NOVEMBER 3, 2014
PICTURES....COMING SOON
Monday, December 1, 2014
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 :)
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.
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!
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