Mother's Day, and Rain!

So this week it rained. That's it, all I got to say. Peace!

No, just kidding, but really it did rain way too much. It always gets hot right around lunch and then it starts to pour right when we start leaving to visit and teach. Oh well, rain is good.

 

This week, passed by like a flash of lightning! I remember talking with Elder Thompson last Sunday about how we were going to talk to our families in a week, and then I blinked and it was Sunday and we were talking with our families! So, yeah it was fast.

Well, the work is going good in our area. We have a few people that are really progressing, and there are a bunch of contacts that we did last week that we have to look for this week. That was a lot of what we did this week, on Friday we had an exchange with the elders in Bosa, and I went with Elder Gambini who is from Argentina. It went pretty well, although we didn't find all the people we were hoping to find. The Vargus family is still going strong, they are just amazing. They now have four attendances at church and are just preparing themselves to be baptized the 3rd of June. 

Saturday was a crazy day. We had to help with two moves, run to lunch, change and shower in the elders of Libertad 3's house because we didn’t have water, go to a baptism of the elders in Libertad 2, run back to the house of Libertad 3 to get a bed that we had to take somehow to another area, in Bosa. We waited for about an hour and a half for a taxi that could try and take the bed frame we had to transport, until we gave up and called the housing secretary who said that he would call a member who could another day take it to Bosa. So we took the bed frame home. That was a really short resume of Saturday. 

That was pretty much the week. This week Hugo Montoya is coming to the mission! He is in the Area Presidency for our area, and he on Thursday is going to have a meeting with the zone leaders and then Saturday talk with the whole zone, so I’m really excited for that! 

The mission, is awesome.

Love,

Elder Kendall

 

 

 

With the Lord, Only Going Up

Me and Elder Thompson!

Hi everyone!

Well, this week was pretty darn awesome! Just a whole lot of change, really good change. We talked about our goals for this month as a zone on Friday and the whole attitude of the zone has changed. They are so pumped to get the work going!! I felt so happy with that change. Everyone this last transfer were pretty un-focused and not wanting to do a whole lot. Now we have a quite a few new missionaries that are full of energy and we are going to do so much more stuff this month. We have already found half as many new investigators this week as we did in the whole last month. So we are starting to really do some good work as a zone. It is awesome.

In our own area, I just have to keep talking about the Vargus family. I really have never seen a more prepared and open and amazing family as this one in my whole mission. They are reading the Book of Mormon, praying, and they have attended church three weeks in a row now. They literally tell us each lesson how much they love the gospel and ask us questions about what they read. They also ask us stuff like "After we get baptized, do you guys keep coming to visit us?" To which we respond "Um YEAH! Of course we will!" Really, just pure awesomeness. 

We found a bunch of people this last week, and we just have good stuff going. Still lots of rejection from people, but we just keep going on and talking to people. My companion Elder Thompson is a super solid guy, and he helps me open my mouth and just keep going till the end of the day. It was a good week. 

This gospel is true. It simply is. I have never been so convinced of it in my life. There simply is nothing better. 

"Shall we not go on in such great a cause?" -Joseph Smith

Love,

Elder Kendall 

Transfers, and a Whole lot of 'em!

Hey everybody! 

Okay, so this week went especially fast, the time just slipped on by. Well, not a whole lot happened this week really, Elder Amato was pretty much just getting stuff ready to go home the whole week, and we didn't get to teach as much. 

But, there is still a really good thing about this week, and it is the Vargus family. They are really so very prepared by the Lord. They attended church for the second time this week, and they just loved it. This time the whole family went, and they all enjoyed it a bunch. We had to move their baptismal date to the third of June because the 27th of May is stake conference, but other than that until now there is nothing but time and more learning that is stopping them from being baptized. Carlos, the dad, has told us many times that he found the truth, and that he wants to feel and experience baptism so much. 

The daughter, Karen, told us she had a dream one night, where she couldn't sleep or do anything because she wanted to know the truth. She was praying a ton, and reading the Bible and the Book of Mormon. Then she dreamed that she saw some ancient scrolls like the ones the Old Testament was written on, and that while she was reading she heard someone tell her that it was the truth, that this was the correct path. Amazing!! They are so excited, and I’m just humbled to know that God has placed them in our hands to simply help them along. 

Also Transfers! So, Elder Amato left, and so did half of the missionaries in the zone! 9 of the 18 missionaries got transferred, and the zone is so new now. I’m super pumped to see how things are going to go, we are going to have a whole lot more missionaries now that are a lot more excited about the work. I have good feelings about this transfer, I know that we are going to be able to do great things. My new companion is Elder Thompson, he is from Moroni Utah, and is a great guy. It is going to be a great time. Also, there are now sister missionaries in Casablanca!!!! They kicked the Elders out and put sisters in! That is a huge change! It will be interesting to see. 

That was this week. I love the mission, gotta take advantage of every day that is left. Because time goes too fast. 

Love,

Elder Kendall

 

Another week gone by ?!?

Well, hey everybody!! This week passed by quickly, which always happens. But we did so many things this week. We did three different exchanges, and let me tell you that doing that can drain you pretty good! We have done five now in the past two weeks. It has been fun.

