Hermana Morgan Renae Kennedy

A BIRTHDAY SURPRISE!!!

I was surprised on Tuesday night to receive a birthday celebration with decorations and a piñata from a group of members and other missionaries in the Chapel. It was something I didn’t expect at all and it really was awesome. Almost half of the relief society was there and some of my great friends. We ended up having cake and I opened presents! The decorations and planning was done by my two mamitas, Hermana Medina and Hermana Fernandez, seeing almost all of my friends there almost made me cry I was so happy! I hit open the piñata and then I had my first tortazo!! Everyone pretty much filmed it and it was epic! The video is too big to send over email but I got pictures! The tortazo is a tradition to get some of the cake on the person´s face after they blow out the candles, well for my first one, it wasn’t just a little bit on the chin, as you can see it was my entire face!!! 

The following day, I woke up with a cold. Not being able to talk, Hermana Castro went out with our friend Maureen to get some citas while Hermana Fernandez took care of me and was my companion for the day. She made me drink Tapsin which is this gross menthol drink and afterwards I sat on the bed while she ironed the clothes and we talked a lot about spiritual things and things I have learned on the mission and things she has learned through her son on his mission. Afterwards she brought me a tray of grilled cheese and hot chocolate and we watched Mormon messages and a LDS film online. I must admit, that for my first sick day in the mission, which was also my 9 month cumplemes, it was probably the best sick day I’ve ever had.

 The following day we had our car wash, Castro and I ended up being the sign people which meant we had to dance and yell at the people to come to our capilla. We had a pretty good turn out about 20 or 25 cars came and we got about 10 references. Not nearly as crazy or productive as the first carwash but hey it was an activity. Good news, this past Sunday Iquique had a stake conference and we had two investigators in church, plus all of our converts were in church so I was very happy about that :) Castro and I have been lucky to have found someone progressing, his name is Cristian and he is the boyfriend of one of the members in our ward. He is very receptive and reads two chapters from the Book of Mormon every day, which is super amazing because not even members do that on an average basis. We are planning on challenging him to baptism on our next cita on Tuesday. I’m sorry if this email lacks more interesting details but I find myself responding to a ton of mail I hope the pictures can make up for it! Thank you everyone for writing me, your words uplift me.

Love Hermana Kennedy