NOVEMBER 3, 2014

NOVEMBER 3, 2014

PICTURES....COMING SOON

OCTOBER 27, 2014

 OCTOBER 27, 2014

well, i'm getting transferred! I've spent 6 months in this area. it's bittersweet. I need to be transferred. I need a change, and new people to work with.  However, I love this area so much. so much. I love the people here. it's hard to imagine; Those who have served missions can definitely relate...but serving in any area, especially one that you've been in for 6 months, you develop such deep of a love for the people that your serving. it doesn't make sense. why would you love these people so much? only seeing others through the eyes of Christ would allow you to do that. all of my investigators, all of my converts, all the members...they're all going to be sorely missed. I love them dearly, and leaving will be difficult. however, it's what the Lord has asked of me, and it's definitely what I need.

 

we didn't have a baptism this Saturday, but that's okay. Sister Sinclair still wants to be baptized, and it's just post-poned a couple weeks. Hopefully i'll be able to come back and see the baptism though! and I'll definitely come back to visit.

 

I've been blessed to see 8 baptisms in the Parkwood area, and 4 in the Alamo 2nd ward (since I've been living in this apartment). I don't know why the Lord has allowed me to see so much success, but I definitely feel blessed for Him allowing me to.

 

I'm gonna try to get as many pictures of the members and investigators and people I've worked with since I've been here in the upcoming couple days, hopefully i'll get a bunch so I can send them next week!

 

have a great week!

OCTOBER 20, 2014

OCTOBER 20, 2014

hey hey! so it was a bittersweet week in the life of elder snow this week. on monday night, elder funk got a call from the assistants to the president saying that he was going to be emergency transferred to austin, full bike. Elder funk's bike was broken, and he has 7 weeks left, and all he wanted to do was finish his mission in this area. he wasn't so happy. i was upset too. elder funk is my best missionary friend, and i was soooo sad that he had to leave. so he packed up and left at 9 am the next morning. i went with them to drop him off. it was so sad. i had to see my good friend leave. and for some reason, his leaving really freaked me out. i've lived with him for 6 months and known him my whole mission, and when he left i just like...idk. i had a pretty bad anxiety attack on wednesday, it was super weird. super super weird. i dont' stress about anything! i always just thought stress was made up, but man i guess i experienced stress for the first time ever! hahah. i got all sick to my stomach and stuff...but after talking about it a little bit, i felt better. i'm doing good now :)

so the important things that happened this week...first, "R"'s baptism. so i guess i never talked about him before, but "R" is legit. when i was in alamo 2nd ward, the singles ward, with elder funk and elder mccombs, he just walked in to play basketball with us on a pday once. it was crazy. i guess he lived in the apartments near the church, and someone invited him in as he was walking by and he just balled it up with us! and ever since then he's been there every pday to play basketball with us haha. anyways, we started teaching him, me, mccombs, and funk. while i was there he accepted a baptismal invite to be baptized, and we taught him everything...and saturday he got baptized! he's super cool, he and i are tight. i love that kid haha.

alright so the coolest thing ever happened this week. we've been working with the sinclair family for a while now...brother sinclair is a member.  His wife, Gretchen, has been in contact with missionaries for a while, but didn't really start letting them over until me and elder vega started working on them. we're super tight, i really like Sis Sinclair a lot; she's super cool. well, this week we had 2 really powerful lessons with her. she's made a lot of progress the past couple weeks, she's come to church for all 3 hours and watched conference and has been reading, so we went into our lesson thursday night planning on finishing the plan of salvation lesson with her and inviting her to be baptized. 

 

we taught it well, she had a lot of good questions, and at the end we talked to her about baptism. after a while and some really good questions, she said "i want to think about it a little more." so we were excited about that, because we could already see on her face that she wanted to be baptized haha. we met with them again on saturday. we were going to teach the gospel of jesus christ, so we read 2 nephi 31 with her and her husband and kids and stuff. again, really good questions, she was doing great. then when we started talking about the holy ghost, i felt like we should go into more depth and talk about what kind of feelings the holy ghost gives us. so we flipped to galations 5 and talked about the fruits of the spirit. then i asked her "have you felt any of these feelings as you've been meeting with us, or coming to church, or reading the book of mormon?" then she proceeded to tell us this super spiritual experience she had had, and she didn't know it was the spirit until recently. 

