CompleteLee Blog

Ms. Wise Presents...Toddler Time & a Note on Thankfulness

2012-01-27T11:13:00.001-07:00

Sometimes keeping one step ahead of the little people takes care of most of the "battle"! Love Bug and the Witty One are out on the deck right now and have been for about a half an hour fully engaged in this activity. This is so easy for mom to get ready. All you need is a couple of paint brush and two plastic containers with water. Of course, you need decent weather and a deck or a sidewalk as well if they are going to do this outside. I recommend outside. LOL

In the picture above, the boys show off their paint brushes. (Don't look at the mismatched clothing and no making fun of my phone camera pics! My point with most of my blogs is to share ideas, not beautiful photography! I gotta be fast and efficient around here. heh heh heh) :)

Here, Love Bug shows off his painting abilities.

My Witty One is a bit more methodical in his artistry.

It is humorous to note that the boys run all the way across the deck to dip their brushes in the water. Then, the pitter-patter back to their favorite spot for drawing on the other side of the deck. I don't bother to move the containers closer to the favored spot because A, it keeps them busy and active longer and B, I like to see their cute little wet footprints spread out across the length of the deck.

Side note from Mama Rika...Yes! I got my missionary #1 home all in one piece. Well, mostly anyway. We have a doctor's appointment next week to see what we can do to get him completely well and whole before he leaves back to college in three months. It has been great to have him here. So much fun to watch all the things he is re-learning and listening to him be so grateful for things I have been taking for granted. Isn't it awesome to not have to where flip-flops around the house and in the shower? Cold cereal?! Sweet! Wow! This house is huge compared to most Peruvian homes! This is so cool to be able to grab whatever I want to eat from the fridge. And on and on...Are you feeling grateful today? I am.

Okay, so the little boys are done painting now. Pretty cool, though, it kept them happily occupied for nearly an hour!

Mama Rika Missionary Updates...the Last One?

2012-01-09T15:09:00.001-07:00

Sorry I never got last weeks emails posted. Here are two weeks worth...

Missionary #2 [last week]

Sorry that emails will be so short this week, I'm actually at the mission office right now doing it. The libraries are all closed, so I won't have near as much time as I usually do. But that being said, this week was awesome overall. We were really led to find some prepared people. We were blessed also to teach a ton of lessons, which was a huge blessing compared to the previous week where I dislocated my arm. We also had 3 investigators at church as well. It was awesome!

Thanks for the letters this week. I love hearing from you!

I did NOT stay up for the new year. I was sooooooo tired, there's now way I would've lasted. It's hard enough being up at 10:00 let alone 12:00. I almost fell asleep during my nightly prayers that night. Apparently I did sleep talk that night. E. Ames couldn't get to sleep, and at about 10 min before midnight there were tons of sirens going off and people shooting of fireworks. Apparently, I sat up in bed and said "what is this?" and without waiting for a response yelled "WHAT IS THIS!?" and fell back on my pillow as if nothing happened. I don't know what it is, but I keep saying things while I'm asleep that I don't remember. My mind has a mind of it's own I guess.

Missionary #2 [this week]

Sorry that I wasn't able to get much of an email off last week, but here's what my week this week was like.

Monday:

Snowed on monday, for the first time since I've been here. What is weird is that it was back up in the 60's later on in the week. The snow only lasted a day before it melted. It was pretty though. The other elders played rugby with the ward. I didn't play, for some reason the thought of calling my President Pitt and explaining why I had yet again dislocated my shoulder didn't really appeal to me. I stayed on the sidelines and watched and took pictures. It was snowing while we played, and at one point, you couldn't even see the trees at the edge of the park it was pretty crazy.

Tuesday:

We visited a couple of investigators, and found a really awesome couple to teach later that night. They held very high standards, and we had a great visit. They seemed like dry-Mormons. Just add water. We're excited to continue teaching them. They'll be out of town for a little while, but we'll catch them when they get back.

Wednesday:

We volunteered at the Red Cross and visited with tons of people as they ate their snacks and drank their juice. One of the guys asked if the appeal to being a mormon was to have multiple wives, and asked how many wives we planned on having. Apparently there's a show called "Sister Wives" that's on TV right now that shows a guy who practices polygamy and has 4 wives. He's part of the Reformed church, but people are getting the misconception that we still practice polygamy. Anyway, I think we were able to help clear up a few of those mormons-are-crazy ideas.

Thursday:

Tried to see a ton of people, but a lot of it fell through. We were able to have a great dinner, and we gave service to one of the members out here. It's weird because we haven't really done much service at all since I've been here, but this week we had close to 5 or 6 hours of it.

Friday:

Had our interviews with President Pitt today. He's awesome! I love him so much. He was glad that my shoulder was getting better, and not detracting from the work.

Saturday:

I gave a blessing to a less active member of the ward. He had requested it last week, and this was the first time we were able to see him since then. I was slightly nervous, ok....a lot nervous, but the blessing went ok, and I think he's really coming closer to Christ. I hope he'll be able to have that desire to return to activity in the church, it will be difficult though as he hasn't been in 50 years or so. We'll keep working with him though.

Sunday:

Had another investigator at church this week! Yes! Now we're getting some progress! We're slowly, but surely, getting people closer and closer to baptism. We're really working hard, and praying hard to help them make that covenant, and we're getting closer and closer all the time.

Love ya!

Elder Brayden Connole

P.S. President and Sister Pitt recommend that we see if we can get a GPS to help us with these crazy roads out here. It's not vital, so don't stress about it too much, but if you are looking around and find a cheap one, it would be really nice to have.

P.P.S My shoulder is feeling pretty great. I'm keeping it in the sling like the doctor told me to, and I'm putting BFC on it almost every night, I am running low on Emergen-c but I can pick some up at the store later today.

Missionary #1 [Pics]

Missionary #1 [last week]

Oh man Im gonna be home in 2 weeks...wow. crazy. idk what to think about that.

This week was crazy and really tough. Of the 5 people that we had to baptize only one of them got baptized. But it was a super cool baptism. J was that one guy that we found that is from some little tiny town in the middle of the jungle. He had been fasting for like 2 days to see if he should get baptized and in his interview with E. Gamarra he got an answer where the Spirit testified to him so strongly that everything we had taught him was true. He had to have another interview with the 1st counselor in the mission and after that interview the 1st counselor gave the bishop and us instructions to baptize and confirm him the same day (something that in 99.9% of the cases you shouldnt do) and that the next day at church we should give him the Aaronic Priesthood. So we did so. And now he is on track to go back to his little town and baptize all of them. We are gonna coordinate with the mission that he lives within to be able to make sure that missionaries get sent there. I am pretty sure that it is a place where the gospel has never been. So we are really pumped up to see how this works out. He was actually a deacon in his church there. I think it was an 7th Day Adventist church so if they see the conversion of J we are praying that it works out like King Lamoni and his people.

Other than that we were on splits, running around to interviews here and there trying to make sure that the zone reached the 4 baptisms that we had said that we would have. We talked with the zone at the start of the week and we found out that there was about 15 people that should get baptized so we started working with them. We went on splits with both our DL and managed to get a baptism in both their areas. And we got the sister missionaries a baptism after we found out that they didnt baptize a 10 year old kid with her mom...idk what they were thinking but yeah they got him baptized too.

We had a bad experience with R, the guy we´ve been helping to stop smoking and drinking, so like up until Friday night he was good to go, passed his baptismal interview and everything and then saturday for the baptism he never showed up. So after baptizing J we ran over to his house to see where his was at...nothing...we went back a couple times that day....nothing. So we went early to pick him up for church...nothing. Went back that night...and he opens the day and the first thing out of his mouth is: "I don´t know what I was thinking trying to be a Mormon, I am Catholic, I´m gonna die Catholic here is your stuff back". And the Spirit bolted out there like a scared horse. We asked him if we could come in and we tried to reason with the guy but nothing. He just started making mockery of everything we had done for him and idk. It was not very fun. We tried everything, even got him to feel the spirit once again and...nothing. So we left with a prayer and a heavy feeling on hearts. Not because we lost a baptism, but because we had lost a soul. It was painful but we picked ourselves back up and kept working.

Later that day we found a family that was really cool. We had been teaching the daughter and her son for a while and we had been insisting in meeting her parents who live there with her. She always told us that they would never listen to us but we found a way in and watched "Finding Faith in Christ" with them and afterward challenged them all to get baptized on the 21st. They all accepted. The spirit was there.

So what did I learn this week. Other people´s agency is still in play but I can feel good about the hard work that I do even if the results dont come out like I want them too. But hey thats life :)

Love ya, next week is my last email home!!!!

Elder Patrik Connole

Missionary #1 [this week]

Lol I haven´t even gotten my itinerary yet so thanks for the update. Lol Idk if I am gonna be able to email next week but I´ll do it if I can :)

So this week we had Zone Leader Council, which I think was actually really productive. Not that the rest of the councils have been unproductive but I think we really sent down some good bases to get the mission to another level. As a zone this week we had the most baptisms in the mission which is something that has NEVER happened here in Ilo. The missionaries and everyone are really pumped with everything that is going on. We should have 6 more baptisms this week. Good things are happening here in Ilo. On Sunday we had a meeting with the Stake Presidency (there is only 1 stake in all of Ilo) and we just showing them how much the work on the missionary side has progressed and how with their help how much more we could do to really make Ilo a strong stake once again and even how we could get it to split. It was kinda funny because I was just showing the 1st counselor some of my ideas and what not and he said half seriously "Elder, why don´t you just stay here and be part of the High Council?". I just laughed and said hey, look me up on facebook and I´ll be happy to feed you all the ideas that I have :) Good stuff.

Soe we didn´t have very many days to work this week because of council and interviews with the Presidente (Idk why I got one because I´m just getting interviewed on sunday), but we did some good hard work with what we could but the Lord blesses. We had 5 people come to church. Jorge, and 4 references from 3 different remembers. We were so pumped because not on ly that but the attendence was about 25% better than it usually is. Good things are happening. The Lord sends his blessing to those who are diligent in their work.

Lets see what else happened this week. Um...you know it was just a good wook of working hard more than anything we were finidng new investigators, some with more potential than others. Ooh! Yeah! We found a family from Puno! Puneños (Thats how you say people from Puno) are SOOOO Cool! And they are married! What?? That never happens! So yeah we found them the Dad is a young statistics professor at the local university and they have a 1 year old. We visited them and they let us in right away and as we began teaching the spirit was obviously present and we shared with about the Doctrine of Christ (2 Nephi 31) and after we got to talking a bit the Dad just asks us "So wait...are you guys inviting us to get baptized?" Uh...hello! YES!!! So him and his wife accepted a baptismal date but they went on a trip this week sooooo yeah they are on hold for the moment. I´ll have to email E. Webb and see how it went with him.

I am gonna keep workin hard obviously because even though I may be finishing my time up the Lords work isn´t even close to being finished. and I am still a part of it. The Lord still has some experiences that I need to have this week.

See you next week!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Elder Patrik Connole

Disclaimer.. Please feel free to read what interests you on the blog and disregard the rest. My feelings will not be hurt if you don't read every word I write. LOL :) My goal at the forefront currently IS STILL... to get settled in to our new place, so things may be a little hit or miss for a bit. My plan--and perhaps it will work exactly as planned--is to return to the blog world for "real" by the time the new year rolls around.

Mama Rika's Christmas Pics and Missionary Flood and Giggles

2011-12-27T11:01:00.001-07:00

We got to speak to both missionaries on Christmas day, one via Skype and the other via phone. The one in Peru was the one allowed to Skype. His picture was fuzzy and his voice kept cutting out, but it was still awesome to see and hear him. There was also a rather abrupt ending to his call, slightly short of his allotted time. The one in the States was able to visit with us for quite a while longer. We even opened some presents as we chatted with him. The boys sister Nan (nannying out of state) also was able to Skype us at the same time, so we sort of had the gang all together at once. All in all, it was a great day, a great family time.

Our tree and Decorators.

A little holiday fun a friend brought to do with us.

Painting the roses red...or something like that.

Nothing like morning hugs!

