No more Pilas

Hello!!

We had this thing called LA GIRA this week. The 1st counselor of the area presidency came and spoke to us by areas- the mountains, the coast, and the capital. My comp and I went up to the mountains. We woke up super early and drove a solid 2 hours into the mountains to a town called Patizcia.

This was the last meeting and area with the General Authority.  We heard about how he had been destroying missionaries and a ton of concepts we have in the mission. We go to this meeting and everything is going good, then the assistants and a couple zone leaders gave a presentation. The general authority would just stand up and correct them. Then I had to give a little presentation about the spirit (and I was scared) haha... ya he stood up and corrected me a lot but it was all good and humbling. He did get rid of the word PILAS in the mission though... which made me sad (its a slang word that just means smart) This is what he said ¨you guys claim you can walk on water, but every time you say PILAS, you start to sink and Jesus won’t help you out. ¨ (Getting rid of Pilas has proven very hard to get rid.) I learned a ton! There is no such thing as being more obedient, it’s just obedient. I also learned a big difference about covenants and commitments. I guess our mission is a lot different than other missions. It gave him more room to tear us apart. He told us in all the other missions, he just went and spoke, nobody else spoke. With ours we had presentations so he would stand up and stop the conference when he had a spiritual thought. It was good and we are going to see a lot of changes so we can baptize more!!! After all of this we had lunch with the General Authority and he said our mission was one of the strongest he had seen in his tour across Central America! That made us feel good!

Other than that it was just the same old same old! We got a ton of people to go to church and we are going to baptize next week!!!!!
Well I love you guys and thanks for everything!

Elder Kendall

P.S.  Here is a photo of a chapina that tried to sell us a pan, but she couldn’t reach our window because she basically goes up to my knee.

Missionary Mistakes

I’ll start from the beginning!

Monday- Wednesday- we were teaching and finding people so I won't bore you guys with all that stuff.

Thursday- we went on a little road trip to take supplies to some elder’s way out in the middle of nowhere. We decided to make a P-day out of it! (We don’t have a set p-day because there hardly is time for that) We went out to Antigua and did a ton of fun stuff up there with my distrito!!! We talked with a bunch of Mormon gringos that were up there for some humanitarian work! They were crazy surfing people from California so it was fun to talk with them!

Friday and Saturday we had two interviews to get people ready to be baptized! Hermana Betty and Hermana Jouquina! Two hermanitas that are just awesome and so funny! Hermana Jouqina is this crazy 83-year-old woman who is basically my grandma out here! She is so CRAZY!! Funny story about her -we have been teaching Hermana Jouqina for a couple of weeks and we brought her to church a couple times! She always told us she had been baptized in the church but we weren’t sure because she said the people who baptized her were JUAN AND JOSUE haha. We just thought she was crazy and she was baptized in some Evangelical church. So we got her all ready for baptism............

Sunday- we get to the church and we are getting everything set up the baptism! We get Betty and Jauqina all dressed up in white and my comp and I are dressed up in white. That’s when some weird stuff started happening! Out of no where came up this member and said that Hermana Jauqina was a member of the church because he was at her baptism 45 YEARS AGO!!!! We were all confused! We were just thinking ¨do we trust these crazy Guatemalan people or do we just do it anyway. We decided to investigate a little, we called the area office and gave them her information, they looked her up, AND SHE WAS ALREADY A MEMBER!!!!!!!! WE ALMOST BAPTIZED A MEMBER!!!!!!!!!

Missionaries make mistakes and sometimes we almost baptize members....pero Esta bien hahaha!! We still baptized Hermana Betty this weekend and we are preparing her daughter for this weekend!

Thank you for all of your letters and support! I LOVE YOU GUYS A TON!!!
PA PUES!!!!
-ELD KENDALL

ps. I may or may not have bought some Corte MC hammer pants 

Turkey Dinner

Ok, so this last week was nuts!

This last week we had mission changes. Which means we were super busy in the office. I’m learning a lot and my organization skills are coming in handy now! There are so many papers and so many people asking me for stuff! I’m also trying to be more worthy of the Spirit! And I’m trying to avoid thoughts of home (its impossible) haha but its all good.

Monday- we were in the office almost all day. We were finishing all the changes with president and getting all the mail and stuff ready.

Tuesday- we went to our Mission President´s house and gave a presentation to the new elders and sisters who came in that day. Then we took them out to work......... Something president always tells us to do is to destroy the new kids so they have a good expectation of how they should work...so WE RAN ALL DAY! I was SOOO dead. The kid with me had a super good attitude so we were laughing and having a good time! Then we went into the office that night and we were there until 2am... So that was fun, especially because we woke up at 4am the next morning.

Wednesday- we had changes, and they are just the craziest. I also got to see my companion from the MTC.

Thursday- we had P-day and we were pretty dead so we just tried to sleep but we also planned our P-day de distrito.... We are going on a road trip to Santiago Atitlan (you guys should look up pics of that place because its sick) CRAZY STORY TIME-That night we were knocking doors, when someone just burst through the tin door with a knife in his hand and he was covered with blood. He yelled ¨I’m killing right now¨......... My comp and I looked at each other and we thought we were so screwed, then he said he was joking with us and invited us in....So naturally, we went into his house. He had the knife in his hand because he was about to kill this HUGE turkey! And I said ¨wow that thing is huge and then he asked me if I wanted to kill it, I didn’t really want to but the guy kind of freaked me out so he made me do it haha. So I killed the families dinner. Haha! That was interesting!

Friday and Saturday- I don’t really know what happened. The days just blur together.

Sunday- GOD BLESSED US SO MUCH! This week we had 9 people in the church. We had a new family come to church and they are so PILAS!!!!! The night before church the family watched The Best Two Years.... haha I don’t know how, but they thought it was funny.

We are doing well out here. IT’S FUN! We have been working like crazy and God is blessing us COMO LOCO!!! Thank you always for the Prayers and SEPAN QUE LES AMO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
ELDER KENDALL

Getting Ready

I won’t be able to write this week. We are getting ready for changes and I guess that means we are super busy! We have to sort all the mail and get all the numbers ready! It's going to be nuts!

I love you guys! 

PDay

SO WHATS UP!!!!!

As District Leader I’m in charge of our district Pdays, SO WE WENT BOWLING!!!! We went to this great place, it was huge and we had unlimited bowling!!!  We bowled for 2 hours and then we went and played pool for a little bit! 

Later that day we went up to the top floor of the house and we put mattresses on the floor and started wrestling!!! It was a ton of fun, the assistant right now was a state wrestling champ he just destroyed us!!

Out in the field, the Herrate family of 4 is getting ready to be baptized this weekend! They are super pilas and kind of rich (comida).  I’m stoked to see them get baptized! We have also been finding a ton of people to teach lately! I’m in the same stake that I was in before,  El Carmen (my old area) is about 20 minutes from my current area.  The only thing that sucks about this area is the church is still very far away.  They are about to finish the new church in our area and that is going to make it a whole lot easier to bring people to church!

WELL I LOVE YOU GUYS A TON AND THANKS FOR EVERYTHING!!
Branson

PS I don’t have any pictures from the field because its super Peligroso in this area, so I don’t take my camera!