 

We testified to her that it was the spirit, and we testified that everything we've shared with her will help her come closer to God, and that baptism will help her feel of the spirit more in her life. then i asked her again if she would be baptized on october 25th. she said "when are you leaving elder snow?" and i said "i don't want you to make a decision because i might be getting transferred soon, i want you to do this for you." and she said "no...i want you to be there. i mean...i never thought i'd be where i'm at today, i never thought i'd be this close to becoming a member of this church...but since you've been here, everything changed. we really want you to be at the baptism. yes, i want to be baptized on the 25th of october." i seriously almost cried. i was so honored haha. it feels pretty cool to have someone tell you that. it feels cool to make a difference. she's getting baptized! i'm so freaking excited!

that's it for me this week! seeya!

OCTOBER 6, 2014

OCTOBER 6, 2014

heyhey! interesting week in the life of elder snow, that's for sure! so, we didn't have a ton happen this week, except for one cool experience with an investigator, which i'll get right into...

There's this guy named "G." He's like..63 years old, looooooooves the missionaries. he has been affiliated with the church since 1986 when he and his wife (mostly his wife) were being taught by the missionaries in california, but he never got baptized. he eventually got divorced, continued to work, and then went back to school to become a catholic priest, believe it or not. 7 years of seminary later, he was a priest. he practiced as a priest for a while, then he retired, and some missionaries knocked into him where he currently lives in the Parkwood area a couple years ago. nobody has really seen any progression with him, but he's just a super nice and charitable guy, so i've been dropping by him every so often since i've been here. he and i have become very good friends, and he has a lot of family in the area, so we've been trying to work with them as well. he's been telling me for a few weeks now that he wanted to see the temple here in San Antonio, and i've been kind of blowing him off because i didn't think it would be the best use of our time. he's already seen like 3 temples, he's already been taught all the lessons, he already knows what we do in temples, what's the point right?

i'm an idiot, i know, but i kind of just never got to it. Well, we got to it this week. we went out to lunch with him tuesday, then we all went to the San Antonio temple together. we walked around the temple and took pictures and all that good stuff, and then we found a shady spot to sit, pulled out a temple pamphlet, and taught him about temple work. the spirit was strong, and it was very peaceful as we were discussing important gospel truths with him. he then started to open up to us, which is not uncommon because we are very close, but he said some things that were very interesting like "there's definitely a different spirit about this place...it feels very peaceful and happy," something along those lines. then, in the MIDDLE OF HIM OPENING UP TO US, my companion cuts him off and says "do you want to touch the temple?" i was dumbfounded. i'm seriously just screaming in my head "What are you thinking? you ruined the moment, he was able to open up to us, you RUINED it!" but i didn't say anything. i kind of just looked down and controlled my rollercoaster of emotions that was currently being battled out in my head, and then "G" said "well sure! i've never touched a temple before!"

I reluctantly got up, and walked with them to a place where we could touch the temple. elder duncan touched the temple and closed his eyes and i was just like "you gotta be kidding me." then, G proceeded to do the same thing. i stood back and let them do their thing. i thought it was a dumb thing to do to be perfectly honest. boy was i wrong. G actually stood there for a good few minutes with his eyes closed and his hand on the temple...and he had one of the most spiritual experiences of his life. we were then able to teach him more about the spirit, how he speaks to us, and how we can recognize spiritual promptings. we told him that one day he would be able to enter the temple, that baptism wasn't the end goal, but that the goal is to go to the temple. we were able to set him with a date of baptism for the 25th of october. he's now a progressing investigator. after 28 years of being affiliated with the church, this is the closest he's ever been to being baptized...and it's all thanks to elder duncan. i thought he was gonna botch it hard, but he ended up being the hero. it was a brilliant idea haha.

anyways, that was my cool experience for the week. general conference was fantastic! i hope you all had as great of a time there as i did. 

have a great week everyone! stay safe, have fun. love you!

