Through the Swirly Twirly Gumdrop Forest

Merry Christmas (yesterday) Everyone!!!!!!
Not even sure if that quote for the subject is correct, but I tried :)
Wow! What a week! A lot of things happened.

On Friday, we had our Christmas mission conference. It was super fun
and extremely spiritual. Every zone was required to create a
skit/musical number to perform for the rest of the mission. They were
hilarious! I will attach a video of ours. We also learned of our new
goals that President Reynolds has set for our mission for 2017. It is
called 365. The goal is to have 365 baptisms and 365 temple trips in
2017. That is one baptism every day! I am so excited for this goal!
There is a lot more to it, but that is the basic gist of it all.

Christmas Eve was full of knocking. Honestly, it was a ton of fun!
People weren't the most receptive to our message because they had
family over for parties, but it was so cool to be able to share our
message of Christ with people on Christmas Eve door to door! I loved
every minute of it.

Christmas Day was amazing! Sacrament meeting was incredible! So many
members who are less-active came to church yesterday, so we were able
to talk to a bunch of new people. The spirit in Sacrament meeting was
very special! I love Christmas, on Sunday. After Sacrament meeting, we
had brunch with the Whitney family. We then went over to the
Mansuetto's to Facetime our families. It was really neat to be able to
see them again. I love my family and am so grateful that Christ made
it possible for us to be together forever! Sister Mansuetto made our
district an incredible Christmas dinner! I absolutely love the
Mansuetto's.

After dinner, we started a fun competition between our district. We
decided to start a Biggest Loser competition for our district. Brother
Mansuetto is joining in as well! We all weighed ourselves after dinner
last night and whoever loses the most weight between now and March 1st,
wins. We are all donating $10 and keeping the money in a safe at the
Mansuetto's. So whoever wins, gets $50! It is going to be awesome!

Well, that is basically it for this week. I love you all! ❤️️

Elder Snell

Elder, It's Cold Outside

HELLO, FRIENDS!!

Wow! What a week! It has been a long one, but that is okay with me!
Haha :) Time has been flying by, so it is kind of nice when it slows
down for a bit. Also, the temperature took a steep dive this week.
Makes for a really fun Prime Time knocking doors! :) knocking doors is
probably one of my favorite parts of missionary work :)

Transfers were on Tuesday. Exciting stuff! My new companion is Elder
Flora. He is from Anaheim, California and this was his first week in
the mission field! He has picked missionary work up so quick. It is
awesome!

It finally snowed and it stuck!..........for a couple hours hahaha. We
woke up Saturday morning to a mild snow storm. Gary's baptism was at
2:00, so we got to the church at 10:00 and got straight to work
shoveling the sidewalks around the church. It took a good hour and a
half. We started filling the font at noon, and by the time 2:00 rolled
around, all the snow had pretty much melted! All that effort wasted
haha. It was a good workout, though! Haha :)

Gary's baptism was awesome! He asked to bear his testimony to everyone
after he was baptized. It was an amazing feeling to be able to see how
much the Gospel has changed his life for the better. What an
incredible weekend! :)

We also had the ward Christmas party on Saturday. A bunch of the
members brought some friends who aren't members of the church yet, so
we were running around trying to talk to as many people as we could
throughout the night. The party was also an ugly sweater contest, so
Brother Margiotta (out ward mission leader) brought us some sweaters.

I think that's about it for this week. I hope you all have an amazing
Christmas on Sunday! I love this season where we celebrate the birth
and life of our Savior.

Merry Christmas!

Elder Snell

Gary's Baptism

My District

Elders with Brother Margiotta

SNOW

Elder Snell and Elder Flora

Plainview For Life!

Hello, Friends!

This week has been super busy! Not too much exciting stuff happened,
though. Well, other than MISSIONARY WORK!!! That stuff is always
exciting!

I just realized that this is actually going to be a pretty lame email
hahaha. Oh well! It's the thought that counts 😅 You can email me if
you have any questions.