Missionary #1

Lol, Well you´ll be able to see me loud and clear here in like 3 weeks. Haha, that sounds so trunky, but I promise that I´m still working really hard. I can´t afford to get trunky anyways...we should have (cross my fingers!) 5 baptisms this week. Yes thats right 5 baptisms this week. We had all of them at church this week and 3 of the 5 are really pumped for their baptism and 1 is like starting to feel the spirit and recognize it. The other lady, ...well we are pulling for a miracle. She is really cool, and came to church this week but she is Evangelist and just gets all stubborn with us when comes to trying to prayer in the right way. Her husband is really excited to get baptized so we are gonna help him understand the commandments this week and we´ll be good to go.

R, (the guy who is trying to give up 50 years of smoking and drinking) has quit smoking for the last two days and he didnt drink during Christmas time, whihc is amazing because usually a lot of people here just drink all day the 24th and 25th. So he is on track. What we did to make sure he didnt even have the temptation to go out and drink was send him off with the Patriarch and his family. He loved it and on top of that he went to church by himself.

Y and E are doing awesome as well. Y got an answer that very first night that we visited her and knows that is true. E is coming around slowly but surely. He always says that its interesting and we know that he feels the spirit but he wont like say that he is. He has committed to baptism this week but we are just waiting for him to have that "aha" moment and everything just comes together.

Tuesday we had our Christmas Devotional as missionaries in Tacna, (remember how I was telling about the dancing donkey?) and so it was really fun to go see and bunch of the other missionaires and see how they are doing. It was reallly fun to see E. Muñoz who I trained, he is now in as a District Leader. Lol he got a surprise call from the Presidente to tell him that. So that was a fun day.

Oh yeah on Thursday I had to do an interview by telephone...that was a very interesting experience. What happened was that E. Gamarra and E. Ricra had a husband and wife that were gonna get baptized. But when got there the husband, who is a police man, got emergency call in to work. I guess they needed some extra reinforcements for something. So E. Webb interviewed the wife and I called Pte Fernandez to see what to do. After explaining the situation, he told me to just interview the guy over the cellphone. So I did so and passed him. Really interesting to do that. The next day we stopped by their chapel to give them some baptismal clothes and after we got there and walked in with them we saw a bunch of water in the hallway...wha?

Turns out that somebody left the huge tank of water upstairs open and so when the elders turned the water on to fill the font the water just started running out of tank, overflowed the basin and ruined the roof. So Luzgardo (a member of their ward) and I rolled up our sleeves and took off our shoes and socks and started draining out the water from the roof while the rest of the gang shoved the water out the door. Craziness

So thats how it went down this week,

Love you all, it was great seeing ya ;)

Elder Patrik Connole

Missionary #2

{I sent the boys this picture of their Uncle's "Christmas tree".}

Lol that tree is awesome! This may be a short email due to shoulder problems, just fyi. I'm trying to stay off of it, and one handed typipng is no fun.

This week was by far the craziest week I've had since i got here. Monday night was ridiculous going to the ER. it took an hour and a half for the drugs to wear off during that time i was talking and said things to the doctors and xray tech like:

SECURITY GUARD "how ya doing buddy?"

ME " great! they got me on morphine but i can still feel my shoulder"

SECURITY GUARD " oh no you can't"

(later, talking to the same security guard)

ME "you need to go through the temple so i can see you in the celestial kingdom"

BRO FROST "why don't we play the quiet game now"

ME (in a loud stage whisper) " oh... sorry. how's this!"

ME " you need to get baptized"

DOC "i've been baptized"

ME "nope, you need to try again"

ME "Merry Christmas! and make sure you tell your family"

DOC "i'll tell them"

ME "you won't forget?"

DOC " I won''t forget"

ME "oh you'll forget"

DOC " i'll be sure to tell them"

ME "really? no... you'll forget"

DOC "i wont forget"

ME "yea you will"

(this continued for a while before the doctor left. Do you thInk he forgot?)

ME "I know i said i didn't like hospitals before, but man i sure like them now! I don't know what i was thinking!"

ME "I know i'm on drugs right now so you probably think i'm just crazy... don't laugh drugs are a serious thing. hahahahahaha"

E. AMES " time to wake up now"

ME "I'm trying to, but whenever i open my eyes everything is all swirly"

ME "have i been talking about unicorns this whole time?"

E.AMES "not too much."

ME "good, cuz that would just be weird."

ME " I've been talking a lot now, why don't you just talk for a while and i'll just listen.... i don't hear anything, start talking."

E. AMES " I hope you never take up drinking because you are just bizzare right now."

ME. "i couldn't, beer smells funny, and smoking makes me cough, and i don't even eat chocolate... but that has nothing to do with the word of wisdom, so why am i even bringing it up?"

i don't remember hardly any of this, this is just what E.Ames and Bro Frost (a member out here who drove me to the ER) told me i said. we didn't get back till about 2am. needless to say, we didn't get much done for the next few days.

We were still able to teach some lessons later on in the week, but the holidays also threw off our schedules. adjusting back to our regular missionary schedule has been hard, but we're getting back into the swing of things. It'll be a great week this week. I'm excited for the new year coming up.

{Lamenting the fact that there is too much fast food eating going on and too much junk food treats available to the missionaries} as far as good healthy snacks, granola would be great, cougar crunch and dried fruit would work too. :) idunno, surprise me.

Mama Rika Missionary Update Shoulder Dislocated Again!

2011-12-20T14:22:00.000-07:00

Note from Mom...I got a phone call from the mission office informing me yesterday that my missionary #2 has once again dislocated his shoulder and was in the emergency room getting put back together. Extra prayers are in order in the hopes that the shoulder will remain where it is supposed to for the rest of his mission (okay, for the rest of his life would be even better!). On the upside, though, it was nice to hear compliments about my wonderful son. The mission president's wife had nothing but good things to say about him.

Missionary #2

So, my week this week was pretty good, especially considering it was a transfers week. Apparently those are the weeks that generally have a slight dip in the progress of the work. The Missionaries need to adjust and whatnot.

Tuesday:

We helped the Assistants move funiture into the new apartment out in Montgomery. We now have 3 sets of elders in our ward. The ward members are quite excited about that. One of the members out here, Bro W invited us to his house for his Christmas traditino of having the elders come and decorate cookies. It was awesome! We had a great time, and it was especially great since I missed out on making all the Swedish goodies this year.

Wednesday:

We visited a couple of people in the afternoon, one of them a recent convert and the other was an investigator. Once evening rolled around, We taught D R and his brother M. We went over the Gospel of Jesus Christ with them, and surprisingly, M was relatively quiet and just soaked everything in. Both of them were very involved in the lesson, and engaged in what we were teaching. In Previous lessons, M would tend to ask a bunch of questions, and a lot of them didn't reallly relate to what we were talking about, but this time he had been reading from the Book of Mormon, and was much more receptive to our message. The Book of Mormon is amazing at softening hearts, and enlightening the minds of those who read from it. There is another great example of this in later on in the week with another one of our investigators.

Later that night we were able to drop by a couple of our investigator's places, and drop off some of the cookies we had made a bro. W's house the night before. There's nothing wrong with going through the stomach to soften the heart right? We're hitting from all angles here. The Book of Mormon, our testimonies, and cookies? They won't know what hit them. :)

Thursday:

We were able to stop by and see A, one of our investigators, she wasn't feeling too good, but we wer able to teach a short, but powerful lesson about the plan of salvation. I think that is a direct result of the Spirit being able to be present in our lessons. Whenever he is not present, our lessons are horrible. Whenever he is there, the teaching part might be horrible, but the end result is amazing. The spirit is the real teacher in missionary work, he can get to the hearts of people so much better than we can. That's why testimonies are so important because they bring that spirit.

Later that night we stopped by C, and gave her a Joy to the World pass-a-long card. She put it up as a decoration on her tree. :) Yea! We'll come by with a Joy to the World DvD sometime this week.

Friday:

We went over to see E after studies were done in the morning. I have to admit, I was a little wary because our previous appointments with her had been pretty crazy, and she didn't really seem too interested or engaged in the conversation. Which is weird because she's been to church 3 or 4 times which is more than most of our investigators.

When we got there, we knocked on the door, and when they let us in, we saw E coming down the hall with her Book of Mormon in handa ready to go. Good sign! Last time we'd met she'd read through chapter 3 of 1st Nephi. When we asked her about how she'd been doing with her reading, she told us she'd made it to chapter 7 which was incredible progress as it was more than double the amount she'd read in the last 3 months. She then asked us how to pronounce the name of one of the people in the chapter. She kept saying that it was something like Sherman. We looked at Chapter 7 of 1st Nephi, and sure enough, there was no Sherman. I was pretty sure there were no Shermans anywhere in the entire Book of Mormon. We searched around for a little bit, and decided that she must be talking about Ishmael as that was the closest thing to Sherman we could find.

We asked if we could just start reading with her where she left off. She agreed, and also mentioned something about a Vineyard in the previous chapter. I'm sitting there thinking "Vineyard, what vineyard? I just read through 1st Nephi and there's no Vineyard in chapter 6. Is she reading the same Book of Mormon I am? Where is she getting this from?"

Needless to say, we were quite confused. Come to find out, she was actually 100 pages further in the 7th chapter of Jacob, not Nephi. the Sherman Character she kept talking about was actually Sherem, and she had just finished the longest chapter in the Book of Mormon about the Parable of the Vineyard.

We were blown away. The most she'd ever read in between visits was maybe a chapter. This was some serious progress. But not only that, she was so much happier that she used to be, and she seemed so full of life. She understood what we read about, and the doctrine we taught. It was an awesome lesson!

Later that night we were able to visit L and his Girlfriend T. They recent had a baby who had some health issues, but seems to be doing fine now. We started teaching a lesson, but we also ended up helping them set up a playpen. They were incredibly grateful, and T was crying after the prayer because we asked for a blessing on her baby. It's amazing how simple things help people so much.

Saturday:

We took the J family on a church tour. The pictures in the Church Building are awesome! They help teach doctrines and stories from both the bible and the Book of Mormon so well. We had a Christmas social later that night, and a lot of the members of the J family made it, and E did as well! yes!

Sunday:

We had studies last an extra long time today because of Church, and a musical fireside we went to. We didn't start proselyting till 7:45 or so. We stopped by D. We knocked on the door, but no one answered. Last time we came, the Dughter answered the door on the other side of the house first, so we decided to try the other side. When we came near the porch, we heard some music playing on a radio. We couldn't see very well because it was pretty dark. Apparently D couldn't see us very well either because we startled her when we came closer. She was glad to see us, but really couldn't meet with use for a while. Her grandma had passed away, and she'll be gone taking care of the funeral and whatnot. We told her that God loved her and her Grandma, and explained a litttle bit about the Plan of Salvation. She started getting somewhat emotional, and she told us she thought God sent us to her so that she could hear that. Once again, it is amazing how just small and simple things that we often take for granted really impact the lives of people. Just knowing that God is our loving heavenly father is and incredible gift.

Love you all! I can't wait to call home on Christmas!

Elder Brayden Connole

Missionary #1

Wow this was probably one of the CRAZIEST WEEKS ever!

So idk if i´m gonna be able to get everything in. We had a baptism! Well 2 but one of them was 8 year old Y, whose brother we baptized a couple weeks ago. She got baptized with her grandma, T. The 8 year old baptism doesnt cound for the mission but it certaintly counts in the eyes of the Lord.

T is about 65 and doesnt know how to read very well. As a matter of fact, her first language is Quechua, and her second is spanish so sometimes she didnt understand everything that we talked about. We were working really hard with her to get her to feel the spirit and follow what she feels. She would really pumped for her baptism one day and then fall into the dumps the next. That was happening for a long time until we figured out what her biggest problem was...SHE DIDNT WANT TO GET BAPTIZED IN COLD WATER! Lol oh man so we told that there would be warm water for her baptism and and then she was good to go all week. She had the bishop baptize her and her granddaughter and after the actual service she told us "I am really a Christian now" :) Awesome! we were very very happy for this baptize because we had been working sooooo hard with her and she finally accepted it and now she is a member. I´ll send pics next week

So yeah other than that this week was full of splits with the missionaries going to the rescue on some of them and succeeding a couple times and then failing a couple other times.

