DECEMBER 18, 2017
Hey, Friends! :)
Just in case I forget to say it next week............
⭐️ MERRY CHRISTMAS ⭐️
This week has been super crazy! I will start out by telling you about our investigator, Irina.
Irina is from Russia and has been living here in New York for around 10 years. She is pretty good friends with our Russian recent convert, Valerii, and his wife, Galina. Galina and Valerii pick up Irina every week and bring her to church. Irina is an older woman and is bound to a wheelchair. So, each week, Irina comes rolling into the chapel in her electric wheelchair and starts talking with everybody there in her super thick Russian accent! I love it! Irina is also a huge cat lover! It is kind of ridiculous how much she loves cats. Last week, we were in Gospel Principles class and realized that Irina had left and didn’t come back for a long while. Elder Pratt and I decided to go search for her. After looking around for almost 15 minutes, we ran outside to find Irina strategically placing small dishes of cat food around the premises of the church for all the stray cats to eat!!!! She then took it upon herself to talk with the bishop about making sure that all the cats around the church are getting properly fed so they don’t starve and die. It was pretty hilarious! Despite Irina’s insane love for stray cats, she is a pretty solid investigator and has a lot of faith. We met with her earlier last week and taught her the restoration. She doesn’t completely understand English, so Valerii and Galina had to translate for us. However, Irina told us that she knows that the Book of Mormon and Church are true and that she really wants to be a member. We invited her to be baptized in February, and she got all upset that we wanted to do it that far away. So, we moved her date a little closer toward the end of January. She is really excited!
What made this week really weird was Elder Pratt being sick since Wednesday or Thursday. We have had to stay inside as much as possible for the last half of the week so Elder Pratt could get better. So, I have been acting as his nurse/mom for the past few days! It has been fun. I have also been on the phone all day since Thursday trying to have lessons over the phone with our investigators and set up all of our Bible drop off appointments for the coming week. It has been super crazy! Luckily, Elder Pratt is starting to get better. However, the sad thing is that transfers are tomorrow and Elder Pratt is leaving!!!! We only had 5 weeks together! Sad stuff. At least I can trust that the Lord knows what He is doing :)
Valerii gave his first talk in sacrament meeting yesterday! He wrote the entire thing himself and gave it in Russian. Sister Brown was there to translate for him. He share his conversion story of how he was the last member of his family to be baptized. It as really powerful! He also testified of the Plan of Salvation and taught it better than I ever could! I am super proud of him! He passed the sacrament for the first time last week! Valerii is becoming a really strong member of the Church!
One last story: so, last week, we were on our way to visit a less-active that was referred to us by some missionaries over in Queens who supposedly ran into her on the street. While we were on our way there, we were walking down a dark road with about zero people on it. As we were walking, we heard someone start coming up behind us. Pretty soon, the person called out, “Hey, Elders!” That always surprises me! Anyway, we stop and turn around and there is a man running after us. His name is Kyon and has been a member of the church for a little more than 10 years. However, Kyon has been in-active for a long long time. He told us that he was thinking about trying to come back to church but never knew where to start. He was praying earlier that week that God would lead him in the right direction to be able to work on coming back to church and getting to the temple. Well, God definitely sent him and us down the right street that day. We started teaching Kyon regularly and are helping him get back to the temple! It is so neat to be able to witness God’s hand leading us in our lives. I know He lives and I love him with all my heart!
I love you all and hope you have a wonderful Christmas season!
Elder Snell
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