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 :)

3.19.12

What up family!!!!
Interesting week. Haha the mission never seems to fail as far as craziness goes. Lets see on Monday we actually took things a little chill. Took a nap and wrote some letters to my converts. Good pday, needed the break.

Tuesday we had a great zone meeting. I talked about how the Lord has prepared people for us to teach since the creation of the earth, that there are people waiting especially for us. So we need to open our mouths and talk to everyone, if not we wont know who are the people that our Heavenly Father has put in place for us. It really is pretty simple. I really like a scripture in D&C 29:7 that talks about how we are called to gather Isreal and we will know who are the chosen people when they accept our invitation to hear more. In our mission we are starting to do something really cool. In our contacts we are focusing on our purpose more. We are are actually telling the people as soon as we meet them that we here to baptize people. Haha it is pretty interesting. A lot of times we get horribly rejected but we also are finding the people prepared by the Lord to hear our message at this time. It’s a really cool change we are taking in the mission. We have been having some struggles the last couple months, but as I said last week the work is always progressing and changing, so us as missionaries (the blood of the work) need to change as well. Also asked a couple missionaries to share testimonies about how the Lord has prepared people for them. I shared my testimony and story about Milagros and Katy. It was a really cool meeting.

This week we had a lot of splits with other areas. We are trying to focus on verifying the areas in the zone. This week I went to Huancavelica and did a baptismal interview. But it wasn’t your ordinary baptismal interview. First off, it was in a tiny tiny town like a half hour outside of Huancavelica. We were joined by two cows in the baptismal interview. But I haven’t even gotten to the interesting part yet. So ya the guy was deaf. 100 percent. It was quite interesting. I had to write everything. Eventhough sometimes he couldn’t understand my handwriting and got frustrated, it was a very spiritual experience. He has had a lot of trials in his life and has a very strong testimony. As I left his house I felt the most amazing feeling, standing at the top of a mountain, in the middle of nowhere, just getting done doing a baptismal interview to someone who cannot hear sounds but can hear the spirit as strong as anyone. Awesome experience!!! Eventhough the 4 hour taxi ride back to Huncayo was terrible haha.

This week we have conference with President. I am really excited. It is always an amazing learning experience. We are prepared and ready for it. I am pretty sure it is my second to last in the mission. Also super excited for general conference! Last one in peru . Trying to get spiritually prepared. You guys should do the same! General Conference is such an amazing opportunity to be taught and spiritually fed. If we do so the spirit will testify to us the things we need to hear and we will be given impressions that we should write down and act upon.


Oh ya,since Jade is 9 you guys should totally have her listen to the missionaries if she is going to be coming to church all the time! That would help her out a ton, along with our family.

I have also been thinking a lot about what dad said when we skyped and how he wants me to teach you guys the first lesson when I get home. So you can truly feel the spirit of what I have done these past 2 years. I think it would be awesome, maybe hard in English, but it will be an awesome opportunity. Even though leaving here will be the hardest thing I will ever have to do at this point in my life, the thing that helps me is knowing I am coming home to my family, I am excited to be back with our family.


Well have a good week! Today we are going to play a game of soccer between the zones! Gonna be sickkkkk! 