R is having a lot of troubles getting over his smoking problems, and then he tells us that we dont know what its like to give us 50 years of smoking and drinking. Which is absolutely true but I do know how it feels to change from being one person to another. I opened up Alma 5:12-21 and just told him that he needed to experiment a change of heart. and to experience that he needed to pray like crazy and manifest his faith. That was a I hope that that gets him to start really praying and making changes. I know that he won´t be perfect and he may fall again but he needs to just trust in the Lord some more and experience a change of heart, becuase if he feels a change of heart his whole atititude will change and he will do things for his own iniciative to change

So yeah I am excited for Christmas this week and being able to talk to everyone. and I love you all

Elder Patrik Connole

Mama Rika Missionary #1 Update-- Hard Habits

2011-12-13T11:06:00.000-07:00

Note...Methinks Elder Connole #2 must have gotten transferred since I didn't get an email from him this week. Also, I moved my "disclaimer" to the bottom of the email, so it isn't in the way of your weekly reading. lol

Wow, another week has gone by, I can´t believe it. I´ll be home in 5 weeks. woah. crazy,.

Oh hey before I forget, I can do Skype again this year but I dont remember my account I think it was pconnole and i dont remember the password and also what time can we do it? What would be best for bub and you guys, I can do it at any time so just let me know.

Anyways, this week we were working pretty hard it was kinda crazy with all the transfers because they sent both our DL to other zones, ánd presidente didnt asign new ones until thursday. That just makes life harder on us Zone Leaders. But yeah there were 3 baptisms in the zone and we have a lot planned this week, so we are gonna be working hard core to get this baptisms down.

So yeah lets see here how´d this week go? Monday after internet we went and played soccer like usual and got to know the zone, so that was fun. Then we went and taught R, who was that reference we got from the Patriarch. Oh man he is a funny dude, like it seems like he doesnt understand everything that we teach him but he acutally really does. And he loves to kid with us. We taught him every day this week and have gotten him to stop drinking and he is down from a box of cigarretes to just 1 or 2 a day. We are praying really hard that he will be able to get over this addiction that he has. I know that he can do it it just that he has been smoking for more than 50 years so its a really tough habit to give up. We gave him a blessing and we are working with him for a baptism on the 24th of this month. I was on splits with E. Espinoza this week and we taught his wife, she was also way cool and after we watched a movie she felt the spirit so strongly that when we told her that her husband was gonna get baptized, she said ¨When is the baptism so that I can get baptized too¨! SWEET! But then we found out that she would be going to an treatment in Arequipa for all of December...lol that aint stopping her. She said that she would come back that day so that she could get baptized. But now we have the problem of teacher her. So...we are gonna talk to the asistentes (Remember E. Lowe who I trained?) and see if they can teach her but yeah.

That was on thursday and guess what Christmas came early this year as we now have CELL PHONES!!!!!! WOOOHOOOO!!!!!!! So yeah for the first time in the history of Mision Peru Arequipa all the ZL have cell phones. So nice! Oh man we are pumped to have it. And on top of that I got yours and mormor´s packages :) So yeah it was a good day lol.

We have also been working with that family that we found who live in the Jungle. Well turns out that they are really really cool and we got them to church this week. But they are haing some doubts about their need to get baptized again. Like they were baptized in a evangelist church by inmersion so they think that that is valid. Sigh, unfortunately they have yet to entirely grasp the concept of priesthood authority. But thats ok, becuase we have yet to teach the entire restoration lesson. We will focus them on that and have them pray about Joseph Smith (in spanish its José Smith) and yeah they´ll be good to go. So we are excited for them. They also have a 15 year old daughter that we havent really met yet and a 27 year old daughter who needs to get married first. So hopefully they will also want to get baptized with them. We still have to teach them a lot but yeah.

And so thats whats been going on. We are working hard, and I am really enjoying the opportunity that E. Webb and I have to work together again.

Love you all

Elder Patrik Connole
Disclaimer.. Please feel free to read what interests you on the blog and disregard the rest. My feelings will not be hurt if you don't read every word I write. LOL :) My goal at the forefront currently IS STILL... to get settled in to our new place, so things may be a little hit or miss for a bit. My plan--and perhaps it will work exactly as planned--is to return to the blog world for "real" by the time the new year rolls around.

Mama Rika Missionary Updates and a Little Extra :)

2011-12-06T09:13:00.001-07:00

Disclaimer.. Please feel free to read what interests you on the blog and disregard the rest. My feelings will not be hurt if you don't read every word I write. LOL :) My goal at the forefront currently is to get settled in to our new place, so things may be a little hit or miss for a bit. My plan--and perhaps it will work exactly as planned--is to return to the blog world for "real" by the time the new year rolls around.

Note to self...remember to plan what you are going to start blogging about come the first of the year. I just looked at my blog stats and am amazed at how many hits a day I am getting and I am hardly doing any blogging currently! Here is a picture of my little Love Bug for your enjoyment. No, the picture has nothing to do with the rest of this post, but isn't he cute? lol

Missionary #2

My week this week:

Monday:

We helped set up nativities in the church building. I'll be taking pictures of some of them later this week to send back home. It's a pretty big event, and we've actually recieved a few referrals out of it. We taught D R a new investigator who has recently committed to baptism, and his brother M. I was on a mini-exchange with E. Wiederholt, one of the Zone Leaders who works in the same ward as I do, so I was able to learn a lot. D wants to be baptized on the 22nd of January, and M is working towards it as well.

Tuesday:

Exchanges with the Zone Leaders. I was with E. Wiederholt all day. He wasn't feeling very good, so we mostly just stayed at home and listened to some awesome talks. I would strongly, strongly recomend that you listen to a talk by Hugh B. Brown called "Profile of a Prophet" it is awesome!

Wednesday:

We taught a lesson to one of our investigators that morning, and we were able to contact one of our other investigators, C, later that night. It was really awesome, because C had basically dropped off the face of the earth for the past two weeks, now she's coming back in contact with us. It's great to see.

Thursday:

We dropped off some pamphlets to Bro Ch's house (a Convert of almost a year now) While we were there, we were able to set up an appointment with a friend of his. She just said, while we were talking to Bro.Ch, "You know, I might come to your church this week." So that led to a great gospel discussion. Apparently Bro. Ch had been talking to her about it a lot. He is very good about spreading the message of the restored gospel. Members who work to find missionary opportunites are the best!

Our appointment later that day with the J family fell through. :( It's too bad, especially since they are really the only family we are teaching right now. But we did get a chance to reninvite them to church.

Had a lesson with a new investigator after dinner with a family in the ward. It was a really good lesson. She actually already knew a ton about the church, and was very interested to learn more. She told us however that she was not interested in becoming converted, and declined our invitation to come back again. She did say it would be okay if we dropped in if we were in the area. We just might be "in the area" a lot this next coming week.

That night, the Assistants needed the van to transfer some visa-waiting Elders who just got their visas to head off to Ukraine. So we drove their minivan everywhere the next day.

Friday:

Taught a lesson to T. She's the investigator that Bro. Ch referred to us. She had a lot of questions, but was faily receptive overall to the message. She said she'd be at church this week, Bro. Ch will be a big help with that, as well as other commitments she makes. Stopped by a couple of other people. A S ( an investigator) gave us a small Christmas Tree, and some ornaments to decorate our apartment with.

Saturday:

My first Zone Conference! It was awesome! President Pitt taught us about the Atonement, and went incredibly in depth. He is a spiritual giant. There was a lot of good stuff we went over, and I made sure to take good notes so i can be sure to improve myself in my missionary efforts.

We stopped by an investigator who we hadn't seen in a while, and we were able to teach a few short principles, and follow up with how they'd been doing with their Book of Mormon studies. I've noticed that as soon as any one of our investigators starts to take steps towards baptism, almost instantly Satan works overtime throwing stuff up in their path. It has happened with almost everyone we've met and taught with. I know that's the case with everyone, not just our investigators. As soon as we decide to do something better with our lives that will bring us closer to Christ, Satan throws everything he can at you. I think that's why it says in Helaman 5:12 to build your foundation upon the rock Christ. Otherwise, Satan's fiery darts, and shafts in the whirlwind will take their toll on our spiritual lives.

Later that night, we tried to go see a Hospitalized member. He'd been discharged the day before, so we went to our back up plan to see some other people. Those all fell through, so then we started following up with people close to our apartment. At 8:57 we knocked on a door whose residents we had previously loaned a Book of Mormon to. A lady answered the door, and we talked with her for a good 20-30 min about the Book of Mormon and Prophets. She invited us to come back again, and we hope we'll be able to teach her and her children as well.

Sunday:

After church and studies, we went to go stop by some of our investigators we hadn't seen in a while. None of them answered. Also, none of our investigators showed up at church either. It was kind of bogus. As we were backing the van up to leave, a lady stopped us and asked if we were "the mormons". We responded in the affirmative, and eventually found out that she was an investigator that we'd been trying to contact for the last 5 weeks. She had been contacted by other missionaries, but had been working two jobs and hadn't been able to be around when we dropped by. We set an appointment with her for monday night.

We had about 30 min till dinner, and decided to continue tracting on a road we'd tracted a few days earlier. First door we knocked on. Nothing. Second door... Nothing. But the third door... they weren't interested. This pattern continued down all the doors until we finally got to the last house on the street. The house was one that we'd admired for quite some time because of how large and beautiful it was. A woman outside was raking leaves. We found out later that her name was D. She was kind of wary of us at first, but her excitement gradually grew as we started testifying of the restoration. E. Ames said we had a prophet on the Earth again, and her eyes lit up. She asked who it was, and I told her it was President Monson. She accepted a Book of Mormon, a mormon.org card, and a challenge to read and pray. We ended up being about 20 min late to our dinner appointment.

The Lord is really blessing us as we dilligently find and teach people. Thank you for your prayers in our behalf as missionaries, they really do help to prepare people to hear the gospel, and prepare us to find them.

Did you get the chance to watch the Christmas Devotional? I loved President Eyring's talk.

Love ya!

Missionary #1

Yah sweet. thanks for the pic. I hope I get that package soon. :)

Hey I need a favor, can you send me the 10 best photos that I´ve sent you. I need it for my last transfer as something they do as a mission.

Anyways this week we didnt work at all on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday because we were doing stuff for the Zone Leader´s council that we had. Awesome as usual. We talked about developing a personality like Christ and how everything is based on love in everything that we do. It was tight! I wish you could have been there. We used 3 Nephi 12-14 to talk about Christ´s personality.

Thursday I was on splits with E. Blacio and we found a SWEEET family. They are from the jungle, (like a 4 day bus ride from here) and they have been looking for the true church to join here in Ilo and had been praying diligently that God would send someone to show them them the right path. Hello! We are missionaries from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints! They accepted us readily and committed to baptism so quickly, it was awesome! God prepares people to listen to us. They were gonna go to church this week but when we went to pick them up they werent there so we had to go, but later on we passed by and they told us that they had gone out and looked for the chapel but they couldnt find it...ARGH! So frustrating!!!!!!!! But yeah we arent gonna let that get us down. My new (well sorta, he was my comp about 6 months ago) comp, E. Webb and I are excited to teach them even more about the gospel.

And on Friday we had 2 baptisms. I dont have the pictures because E. Ruggiero, who loaned me his camara, got transfered to Tacna so I´ll have to get those when I finish the mish. We baptized our pensionists daughter and that was really neat because for the first time in a long time the whole family went to church. D also gave her testimony which was pretty good so we were pleased. And we FINALLY baptized the Jehovah´s Witness lady, A. Did you know that older people are harder to baptize than younger people? Especially when they are 70 years old and their backs don´t work right. I had to kind of take her in a newly wed hold and dunk her like that. But we got the job done. She is so excited about the gospel and is trying to preach the gospel to her neighbors, buddies and her kids, so far she hasnt had much success but I am confident that she soon will.

