Elder Kendall's Service in Colombia: 2017 Is Here, Time Is Not So Much Here

Hey family!!! I hope everyone had an awesome time for New Years, we got woken up by all the music and crazy fireworks so it was fun! We ate a ton of food, so much food. And we cooked it too, we made a cake and everything with a really cool member named Mercedes.

Anyways, this week was an interesting one for sure, my first week leading the area, once again. Elder Johnson is a good guy, I'm excited to see what will happen in the future. Not too many people were home this week for New Years but we got to do some great things.

Update on the Casado family, so we went on Wednesday to go visit the family because we thought they got back from their community. When we got there we only found the father Antonio, and we got to talk to him a little bit which was great. He told us that his family would be home on Friday, so that's when we went back.

Friday, we found Amanda and their daughter Yoli home, but not Antonio. That is when Amanda told us the bad news. Antonio, before had had a drinking problem, but the whole month of December he hadn't drunk a single drop, and was doing super well. We thought he would be fine and get confirmed this Sunday. But, Amanda told us that on the 25th when they were in their community, he drank. And that same Friday night they had received a call from a man telling them to pick up Antonio because he was drunk and had fallen and gotten hurt. I was completely shocked. I wasn't sure what to say. Amanda was super hurt, but she told us that she for sure would go to church on Sunday in order to be confirmed. We set an appointment to talk to Antonio for Monday, which is today. We are going to try to help him as much as we possibly can. This family needs a lot of help!

Today we have an appointment with the Casado family and are going to work hard with Antonio to get him to quite drinking for good.

That was a crazy part of the week, but a super good thing happened too!! Amanda showed up to church at 7:00am and was there earlier than anyone else. And then she was confirmed a member of the church. I felt so happy in that moment!! What a joy it was to be able to help this family, and little by little we`ll get all of them to join with their mom.

We have a whole lot of work to do in this month, so many things. The night of New Years I made a promise in my prayer to Heavenly Father that I would use all of my heart and all of my strength in these last 8 months that I have to give in the mission field. It is my desire to give all to God, for all of the things which He has given me. I love my mission, and I'm feeling the time starting to go by way too fast! Like it always has. I hope to give my all.

Love,

Elder Kendall