Elder Caden Snell: Riddle Me This! Riddle Me That!

Hello, Friends! It's nice to be here with you in Primary!

Wow, there is just so much that happened this week that I could talk about! I will attempt to spare you from a super long and boring email... :)

First off, Elder McConkie and I were talking with a member from the Westbury branch last Saturday. Turns out he works for a solar company and has been a door-to-door salesman for many years. Since we, as missionaries, also go door-to-door, we asked him (Brother Haws) how he plans out his time and what the best methods are for getting into a home. We talked with him for a bit and then set up a time where we could go to his house so he can teach us more. Apparently, Brother Haws has given a workshop on everything we talked about a year ago in a Zone Training Meeting, and our Zone Leaders had asked him to give another workshop for our Zone Training Meeting that was Friday. Brother Haws presented to everyone a new way to "develop and area". He said to pick 2-3 areas of roughly 150-200 homes. Every time you are going to go knocking, go to your first chosen area and knock as many houses as you can while keeping track of who says yes, no, or aren't home. Every day for the next week, come back to the same area and knock all the houses that were not home until you have talked to every single person in the neighborhood. There is a little more to it than what I just explained, but it is very thorough. Brother Haws also typed out a "pitch" for missionaries to use at the door. It is actually pretty awesome and has helped us out a TON! Let me know if you want a copy of his pitch :)

Hopefully that knocking business made a little bit of sense... sorry if it is confusing! Anyway, Elder McConkie and I decided we were going to start this knocking method on Saturdayconsidering that all of our lessons cancelled on us last minute. So, we drew out the boundaries for the three areas we were going to be focusing on and did some door knocking role plays for about an hour before heading out to do it for real. We drove to our first area and commenced knocking. As we started, something felt very off. We decided to keep on knocking. Not a single person answered the door our of about 15 homes. Elder McConkie and I felt very strange. We said a prayer, and knew that we were not in the right place. For some reason, even though it made no sense at all, we both felt that we needed to go to the church. We ditched all our knocking plans for the day, and drove down to the church. When we got there, the Sisters were there with one of their recent converts. They were trying to set up for the women's broadcast of General Conference. Turns out that they didn't have an HDMI cable or adapter. I did have one, so we let them borrow it for the broadcast. We also felt that we should walk across the street to the neighborhood park. We walked around talking to everyone there until we spotted a man playing tennis by himself on one of the tennis courts. We felt that we should go introduce ourselves to him. He is from Romania and is super agnostic. We had a very interesting conversation about God and talked a lot about the Plan of Salvation. Nothing super significant came out of our conversation, but I just hope and pray that he will ponder what we talked about with him. He wouldn't let us give him a Book of Mormon or a pamphlet, so we just left him with a Mormon.org card and our number on it. The rest of the day was super weird! We went back to the church and still felt that we were needed somewhere. We said about a hundred prayers that day. We turned to the Book of Mormon for answers and were only guided one little step at a time. I felt like the Book of Mormon was giving us little clues to one big riddle! We were getting really hungry, but felt that we shouldn't go home to make dinner. Then, Sister Salas randomly texted us and said that she made us food and had it all packed up to go. We drove down to her house, thanked her for the food, and ate it at a nearby park while talking to as many people as we could. We still felt like we were needed somewhere, but had no clue where to go. We called a bunch of members and investigators asking if anyone needed anything. Everyone was all good, today. For some reason, the Huntington Hospital kept coming to mind, so we drove up there. Nothing. Then we went to the Kellers who weren't available right then. We finished up our night with some look-ups. It was such a weird day, and not much came out of it. However, I know that the entire day was led 100% by the Spirit. Not sure exactly why we felt we needed to go all over the place, but I know Heavenly Father sure knows what He is doing! 1 Nephi 4:6.

That was a long paragraph! Sorry... anyway, last week, Irma said she gave a Book of Mormon to her friend. So, we asked her to invite her friend over for dinner! Sister Irma did exactly that and invited us to be there as well. After we ate dinner, we taught Irma's friend the Restoration. She felt the spirit and really loved meeting with us! Sister Irma was so happy to be able to share the gospel with her neighbor!

OH! I just remembered a story! Last one, I promise! I can't remember if this is from this last week or the week before then, so if you have already read this story, I apologize. Anyway, Elder McConkie and I were knocking a street before we needed to head out to a lesson and it was super cold. We knocked a couple houses with no real results. Elder McConkie stopped, looked at me, and said, "Alright, I am super cold. Elder Snell, we only have time to knock one more house. Pick one that will let us in." I looked up and down the street and a small blue car parked in a driveway caught my eye. I decided we would knock on that house as our last one. A nice looking lady opened the door and said, "Oh, you both look like popsicles! Please, come in!" Turns out that the couple were both Presbyterian pastors who had just moved here a couple months ago. They knew exactly who we were and felt they should help us out a bit. After talking with them for a while, they invited us to come to dinner with them and some of their friends. Every Wednesday night, they get a group of people from their church together and go to the diner right across the street from our apartment and discuss a gospel topic. They invited us to come with them and teach their friends a little bit about the LDS church! We haven't been able to go yet, but we are trying to free up a Wednesday for it!

Wow, that was a long email! Sorry for that. It truly was a great week, though!

I love you all and hope you have an amazing week!

Elder Snell