Saturday we contacted a reference that the Patriarch gave us, one of his long lost buddies. This guy is about 65ish and he is really repentant, has realized that he has been a drunk, smoking goof head for all of his life and he wants to make it all good again. He came to church with the patriarch this week and LOVED it.

More upates coming soon, love ya!

Mama Rika Missionary Updates

2011-11-28T14:45:00.001-07:00

Missionary #1

No we didnt have anything special for Thanksgiving. I was on splits that day just working hard as usual.

We found a better internet site so yay! no more lame sauce computers!

So this week weas splits-mania! We went on splits 3 days in a row, and so I wasn´t in my area for 2 days, and E. Ramirez for the other. We were trying to help out several Elders who were having difficulties in their areas, and we needed to teach them how to get over them. The best way is through example so thats why we went on splits. Monday we had 4 lessons, which is cool because we only work for 3 hours on Mondays due to P-day. But unfortunately 2 of the lessons were just to leave investigators that were not progressing. But we did have a lesson with T(E´s grandma), that went really really well. She doesn´t know how to read so we are being really creative to help her understand the gospel. We taught her about prayer and how she should not do the memorized Catholic prayers (think Lord´s prayer style) but that she should pray from her heart and not to the Virgen Mary. She did such a good job and the spirit manifested to her that we are truely God´s servants.

Thursday I was on splits with E. O., he is from Utah. He has been out for a while now and still hasn´t had very much success in baptizing. He is great at activating but baptisms not so much. So we went out and just knocked doors trying to show him how to get the job done and we found a lot of people. In fact he told me that he had had some of the most spiritual experiences in contacting of his whole mission that day. So it was really cool to over there and help him to grow. I did an interview for a lady, and wow an awesome experience. She has been waiting for like a year to get baptized because she is not married and has a bum of a husband. Finally she got up enough cuoarage to kick him out of the house and she will be getting baptized this week. Actually that is the second lady in a row that I´ve interviewed that has done that.

Then on Friday I was on splits again, this time with E. Ruggiero´s temp, (Bro. Rojas) and we went to go teach T again. We planned to teach her about baptism and we had made a couple posters with Jesus Christ getting baptized and the gift of the Holy Ghost. The inspiration came to have her try to get to a certain place that we designated to be the Kingdom of God and we asked her recently baptized grandson to come. Rojas and I acted as the guardians to get in. So since he had been baptized we let him in. And then we asked T to do it, but we didnt let her in. Then we read John 3:5 and she told us that she needed to get baptized and she needed to do it now.

Sunday came and she showed up 10 minutes early for sacrament (WAAAAYY before us) with her 2 grandchildren and she loved church. I dont think that she understood everything that went on but she definitely felt good being there. And A (you remember that Jehova´s witness lady that we were teraching?) showed up by herself as well. A is PUMPED for her baptism this week, and I admit...so are we! haha

We also should be baptizing the pensionist´s daughter this week. She turned 9 a while ago and we finally were able to get the whole family excited about doing it. The bishop is gonna baptize her. I think he made a special visit this week to give a good pep talk to the parents about the baptism. Lol, whatever he did it worked. So we should have two baptisms this week and then we have T for the next week.

Thanks for everything, love you guys and I´ll talk to you soon!

Elder Patrik Connole

Missionary #2

Yikes! TW gone! crazy! He's going to love it! Tell Sister W that she's the best!

My Thanksgiving was very enjoyable. We actually had 4 or 5 dinners. I think I said more about this in a letter I just sent of to you this morning, so you can read about it there. I slept very soundly that night, being more full than I have ever been in my life, and completely exhausted from all the places we went. It was pretty great.

We're driving The BOSS (as my trainer so lovingly named our van) because the Mission President wanted to make sure that all the vehicles in the mission were being used. Since the Transfer Van was just sitting around the mission office all the time, he sent our car down to somewhere in Virginia, and we got the van. He wanted to make sure to keep the van close for when transfers come around, and since the mission office is in our area, and the airport is just outisde of it, we got the van. Not to mention, the other two areas close to the mission office were the assistant's area, and the Zone Leader's area, and since they drive all over the place, it was best to give the van to us. Our area used to be a bike area, but we got a vehicle about 3 or 4 transfers ago, so we don't drive nearly as much as the other places around.

I'm glad you got the mission newsletter! Sis. Fo (she's in charge of the newsletter) Said she sends them out to the new missionaries parents. I'm not sure if they continue to send them after this first time, but I guess i could ask. We're in the mission office usually once or twice a week for various reasons.

I wish you could meet President and Sister Pitt. They are the most loving and wonderful people I have met in a long time. President Pitt used to be a dentist, and if i heard correctly, I think he was the dentist for a couple of the members of the Twelve Apostles and I think he's on a first name basis with some of them. He and his wife submitted their paperwork to serve a regular couple mission, but President Eyring called them and asked them to come to his office where he extended the call to be a mission president. It's pretty cool!

The pictures are so great! I love to see pics of the little ones especially. I love the hat one. It made me laugh. Looks a bit messy because of the move, are you getting the house pieced together pretty well?

Oh BTW I recieved the letters from all the Mia Maids lol. My Trainer laughed at me and said that they would still be in highschool, some of them just barely even dating, by the time I get back. Anyway, it was great to get the letters from them, I'll be writing them back, but it might take a while because I'm only supposed to write on Pdays and there were a lot of letters to get through. Tell them thanks for the letters though! it really brightened my day.

So, this past week was pretty crazy, but we got alot done even though it was thanksgiving week.

Monday:

We went shopping for things that we needed for food, but had a shortened Pday because of thanksgiving. We visited Brother C, a recent convert out here and were able to share a short message about king Anti-Nephi-Lehi giving thanks to the lord even though the Lamanites were about to come and slaughter his people. We always have time to give thanks to the Lord.

We had a great dinner with the C family (members out here) They served Venison Tenderloin steaks. MMMmmmmMMMmmmm they were good. Bro C is a great cook. Tons of people out here go deer hunting mostly for two reasons. One, because there's a billion deer out here. In fact I believe that WV is the state with the most hit deer in automobile accidents. Second, because people, even in the city are really just small town country people who love hunting and fishing. They tell stories of hunting to us all the time, it reminds me of connole family reunions.

Tuesday:

Lots of studies on tuesday. We had to take a special training course specific to the van we'd be driving. It took about 3 hours, and honestly I was super bored the whole time, it almost reminded me of AIMS testing back in AZ, but not quite as bad. That being said, I did actually learn quite a bit, and I have been able to drive better since then. I thought I didn't need it at all since I'd been driving our van at home, but it actually did really help.

Later that night we were able to teach HC and have Bro. Fr from the ward come with us. Members really do make a huge difference in missionary work. Without them, we really can't have very much progress. Just think about the L family and how the Cr family helped them along, and the members really supported them when they came to church. It makes a big difference.

Wednesday:

Awesome day! We invited three different people to be baptized, D R, Da J and Di J. We taught 5 lessons which is totally sweet.

Da came to church on his own a couple sundays ago, but we weren't able to teach him at all. He brought his brother Di with him to our first lesson. The lesson we taught was incredibly scattered, and to be honest, it was probably one of the poorer lesson's we've taught. But the spirit was with us, and made up the difference, and they both accepted Baptismal invitations.

After the lessons, we walked back to our van, and started driving down the hill to get back home. Di and Da were walking up the hill toward us with their mom. She's losing her eyesight pretty bad, and could barely see. When we first said hello, she asked us if we had any pies. It was sort of an odd question, but we told her we didn't. She went on to explain that she and her husband had just pawned their wedding rings so that they could have a turkey dinner, but they really didn't have money for a pie for dessert.

We told them that we didn't have any pies, but we'd be sure to ask around for some. Afterwards we ran to the grocery store, and bought them a pie and some ice cream. We went back home with the goodies and ate dinner, and dropped the pie and ice cream off later that night. We talked to both of the parents, and they said they'd been looking for a church to go to, so why not ours? They said they'd be there on sunday.

Thursday:

We played basketball in the morning for an hour and a half, then had thanksgiving lunch, mid meal, dinner, after dinner meal, and dessert. All at different member's homes. The day was stuffed with driving around, and I was driving around feeling stuffed.

Friday:

Had an appointment with Da and Di again, but only Di came. Apparently their dad had a heart attack the night before, and they'd been at the hospital. He's back now, and is doing much better, but it'd been a long thanksgiving night. I'm honestly surprised Di showed up. He was going off of about 1 hour of sleep, but he still wanted to see us. I'm not sure how much he absorbed out of the lesson, but he was glad to be with us.

We then decided to drive to St. Albens (about 10 miles round trip) and see A (an investigator out there) We pull up to her house, and her neighbor, J, is raking leaves. He somewhat jokingly asked us to rake with him, so we picked up the rakes and started going at it, white shirt, ties and all. I don't think he was expecting that. We raked her whole yard, and were able to teach a short lesson.

Saturday:

Quite a bit of tracting was done on Saturday. We usually are able to teach more than we tract, but we still have days every once in a while that we tract a lot. We had a couple of promising contacts, hopefully we'll be able to follow up on them. I've been praying to be able to open my mouth and talk to everybody more effectively, and that really helped today, there were several times where striking up a conversation with someone led to a gospel conversation. I'll tell you about one of them.

In the morning, we drive out to a random street fairly close to our apartment, and start tracting. This guy, who is jogging, runs by but i didn't get a chance to talk to him, we were talking to a different person. After a little while, the same guy jogs by again, taking this as a sign that he need to talk to us, I waved and said hello as he got closer. He waved back, but continued to jog, then I noticed that he had Titlist Golf mittens on. I found that odd, but I asked as he almost passed by if he was a golfer. He said yes, and I told him that my dad was a pro. He stopped and talked to us for quiet a while, first about golf, then eventually about religion. We left him a mormon.org card, and our phone number. We invited him to sit down with us, but he was a little wary because of his parents who lived with him. i don't know what will come out of that, but I hope something good will.

Stuff like that happened a couple of other times during the day. God really does listen to, and answer prayers. It was great to see.

Sunday:

Once again.... No Investigators at church.... Bogus! I was really hoping that we'd have a couple today. We'd had several say they were coming, but none of them did.

We were talking to a less active member out here, and he said he wanted to "drop out" of the church. It was sad really. It's not like you can just drop out of the church like you would high school or something. You've made commitments with God. Eternal commmits. There's no just dropping and running from that. We make a covenant at baptism to take upon the name of Christ, not just for this life, forever. I just wish that everyone understood that.

That's about how my week went. I really enjoy getting letters from you! Keep me posted on everything. I got the letter back from W where he put the name tag(s) on the missionary I drew. That was really cute. Tell him I love him and miss him, and that I love his pictures he drew for me.

Love ya!

Elder Brayden Connole

Mama Rika Missionary Moment --A mailman and an angry elder

2011-11-21T14:54:00.001-07:00

Missionary #2 says...

I am feeling much better now. Thank you so much for the package, oh! if you could throw a julboken ( think that's how you spell it) or something very swedish, that would be awesome. I'm going to need it for the 24th. Today's email will probably be a bit shorter than usual, our Pday is kind of different this week as Thanksgiving is coming up, so we're kind of switching days so we don't have to Proselyte on Thanksgiving. Anyway, it'll be much shorter this week than in weeks previous because we have about half of the time.

Thanks so much for the pics of D, I really enjoyed them. Looks like he's being a boss and dominating at the net. Have him write me so we can swap volleyball stories. I played a bunch up at BYU and basically every day at the MTC.

I'm excited to get the letter back from W. Maybe we'll have to keep this up by adding a little more each time to a different picture. That could be really fun. How is A doing btw?

did I mention my companion and I just now started driving a 12 passenger van for our mission vehicle? Awesome! Lol it's really great to show up to an investigator in that beast, I mean they already think we mormons are a little strange, why don't we just advertise it a little more?

We got to listen to E. Anderson of the Quorum of the Twelve this past weekend. Wow! It was amazing! He came down for stake conference, and decided that he wanted to make sure to talk to all the missionaries in the mission. This was the first time in mission history that all mission got together in one large group. Our mission area covers parts of 6 states, so it's really difficult to get everyone together. To get from one side of the mission to the other probably takes about 10 hours or so. Some of the missionaries got up at 4:30 and drove for 5 hours to come see E. Anderson. I was only 20 min away from the Sissenville chapel that E. Anderson was speaking in. He actually came to the stake I'm currently serving in. It was pretty awesome to have all those missionaries gathered in one place.

