A Great week!

First of all Happy Birthday to the most wonderful sister is the whole wide world! Officially a teenager. Those were the days, not a care in the world. Dad said you're getting as tall as Mom. That's crazy. You're not supposed to change until I get back. Anyways Happy Birthday and hope it was fun. So another week in the mission. We actually had a pretty good week. We made our new trimester goals for baptisms in the next four months. Our goal is to have nine, which is a pretty high goal for this area. Right now we only have four people on date, and two of those are maybies (they could be eternal investigators, they've been investigating for a while). So this past week we worked on helping our investigators understand that they need to be baptized by the proper authority and what promises we make during baptism. Pretty much everyone we teach is Christian and has already been baptized so it is hard to explain the importance of being baptized again. Yesterday we had a confirmation that I was able to help perform for a Sister Meise who got baptized the first week I got here. This week I have my first baptism. It is for a white mother and daughter named Thelma and Charnee Armstrong. They are golden investigators, the mother is divorced and her birthday is on Sunday so it is a perfect day for her to get baptized. The daughter is 18 and has a son and they live together in an appartment close to the church. Charnee asked me to baptized her so I'm pretty excited. Also quick note, I can't put pictures on this computer but I'm going to try and put them on a CD at one of the photo places and send it to you. The branch I'm in is pretty small. Since we're in town we have a good mix of blacks and whites, but a lot of the members are older and have been members for a long time. Our next door neighboors, the Jubbers, are part of the temple presidency so that's pretty cool. We only have one counselor in the branch presidency. I guess the work in this area has been hard for a while. The two Elders who live with us have more success in the township that they serve in. Anyways we have a teaching pool of about 20 progressing invesigators who we want to put on date, but it's really hard. There is one family, the Vulshank family, who reads The Book of Mormon like crazy, the dad Villum even got in a fight with a Jehova and gave him one of our pamphlets. They haven't been to church yet though and we haven't brought up baptism yet. They do smoke, but the other day he was having a hard time believing the Book of Mormon because Nephi killed Laban and the Lord says thou shalt not kill. He said he needed a sign to keep reading the it, so I gave him Alma 32 to read when we left and he said when we came back that that was the sign he needed. So hopefully we can get more people on date soon. Anyways Elder Albertson is awesome and is hilarious. I'm going to have pretty sweet abs when he leaves from laughing so much. There are certainly some characters that we teach and a lot of the members of our ward. The scripture from my study this week is from Alma 37, 35-37. We must always have our thoughts directed towards the Lord and He will direct all of our doings, and if we allow Him to lead us we will be lifted up at the last day. I love you all and hope everything continues to go well in all of your lives. I will continue to pray for all of you and may the Lord bless you in everything you do.

Love,

Elder Chandler Kendall

First of all Happy Birthday to Carsen last week and Happy Birthday to the best father ever today! And Happy Easter as well. I had a lot of mail to read today and tried to send a email out to everyone so this will be a short message this week. So losing my memory was not fun at all, it doesn't really make adjusting to a mission any easier, but I'm glad to be back in the work. I am amazed at all of the people who care about me and have prayed for me. I know that the power of prayer works and that it was because of your prayers that I was able to heal so quickly. So basically what the doctor said was, because we had no water in our flat and I was taking a cold sponge bath, that all the blood probably rushed from my head to my feet and I fainted and hit my head. All of the missionaries and senior couples and Presient and Sister Poulsen were so helpful to me and I was blessed to be in their care. I had three stitches in my head, and a CAT scan, both of which I don't remember. The doctor said I'll probably never get my memory back of that morning. Anyways by Friday I was back in Klerksdorp ready to teach the Gospel again. Well I'm almost out of time so I'll leave you with a spiritual thought.

All things that the Lord does for us is for our benefit. Losing my memory helped me better understand the Plan of Salvation and what it is like to come to this earth. We live with out Heavenly family and then we pass through the veil and come to earth, not remembering how or why we came here. We may have spiritual homesickness that sometimes we forget about as we go through life. As we grow closer to the Spirit we will remember our Heavenly home and remember that the reason we are here is so that we can go back to live with our Heavenly Parents. We should use that to motivate us to try our best in everything we do so that when we do return home that we will have a joyous reunion.

I love you all so much and hopefully next week I can tell you more about South Africa.