So, transfers are tomorrow! Here is the standing of the Plainview
District: Elder Cubas OUT, Elder McCleary IN, Sister Fitt IN, Sister
Nash HOME, Elder Robison OUT, Elder Snell IN!
I get to stay in Plainview for (most likely) another 3 months!
President called me Friday night and asked me if I would train an new
missionary. I am so excited to train again, but I will miss Elder
Robison. He is pretty cool!

One more exciting thing: Gary had his baptismal interview on Saturday
and he qualifies for baptism! He will be baptized on this coming
Saturday! I am so excited for him to make very special covenants with
our Father in Heaven. I love watching people change their lives for
the better! The gospel is true! I love being a missionary!!!!!!

I hope everything is going well for all of you! Thank you, everyone,
for being the amazing people you are and for being apart of helping me
become more like our Savior, Jesus Christ!

Love you all!

Elder Snell

Oh, You Gotta Have Faith

Hello, Friends!

WOW! I cannot believe that it is already December! Time has seriously
flown by. Crazy.


What a great week it has been! It has been pretty hard, but the good
things far outweigh the negative! I have grown so much as a missionary
and as a disciple of Christ this week. My faith has grown so much!

This week was pretty tough at first, but that is where the most
learning and growth comes from. Almost all of our investigators had
something going on this week. One had their grandfather pass away and
was out of town for the funeral. Another got a new job and has been
working all week. One of them is preparing for surgery, so she got
really busy. We tried so hard to be able to meet with as many people
as we could, but it just was not working out too well. It got a little
discouraging at times. Discouraged is exactly how the adversary wanted
us to feel. Knowing this, we decided that we really needed to increase
our faith to find those who are being prepared to receive this gospel.
To tackle this situation, we spent all of our personal and
companionship study on Thursday morning studying finding. Creative
ways to find, how to increase your faith to find, you name it!
During the day, we decided to go to Main Street in Huntington. There
are always a ton of people walking around up there. We talked to 58
people and were only able to share the #LIGHTtheWORLD video once.
Despite not finding anyone to teach, we were confident that Heavenly
Father would lead us to someone who would be interested in our
message. It was getting really dark outside, but we still needed to
find someone to teach. So, we decided we would knock from 6pm until we
had to go home by 9. We knocked for a solid 2 hours. During those
hours, we were able to teach 3 lessons! The best part came at the last
house on the street. We knocked, and a 23 year old named Josue came
right outside on the porch to talk with us. He had a bunch of
questions for us and we ended up talking with him for an hour. He said
he would LOVE to continue to meet with missionaries (the sisters over
the YSA)!
As we were walking back to the car, we ran into a very nice woman
walking a dog. She was visiting a friend's house for a party and was
walking her dog. She was amazed that God would put us in her path that
night. She was ecstatic to meet us and talk with us about God and
Jesus Christ. She said that this was "truly diving intervention"!
Hopefully we will be able to keep in contact with her.
It was definitely a huge personal growth week!

Oh my goodness! The Christmas devotional was amazing! I am so grateful
for our Savior and His atoning sacrifice for us. I know that we have a
Father in Heaven who loves us so much! I love celebrating the birth,
life, and resurrection of our Savior, Jesus Christ during this
beautiful time of year.

Thank you all for being the wonderful and amazing people you are! I
love you all!

Have the most wonderful week and don't forget to #LIGHTtheWORLD! And
smile. Don't forget to smile.

Love ya!

Elder Snell

We Are Sowing, Daily Sowing

Hello Everyone! :)

This week has been amazing! 

On Tuesday, there was an Interfaith Thanksgiving Worship Service hosted by the Temple Chaverim. It is a Jewish temple here in Plainview. It was a really interesting service! There were people of all sorts of faiths and religions. It was really cool to see everyone gathered together to worship and thank our Father in Heaven. We were able to talk to quite a few different people and a bunch of people had questions for us about our church. We talked with a Jewish Rabbi (picture included) and so many more. A pastor from a Lutheran congregation came up to us (4 missionaries) and started asking some questions. Elder Cubas started teaching him the Restoration, so we joined in and testified of the Priesthood. The pastor said he had never been to an LDS worship service, so I gave him the address of our church and invited him to come. He said he would really like to make it there some day! It was legit!