A cool thing that E. Anderson did was to give us a promise as an apostle. We had a short Q and A session with him and Elder Seldon of the 70. In response to one of the Elders who had expressed concern for his mother who was just now starting to reactivate in the church and having struggles doing so, He said (I may have mixed up the order of things a little bit, but the main idea is still there) "No goodness, or unselfish, or righteous act that you do on your mission will ever do anything but help you, your posterity, those around you, and your family." Then he told the elder to talk to him afterwards so that he could write a note to his mother. The elder's biggest concern was how to best help his mother, and in response we all were given the promise from the mouth of an apostle of the Lord. It was amazing.

Pretty great right? Being with Elder Anderson was awesome! When E. Anderson was talking about how we often feel inadequate for our callings or the things that we are assigned to do in the church. He said that he really felt that way when he was called to be a part of the Quorum of the Twelve. To kind of emphasize his point, he said that he was talking to President Monson one time, and somehow he brought up the fact that within a month of President Monson becoming an Apostle, Elder Anderson was being ordained a deacon. Crazy right?!? Presdient Monson has been an Apostle for a really, really long time. 48 years or something like that. Elder Anderson said that he has learned not to compare himself to others, and encouraged us to do the same. He did say "Compare yourself to yourself." That is the best way to do it.

Another cool thing, the stake president here is the father of one of my friends, Courtney, out at BYU. In fact, it was because of him I was able to attend 3 sessions of General Conference. His wife was on the lookout for me, and made sure to grab me right after the session with Elder Anderson. She had promised Courtney that she would make sure to take care of me so that night she bought a gift card for wendy's that me and my companion were going to share. She said she hoped I served in her area so that she could feed us. Speaking of fast food, I really don't like fast food restaraunts... especially taco bell. We eat out way too much as missionaries, it's really not fun. :( I've gained about 6 pounds since I left for the MTC. That's the more than what I've gained in the last 3 years! Eh it's not all bad though, I could the extra warmth for the winter coming up.

It has actually not been to bad up here. We've had a car (now a van) with a beautiful thing called a heater. :) Either way though, it's been pretty nice temperature wise up here. There's been a few days where it's been pretty cold (we had a light snow on Tuesday) but it's apparently been unusually warm for around here. I just overheard one of the librarians even saying it was supposed to get up to 70 degrees tomorrow. I don't know how accurate that will be, but it's been close to 60 during the days. Cold, but not freezing yet. I keep trying to convince E. Ames (he's from Spokane, Washington) that freezing is actually at 50 degrees, he thinks it's at 10 below. I always tell him that Arizonans freeze at 50 so he might just have to carry an Elder Connole Popsicle around during the winter.

Random fact: I saw a lady with a fairly defined beard...

Another random fact: I was accused of being a mailman at 7 o'clock when we were tracting last week. The guy we were talking to kept asking "you're sure you're not a mailman?" while we were talking to him. Maybe he was expecting an important letter or something... Idunno. I should have just said "Yes, and I have a package for you" and gave him a Book of Mormon, but I didn't think about it until about an hour or so later.

Anway, love ya tons! I look forward to hearing from you every week, and Happy THANKSGIVING!

Elder Brayden Connole

Missionary #1 says...

Thanks for the thought about the goodies. I hope that my card is working this go around so that I can take out the money. D looks like he plays well

Sorry this lettler is gonna be short but this computer is LAME sauce. the connection is bad and the keyboard sucks. So yeah Sorry..

We had a baptism this week. 12 year old Eduardo, he was soooo excited for his baptism and I was a little be more excited than normal because for the first time in my whole mission I was gonna baptize in warm water. HA not! The water was boiling hot on top and cold on the bottom! Oh Peru....but we got him dunked which is the important part. He is a part member family that we had found a couple weeks ago and now his mom is going to church too, and his younger sister, who turns 8 in a couple weeks, so we will baptize her too. Even though it wont count towards the mission she needs to get baptized as well so that will be a couple powerful experiences for this family that needs it so much.

The grandma was at the baptism too and now she wants to listen to us as well sweet!

So yeah another cool thing that we did was go to arequipa, usually we head up on a bus, (like a greyhound bus type) but when we went to go buy tickets for the 4 of us (the distrcict leaders went with us) there werent any. So we took a car to moquegua, and then we took a minivan to arequipa. Kinda sketchy I know but hey, we had to get there. We had a meeting with Elder Gaugh, who is the area doctor. 2 things about him. 1 he is british and 2 he doesnt speak spanish. So the entire presentation was him speaking very limited spanish and him acting out (in a very, very dramatic fashion) what he wanted us to understand lol. it was pretty ridiculous. At the very end he was talking about how to combat stress that comes when somebody yells angrily at you. He called up a big american elder to yell at him in a very mad tone of voice but the poor guy couldnt do it. So he just made a generall plea out for someone to help him and so I headed on up to the stage and did my best of impression of Angry Elder Connonle. Lol he loved it so much that he madre me do it about 19 times while he demostrated how you could turn the mad voice into something else tso that it didnt seem as bad. haha

well times up

Elder Patrik Connole

Missionary Moment (er, rather mega moments) with Mama Rika

2011-11-14T15:09:00.001-07:00

Reminder... Please feel free to read what interests you on the blog and disregard the rest. My feelings will not be hurt if you don't read every word I write. LOL :) My goal at the forefront currently is to get settled in to our new place, so things may be a little hit or miss for a bit. My plan--and perhaps it will work exactly as planned--is to return to the blog world for "real" by the time the new year rolls around.

We were without much access to the internet for a bit due to the move, so I am including two week's worth of emails from my boys here.

Missionary #2 November 7

Apparently I'm allowed 2 hours of computer email time every week which is pretty nice. I completely forgot to grab my camera, so I won't be able to send any pics this week. I guess it probably doesn't matter as you will be lacking any sort of good internet for the next few days.

West Virginia is pretty beautiful. I'll see if I can't get some good pics of the trees here. Although all the leaves are quickly falling and there's not much of Fall season left. Soon it'll be freezing cold and I'll be a little Elder Connole popsicle. Whenever I tell someone I'm from Arizona and San Diego they start to laugh because they know how much I'm going to freeze. In fact, one of our investigators offered to get me some thermals to help me out. :)

My trainer is Elder Ames. He's from Washington, and says he is slowly losing his ability to speak properly. The West Virginian accents are slowly catching up to him. I'm in South Charleston right now, so the accents arent' that bad because they're city folk. There's been a few people that I really don't know what they're saying half the time. It's really bad when the someone says they're retired because it sounds way too much like the word retard. lol It's pretty great.

When we first got into the mission office, they were telling us about cars and the regulations on them. A couple of the elders really lit up when they heard that a lot of the missionaries drive 4 wheel drive trucks and jeeps. We drive just a regular car though. Apparently its a necessity in a lot of the areas, the roads here are way worse that San Diego. Not only are they crazy and curvey, they are often only big enough for one car to go through. E. Ames says that I've got the easy side of things since I'm in the city. I'm kinda scared to think of the craziness that happens in all the other areas.

Speaking of which, they shut down the area in Hazard, Kentucky. E. Ames and his companion were actually the last missionaries in that area they were out tracting and area right before a huge drug bust. Now a lot of the dealers think the missionaries are undercover agents and busted all of them. President Pitt pulled them out of there right away because one of their investigators said that the missionaries had better stay away from that area or else some of the dealers might try to get even and "go string them out in the woods" as E. Ames put it.

Yup, good ol' West Virginia! Here in Charleston there is literally a church on every single corner. It's ridiculous Everyone belongs to some church, and a lot of them have read the bible in and out, back and forth, and quote it left and right. Theres actually an old retired minister who lives a couple apartments down. He really likes us, but he has really bad alzheimers, and doesn't ever remember anything we say.

President and Sister Pitt are awesome! President Pitt is such a teddy bear, and loves everyone. He, and everyone else in the mission, greets everyone else with a big hug.

Let me give you a quick run down of my week so far.

Monday:

Pack and get ready to go, finish up classes and whatnot at the MTC

Tuesday:

Early morning leave to West Virginia. We reported to the Travel Office at 5am. bleh... Flight was relatively pleasant. Handed out a pass-along-card to the gentleman next to me. Get to the mission home, and have a wonderful dinner. Jet Lag kicked in, and travel weariness put me to sleep.

Wednesday:

Met my trainer, E. Ames. Found out that someone from our AZ stake is in my mission. Pretty rushed day overal. Taught a recent convert, Bro. Childers, about keeping the sabbath day holy. Tracted till 9.

Thursday:

Tons of Unplanned service, which is rare out here. Helped the ZL's with one of their potential investigators. He needed help rebuilding his deck. Dinner and service project, followed by raking leaves for a member's next door neighbor. Two Appointments cancelled, and our backups didn't work either. We ended up teaching an investigator with a baptismal date of Dec. 4th. We taught her about the Word of Wisdom and she committed to live it. We fumbled around a bit as it was our first real teaching appointment, but overall it was a pretty good lesson. Placed a Book of Mormon later that night.

Friday:

Spent an hour on mormon.org. Missionaries are supposed to spend two hours a week on there so we can direct investigators and contacts there more efficiently. The church is really pushing mormon.org now. It's on all of our pass along cards, and the newest cards emphasize the people aspect of mormon.org. Went tracting, but it wasn't going very well so we stopped by a sister's apartment. Her kids were going a little crazy, so I entertained them with pamphlet pictures while E. Ames read from the Book of Mormon. The lesson, overall went pretty well. Had another cancelled appointment, so we went and met Bishop Larsen, the bishop for the ward we're in, and also met his family. Tracted till 9.

Saturday:

Recieved a random text from an investigator that we've somewhat lost contact with. Visited with her a little later on for about 15 min or so. She has never come to church, even though previous missionaries have been inviting her since August. She committed to come to church which would be the 3rd investigator to do so on the week. Taught two 40 year old twins. They've been taught by several sets of missionaries, once was on date to be baptized, but never followed through. The lesson started strong, but one was quiet vocal, and had been reading anti-mormon literature. The other kept wanting her to calm down, and started almost teaching the lessons for us. One will commit to stuff, but have trouble believing, while the other will have trouble committing but not believing. Arg! The lesson ended on a good note, and the spirit was definitely there, hopefully we'll be able to help them out more in the coming weeks

Sunday:

3 lessons today which is pretty solid for a sunday, it was somewhat dissapointing at church when none of our investigators showed up. :*( But on a good note, a random lady we talked to earlier that day showed up and sat right next to us. She saw that everyone was bearing their testimonies, so she went up and did as well. She ended her testimony with "thank you" and left the stand. After sacrament, E. Wiederholt (one of the zone leaders) and I talked to her and found out she lived in another state, but was very fond of mormons. I gave her a pass along card, and I hope she goes to church out where she lives. Two of the lessons were for less active members, one of them, I could only really understand about half of what she said. The other one we stressed being an example to his family. We also taught an investigator again for a short lesson. (she's the one who offered to get me some thermals) It all went fairly well. and overall the week was pretty great!

Love you tons! Keep me posted on what going on with life. I'll send pics next time.

Elder Brayden Connole

November 14

Hey everyone!

Apparently, every month after entering the MTC you have a click day. Basically it's a monthly anniversary. Why it's called click day, I have no clue, but that's what the zone leaders, and my Trainer called it. Click day for me was on saturday. I can't believe I've been out a month already. It's seems like I just barely left.

So here's my last week:

Monday:

Good relaxing P-Day. We have trouble getting our laundry done because the zone leaders and the Assistants come and use our washer and dryer. Usually we just put a batch in between appointments while we are at home during the week.

