the technology, president was there and Bro Donaldson, the head of missionary work skyped in the meeting. We talked about some of the issues and stuff with the ipads and whatnot. It was a basic meeting until the end when Bro Donaldson started talking about this meeting that will be happening on the 23rd that my room will be involved in. This meeting will actually be a lot bigger than you think. It will revolutionize missionary work for this generation. It will be the biggest meeting of this dispensation as quoted by Elder Nelson I believe. I am assuming that the new technology will be introduced during this meeting and it start rolling out into the fields. This is exciting! And we are apart of it! So be sure to watch this meeting and encourage all the members to watch it as well.

So yeah, Im not sure what else to include at this point. I hope all of you have a good week. See you on the other side!

love

Elder Connell