Week 57: Did someone say Heat?

Hey

It is always so nice to get and read your letters. It always makes me happy to hear about all the things that are going on back home. Sounds like Parker is excited to get his eagle project out of the way... haha. And I just want you all to know that none of your complaints about the heat will find any mercy with me!!! haha! This week was one of the hottest weeks, we have ever had. Its so hot, the sun is starting to hurt! Also it is so humid here that in 5 minutes you are drenched!! I also cannot continue to wear my lightly colored pants because you can see all the sweat lines. Pretty nasty! Now starts the time of sueros all over again. (Sueros is that salt drink that we are supposed to drink so we don't get dehydrated.)

This week was a little hard for us because our investigator, T., is not ready to get baptized. She says that she will be ready later on but we can tell she is not doing anything to make this happen, so we are kind of disappointed. But we found a new investigator that is friends with one of the members here. She introduced us to her. Her name is A. and she is the daughter of eternal investigators here in 4 milpas. She has seen the missionaries before, but has never really talked with them. She was home with her husband and her cousin, but her husband did not want to come out and meet us. We got to know them a little, and we left them with a pamphlet of the restoration. Then we set an appointment to come back and teach and with the member that introduced us. But when we went back, it turns out that her husband got a little upset and told us that he did not want us to come back to his house because after we left A´s cousin was talking about us all day. And it is really frustrating because the member we went with went and talked with her afterwards and asked what she would have to do to get baptized. ahhhh so frustrating. But Elder Ramirez is great. He is really funny and helps me to joke around and sometimes take my mind of the work, because it is really stressful here.

Also this week we had some crazy thunderstorms at night. At night we would sometimes spend an hour outside just looking at all the lightning. One night after planning we spent the rest of the night outside because it was a lot cooler outside of the house than inside. 

And today we had our first Pday where we stayed in 4 milpas. We woke up early to go climb a mountain and watch the sunrise. It was pretty cool because you can see our entire area. I took a few videos so you should be able to see them. But that is about it. 

I feel like I just wrote you guys so there is not to much more for me to tell. Sorry if this letter is a little short, but I will try to do better next week. But to make up for it I took a lot of pictures. 

Love you so much. Thanks for all your advice and support. 

Love

Elder Snyder

Here's some pictures of our hike this morning. And the other pictures with us in missionary clothes were from when we went to mochicahui. Ohh yeah, I forgot to tell you that friday night we got a call from one of the sisters in the Rosales Branch who wanted us to give her granddaughter a blessing because she was going to have surgery on saturday. The only problem was that they called us at night and mochicahui is like 10 kilometros away. So, in the morning on saturday we woke up early and left to bike ride an hour to go and give a blessing to this girl. The whole time I was thinking that I have never put so much faith into a blessing like this. I was thinking of the scripture in James that says that faith with out works is dead and how we show our faith by our works. And I was thinking that I have never worked so hard to give a blessing because we were dripping in sweat when we arrived. haha. But it all turned out ok.

Week 56: Mango Hunting and a Flood

Hello

Sorry I was not able to write on Monday. I went to Guaymas again to finish renewing my visa.  It was really fun. It was another party with my generation. Then when we got back we stayed with the missionaries in Macapule again. Only this time Elder Lowry was there. He asked President if he could end his mission in Macapule and he said yes. 

That video was so awesome of Jacob, Austin and Dakota. It was cool to hear a little bit of Spanish thrown in there. And I honestly laughed out loud at the picture of the LATE tag on Jacob's bag. It was so funny to see that it is the same old Jacob. 

But this week alot happened in such a short period of time. One of our favorite families from 4 Milpas moved. :( They went to Tijuana to live with their son and to work because there is not that much work here. But we are going to miss them because they were one of the few active families in the branch. 

Also, I dont know if I have already told you this but there are so many mangos here. After every lesson people ask us if we want mangos. We have like 5 kilos in the house. They are so good. So I have a couple of pictures of my companion and I hunting mangos. 

Last Sunday we were so stressed out when we got to the casa de oración...We got there to find that one of the pipes behind the building had burst and that the whole back room was flooded with water. There was so much water that it even entered the room where we have sacrament meeting. So we spent like 10 minutes collecting all the water with mops and we left the backroom flooded because there was not enough time to clean everything up. Then like 5 minutes before the meeting was going to start, someone told us that the person that we assigned to speak was not going to be able to come to the meeting. So that means that we both were going to have to speak. But it all turned out well. I presided and blessed the sacrament and my companion conducted and passed the sacrament. Then we both gave our talks. I talked about the importance of the sacrament and how we can make it more meaningful each time we come to church. That during the week we need to repent of our mistakes then when we come to church, we should prepare ourselves mentally to take the sacrament. Because it is not the action of taking the sacrament that gives us the remission of our sins. Just like how simply getting baptized does not wash away our sins. It is the sincere repentace process that takes place before and that is then sealed with a covenant. And when we partake of the sacrament, we get to renew that same covenant of baptism that we make, and we can still feel the same joy that we felt that day we were baptized all over again. 

