3.26.12

FAMILIAAAA!!!!!
Well I am gonna try and type as fast as i can, lots of stuff this week!
Well just to let you guys know my return date is officially the 25th now. Not sure if I will be able to fly home with Rider but president said I can pick the date. So the 25th it is. That also means that I only have 4 months left ahhhhhh crazy huh.


Well this week was awesome. Monday we had a huge game of soccer between the zones. (Paolacci / Biliter now that was fun) Lets just say my zone is the BOMB! Haha totally won, and definitely played soccer the best I have ever played in my life. Peru my be rubbing off on me. But don’t worry I have also learned humility down here too. 


Tuesday we had a district meeting which was awesome. We had some really cool practices on how to be more direct in our lessons, a lot of our missionaries are having trouble teaching with power and authority so this totally helped them out a bit. 


Wednesday, Elder Avalos (one of the AP's & one of my comps in La Oroya) came to Huancayo and we got stuff ready for the conference with President, that’s when the fun began haha. We had to wait at a bus station until 2 in the morning waiting for some missionaries that were coming from Huánuco to have interviews with President. Don’t know if you’ve heard but there has been some struggles here in the mission and a couple missionaries have been sent home. It seems as though we are going through a transformation. It is really tough because we are finding out a lot of stuff about a lot of missionaries and one of the kids that went home was one of my buddies. It is super sad, and really hard. But it is for the best of the mission. After all of this passes the mission will be so much better. It is just hard because we saw President that night and he just seemed destroyed. This has been super rough on him. He loves all his missionaries and truly desires for each of us to be the very best we can be. But despite all of that he goes through he keeps being one of the most amazing men I have ever known. How grateful I am for him in my life. 

The conference on Thursday was AMAZING. President and Sister Ardila focused alot on repentance and being integrated missionaries. President also taught us how we need to declare our purpose as missionaries. He shared a couple experiences with us that he's had in the last couple months. He's gone to various investigators in the mission and the first thing he says is "Hello I am President Ardila and I am here to baptize you" haha crazy huh. Well guess what. It works. He's proselyted a total of 20 hours in the last month and has had 4 baptisms. If we do the math he kills us as far as baptizing goes. But the truth is that we can all have the same success, we just need to make sure that people know why we are there, to baptize, nothing less, nothing more. He taught us something really cool from a set of verses that we always read as missionaries. He read from John 3: 1-5. And taught that we are here so people can ENTER Gods kingdom, not only so they can SEE it. And the way they enter is by getting baptized. If they choose only to listen to these things and maybe change some stuff in their lives they will only be able to SEE Gods kingdom. Pretty cool. Well time is flying so I must move on. I could go on and on cause it was an amazing conference. But short on time.


On Friday I went to a town called Pampas to see how they are doing there. It was awesome. Super pretty. Take a look at all the pictures. Came back Saturday.

But ya Sunday was amazing. As you can see we had a baptism. Earlier this week we were praying about our investigators and who would be ready to be baptized. We went and visited a bunch of people but nothing. So I thought we should go visit an investigator I had been teaching with Elder Novoa. She has always been willing to learn but never went to church. I had gone to visit her every once in a while but nothing ever really happened until 2 weeks ago when she came to church. So Wednesday we decided to visit her and she was ready to get baptized on Sunday. Despite all of the problems in her home she still wanted to do it. We were soooo surprised, she had changed soooo much. We had no idea why until we took out 1 Nephi 3:7 and I started to give the background and she was like "ya I know" and then she took over and started summarizing all of 1 Nephi. I had such a strong feeling at that moment because we knew that the change she had was because of the Book of Mormon. It is amazing that book, seriously. Sunday she was baptized and I had the privilege to do it.

She shared her testimony of the church and especially of the Book of Mormon. It was a great day, great testimony builder. 


Well that is all I have time for. Want to write alot more but I gotta go. Love you guys sooo much and have a great week.
Elder Paolacci


ps - mom can shoot me a quick email with basic instructions to make meatballs. We are going to make spaghetti and meatballs today :)