June 26, 2017
Happy Summer, Everyone!
I know that most of you who read this email are like, "Why is he talking as if Summer just started, it has been going on since the beginning of June..." Well, let me resolve your concerns :) This week was graduation here in New York. Literally everyone graduated. Everyone. I am not entirely sure why, but the school system here helps everyone celebrate the graduation of every grade. On the last day of school, there were 2nd graders, 5th graders, Juniors in High School, etc. all over the place, and they all were wearing caps and gowns! I definitely agree that advancing to the next grade is important and an accomplishment, but every grade had their own graduation with caps, gowns, diplomas, huge luncheons, and everything! hahaha It was a party, for sure!
Anyway, with all of that being said, it brings me to my next topic of discusison. The beginning of this week was a little frustrating for me... It seemed that no matter who we talked to or where we went, absolutely no body would talk with us. I was getting a little disheartened. However, on Wednesday I was studying in the Book of Mormon in Alma. It was talking about how Alma and Amulek were preaching to people on the hill Onidah. The people he was talking to were a very hardhearted people and didn't really care much about what Alma had to say. In fact, a lot of them started trying to prove him wrong and make him second-guess himself. He and Amulek were cast out of synagogues, houses, and rejected on the streets. However, they never diminished their faith that the Lord was preparing the hearts of His children in their area. As they were preaching on the hill Onidah, a large multitude of poor people came to them. Alma then teaches them about growing their faith and acting on it. Many were converted to the gospel as a result of Alma and Amulek's testifying of the Savior. After my morning studies, I felt a renewed faith that there really are people out thee who are ready for the message we share. We set out at 10:00am to bring someone a Bible they requested. On the train ride there, we didn't hesitate at all to start conversations with those around us. Within the 45 minutes of travel, we were able to be led to find 3 new investigators! Heavenly Father is SO mindful of His children! There were too many "circumstances" that morning for them to just be circumstances. One woman I was able to talk with actually talked to me first. She asked if we were students here and was very surprised (almost excited) to find that we were missionaries. She loves God and Jesus Christ and attends the Rock Church (a church by the mall that performs heavy metal rock music for their worship services) every Sunday. We talked a lot about family and about Heavenly Father's plan for all of us. I was able to give her a Book of Mormon. However, when I asked if she could read a verse out of it, she exliained that she is 90% blind and can't read. So, I helped her download the Book of Mormon app on her iPhone! I am so grateful for the technology Heavenly Father has blessed us with to further His work! Ginger (the super awesome blind woman I met on the train) is going out of town for a couple weeks, but is really excited to be able to meet with us when she returns! Heavenly Father is so good!
Recently, I have started praying for the gift of remembrance. I have found that during lessons, sharing personal experiences and using the sciptures to teach really bring the spirit and make a huge difference in how the lesson plays out. So, I have been praying to be able to remember experiences I have had in the past as well as to be able to recall scriptures I study. During lessons (especially this past week) I have had forgotten experiences pop up in my mind from my childhood, high school, mission, etc. that have had unbelievable relevance to the needs of the person we were teaching. I love missionary work!!! We were teaching our investigator, Charles, on Thursday. He had a lot of questions about his purpose in life as well as how he can develop the desire to change to become what God wants him to become. Throughout our entire conversation, different scriptures kept coming to my mind that I had briefly studied in the past. As we read them with Charles, I felt the spirit just flow out of the Book of Mormon as the scriptures answered the questions Charles has had for a long time. By the end of our lesson with him, Charles expressed how much love he felt from Heavenly Father for guiding us to scriptures that spoke directly to him. It was so neat to have Charles read a scripture and pause in the middle of reading and say, "That's me. It's talking about me!" Wow, I love the Book of Mormon! Charles determined right then that he wasn't going to let anything get in his way of reading the Book of Mormon everyday! We saw him yesterday, and he was super excited to tell us about Nephi's vision of the tree of life! I love the Book of Mormon and I know that it is the word of God.
