Promptings of the Spirit

The mission is awesome! I’m trying to work my hardest. And I know the Lord is blessing us. Just the other day we found a family to teach. What happened was my companion and I were walking from a failed city to a less active members house. So on the way there, we called her to make sure it was ok if we stopped by. We were walking through a “rich” neighborhood (and by rich I mean it's a 2 story house, mediocre size and the had 2 cars in the drive way). Rich for here. 

While my comp was on the phone I saw the house and I was like, “Wow this is a pretty nice house” but just kept walking. Finally my comp got off the phone and said that we couldn’t go over to the member’s house today. So we decided to contact. I got this feeling that we should return back to that big house that I saw. But then I thought “no way! They are rich and rich people don’t usually accept the gospel because they don’t feel like they need it.” But then a memory came back from a teacher I had in Teachers Quorum talking about the gospel and missionary work. He said, “The gospel is for everyone, not just the rich and not just the poor.” So I said to my companion “lets contact this house.”

We found a family that is so prepared by the Lord, and I have no doubt in my mind that we were meant to find them because of the two failed cities we had and the prompting of the spirit. I love being a missionary. It is awesome. Anyway, I’m glad to hear that everything is going good with everyone. Oh and Happy Birthday this Friday Renee! I hope it’s a good one. Thank you all for your love and support. I Love You All.

Chao,

Elder Kennedy

Fruits of our Labor

I had a pretty good week. My comp and I are working hard and seeing the fruits of a lot of those labors. We just had our first baptism as a companionship yesterday (my first of the mish) Juan Lucero. He is so awesome. He has an incredibly strong testimony. I will send pics soon, but the janky computer I have today doesnt have a USB port so I cant this week. 

Also today for our P-Day activity, as a zone we went over to the East Mission and hiked. I can now say I have hiked in the Andes Mountains. It was so much fun. I will send pics of that too when I can. JOE IS GRADUATED! That is so awesome. Good work man. That's cool too that your mom surprised you by coming up.  I bet that ment a lot to you. Now you're in the good ol' SD. Awesome!

I love it here. I just need to improve my Spanish. I am definitely better than before, I am now able to understand most of what people are saying, but I dont speak as well as I talk. But, the good news is I am able to get my point across even if I'm using the wrong tense or dont conjugate right, or have a horrible gringo accent haha. I can comunicate and that's good. But I am definitely improving. I just gotta work a little harder. Mom, Joe, and Renée: I'm glad to know you guys got safely back to SD after Joe's Graduation. I hope all is well with everyone. I love you guys.

Chio,

Elder Kennedy

Renee-Im so glad you guys are in SD, that is so awesome. Time to start the next chapter of life after what, 7 years in Idaho? (thats a long chapter.) Im proud of Joe for graduating. Thats awesome.

Ian did manage to send us a few pictures of his Zone. Let's play...where's Ian.....

 In the top row?? No.

 Sitting with all the Sister Missionaries? Nope :-)

 Could that be him? Right behind President and Sister King (Mission President and his wife). Yep that's him standing directly behind Sister King.

 And for the fun shots....

Conference and an upcoming Baptism!

Hey, 

So how awesome was conference?! It was so much fun watching it in the "gringo room" in English. There were 6 of us gringos: Elder Johnson, Elder Stewart, Elder Christensen, Elder Burk, Hermana McKarthy and me. All the talks were so awesome, and as a missionary you feel so spiritually fortified because of them. I'm glad you all liked the pictures! No Elder Gonzalez is not my comp. Elder Burk is still my companion but we live with Elder Gonzalez and he likes to be in pictures. That’s why he is in a lot of them. Some of you had some questions about transportation here. The answer is we walk everywhere in our sector (which is relatively small), but if we leave our sector we might take a collectivo which is kind of like a taxi but they only drive in specific routes. There are also the micros, or public bus system that we can use depending on where we need to go. Our other option is the Metro which is the train or subway system, you can get all over the city on this. Collectivos cost 450 pesos per person, which is about a dollar, The micro and the metro you pay with a BIP card. You put money on the card and every time you get on, you beep your card. It is all relatively cheap. I am glad to hear all is well with everyone. Happy 55th Birthday dad! Congrats on graduating Joe! That’s so cool! Sorry I’m gonna miss it bro. But now you get to finally move down to SD! That’s awesome. I’m glad the bikes are good. Ken is awesome for watching out for them.

Down here things are going awesome. We have an investigator named Mario, we found him while we were contacting. He was sitting on the sidewalk reading the bible, we later found out he does that everyday for a few hours. He was a drug addict that wanted to change so he locked himself in his room for a week and did nothing but pray and read the bible the only time he left his room was to eat. He overcame his addiction and he now spends his time helping addicts learn the gospel and over come their addictions through Christ as he did. Also our investigator Juan has his baptism this Saturday. He is super exited and so am I. I love being a missionary. The life is hard but extremely worth it. I love you guys! Thank you for all of your support and love for me. 

Love Elder Kennedy

Renee- thanks for keeping me updated on everyone getting their mission calls. It is so cool to hear where they are all going. I’m so happy for Joe graduating and you two getting to move to heaven ... I mean San Diego finally. That’s so awesome! Anyway thanks sister I love you!

Joe- Thanks for updating me on “your new purchases” Can’t wait to see them. Anyway man, I’m proud of you and I love you. 

Pictures!

Elder Kennedy spent most of his email time on P-day (the day after Easter) uploading pictures. So here are some old and new ones.

CCM in Provo:

 Elder Whitby broke our bed...

 This one is of me and Elder May. He is from Cancoon Mexico going to Las Vegas. He taught me some Spanish and I helped him learn some English in the CCM; super awesome Elder!

 My district and teachers in the CCM with Hermano Monroe and Hermana Camacho

 My district and teachers in the CCM

CHILE:

mapa de mi sectór (map of my area)

Crazy Colo-Colo fans (equipo de fútbol acá en Chile)

No this is not me. It's elder Christensen and elder Stewart in the back. we made elder Christensen a super misionero.

Me in front of the Church building.

 y un perro en el calle (and a dog in the street)

 We tried to made completos, but forgot about them. They kinda broke.

Pention tour! So we go through our massive green gate and we have a pretty grande patio ( so we play soccer for exercise in the mornings)

Then we enter our front door which is here, enter this tiny room with the spiral staircase and go up them.

 Then you see this. (it´s a little messy I know, but we did clean it after I took this.) we have a really nice pention ... like this is one of the nicest houses Ive been in since I got here.

Our pention has a super nice kitchen too.

The view from my room

 Elder Gonzalez past out on the floor...

 Today on p-day most of our zone got together and cooked. super fun and super good food.

 Easter Sunday we ate at the familia muñoz home, they served a lot of food.

They kept offering us more, but I was really full and couldn't eat any more so when i said i was full everyone pushed all the food on the table over to men and was like here eat this here have some more ice cream eat this lettuce its super good. it was super funny. (probably would have been funnier if you were there tho haha)

sorry, no time for a good email... thats the sacrafice of pics but I love you guys!