Elder Caden Snell: Miracles, Math, and Mace! Oh My!

Jan 22, 2018 Hello, Everyone! :)

Really fast, before you skip down to the bottom to check out the pictures and not read the rest of the email, at least read the next paragraph! Then you may feel free to skip down to the bottom if you so desire.

We got some super exciting news from the Area Seventy Presidency the other day. On Saturday, we had a mission-wide conference call where President Reynolds told us the big news. First, he told us who the new mission President will be which was cool. He and his wife is from California will be bringing some children with them, so it will be fun having a mission president with his family living with him. But the most exciting announcement is that on July 1, 2018 there will be a change to the boundaries of our mission! We will be gaining 1 or 2 new stakes. These stakes cover all of Manhattan, The Bronx, and a small part of Connecticut!!!! So, my mission will then cover all five burrows of NYC and will be called the New York New York City Mission!!! How crazy cool is that?!? We are all pretty excited! However, I will only be here for 20 days of the new change. It is still super exciting though! We will also now have a TEMPLE in our mission boundaries!!!!!!!!!!

Well, that is probably the most exciting part of this week’s email. I thought it was super cool! Anyway, sorry for not sending a weekly email last week. Our schedule was super off due to the holiday and our Preparation Day moving to Wednesday. However, there were some good things that come from that! Monday was an awesome day filled with some really great finding and some miracles! Also, the Brooklyn Museum was open on Wednesday so we were able to go explore the museum for a bit. It was a grand day! I will attach some pictures and videos from the museum in another email probably :)

On Friday into Saturday we had exchanges with the Dyker Heights Elders, Elder Rogers and Elder Jarman. Elder Jarman came with me this time and we saw some amazing miracles during our 24 hours together! Friday night we had some back to back lessons. We had a lesson with a woman from Haiti named Monica. Monica had requested a Bible and The Book of Mormon from mormon.org and has been talking with the referral center sisters for a little over a month now. She has now been reading the Book of Mormon on her own since then and Friday night was our first lesson with her. First, on our way to Monica’s, we ran into a Maggie. Maggie has a Mormon friend in our ward and used to come to church with her regularly! Maggie said that she actually misses coming to the Mormon Church and would like to come visit again! Maggie still has her Book of Mormon and is excited to start meeting with missionaries again! Now, during our lesson with Monica, she soaked in everything we taught her and loved it! It was a little awkward at first because Monica’s apartment is 6ft X 4ft, so I had to sit next to Monica on her bed and Elder Jarman sat on a little chair halfway out the open door of her apartment. Despite her cramped living conditions and very limited wiggle room, the spirit filled that tiny apartment barely big enough for her bed, dresser, and 42” flat screen TV. It was a really neat experience. Monica also come to church yesterday and really enjoyed it there. She said that she is planning on coming every week and is really looking forward to the day she gets baptized. Monica is a miracle!

Throughout the remainder of our exchange, we continued to see miracles! We had a lesson with Jose and helped him feel forgiveness toward someone who had upset him earlier that day. As we knelt in prayer with Jose in the front hallway of his apartment building, Jose poured out his heart to God and pleaded that he would be able to forgive the man that offended him just as God always forgives us when we try our best. After Jose finished his prayer, we all stayed on our knees. After a minute or so, Jose finally said, “Wow, I feel it. I don’t feel angry no more. Jesus really does help us feel His peace”. It is such a special experience to be able to watch Jose grow closer to his Savior and Father in Heaven through little moments like these. Now, for the first time in Jose’s life, he says that he actually feels confident he can quit smoking. So neat!

Saturday Morning, Elder Jarman and I had a couple of our lessons fall through, so we had some time to go finding and do a few look ups. We decided that we would go visit Joan for the final time before dropping her to see if she would still like her copy of the The Book of Mormon she ordered onmormon.org. We have gone to find Joan quite a few times with no success. However, I felt this time might be different. We got to her apartment building and went up to the 5th floor and knocked on her door. To our pleasant surprise, Joan answered the door!!! She said she would still love to have her Book of Mormon and that she was about too leave in 15 minutes (perfect amount of time for a lesson!). We stepped right inside her apartment and taught her the message of the Restoration along with giving her her Book of Mormon. She was super receptive and is really excited to read the Book of Mormon now! As we were leaving Joan’s apartment building, we ran into Hector, a man who I had run into a couple weeks earlier by accidentally knocking on his door in the same building as Joan while looking for someone else. Hector remembered me and was more than willing to have us over to share our message with his family next week! It was so neat to be able to see God’s hand guiding His work over the past week. I am so grateful be play a small part in all of it :)

Well, there is so so so much more to talk about from the past couple weeks, but this email is already long enough! So, here are a few quick highlights:

District Leader Training Meeting
We ran into a super rich 19 year old from Pakistan who likes flashing his money around so he bought us lunch on the spot.
Jack the Jew has been coming to church for the past few weeks in a row. Last week we sang him some hymns after church and he definitely felt the spirit to the point of tears. He’s coming around. Slowly but surely.
We got pepper-spray from a guy selling a bunch of things on the street, and WOW does that stuff work! Not a pleasant experience! Would NOT recommend!
I hit my 18 month mark on this past Saturday...
John, a 19 year old recent convert, needed a ton of help with his math in order to graduate high school. So, Elder Lee and I helped him with more math than I have ever touched our thought about in over a year and a half! It was kinda fun though. We helped him with over 50 different assignments in total. At least he will now be able to graduate high school, so that is good! :)
We got on a train FULL of a large group of Haitians protesting against President Trump. They had instruments and were chanting super loud! It was awesome!