Continuing on my topic of being led by the Spirit: On Thursday night, we were at a complete loss of what we should do. Our lessons had cancelled and we didn't have the time to travel too far. So, Elder Afoa and I stopped on the sidewalk underneath some trees and prayed, asking Heavenly Father to please guide us where He needed us to be for the night. We both felt that we should knock doors for the rest of the night. So, we pulled up our AreaBook maps app and felt drawn to 81st street in Middle Village (just a couple blocks from our apartment). Once we got there, we prayed and felt that we were where we needed to be. So, we commenced some solid knocking! Well, actually, absolutely nothing happened for a good 30-45 minutes... Not a single person had answered the door yet. We were beginning to doubt if we were even where we needed to be. However, we relied on the answer we got from the Spirit to knock out the street. At the next house, we noticed there was a really old man sitting on the front porch of the house next door. We cautiously approached him (because most of the old people I have run into sitting on their porch have been extremely crabby...) and he very warmly invited us to sit down and talk with him for a bit! Our conversation was awesome!!!! His name is Paul, and he is as 71 year old Catholic. However, during our conversation, he expressed to us that he doesn't go to church anymore (except on Palm Sunday because "Palm" is his last name) because he believes that his church is not true. We testified to him of the restoration of Jesus Christ's gospel and shared with him the Book of Mormon. He was super excited that we gave him our Book of Mormon and thanked us kindly for the gift. We ended up talking with Paul about Jesus Christ, and church, and Joseph Smith, and the Book of Mormon, and prophets, for about an hour and a half. Sadly, he is moving to Florida at the end of July, but said we are more than welcome to stop by whenever we want. We ended our conversation with a prayer, felt the spirit very strongly, and enjoyed a gorgeous sunset! What a great end to a long and tiring day!
On Saturday night, we decided to go to Forrest Park to talk with people there. Lucky for us, we decided to go on a day where there was a Spanish quinceañera going on at night. There were hundreds of people all over the park!! Too many families to count! We had a hay-day talking with as many people as we could. We didn't find any new investigators there, but we planted plenty of great seeds. Some people we talked with have siblings and other relatives who are Mormon, so that was cool. Sadly, they weren't interested in learning more from us though. As we were going about talking with people at the park, we realized that we had scheduled with Naveen (one of our investigators) to FaceTime him. So, we found a quiet place in the park with a table, and were able to FaceTime him with our fancy new phones! It was really cool (and super productive) to be able to go immediately from finding to teaching a lesson without a minute of unproductive time in between. I am so grateful for the technology Heavenly Father has trusted us with to further His work!
I apologize for the insanely long email this week, but I just really wanted to share some of the cool things that happened this week. I know that Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ direct this work! They are so aware of all of our needs! I love being a part of helping others find their way to Christ, even if it is just giving them a card and bearing my testimony to them. I love being a missionary and I love this Gospel!
Have the most splendid of weeks and stay cool! Enjoy the rest of June!
Love you all!
Elder Snell
PICTURES:
1-6) Elder Afoa had some "ie" from Somoa, so we decided to put them on, along with our Mets jersies Sister Silvera gave us, and take some pictures! hahahaha
7) My district always sends me pictures of snails and tells me that they found my long lost uncle or something like that! I think it is hilarious! hahaha
8) This is a huge Catholic church we found while on our way to drop off a Book of Mormon and Bible to someone.
9) It is super hot outside, so last week on Preparation Day, we bought a watermelon! I'm not entirely sure why I felt the need to take a picture of it, but here you go :)
10-11) I guess they didn't have insulation? I don't know! hahaha Looks pretty cool though, right?
12) Graffiti of the week!
13-14) For all you jazz band geeks out there! I was just walkin' along, doin' the Lord's business. When Flash! Bam! Alakazam! I whipped out my phone and had to take a picture! (just for the record, I used absolutely no filter at all for that picture)
15-16) This is the garage door for the Glendale Fire Department, so I just had to take a picture with it! hahaha