Love,

Elder Chandler Kendall

Thank you for all the prayers

Dear Friends of the Ward-

Thank you so much for the phone calls and e-mails in support of Chandler and our family! Chandler hit his head on Sunday morning and woke up with a concussion and 3 stitches. He also woke up feeling like it was Dec. 2008. He just turned 17 and now he was wondering how he got to South Africa on his mission. We updated his mission blog- ElderKendall.blogspot.com and our family blog. The funny thing is that on our family blog we updated Chandler on his senior year. For those of you who don't know him, he went from playing Football and Lacrosse to drama his senior year. He was looking at the drama picture wondering who he was... thinking he is a Linebacker for the Lone Peak Knights! Now we can laugh about his e-mail he sent.
This morning I called the mission office and they said that he was up to remembering about the summer of 2010. The other Elders wanted to play volleyball with him on Monday, their P-day, but the Senior missionaries didn't think that was a good idea. The Elders joked that if the ball hit him he might go back to being 12 and I heard that he laughed about it. I do wish I could talk to him, but they said they thought he might get too homesick. I know he is in good hands, but he is my boy. His name was in at least 5 temples and I know there were literally thousands of prayers offered in his behave, especially all around the world from his friends on missions. I was tough on Sunday through yesterday, but today my heart is full and I am very emotional! I have found out that the tears come when the spirit is so strong and I have a grateful heart. Thank you so much for all that you do.

Love,
Michelle



Thank you so much to everyone for your prayers and support. I know that the reason I was able to regain my memory quickly was because of the many prayers that all of you have given. I am so blessed to have such wonderful family and friends in my life. As of Thursday my memory was restored and Friday I was back doing the Lord's work. I loved the emails everyone has sent to me and thank you so much for providing me with memories and pictures of things in my life that I have forgot. It's actually kind of funny to see what I forgot and the different person I became my senior year. Apparently word got around that this happened to me, and as such I have received a lot of emails. Unfortunatley we only get an hour a week to read and to write emails, but I would like to personally write each of you a letter. It takes two to three weeks to get letters out of here so it might be a little bit before you get it, but I have written everyones' name down and all I need back is your address so that I can send it to you. If not I'll just send it to my family and they can give it to you. The Lord truely does work miracles and I know that it is because of each of your personal worthiness and faithfullness to Jesus Christ. I pray that he will personally bless all of you in your lives and that you will always feel His Spirit throughout each day. I love you all so much and once again thank you for helping me out here on my mission. The work of the Lord will always go forth!

Love,
Elder Chandler Kendall

So I can't remember a lot of things right now. For me it is December 2008. I have no idea why I am remembering this time in my life. I just got done looking at all of the pictures and different things, but right now it doesn't seem to help. Imagine being 17 years old and waking up the next day in Africa on a mission. Basically I've lost two and a half years of my life. Everything is so strange. Every time I try to remember anything it is useless right now. It's like trying to remember tomorrow. And seeing pictures of myself and other people is super weird. First of all all of the kids look so big, especially Carsen. Also I can't believe I did theater. I got a package today from a Johnson who gave me a journal and said I did theater with her son and I see pictures of me doing theater and I look like a fruit. And I guess I went to Utah State. I was looking at the pictures and my dorm was ghetto. I wonder who my roommates were? So they said that Grandma is doing better. What happened to her? And Mike is having a child? I think I have too many questions right now to be answered and every time I try to remember something I've read or a picture it is like looking at another life. I'll tell you everything I remember before yesterday. I remember going to school. I'm kind of stressed because of AP classes. I'm preparing to take a test in U.S., Chem., and Calc. My birthday was a couple of weeks ago. It's been snowing a lot. I also am working on my eagle project. I have long hair (not any more) and I wear glasses. I'm not doing so well in Chemistry. I think my short term memory is getting better. I can remember things that are happening over the past day better, but there is still that gap in my memory. It's like I'm in a strange dream and I'm just waiting to wake up and go on with my life. I'm going to try my hardest to get my memory back, because if I don't I have no idea what I"m going to do. Tell everyone thank you for all of the support, even the people I don't know I know. I love you all and sorry for how spoiled I act. This is the craziest thing that has happened to me. Hopefully I don't end up like Jason Bourne, at least I know who I am. I wish I could remember everything over the past couple of years so I can say something significant, but right now there is nothing. Tell the kids I love them and I love you guys as well. I hope I make it through this.

Love,
Chandler