I don't know if I have talked about our investigator, Gary, yet. I think I have.. anyway, his baptism is coming up in a couple of weeks! I am so excited for him! He has come a LONG way :) keep him in your prayers. I love this eternal work! :)

Thanksgiving was fantastic! We had 3 different meals, all of which were completely different. All had turkey, but everything else varied. It was so yummy! The Mansuetto's fed us Thanksgiving dinner on Wednesday (picture included), and the Brewer's and Sister Dio Smith fed us dinner on Thursday. Everything was awesome! Everything is AWESOME!!!!  I have so much to be thankful for! I am so thankful for this beautiful gospel. I don't know where I would be without it. Definitely not in New York hahaha. I am so grateful for my wonderful parents and the Christlike examples they are to me :) I am so grateful for all my friends and family who have helped me to become the person I am today! I love you all and thank Heavenly Father for getting to have each of you in my life.

I hope everyone has had an amazing week! Thank you for all your support. Let me know if there is ever anything I can do for you :)

Love you all!

Elder Snell

P.S. I found out that Elder Robison is not a fan of Primary songs. Whenever it gets quiet in the car (so whenever we aren't talking about our investigators) I like to sing Primary songs...somewhat above average volume. Sometimes he sings along hahaha :)

P.P.S. If you haven't had the chance yet, go to Mormon.org and watch the new Christmas Initiative! #LIGHTtheWORLD

Lutheran Pastor with Elder Cubas, Elder Snell, Elder McCleary, Elder Robison

#LIGHTtheWORLD

Mansuetto's Thanksgiving Dinner Table

Long Island Freeways

Did You Think To Pray?

Hello, Friends :)

I LOVE Long Island during this time of year! There are so many trees which equals  SO MANY leaves!!! The colors are so amazing and so are the service opportunities!

On Saturday, we had a stake-wide service project at the Veteran's Hospital in Northport. We picked up about 4 or 5 massive truck loads of leaves. It was a ton of hard work and a ton of fun! So many leaves!

So, we had an exchange with the Zone leaders on Wednesday and Thursday. Elder Pothier and I taught 5 lessons Wednesday night. It was a party. During our study time on Thursday morning, all the fire alarms went off in their apartment building. We all had to go outside and wait for the fire trucks to show up. Turned out to be a false alarm, but it was still pretty exciting hahaha :)

This week was pretty hard investigator-wise. For some reason, it seemed like everyone was either gone for the week or just super busy. We were able to meet with a few of our investigators, and we were so thankful for that. However, we just couldn't seem to get ahold of our most promising investigators. It was pretty hard. On Saturday, we were getting kind of desperate. Elder Robison and I were on our knees a ton this week praying that we would be able to meet with our people. We decided that we were going to go over to the Budget Inn (where 4 of our investigators live) one last time for the week. When we got there, Tamika was outside talking with some of the other residents. She was so happy to see us! We talked with her for a bit and read the Book of Mormon with her. The chapter she was on addressed her needs perfectly! Right when we finished with Tamika, her husband, Darrell, shows up. Tamika had to go, so Darrell sat down with us and we were able to talk with him and read the Book of Mormon with him as well. Right after we finished its Darrell, we walk around the corner and find Nadia outside. She saw us, and ran inside. A couple seconds later, she walks out of her room with her Book of Mormon in her hand :) we sat down with her and she asked if we could read with her. We read from where she left off at, and it addressed her needs perfectly, too! Oh my goodness, Heavenly Father is real and amazing! The rest of that night was extremely successful as well :) 

I love being a missionary! I know that this is an inspired work. Seeing the gospel change lives is one of the most amazing things to witness and be a part of! I know that Heavenly Father answers our prayers and that He will help us when we need him. We just need to ask in faith :) 

I love you all! Have an amazing week. Happy Thanksgiving!

Elder Snell

To the Beach!

What's up, everyone?!?

Another week gone already! Wow, it just flew by.