So I gotta tell you guys about the Vargus family. They are amazing. Last week my companion received them as a reference from a family of members that we have been working with, and Sunday on the 16th we went to teach them for the first time.

And they are just pure awesomeness. The next time my companion went to visit them with another missionary, and we had left the Plan of Salvation pamphlet for them to read as homework. Afterwards we felt like we should have left the Restoration instead.  When my companion got there, they said "We didn’t read the pamphlet because God told us told us not to do it." My companion said "Yes, that is because He wanted us to share this message, The Restoration, instead." And they all felt the spirit confirming that it was true. They listened to the message and understood it all. They said that it filled them up. Like there was a hole that was being filled. And they accepted a baptismal date. 

The next time I went to visit with another Elder, and we talked about the importance of reading the Book of Mormon, praying, and attending church. They just said that it was all amazing that we taught and they just wanted to do all three. And they attended church! They loved it, and they also told us that they were married in 2001. Which is really just amazing. 

They should be getting baptized the 27th of May for sure. It was pretty awesome.

That’s all I have time for, but we got lots of good things to do now. And it feels good. 

Love,

 

Elder Kendall

Yeah, we played paintball... Sort of...
It wasn't actually paint, it was just rubber balls. Pain. Hahahahaha!

It was pretty intense, couldn't see a thing, and it was pretty close quarters.
But still a good time...

The Lord's Hand In All Things

Hey everyone how is it all goin? Good?

This week we had a lot of really good things happen, and I saw some really big miracles and the hand of the Lord in our area. Since it was Semana Santa (Holy Week) we shared with every person the initiative of the church about the Prince of Peace. I love that video, and the whole idea of peace. So many people in Colombia need that peace, there are a lot of hard things that people have to deal with here. 

We also did lots of exchanges this week, and it was pretty fun. We were able to find 17 new people to teach this week! There is a family of members, the Rodriguez family, that we have been working with for a while now trying to find and teach some of their friends or neighbors but it never happened. Until this week! I don't know exactly what changed this week from those in the past, but the Lord truly blessed and helped us finally teach these people. We found 11 references from the Rodriguez family this week, and there are a lot of families. It was a really wonderful thing, and now we have a whole lot of work to do. I hope that we will continue to be able to find new people to teach as well. 

The Lord truly works in mysterious ways. But I am so very grateful that He helped us out with these people. I know that God lives, because I have seen His wonderful hand change people’s lives. And I'm learning how it is possible that He can change mine.

Love,

Elder Kendall

Semana Santa and Vacations (but not for the missionaries)

Hey everyone! This transfer is just going by wicked fast like everyone has since I started the mission. There are only three weeks left until my companion finishes his mission. We have plans to do six exchanges in these next two weeks (if you don't know, that is a lot), and the time is going to FLY. This week is Semana Santa (holy week), and so there will be lots of partying and lots of vacationing. It should be fun.

Our zone did some great stuff this week, and were able to baptize three people, which is what we were able to baptize in the past two months combined. And, this week there are also four more people who should be baptized this week! So we are getting things going here in the zone, and I hope that we can keep going with this excitement for the work, we have needed it.

We in our area are still working on new people, our only hope for baptism before Elder Amato leaves told us on Sunday that they don’t want to get married anymore for the problems they have been having. So we are working on that as well. We did get to meet with the Bermudes family, and it was super good. Hopefully we can visit them again this week. 

That’s pretty much all I got time for, this week will be good and I’m excited to keep going!

Love,

Elder Kendall

I found one of my favorite kids ever! Santiago! He is from Casablanca, seriously super cool guy

Me with a sweet puppy

Us at conference :)

We went to Monserrate!! It was super fun, the second time I've gone on the mission



The back part of Monserrate

Super Poopy (means something entirely different in Colombia than what you are thinking... hahaha!) Chinese buffet place we went to afterwards!!

LLAMA!!! What more can I say?

General Conference and Finding People

Hey ya’ll! How's it going? These weeks just keep passing by as fast as Buzz Lightyear when he says "Infinity and Beyond!" which I can imagine has to be pretty fast. 

We had another leadership meeting this week, and it was pretty fun because Elder Palma stayed with us the night before we went to the meeting, he is a zone leader in Florencia. It was awesome. We also had our zone conference this week, and it went pretty well. We were able to practice and whip our zone a little bit into shape. We have been getting better little by little.

And of course Conference was just amazing. I loved all of it. We had fun with us four missionaries from the states watching it in English. I also got to see a ton of people from CasaBlanca!! I saw Brother Baquero, who used to be our ward mission leader, and also the Viasus family, who the two sons used to accompany us all the time and are like my best buds. So darny darn cool. I loved it. Amazing talk by one of the 70's, telling every investigator to please get baptized... UM YES!!! And of course our dear prophet, Pure power.

Later that night after conference, we finally found a new person to teach!! It was wonderful, his name is Jaime. He has lots of stuff to work on, but that is what we are here for! So, we are already getting better. Just gotta keep going and keep finding. 

Love,

Elder Kendall