Tuesday:

We tried to follow up with some contacts in Southmoore apartments (they are just up the road from the church building we have), but none of them answered, or they were busy. It's strange because tons of people out here live in government housing, and when we tract there, it's really hit or miss, some people could really care less, and others are really searching for some help, and some light. Our back up was to continue tracting those apartments, so we did. It was really hard to see anything or talk to people because the sun was abnormally bright reflecting off of the buildings. We tracted into an older lady. She invited us in because we kept squinting in the sunlight, and really had trouble seeing and talking to her while we were outside.

She's a seventh day adventist, and she told us about her faith and what she believed. It was interesting because she actually believed a lot of the same doctrine we did. We showed her in the Book of Mormon some of the passages where our beliefs coincide. We left her a copy, and she committed to read it. Apparently she had met with sister missionaries a year or two back and was somewhat dissapointed when they didn't come back. We set up a return apointment, and she was exctied for when we return.

We ended up giving away 3 copies of the Book of Mormon today in addition to teaching a couple of lessons. It was a good day.

Wednesday:

Visited an elderly couple who are not members, but are completely into geneology. They've been to Salt Lake twice to use the geneology stuff out there, and even admitted that there was "something special about mormons." We talked about a variety of things, from Blacks and the Preisthood to prophets and baptism. They told us in the MTC to use the Book of Mormon to resolve any problem that the investigator might have. So we did. When they had a concern, we would tell them what we new to be true, or that we didn't know the answer, but that we knew the Book of Mormon was true, so whatever concern they had could be resolved through reading and praying about it. The Book of Mormon is awesome. They definitely came closer to Christ that lesson, it was really great!

Elder Wiederholt says hi. ( he's my Zone Leader, and just jacked my keyboard) He's a funny guy.

Thursday:

Feeling a bit under the weather, I think the change of environment and the colder weather is catching up to me. Don't worry though mom, I'm taking vitamin C, garlic, grapefruit seed extract (because mormor said to do so when I start feeling sick), and drinking lots of water. I took a few naps during the day, but we still got quite a bit done

Friday:

Ended up taking a two hour nap instead of just a half hour... woops, although I think it was probably a good thing for me to take a rest. We taught the acouple of lessons and tracted for a while. It's starting to get colder, but apparently is supposed to heat up to the 60's this next week which is really hot for this time of year.

Saturday:

Raked the leaves outside the church building in the morning with the rest of the ward. We have a pretty strong ward out here, and get fed fairly often. AKA every other day, sometimes more.

Everyone out here really knows the bible. We'll just be talking to someone, and they'll quote several verses in connection to each other about how our church must be false. They know their bible. I just have to take a step back and tell them, that the reason I know is because I've prayed and the Holy Ghost has told me it is true.

Sunday:

None of our investigators showed up at church again! ARG! It's especially frustrating because we don't know what happened to them, and two of them are scheduled to be baptized soon. They need to come, but just dont! I don't know what their reasoning is, but regardless, they need to show up at church.

Funny thing though, we had a 17 year old kid randomly show up at church. His name is david, and he should be coming to play basketball with us on P-Day. It was nice to have a new investigator after the bogusness of none of our other investigators showing...

The rest of the day was spend studying in bed, my cold had gotten a lot worse, but I'm feeling much better today (monday) hopefully i'll continue feeling better, as there's lots of work to be done.

Love you all tons!

Elder Brayden Connole

Missionary # 1 November 7

Woah, yeah that was really quick to get released! But I think it will probably be better to have more time for ya. And you get to teach a class that you know a lot about haha!

So I am in Arequipa today and tomorrow, we just got off a 5 hour bus ride, blech. And it was even worse for me because here I am tall so they actually have the seats way to close together, so I was squished for the first like 2 hours until they made a stop in Moquegua and a BUNCH of people got off. Then I could spread out, whew, thank goodness. We are gonna play some basketball today so I am pretty pumped for that! And then tomorrow we have the ZL conference.

This week was a lot better than last week, we had 2 investigators at church, one was M. Guerrero, and ex Jehova´s Witness´ and she loved it so much that this week she is going with the Bishop´s wife to visit less actives! Woot! So she is on track to be baptized next week, because she has a lot of concepts and beliefs and we have to work out and explain to her because the religion that she was in is very different than that of the LDS church.

Lets see I dont have that much time because we gotta go do some stuff so I´ll just give you a brief report.

We worked hard this week and now that I´ve got the area down we were able to work a lot more effectively. We found some really cool people and some not so cool people haha. We are really excited for a part member family that we found yesterday. They have been inactive for a while and have a 12 year old son who hasnt been baptized yet. We were contacting houses and as we were heading up the hill we found a little 8 year old of a convert family that got baptized in April and he was like so excited to walk around with us and he actually knows the family there. He gave a good little testimony about his baptism and now the 12 year old wants to get baptized too. We just gotta get them to church and we will be good to go.

Other than that we had a dilema with the temporal that was gonna be with E. Ruggiero until the end of the change. Turns out that he brought his cell phone so that he could talk to his GF during "break" periods (which dont exist) and so when he and I were on splits I got on him about it and he wasnt willing to give it up so we had to send him home. So the Assitentes are looking for another comp.

Well I think thats pretty much all the exciting news, I´ll have a better report next week :)

Elder Patrik Connole

November 14

Oof, dont I know it! I am the second tallest person in my zone here so its gonna be really weird to go home and have all these people that I know who were short be tall. And just the fact that I am slightly under the average height in the states is just weird to think about!

Looks like you got internet up and running again.

Lol, no we do not use Mormon.org all that much here. If I was in Lima we might do so, but Id say that only about 30% of houses here have a computer in house and like not even all of those have internet. And generally we dont end up working with those people because they are just a richer and prouder. Generally we have more success with the poorer people.

So yeah this week was a lot of traveling like I wrote to you that it would be. We had a lot of fun playing basketball and soccer as zone leaders, (My team won 1 game in basketball even though we didnt have very many good players, and we took 2nd in the soccer tourney). Tuesday we had a good training about how we need to be more effective and we need to work harder so that we can baptize every week. We headed out and got back around 1 am Wed. morning.

But we got up at 6:30 and went to work again. We had to help out E. Ruggiero who was still without a companion until that night So we both headed up to his area after working a little bit in our area and helped him out. We went to visit a member and as we were there we found a less active family who have a 9 year old kid, so the parents asked us how soon could he get baptized, Hello! We took advantage of the situation and baptized him that same saturday. Way cool, the family was so excited and they all showed to church for the confirmation and they are committed to being fully active once again.

Thursday we had our planning meeting then we did some splits with E. Gamarra and E. Ricra. We had to buy some glasses for E. Ricra and that was in our area so we did the splits to not waste time. E. Gamarra and I worked in his area and we found 3 new investigators, 2 of which were a family. And we had another guy that as soon as he opened the door and said, come in I need to know the truth about religions. So we went in and taught him about the Restoration a little and them we taught him about baptism and he committed to baptism. Sweet!

Then the next day we went on splits with E. Rojas, and once again I went to the other area. We taught 5 lessons and had 30 contacts that day, But with the last lesson we ended a little bit late and had to sprint several blocks to get to the room before 9:30, that was not fun, running with your backpack after a long day of work. But hey we have to be 100% obedient right? That night, I went to the bathroom and when I tried to leave the dang door knob was broken and wouldnt turn! So after being trapped for about 25 min E. Rojas finally got me out. We had to break the door knob to the bathroom and then pull everything out with pliers to finally get it open. It was so ridiculous that it was funny.

Saturday, E. Ramirez and I finally worked together and we found a few cool people to teach.

Sunday we went to pick up that part member family that I was talking about last week for church and as we were climbing up the hill to get there, my companion bit by a HUGE dog, It didnt kill him or anything, but it left a pretty gnarly bite mark on his arm where he was protect himself. It would have been worse if I hadnt found a rock and chucked it at the dog scaring it away. Anyways so after dropping off the family and taking the sacrament we headed over to the hospital to get it checked out. after like 4 hours of waiting we finally got him cleaned up and today we have to go for the rabies shot. In the belly button, ouch. That took up most of sunday, but we were able to go back to that family that we had dropped off at church and taught them the restoration and the 12 year old is excited for his baptism

Love ya

Elder Connole

Missionary Moment from Mama Rika

2011-10-26T22:23:00.000-07:00

To any of you that just got more than two blog updates from me via email--I apologize profusely! My automatic sending program seems to have a glitch or two. I will be calling customer support tomorrow. Thanks for your patience.

Here is what we heard from Missionary #2 this week.

i really look forward to the letters you guys send. They come right on monday night and I get to read them and send you back stuff on tuesday.

I really don't like the MTC keyboards here, the shift button and other buttons are sticky and often don't work. So if I'm missing capitalization, I'm blaming the keyboard. :)

When S goes to the MTC make sure he brings extra gym shorts and shirts and socks. We go to gym every day, and I've had to break down and buy socks and a shirt from the bookstore I'm probably going to break down and buy more gyms shorts too.... It's always overly priced there, which bugs me, but they do give the missionaries a 40% discount so I don't feel so bad when I buy stuff.

Sorry I can't send pictures yet... MTC computers don't let you do that. I think it's kind of silly as that's the main reason I wanted to send emails, but no big deal, I'll make sure to send stuff when I get out in the field. All of the other elders here think that my camera is ridiculously ancient looking. They keep asking if I need to go develop the film. lol. I"ve named the camera Betsy and I won't let them make fun of her anymore, it hurts her feelings.

Oh! Kind of a funny thing i've been wanting to tell you. As the District Leader I'm supposed to go get the mail after lunch and after dinner. The elders in my district have begun to think that i don't get the mail fast enough. Now, towards the end of every meal, they start saying "mail?...Mail? mail? .... Mail?" much like the seagulls from Finding Nemo that say "Mine... mine... mine Mine Mine" We get some pretty great looks when I'm walking toward the mailbox with a flock of elders chanting "mail" behind me.

Everything is going great so far, love you tons!

Elder Brayden Connole

Here is a picture a friend of mine shared with me--her parents are also at the MTC right now! :)

And, in case you didn't catch Missionary #1's update already this week, here it is..

MONDAY, OCTOBER 24, 2011

Transferred!

Sounds like his Mission President thought he was feeling good enough for a transfer. We'll just pray that he keeps feeling better and better!

So ya I got changed. I am now in a fishing city called Ilo, its about 5 hours away from Arequipa. My new companion is E. Ramirez, also from Lima, like E. Sulcaray but a different part. I actually kinda guessed that I would be coming here, so I wasnt too surprised about the call. And the good thing about being Zone Leader is that you usually have a pretty good idea of who your companion will be. So yeah I will be here for 2 transfers and wow, then Im done. I know a lot of the Elders and Sisters already too, so it should be pretty easy to gain their confidence and get to work.

Ilo tends to be kinda like Hunter where one month they do really good and the next month not quite as good, so we will be taking a look at that and see how we can get that to change so that we are baptizing every month.

Im gonna miss E. Sulcaray and all the cool people I met in Hunter. We had quite a bit of success over there and I dont see any reason why that shouldnt continue. And E. Ramirez and I will be having success here too. That I do know to be true.

Lets see so while I was there in Berlin we had a video night, where the ward, not us of course, watched a movie called Mr. Poppers Penguins, which I guess is a funny family oriented movie. The good part about it for us was that we got some references and we were able to bring a less active family that has a 9 year old son who hasnt been baptized yet, come. We also got free popcorn, soda and salchiconos. You know me, I like free food haha, actually I think all missionaries in general like free food haha. We had about 45 people there and I guess it turned out well from what the members told us. We didnt stick around very long after grabbing our snacks. The ´Lords work never stops.

On Sunday it was also really nice because in my last Ward Council most of the council members, including Carlos who is now the new 1st counselor in the YM presidency, expressed their thanks and love for what I had done in the ward to help it progress. I had no idea that they felt some much love for me. They all committed to help E. Sulcaray out a lot more and to take care of the people in their organizations that we had baptized.

Anyways I dont have much time this week because of the transfers but I will have a better letter next week

Love ya

Elder Patrik Connole

Mama Rika Updates

2011-10-26T21:48:00.002-07:00

Welcome to my Readers...those who are just joining me and those that have been with me for a long while. Just in case you can't figure out who is writing all these posts, let me explain...I write them all, I just give myself several different names, depending upon what I am posting about. Mama Rika writes all about her kids and is likely the most frequent contributor. To "meet" my other "me's", click on the tabs for each personality just below the family circle picture on the blog.