So, we made a district goal this transfer to get in the habit of
always carrying a Book of Mormon in your hand wherever you go. This
idea has already brought about miracles! We were knocking one night
and finding no success. We knocked on one door and the guy came around
from the back of his house. He looked at the Book of Mormon in our
hands and brought us into his house. He asked if that was a Book of
Mormon we were holding and that he had always wanted to read it. He
told us about some stuff that has happened to him that have brought
him closer to God and is searching for answers :) it was incredible!

We were knocking again the other night and it was super cold outside.
No one wanted to hear our message. We knocked for a solid hour and a
half and again, no one wanted to hear what we had to say. We were
about to go back to the car, but we decided that we should at least
finish the block we were on. We knocked a couple times on a house
until it finally opened up. The guy let us right in and sat us down at
his kitchen table. We was eager to hear what we had to say as we
shared the message of the Restoration. The spirit was so strong as we
testified of the reality of the Priesthood and the love of God. It was
such a tender mercy to be able to find at least one person whom the
Lord has been preparing to receive His gospel :)

Our mission has started a thing called Operation Gold Mine. It's where
we get a list from our Bishop of all the Prospective Elders,
Part-Member Families, and Unbaptized Children 9+. I am so excited to
this. It's going to be TONS of work, though seeing that we have 712ish
less active members in our ward that we need to get in contact with
soon. I know that miracles will come as a result of this plan though!

We just got back from the beach! We went down to Jones Beach on the
shouts shore. It was so much fun! We threw a frisbee and took lots of
pictures.

That's it for this week! I love you all!

Elder Snell

The Lord's Doctors

Email 11/7/2016

Hello, Friends!!

So, this week was pretty interesting. It was sad and stressful and
awesome and exciting and eventful and full of hard work and different
and successful and a lot of other things :)

Halloween night wasn't nearly as much of a party as Elder Jensen
talked it up to be haha. Since transfers were the next day, he spent
the night packing and I spent the night cleaning...a lot... it was
kind of fun though haha

Transfers were on Tuesday. We had to be there at 10:15 for the new
trainers meeting. It was super cool. President and the assistants gave
workshops on how to best help the new missionaries be the best
missionaries they can be.

After the meeting, I met my trainee, Elder Robison! He is super cool!
He is from Cottonwood Heights, Utah. He went to Brighton High School
and loves to run and rock climb. He was called to speak American Sign
Language. He is already 6 weeks into his training, but was shipped out
to Plainview to finish his training with me :) we are going to get
along really well! For language study, he and I watch conference talks
in ASL and don't speak to each other (we only communicate by signing).
I can sometimes understand what he is saying to me, but I'm not too
good at ASL haha I can sign the Missionary Purpose though!

This week has been a lot of hard work! It is a lot more stressful
being a trainer than a trainee! I am learning a TON about myself and
how to become a better missionary, though! My teaching skills have
definitely improved and so has pretty much every aspect of being a
missionary. I have had to rely a lot on the Savior this past week! I
am so grateful for the experiences Heavenly Father is giving me, even
if they aren't necessarily the easiest experiences. However, it is the
hardest experiences that you learn the most from :)

So the coolest thing happened to Elder Robison and I yesterday! Right
after church, Brother Caldwell (2nd councilor in the bishopric) pulled
us aside and told us that someone texted him and asked for the
missionaries to come to the hospital and give a few people some
blessings. Elder Robison and I eagerly volunteered to do it! Turns out
that the woman that requested the missionaries was a recent convert
who lived in Pennsylvania. She is the only member of the church in her
family and her step-dad was hospitalized that morning. We got to the
hospital and there were about 30-40 people there to support the
family. The dad was perfectly normal one day and the next day he is
hooked up to all sorts of machines which were keeping him alive. We
gave him a priesthood blessing as well as his son, who was taking the
situation the hardest. The spirit in that hospital was so strong as we
gave this stranger a blessing in front of his family and friends who
never heard of the gospel but had nowhere else to turn. I am truly
humbled that Heavenly Father chose us to be the ones to go help His
children in such a dire situation. This gospel is incredible! I know
it's true! I know it more and more every day!

That's it for this week! I love you all! Have a wonderful week!

Elder Snell