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