Every Rose Has Its Thorns

Happy New Year, Everyone!

This week was really great :) We found a super awesome new investigator on Tuesday! Before we started knocking, we prayed and asked Heavenly Father if we could have an experience that would help increase our faith to find those He has been preparing to receive the Gospel. We knocked on her door and she let us right in because "we aren't Jehovah's Witnesses". Her name is Christine, and she is super funny! Her's was the first door we knocked on that night and we ended up talking with her for about an hour and a half or so. She absolutely loves Jesus Christ and said she posts stuff about Him on Facebook all the time. We shared the message of the Restoration with her and she thought it was really interesting. At the end, she asked what the book was that I was holding in my hand. She recognized it as "the Mormon's Bible", and was really curious about it because she had never gotten to read it before. We said she could have it, and she then invited herself to read it and pray about it. She also said that she will have to pray about there being a living prophet on the Earth today! Christine is definitely going to get baptized and do some real good in the Church! We were about to leave when she brought up her neighbor across the street. She told us that we were an answer to her prayers. Her neighbor is have a really hard time in her life right now dealing with some marriage struggles and Christine has been trying to share the light of Christ with her for some time now. She came to the conclusion that she was not going to be able to get to her, and that God sent us to get through to her. This week we are going over to the neighbor's house with Christine! It will be awesome! Christine also said that she wants to come to our church this coming Sunday! I am stoked!

So, on Saturday we went and did some service. This service consisted of walking into a forest preserve and taking very large loppers and cutting down very large thorn bushes/trees. In order for this to work best, we had to cut them from the base of the plant. They didn't inform us beforehand as to what we were going to be doing that day, so I was wearing my regular service attire: shorts and a T-Shirt. Turns out that they needed someone to climb inside of the bushes in order to cut the base. No one wanted to do it really, so I volunteered to be the one to climb inside the thorn bushes. To make a long story short: most of the bushes are no longer living, but they did put up quite the fight! (Picture attached below) 

We didn't really get to do too much for New Year's. As a mission, we all had to be back in our apartments by 6:00pm. We were able to teach a few lessons before then, so that was good! We bought some lemon cake and apple cider and went over to Gary's house for a little bit before we had to get home. It was fun! We spent all of New Year's Day knocking and doing other methods of finding.

That's about it for this week! I hope you all had an amazing week. I am so grateful for the Christmas season. I love the feeling it brings and the sense of love everyone has for each other and for our Savior, Jesus Christ. I know He lives! Even though Christmas is over, we can still serve others and celebrate His birth. Christ is the reason for the season and my reason to keep on going every day all year! 

Love you all!

Elder Snell

Twinner Ties- Elder Snell & Elder Rhodes

Attacked by the Rose Bush