It has been a long and interesting couple of years. To catalog a few family happenings...

The kids~~~We currently have two sons out serving missions. One just left for West Virginia, one will return in three months from Peru. Our oldest daughter has gone to school in Idaho, moved to Arizona, moved to Colorado, and is now back home but may be leaving again soon. The next in line is getting dual credits at the local community college as he finishes up high school. Along with his recent acquisition of a driver's license, he will be entering the work force officially in a couple of weeks. Child number five just embarked upon his high school adventure and earns the privilege of being able to claim "tallest freshman" of the family thus far. Daughter number two is taking various fun classes like choir, girl's club and cooking with other homeschooling friends. The three year old continues to impress and delight us with his smarts and humorous sayings. The baby is a happy, running, mimicking 15 month old.

Other stuff~~~Today we began moving boxes to our new residence across town, having come to the end of our year and a half stay in this house.

Dad and Mom~~~Dad is still working at the same location, but added an additional job a few days a week. Time together with family is rare but precious. He loves hearing joyous shouts of "Dad!" when he walks in the door. (Well, at least from the three youngest when they are awake.) He's keeping options open. Mom is still doing all the usual stuff, but has delved further into more frugal shopping (yes, there was more to learn), worked on just a few new songs and arrangements, and recently became a publisher at www.currclick.com. Mom also thinks she has spent about one month of her time in the last 18 months either at the DMV, urgent care, the hospital, or doctor's office. :(

Reason for this post~~~The reason for this post is to tell you what to expect here on CompleteLee Blog from here on out. Originally, there were a lot of things I didn't put on this blog. When missionary number one left, I created a blog for him (www.perumissionary.blogspot.com). Several months ago, I decided I needed to start condensing things and I "shut down" my music blog with plans to just post everything on one blog, this one. Now that I have two missionaries out and more to come in the future, I believe I shall not keep creating new blogs every time, but instead I will post missionary updates here from Mama Rika. I will also start trying to do better with posting music updates and other fun things--ie homeschool, cooking, kid stuff, frugal living, parenting, etc. Please feel free to read what interests you and disregard the rest. My feelings will not be hurt if you don't read every word I write. LOL :) My goal at the forefront currently is to get settled in to our new place, so things may be a little hit or miss for a bit. My plan--and perhaps it will work exactly as planned--is to return to the blog world for "real" by the time the new year rolls around.

Just for fun~~~If you could see his face, the Little Bug is grinning from ear to ear as Sticky hoists him to the ceiling again, and again, and again. Isn't it awesome to have big brothers?

Next up? First update from missionary #2. Stay tuned.

Catacomb Craziness~~Ms. Wise & Otherwise

2011-04-05T15:11:00.004-07:00

My living room turned into a catacomb as the kids studied about the Christians that hid from the Roman soldiers. A view from inside.

Best seat in the house!

Or perhaps this one is the best. I know they enjoyed doing all their schoolwork in the catacombs. I let them leave it up for a while.Peanut was not happy when I made him take down the large catacomb tent in the living room after about 3 days. Seriously? Don’t we need our living room for other purposes???

As soon as he took down the catacomb tents in the living room, I let him set up a more elaborate one in his bedroom. He used blankets and sheets and books and rope and strings and buckets and all sorts of things to secure it. It encompassed the entire bedroom.

He has slept on the floor for about a month since he has tent support beams in the middle of his bed. But, whatever makes him happy. Lol

Now, however, that one had to come down too. Gotta make room for his brother's return from college for the summer.

Pasta Primavera with Lame Pictures~~Chef Maki

2011-04-05T15:09:00.004-07:00

Are you ever so busy that you just feel like you are just running, running, running from one thing to the next? Last week was like that all week. However, dinner still must be fixed. In between dropping off and picking up kids, I got as much dinner prep done as possible.

I minced garlic in some melted butter and then turned off the stove. And, yes, the pictures really are no good. Lots of bloggers have beautiful pictures that make their food look like a complete work of art. Beauty is good, but this is what you get when I am in a hurry. Thankfully I have my phone in my pocket most of the time, so I can do quick pictures, but not fancy pictures.

In this bowl are cut up veggies. The mushrooms on the bottom are cut in larger chunks since they cook quickly. The zucchini is under there somewhere and it is fairly thickly sliced since soggy zucchini is icky. The rest of the assorted veggies that I found in the fridge are sliced in rather thin slices since they will cook more slowly.

Ooh! look what I found also in the fridge!

These will be yummy chopped up and sprinkled over the top of the finished product.

In the blender, I made ready a can of tomatoes (heaven forbid one should find a chunk of cooked tomato in one's food [yes, I am mimicking my children]) and add to that a spoonful of chicken bouillion powder, the juice of one lemon and 3/4 of a fresh tomato that was lonely on the shelf. This is to be blended up. After it has been blended, you can see the dill waiting to be added. I don't add the dill before because the blender will chop it into unrecognizable bits and turn the pretty red sauce more of a putrid greenish color. I will add about a spoonful.

So, next I actually also had a lame picture of my large pot of water ready for peanut to turn on while I pick up Sticky. Beside the pot was two packages of angel hair pasta. Not sure what became of the picture.

As soon as I got home, the water was about ready to boil, so I turned on the frying pan and sauted those veggies in the garlic butter and then poured the sauce over it. Umm what else? Oh, yes, of course, while the veggies were sizzling, I cooked the pasta for four minutes.

What you see below is the end result of the meal.

What? You don't see anything?

Right. Well, It was so yummy that I didn't take pictures as we sat down to eat but I thought--oh, well, I will just take a picture of the leftovers. I left the table half way through the meal to go nurse the baby. Upon my return, I see hubby polishing off the last red pepper. oops.

Inwardly I lamented the fact that I wouldn't have a final finished product picture to show you, but outwardly I sincerely said, "Oh! It is all gone! I am so excited to have a wonderful vegetable eating family!"

Seriously. It is good. :)

The Cooler~~A Mama Rika Story

2011-04-05T15:03:00.002-07:00

We got home from the park the other day and Chubby was mad. (Sometimes we get home and he just doesn’t want to be home, he wants to go more places.) In an effort to coax him from the car, Sticky offered a piggy back ride. “I don’t want a piggy back ride!” Chubby grumped. Sticky then offered him a choice of exciting rides, all of which were nixed. Exasperated, Sticky said, “Fine. I’ll just put you in the cooler and carry you in.” This was met with enthusiasm, although that was not really Sticky's intent. I was in the garage putting in a load of laundry when Sticky opens the door, carrying a cooler. It looked like this. Oddly, the lid began opening.Revealing this!Whatever works, right?

I Need Thee Every Hour: A New Hymn Arrangement by Marika Lee

2011-03-26T09:49:00.004-07:00

In an effort to condense things I am doing into smaller chunks, I am no longer going to post to my music blog. So, if you have been checking that, it will now direct you here instead.

I enjoy writing and arranging songs. To me it is relaxing and uplifting. This hymn arrangement is my first venture back into writing since being pleasantly sidetracked by the birth of my youngest son. Feels good. Hope you or someone you know might enjoy this.

In the middle of singing the congregational hymn, "I Need Thee Every Hour", ideas started coming to mind as I felt the powerful message of the lyrics. The next day I started playing around with the ideas, not sure what was going to come of them. As it turned out, four different arrangements were born of those initial ideas. It took a few weeks to finish as I went about studying the song and the lyrics, hearing from my missionary son that it was one of his favorites, contemplating the meaning of these words in my own life, etc. I came to realize the message is oh so true. I need my Savior every hour.

To view the sheet music or listen to computerized audio recordings of any of the arrangements, go to THIS PAGE on our home website.

Baby Finger Food with Chef Maki

2011-03-09T12:15:00.004-07:00

I am getting close to being at the baby-ready-to-eat-on-his-own stage of life again. So, I thought a little refresher for myself would be in order. I did a little looking around on line and didn't find too much new info, so I guess just sticking to what I have always done is a good plan. :)

When starting baby out on finger food, I like to keep things quite simple and as healthy as possible. They'll get introduced to junk food soon enough, unfortunately.

Some of my rules I have set for myself, or rather for my babies, are these{in random order}...

1. No meat until after 1 year

2. No honey until after 1 year

3. Absolutely no refined/processed/sugary/artificial foods until after 1 year (not that I want them to have these things after they have hit the year mark, but if you want to make me mama bear mad, just feed my baby junk food)

4. Introduce one item at a time when starting them off

5. Don't worry too much about when they begin eating solids. As long as they are growing and happy and healthy, it doesn't matter. They don't have to start eating rice cereal at 4 months old. It is okay if they have a rather unvaried diet at 7 months (the current age of my youngest)

6. Start finger foods when you feel like it. Baby should be able to easily pick up small objects, mastered being spoon fed, and seem to be able to mash their food around in their mouth that you have spoon fed them. Also, they probably should be ready to graduate from eating solid foods just once a day.

7. Start off feeding the baby very runny foods, not too thick.

8. Use a little mini food processor or blender to easily puree cooked carrots, apples, pears, etc for homemade first foods.

9. Mix homemade pureed foods with brown rice cereal and rice milk (check ingredients on label if you buy this)

10. Start with just one meal a day.

11. Mash things like banana, sweet potato, etc. with a fork and add a little water if necessary to make it thinner. No need to cook the banana.

Here is how I like to make finger foods. First, I start with a raw fruit or vegetable like celery. (There are tons of choices available, obviously)

I wash them and cut them into very small pieces. Then I put them in a small pot to boil, like these carrots.

When the fruit or veggie is nice and soft tender, I remove it from the pot and put it in a sealable container and put it in the fridge so that it is ready when baby is. Those are apples in the picture below. To keep things simple, I cooked these items one right after the other. When I was done I had several small meals ready for my little person to eat without a lot of trouble for me to fix when he is ready to eat.

Cooked fruits & veggies are a great starter finger food--healthy, easy to fix and easy for baby to grab.

There are some things that make a decent finger food that do not need to be cooked. Some of these can be used for starter foods, others save for when they are a little older and have the hang of it and can tolerate more than one ingredient at a time. For instance...

banana
avocado (I haven't tried this yet. This is one of the few ideas I found online!)
very ripe peach
very ripe pear
very ripe cantaloupe
watermelon (no seeds)
whole grain breads cut in small squares (Make sure the bread has no nuts or kernels or honey. )
finely cut cooked pasta. rice pasta, wheat pasta, etc.
cereal (Check ingredient labels! You can get cereal from a health food store or farmers market that often has much better ingredients than grocery store brands. The fewer ingredients the better. Toasted oat type cereals are good since they don't have much sweetener and are easily dissolved.)
Homemade waffles & pancakes made with whole grains

As baby gets older, more variety can be added. Here are a few ideas for even older babies/toddlers.

chickpeas (garbanzo beans)
kidney, pinto, navy and other beans
bits of cheese
cooked oats
cooked rice globs
scrambled eggs
hard boiled eggs cut up
grated fruit or vegetables

Planning ahead is a key ingredient for healthy baby food. I don't usually use much ready made things for babies. But I do keep a few things on hand just in case my planning ahead has glitches!

Ms. Cellaneous News

2011-03-05T12:18:00.005-07:00

You may have noticed a few changes to CompleteLee Blog. I am hoping to continue upgrading the blog to make it more understandable and helpful. This is just a little news blurb to let you know that not only are there tabs under the family circle picture above that you can click on, but there are actually words and some pictures offering explanations now.

I also decided to get rid of a bunch of clutter. I no longer have a bunch of blog buttons linking to other sites. It just seemed to me like itcould really get out of control and I want this blog to remain clean and simple. If you like my blog you might tell someone about it whether or not I have linked to yours and 600 other blogs I may or may not ever visit. lol I want this to be a place to visit that is fun and helpful for you and family and friends. I don't want people to feel like there are so many things on this website that it becomes difficult to tell where the article written today is to be found.

