Jan 1, 1018 Happy New Year, Friends! :)
Things have been getting pretty cool over here! The temperature hasn’t gone above freezing for an entire week now and won’t for another week or more. The average high lately has been somewhere around 19 degrees. When we woke up this morning it was 7 degrees with a windchill that took it down to -9! I have officially cracked out my winter coat and am using it regularly. I had a bunch of members and a lot of people on the street get mad at me for only wearing a sweater. It was kind of funny, but they were sincerely concerned for my life. So, in order to not die I have made the decision to wear a coat and some little gloves :)
Someone told me that this year was the coldest New Year’s Eve on record! Crazy! The funny thing though was that didn’t stop anyone from having a good time with some fireworks outside at midnight! We had to be in our apartments by 6:00PM last night but it seemed like that was the time the rest of Brooklyn left their apartments! The fireworks and screaming never ceased all night! There was a large group of people lighting tons and tons of fireworks on the street right in front of our apartment building. The fireworks were SUPER big and SUPER loud! It was awesome! However, it made it very difficult to sleep hahaha. Our apartment was way too hot, so Elder Lee and I opened a window before going to bed. BIG MISTAKE! As soon as midnight hit, there was an onslaught of large balls of fire being blown up right next to our apartment window! It was loud and exciting, but really exhausting not being able to sleep much last night.
This week was a little harder with missionary work. Most of our investigators were out of town or just super busy having parties and what not with their families. So Elder Lee and I had a bunch more time for finding this week! That was really nice! :) There was one day where all of our lessons cancelled that morning, so we had an entire day for finding some new people and getting in contact with some old people. We spent the whole day talking with people on the street, bus, and train, knocking, making a ton of calls, etc. However, despite our hard work, nothing really came of it. At the end of the day, I felt kind of defeated having not found anyone new or made much progress with our current investigators. As we were walking home for the night, I said a prayer in my heart that our efforts for the day would not be wasted and that we blessed the life of someone somehow. Just after my silent prayer, we passed a Middle Eastern woman with her two kids. We said hello as we were walking past her. She immediately stopped and said, “Elders?!?” My heart about explodes every time someone I don’t know on the street says that! Turns out that the woman, Bushra, ran into missionaries a while ago and had them over to her house. She invited us over for some soda (because she knew we don’t drink coffee or tea) and told us about how much she absolutely loves missionaries! Bushra had tons and tons of questions about what we believe and has a real interest in learning more. We scheduled to go over to her house the next morning. She is super cool! I can definitely see her and her family being baptized in the near future :)
We had a few more miracles happen this week! Since it was a holiday weekend, all of our investigators that are consistently coming to church couldn’t make it yesterday... We were expecting to have 4 or 5 of our investigators at church, but they all said that they wouldn’t be able to make it... A while back I made a promise with Heavenly Father that I wouldn’t go to church without an investigator with me. I also promised that I would never miss church. Yesterday was looking like it might be the day I let Heavenly Father and myself down, however God always provides! When we got to church, Brother Butler asked me if I would play the organ for Sacrament Meeting. So, throughout the meeting I was sitting up on the stand. Right after the administration of the Sacrament they always invite those in the foyer to come into the Chapel. While the members were making their way to their seats, I noticed unfamiliar faces. They both came into the Chapel individually and sat by themselves on a pew. After Sacrament meeting had finished, one of them came up to me and introduced himself as Christopher. He was one of our investigators I had never met yet who I felt I should call a couple days earlier!!! He didn’t answer, so I just left a message saying it had been a while since we have seen him and wanted to see how he was doing. He got my message and decided to come to church! The other unfamiliar face was Leslie, the non-member friend of Brother Kelly, who has been really interested in Mormon theology and wanted to meet with missionaries really bad to help him better understand the Book of Mormon! Miracles!!! We were able to set up appointments with Christopher and Leslie for this week and are going to start meeting with them consistently! God is so good! :)
Well, there was a lot more that happened this week but my email is already long enough, so I will just end it here. Happy New Year! I love you all! :)
Elder Snell
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