SEPTEMBER 29, 2014

SEPTEMBER 29, 2014

heyhey! another sweet week! ...well sorta haha. so i was pretty dang sick last pday, not gonna lie. i wasn't actually able to go out to work until like...Thursday. i was in sick almost all of tuesday, then i got super sick tuesday night so i was in sick all of wednesday resting up. Then Thursday, we had a big huge zone conference thing that was like...7 hours long. it was alright....but we had a super super sweet opportunity to see the "Meet the Mormons" movie before it comes out! man it was incredible! it was such a good movie, like, such a good movie. i'm super excited that the church is releasing it soon to be in theaters. i highly, highly encourage all of you to go and see it, and invite friends with you to see it as well. it's a super good missionary opportunity! and if they're not going to be playing it in a movie theater near you, you can request it to play in theaters near you and they'll do it! it's an incredible movie, i hope you all take the time to see it. super funny and entertaining, but spiritual and informational as well!

The other sweet thing that happened this week was this Saturday...we had another baptism! Sue was baptized in the Alamo 2nd ward. i had the opportunity to actually find, teach, and attend sue's baptism, which is super cool. we've become super good friends with her and Carlie and Ryan, her two fellowshippers who invited her to start coming to church. they're all great. i haven't been able to visit with sue since they put me back in the Parkwood ward, but it was great being able to see her and everyone at the baptism saturday. she asked me to give one of the talks, too. it was way cool. i've never done that before. they didn't give me a topic to talk about, however, so i kinda just stood up there and made it up as i went haha. i talked about the tree of life (lehi's dream, 1 nephi chapter 8, and also chapters 11-14 for nephi's interpretation of the dream) and how she had just entered the gate. i then talked about enduring to the end, and how the iron rod would help her do that. i'm not sure what else i talked about. i felt like it went pretty well. then sue gave her testimony at the end...it was freaking incredible. way way way sweet. i'm so excited for her. she's my 21st baptism! way cool!!!

Sunday night we had the opportunity to teach the Sinclair family again. it was great. super super good lesson. i'm getting to that point in my mission where i actually sorta feel like i know what i'm doing now haha. it's nice. we taught the plan of salvation up until the atonement. sister sinclair had a lot of really good questions. she's a very very intelligent woman, so it's awesome to be able to help guide someone and help them come closer to Christ. she's doing very well. Brother Mati, our ward mission leader, did great in the lesson as well. he committed them to come to church for 4 straight weeks...first general conference, then 3 more weeks, so she can see what a full month of church looks like, with all of the topics and lessons and stuff that we go through. i really feel that if she follows up with that commitment she'll be baptized, so we're super excited to see that one go through. 

that's about it for me this week! hope y'all have a great week! love you!

SEPTEMBER 22, 2014

September 22, 2014

This week was pretty dang interesting! elder funk, mccombs, and I had a lot of fun and saw a lot of success in our last few days together, so that's great. we were able to keep teaching our main investigators, and they're all still set to be baptized so that's awesome :)

So wednesday... i gotta talk about wednesday. Wednesday was flippin LEGIT. So, the alamo 2nd elder always do the "border run," which is the day before transfers. the border is pretty far away, all of those areas and such so what we do is transfer everyone who's going to and from the border the day before transfers. i'm not sure why. but it's sweet. and i was able to go! so me, elder funk, and elder mccombs took all the people going down to the border, dropped them off, and picked up the other ones. it took ALL DAY. it was so much fun, we had a blast. i drove the way back, so that was fun. we just all piled into a big 12 passenger van and had a good time! i got lots of pictures so hopefully y'all enjoy :)

i received my new companion, elder duncan, on thursday. he came down from Austin, so i didn't meet him until like 5 PM thursday, but that was okay. It was nice having a little bit of time with elder mccombs and funk again haha. He's been out about 15, 16 months, but I'm the senior companion, so that's a little weird. iIm not sure why they did that, but it is what it is. The last few days have been a little slow...we didn't have a whole lot going on in parkwood, so we've just been biking, knocking, and walking. It's tough getting back on the bike after having the car for 5 weeks haha. my rear hurts again. that's all right; I'll get used to it. Elder duncan is a hard worker and a good guy..