Please feel free to share comments and suggestions you may have. Thank you for your patience as I slowly work my way up to full speed, adding blog upgrades and more frequent blog posts. As Thumbsucker gets older, it should go a bit more smoothly. One finger pecking at the keyboard while fending off little fingers grabbing handfuls of my hair and giving me two-toothed grins is fun, distracting, and time-consuming. Gotta love motherhoood. Pardon me while I go kiss some sweet baby cheeks.

Actually, I think I have said all I am going to for today. I shall go play with baby, then get some lunch, then clean, then work on more classes, then prepare for Sunday, et cetera, et cetera... Perhaps this post made at least a bit o' sense.

I Have No Kitchen Table...Will This Work?~~Makiavelli

2011-02-24T08:54:00.007-07:00

I used to have a kitchen table, but I sold it and a lot of other things when we moved. I had planned to purchase a new one with some of the proceeds from my yard sale. However, the best laid of plans sometimes get misplaced, thrown away, or redrawn. In my case, I was left with a peeling folding table. What to do? What to do?

Fortunately, inspiration's stinger found my brain at the dollar store like a bee finds a bare foot in the grass. There, in the kitchenware aisle, sat several rolls of clear, adhesive shelf liner. I swiftly snagged a few rolls and went to pay for my purchases.

Back at home, I started to work, peeling up the already peeling top of the table. The kids joined in the fun, thankfully, since it took a while.I went to the computer and made up some things and downloaded some things. I also perused coloring and activity books. I did some sudoku, dot-to-dots, periodic table, scriptures, prepositions, mazes, a word bingo for each place setting, etc. All these things I cut out and place strategically on the bare table top. I put the preschool type things at Chubby's spot, the Chemistry and prepositions at Sticky's.

When the table was nicely covered, I got out the shelf liner. Princess helped me to carefully unroll & unpeel the liner from its backing and onto the activity cut-outs. I let enough hang over the edge to smoosh the sticky liner against the underside of the table to prevent it from easily peeling up.

Now all that was needed was erasable markers! I was able to find some that had built in erasers and magnets so that they could hook to the metal part under the top of the table for easy access all around.

When we play Bingo at the dinner table, everyone has a marker and if you hear a word on your Bingo sheet spoken, you cross it off. When you have five in a row marked off, you holler Bingo, or go for the black-out and get all of them! Everyone's Bingo card has the same, or nearly all the same words, but in different order. It is lots of fun!

Here is Chubby by a couple of the Bingos. Each person has something they enjoy doing, or need to work on. The only trouble comes when the markers dry up, or when Chubby decides to smash the tips in.

We have had the table like this for about 6 months now and it is still entertaining. We just recently turned the table around 180 degrees so we all have something new to look at.

Perhaps in another six months, we may create a "new" table.

We can use the table any way we want. Here Chubby drew a picture of his brother.

The really cool thing is that it cleans up quite simply with a wet washrag. The other really cool thing is that guests have been very intrigued by this table and it has spurred many interesting conversations. The other really cool thing is that it was really cheap to make. The other really cool thing is that we had fun making it. The other really cool thing is that there are more really cool things that I am just not going to continue droning on about. :)

This became a case of something I planned for that didn't turn out as I planned, but did turn out to be a good thing. There's probably a good lesson in that for other things.

Where Have You Been?

2011-02-16T11:09:00.005-07:00

Well, I realize I have hardly written a thing in forever, so here's a bit of catching up...

The pictures here are in random, not necessarily chronological order. Here's Kevin cozying up with the littlest. Kevin's new job had us moving far from home to a new spot that is home because home is where family is. ;) Here is me, helping Chubby not be scared of Santa. Princess had no problem of course.

Here we have Nanner, and cousin, after having put in a semester at college. She is currently living at home earning more money {filling orders for burgers and salads and also babysitting} before returning to college.

Patchy has been out doing a wonderful work among the people of Peru for over a year now. We enjoy getting his weekly updates where he shares inspiring stories, great faith, and a positive attitude. He has made his Mama proud. :)
Bub is currently away at college. This is how we talk to him every Sunday. He is charming the girls, diligently studying and letting his laundry pile up so much that his roommates made a dummy out of it to give him a clue. Haha!

Princess has, after having lost what seems like way too many teeth, gained a new grown-up looking smile. She is holding her newest baby brother who is currently 6 months old.

Here's my two middle boys and Chubby talking to Bub. Chubby needs a new blog name. Not sure what that will be yet. He keeps us laughing daily with his 3 y/o witticisms. Sticky has grown enough this past year to be able to catch up to his older brothers and Dad. Peanut has met the "lofty" goal of surpassing his mother. Sticky is about to embark on a new adventure, having just joined a golf team. Peanut is enjoying his Improv class immensely.

Here is our newest addition. For now, we'll just call him Thumbsucker here.

Now that you have been briefly updated, this post will come to a close. However, you will be pleased to know that Mama Rika, Ms. Wise & Otherwise, Makiavelli, Chef Maki, and the rest plan to not be such strangers any more. See ya soon. :)

Dear Faithful Followers...

2010-07-12T18:11:00.002-07:00

Hello!

Thanks for sticking with me. I do plan to take up blogging on this blog again. I am anticipating beginning again in a couple more months (hopefully we will be through with major life whammies by then). If you want to know what will be coming, you can read through older posts to get an idea of what kinds of things to expect in the future.

If you need something in particular, you can get my email address by clicking on "view my complete profile" link on the right side bar.

Cherish each hour!

Mama Rika

Mama Rika's Family FUNdraiser!

2010-03-15T15:52:00.030-07:00

Lots of crazy things going on around here. Therefore, you get benefits! All proceeds go towards our college kids, missionary, moving and surprise baby. Thanks for passing the word along. :)

We have lots of stuff for sale. All online products listed below are 10% off with code. Anyone from anywhere can order these products. In order to obtain any of the rest of the items you would need to live close by so that you can pick the items up.

To receive 10% off any of the following new items, follow these instructions:

1. Go to my page on Lulu.com (or click the item link)
2. Click "Buy" and enter code ' IDES ' at checkout.
3. You will save 10% off your purchase!
4. Offer expires March 31, 2010 at 11:59 PM EDT

NEW:

Out of the Mouth of Babes (book)

Childbirth: Preparing for the Miracle (book)
Mama Rika’s Travel Kit Sheet music: Peruse the pages of my lulu store to look at all these, or go here to see a list of all my songs (minus the ones I haven't had time to get updated). A lot of the songs on the list are free to download.

~~Holiday
~~Educational
~~Inspirational
~~Silly
~~1, 2, 3, 4, & 5 part Vocal
~~Piano arrangements
~~(Any of my music)

If you want Angels Round About Us or others you don't see on the list, email me to get a copy.

Marika Lee “He’s the One” (CD’s) {This one isn't on lulu. Order directly from me and receive the great price of $5 + S/H}

Storyoni on CD (game) {Not on lulu yet, but should be soon, will update link}
Storyoni in binder (game) {Not on lulu}
Fairy Tales (audio books) {Not on lulu yet, but should be soon, will update link}

Collegiate Sportswear {Not on lulu, at the sale only.}

Baked Goods:
Bread

Cinnamon Rolls
Oatmeal Raisin Cookies

Snickerdoodles

Holiday Pretzels Peanutbutter Cookies
Rice Krispie Treats Cobbler
& More

Services:
Kids for hire:
~~Babysitting
~~Yard work
~~Odd jobs-painting, house cleaning, etc.
~~Animal care
Bring your grain and we will grind it for you

Used:
Furniture
Bookcases/shelves (2 like first pic) Also, black garage shelves.

Dining table (with 2 leaves)
Benches (2 identical)
Chairs (2 white back, 2 design back)
Granite coffee table (black. This matches the granite topped thingy below.)
Large granite topped “thingy” (We used it to hold videos, dvds, misc. in drawers. Matches the coffee table above.)
Large computer desk
Bunk bed (Wooden with ladder)
Entertainment center (tv & stuff not included)
Dresser

Clothing
Boys
Girls
Many different sizes

Baskets
Varying sizes and shapes and styles

Books
Educational
LDS
Children’s

Fiction

Nonfiction

Misc.
Knick Knacks

Educational items
Random other items

MORE...............

Games:
The only game you can participate in online would be the "Name that baby contest". If you want to share a baby boy name that you think would fit one of our clan, please email me with your entry.

Free stuff:

Weights set (bench with the round weights to add on)

Desk

Golf Magazines

Miscellaneous

I will add more pictures and links as they become available. Thanks for checking out this page. Feel free to share the link to this page with others.

Mama Rika's Christmas Story, Scripture & Song Countdown!

2009-12-01T10:45:00.004-07:00

Like every year, we read a Christmas story and scripture and sing a Christmas song. Since I posted this for you all daily last year, I am just going to link to those posts for you here. If you click on the link, you will be able to see the scripture, story and song for the day. Come back to get each new day's advent readings!

We get to start this warm and fuzzy tradition with a scripture from Isaiah 7:14, sing Angels We Have Heard on High, and read the beloved story The Gift of the Magi. That is for December 1. Click on consecutive days to see what each day's reading holds.

December 1
December 2
December 3
December 4
December 5
December 6
December 7
December 8
December 9
December 10
December 11
December 12
December 13
December 14
December 15
December 16
December 17
December 18
December 19
December 20
December 21
December 22
December 23
December 24

Merry, Merry Christmas!

I Beat Someone Famous! ~~Ms. Cellaneous

2009-11-13T07:35:00.002-07:00

Back in May of 2008, I published some silly pictures on www.youpublish.com just for fun...

A few days ago, someone famous was eating raisin bran and was impressed with the size of one of the flakes. He decided to blog about it. He also surfed the web to see if there was any sort of world record for the size of a bran flake. In his searching, he found my picture of the World's Largest Bran Flake and included my link in his blog post.

This resulted in thousands of people going over to view my World's Largest Bran Flake picture. It is now the most viewed publication on that site. It also comes up as number one in google search rankings.

Pretty funny, huh?

Who is the famous person? His name is Jorge Garcia. Do you know (without looking him up on the web) what he is famous for? I had no idea until my Dad informed me last night via email.

{I could include a picture of the now famous flake here, but I am not going to. !cheesy grin! This way, you get to click on the link to see it and I get even more views. You'll be so impressed, you will want to let all your friends know about it too. heh, heh, heh.}

Sigh! says Mama Rika and the Rest of 'em.

2009-11-11T20:38:00.003-07:00

Sorry to my ever-so-patient, loving and loyal readers. Don't give up on me. I'll be back in full swing again sometime. We are going through several major life changes right now and I just haven't seemed to have the time/energy/creativity/excuse, excuse, excuse...to keep up with my blog. I'll pop in from time to time here through the holidays, but my posts may seem a little sparse compared to what they were. Anyway, thanks for sticking with me. Here are a few pictures just for fun.

Perhaps I am crazy for letting a 22 month old help knead the bread dough. He was so cute, though. How could I resist?
This is AWESOME! (At least I think that is what he is thinking.)

Tree climbing--not for sissies!

Baby flop!

How do you like this fashion statement?
Have a FANTASTIC day! Don't forget to be thankful! :) SMILES :)

Five Minutes for Thankfulness with Ms. Cellaneous

2009-11-02T08:50:00.008-07:00

The Challenge: Think of something you are thankful for today. Write it in the comments section. Do this every day for the rest of this month.

The Reward: Nothing you can hold in your hands. You will receive warm fuzzies in your heart. You will be able to see things that others are grateful for that you may not have thought of recently.

Come Back: By clicking on our family pic on the top of the right hand side bar, you can easily return to this page.

I'll Start: I am going to begin the challenge by saying I am very thankful for my family. This often comes to mind, but it is an important one. Besides, I have cute pictures to share. :)

The Whole Gang

Chubby (Yes, he needs a different web name.)

Princess

Peanut

Sticky

Bub

Nan

Patch

Mom & Dad

"Sweet Peas & the Pods"

Please join me in being thankful each day. This doesn't even take 5 minutes! It is an easy challenge and well worth the effort! Have a wonderful day!