Love, Elder Paolacci

3.12.12

Well hello there familyyyy!!!
Great week! Started off with our journey to lima. Quite a trip haha.
Elder Biliter is the zl in the other zone in Huancayo so he was on the bus with us. It was a good time. I was still kinda sick but still had a great time. We arrived in Lima around 10pm but when I got to the house alllll of my buddies were there so I didn’t get to sleep until 3am. Haha bad choice because I was pretty much dead for consejo the next day. I was coughing up a storm. But I survived. As always Prez does an amazing job and we learn so much. After consejo we had the choice to play soccer or basketball. I didn’t wanna do either cause I felt like crud but all the gringos convinced me to play basketball and we had a great time. Surprisingly it went pretty well. I think I play basketball better when im sick haha. So ya that turned out fun.
After that you will never guess what we went to eat! Mcflurries from mcdonalds!!!! Oh my goodness it was soooo good. Haha the blessings of being a zone leader. That night we also ordered pizzas! I had to use the little money the mission gives me because I still haven’t been able to take money out of the bank. But that too was amazing!!!! Yet again that night we didn’t sleep until 2 or 3. It is pretty cool being able to talk with all my buddies like that (Rider, Biliter, Johns, Brown, Norris, Sheridan), good times. The next day we were supposed to travel at 8am but we missed our bus and the next one didn’t leave until 2 in the afternoon.
So we were sent to go verify the district meetings in guess where MUSA!! Not sure if you remember or if I ever told you but that’s where we had our district meetings when I was in Manchay! It was super cool being able to walk into that chapel and remember all those moments from when I was starting the mission. I also sat in on Manchays district meeting. It was really cool seeing them talk about some of the same people I have baptized or taught that are now giving references that are getting baptized. It was an awesome experience.
The bad news is that they told me that Blanca, Carlos, and Carla haven't been to church in quite awhile. The good thing is that one of my buddies is in that area now so he promised me he would go and visit them. Idk if you are still trying to do that picture book for them but I think that would help a lot. On the other hand I talked to Elder Quiñonez in the consejo and he said Milagros and Katy are some of the best converts he has ever seen. In this last transfer since I have left they have helped 2 of their friends get baptized and 2 more have a baptismal dates. It is amazing seriously seeing the effects of that one moment on the bus when we met Milagros. Everytime I think about it, it gives me chills. Well after all this we finally got on our way at 2. Now the cool thing about the bus company we take is that they always show movies and we have permission to watch them (of course we have to use our discretion). Most of the time I just sleep because I would rather not watch them but on our way back Wednesday they played a new movie called Moneyball with Brad Pitt about the Oakland a´s. Now I had heard they were making this movie about 3 years ago but I had completely forgotten about it. When I saw that they were gonna put it on I decided I had to watch it. What a great movie, seriously, apart from making me miss baseball like crazy I learned something that applies a lot to missionary work. There is a part in the movie where Billy Beane says that "if things aren’t going the way we want them to or the way they should, it makes no sense that we keep using the same methods or tactics. In change we need to find new ones, and that’s when things will change" Now I don’t know if that’s exactly how he said it but you get the point. It was one of those moments where it just helped me a lot to realize how we can help the mission progress. Or things in our lives in general. And by the way that’s probably my favorite movie of all time now.
Well as you can see we had Magaly´s baptism on Saturday. It was amazing. Super spiritual. She was scared to ask me to baptize her because she didn’t want me to get even sicker. But I told her I was fine and that there is nothing that would stop me from accepting the offer. It was an awesome experience.
Well family it has been a great week. Next week President comes for a conference so we need to organize everything. I have been thinking alot and I think I am gonna talk with president when he comes and ask him if I can train in one of the next changes coming up. Zl has been a great experience and if he wants me to stay ZL all the way to the end that is what I will do, but I would love the experience again before I go home of training a new missionary. So we will see what happens.
Have a great week! Love you all. Congrats to Tina and Jon. Those pics are soooo awesome. I love the pic with grandpa, dad and John. Congrats to Logan on playing such an awesome baseball game. Can't wait to get home and help him out too. Way to go Coleton hanging in there with track. I hated running. So Props to you kid. Karleigh hang in there, it is almost graduation time. It will be worth all the hard work when it is OVER !!!! Can't believe how big the little babies are.
I gotta go - I love you all
Elder Paolacci



well the whole 25th of july date isnt set yet becuase flight arrangements have not been made yet, but if its not the 25th it'll be the 24th or 26th.

3.5.12

Welllll……
What a week haha. We didn't have the most adventurous pday because it was raining like crazy. Just stayed in and played chess. Tuesday we had district meeting, I played scripture jeopardy with the zone, It was pretty fun. Tuesday night we got the changes. My new comp is…..Elder Van Wagoner. I totally called it haha. He is awesome and he works super hard (the lord is blessing me big time in that aspect) so we are going to have an amazing time together. Wednesday were the transfers. Always an adventure haha. Thursday Friday and Saturday we got to work super hard in our area and Saturday night was our baptism. Originally it was planned that we would baptize Anthony, Junior and Gian Carlos. But only Junior ended up getting baptized. During the week Anthony decided that this Saturday would be better for him. So we were only expecting to have two baptisms, but Saturday night only junior showed up. They said that Gians mom changed her mind and made him go over to her house (he doesn’t live with her).
She wouldn’t let him leave. We even took a taxi to her house to talk to her but she didn’t wanna have anything to do with us. So that was super depressing. But the good thing was that junior got baptized. He is so awesome. After the baptism when we were changing he said "Brother Paolacci, I wish my cousin Gian was here too". I felt so bad, broke my heart, but Junior is determined to help his cousin get baptized too. Sunday was pretty awesome. The girl that’s gonna get baptized this Saturday, Magaly, came to church. And a girl that always had promised she was gonna come for like a month finally came. It was pretty awesome. It looks like this Saturday we are gonna have 1 baptism (Magaly). She is super excited. We had some super cool lessons with her this week. Anthony didn’t come to church on Sunday so he might be able to get baptized next Sunday. We are gonna try and talk with Gian Carlos´s dad this week. He lives with his dad so we only need his permission. It is super sad because he wants to get baptized sooo bad.
We have a lot of work to do this week. Pray for us! Jessica is doing great. She is noticing differences in her life due to praying and scripture study. Mayra might still be getting baptized this week. We will see. She kinda got unexcited, she is in kinda a rough patch right now not living with her family or anything. Just pray for her. Well ended this week kinda sick. I thought at first it could have been pneumonia again because I was just dead. But took some meds and I am feeling a lot better. Still got a gnarly cough, but I am fine. Well at 2 we travel to Lima for consejo. Nap time on the bus! Haha. Hope you guys have a great week!
Love Elder Paolacci
PS - hey so ive been talking with presidente these last couple weeks about my release date. Looks like it will be the 25th of July. I know it would be possible to do it with my normal release date but me and president both think it would be better to do things well and not pressured out. Elder Van Wagoner also helped me realize it would be better. I would have to be home at least a week or two before classes to try and get my scholarship again and I think it would be better to be able to pick a good schedule so I can work too. I know there are late start classes but I would prefer to do everything with calm and not rushed too much. What I have realized is that whatever happens is what the lord will want to happen.