That's pretty much it for me this week! I'm super sick today - not sure what happened but i think i might have the flu or something...hopefully i get feeling better, i don't know if i'll be able to go out to work tonight. i threw up this morning and have been dizzy and achy all day, so hopefully i'll get better. and yes mom, i've been taking oils haha.

love you all! have a great week! seeya!

SEPTEMBER 15, 2014

SEPTEMBER 15, 2014

We had some pretty awesome lessons with "S" and "M" again! they're both still set to be baptized in the upcoming couple weeks, so we're super super excited about that :)

we got transfer calls last night. flippin nuts. elder funk and elder mccombs are both staying in the alamo 2nd ysa ward, and they will be receiving a new companion. i will be back to covering just the parkwood ward again, and i will be receiving a new companion...and i'm going to be senior companion apparently, so the guy will be younger in the mission than me. i'm not quite sure how i feel about that, not quite sure how i feel about still living with elder funk and mccombs either haha. they're  like...my best friends ever. they're also my companions at the moment. it's gonna be really hard for the next two guys to come in when we've all already been companions, and the fact that me and elder funk have already lived with each other for like 5 months haha. but i think it'll be good. i don't think we have a whole lot of stuff to do in this area...sooooooo i'm probably gonna be knocking a ton of doors. and i'm back to riding a bike. man do i hate the bike haha. it's alright though. we'll survive. 6 months in parkwood, woooooooooooh!

anyways, love you all! have a great week!

SEPTEMBER 8, 2014

September 8, 2014

okayokay, so it was a pretty eventful week!

this week we were able to meet with quite a few people, but the lessons that stick out to me the most we were "M" and "S". "M" was a media referral we received, she was taught the first 3 lessons in Houston and then moved here for school...she's super sweet, and super golden! we met with her Thursday night, and we were on splits so it was just me and a member named Savon (Savon is freaking legit, he's actually a top 15 football prospect in the nation right now for college football. he's awesome, he and i are super tight). We went in to teach the lesson, and since Savon is a convert he was able to relate soooooooo well. i could have just sat there and let him take the lesson; it's good practice for him when it leaves on his mission in a couple months haha. just kidding, we taught together. he killed it though. we were able to set a target date of October 4th for her baptism, and she seems super golden! we're super excited! so we leave, and as we were heading out and walking back to the car, we realize....that the car isn't there anymore.  It was Savon's car. we were like uhhhhhh what the heck happened. Turns out it got towed hahha. mannnnnnnnnnnn i felt terrible. so we knocked on M's door again and were like "hey, so we got towed, can you give us a ride to the church?" hahahah it was hilarious. it was good though because Savon got her number (thattaboy) and was able to chat with her some more. He's gonna be a sweet fellowshipper for her.

Then we met with "S". S is super super super super golden. she just came to family home evening one night with her friend K, and we've been meeting with them ever since. she comes to every FHE and institute every wednesday, and she's reading the book of mormon like crazy. this last lesson we just answered a ton of her questions about the book of mormon, then we set her with a date for the 27th of september. after we left she texted us telling us she couldn't wait to be baptized. wooh! we're meeting with her again tonight, so we'll keep you posted :)

other interesting things to note; i'm officially the driver of the car now, elder mccombs license expired, so that's like the best thing ever haha. i missed driving so much. also, tomorrow we're teaching flippin' seminary. i'm not happy about that. i'm supposed to be there at 6 am tomorrow and do a 30 minute lesson on DC 4. what the heck. it's like 7 verses. what. i guess we'll just rely on the spirit or something, i dunno what the heck we're gonna do haha. 

that's it for me! have a great week!

love you!