So one of our investigators is proving to be very difficult. She has been investigating the church for about a year. She always comes to church, reads her scriptures, she even pays her tithing! But her problem is the law of chastity. She has a boyfriend that pays for the rehab of one of her sons who was a drug addict. But the worst part is that her boyfriend is married. He has a wife and kids. And she is struggling to make the decision to repent and get baptized. And we dont know what more we can do because she knows what she is doing is wrong and she knows exactly what she needs to do. 

But her mom is doing really well. We taught her the Restoration and she now understands more about Joseph Smith. She is progressing. She just needs more time, so that we can teach her everything.

And our other investigator just stresses us out. She has so much trouble paying attention. We explain things so basically, but she cannot understand and pay attention. She says she wants to get baptized, but we need her to understand what we are teaching before she can. 

But everything is going well here in 4 milpas. Ohhh... I got a new bike. The bikes that we have are for like 10 year olds, so it really hurts my back to be hunched over all day. But the family that left for Tijuana was selling all of their things including their bike. So I called up President Myers and he authorized me to buy the bike. I was super happy because now I have a bike that is my size :). 

Well I love you all so much. Congrats to Parker who got his braces off. Ohh and thanks for the package that you sent. The secretaries gave it to me when I went to Obregon to go to Guaymas. Thanks to everyone for all the letters. They were great. Tell Oma to be careful about sending money because they opened all the letters that were in my package. But I dont think that they took anything. 

Sorry for the late letter but it is better than nothing haha. I want to send the video of my shirt burning but the file is too big to send by email. I can try to send it by dropbox next monday. 

Love

Elder Snyder

Mango Hunting

Week 55: New Mission President and another transfer in 4 Milpas

Our new Mission President, Pres. Myers, and his wife

Hello Everyone

I am glad that everyone had such a great time at the family reunion. It sounds like it was a lot of fun.

So last monday, we had to pay the rent for the house. And it was about 9 at night as we were hurrying to meet with our landlord. So my companion was in front of me and we passed a truck, and we heard someone call out "Elders!" So we turned around to see who it was. The driver who called out to us got out of his truck and said "Elders, I have a surprise for you." Then I saw two people getting out of the car. One was very tall and the other was a woman. I then saw that they had missionary tags on and I realized that it was our new Mission President. haha! So then and there, all sweaty and late at night, we met the president and his wife for the first time in our pueblo. He said he came to meet the district president that lives in 4 milpas.

Then the next day we had a multizone meeting to get to know our president. President and Sister Myers told us many things about their lives and it was pretty cool to get to know more about them. They also told us that in our lives there are 2 types of zones. 1 zone is called the comfort zone, and the other is the miracle zone. They told us that when we start to do the same types of things, we get comfortable and start to receive the same types of results. And when we leave the comfort zone, we enter into the miracle zone. But then when we get comfortable in the miracle zone, the miracle zone starts to transform into a larger comfort zone. And the point is... that we have to work even harder to leave the comfort zone to enter into the miracle zone again. And they challenged us to start to do things differently. That if we are scared to do something, we should do it anyways because that is how we are going to see miracles. 

We also had cambios (transfers) today, but my companion and I stayed the same.  Elder Ramirez is the first companion that I have had for more than one transfer in a row. Not counting Elder Lowry. But speaking of Elder Lowry he only has 1 transfer left and he asked president if he could spend his last transfer in Macapule. And he got what he wanted. He got transfered to Macapule for his last transfer. 

Also the guy who we rent our washing machine from, finally brought back our washing machine. So we rent our washing machine by the week. But the guy who rents it to us is not that smart. We pay this guy every week, so that he can just leave the washing machine at our house. But this time he decided to go pick it up and bring it to his house. This happened about 2 weeks ago. Since then we have been going to to his house pretty much everyday asking him to bring the washing machine back. And it took him 2 weeks to finally bring it back. So during that time we had to wash our clothes by hand. And wow! It takes forever. Every night after daily planning we go outside to start washing our clothes. But it is all good because we finally have our machine back. It shocks us every now and then, but the important thing is that is works. :)

We had a baptism this week. A little girl in the branch extension turned 8 years old and she wanted to get baptized. So we had to fill the font and get everything ready for her. And because there is hardly anyone who has the priesthood here the girl asked my companion if he could baptize her. So it was fun to have a little baptism. We had to fill the font with a little garden hose and it took about 5 hours to fill with water. But the fun part was draining the font. We had a lot of help from the members. Someone brought a big hose and we used that as a siphon to suck some of the water out. And during that time we also used buckets to bail all the water out of the font. It took about an hour to get it done, but it was pretty fun.

Also this sunday we did not have our super attendance of 32. We were actually missing many priesthood holders, so my companion and I had to preside, conduct, and bless and pass the sacrament. But these experiences have only strengthened my testimony to know how important the priesthood power is and how there are so few people in the world that have the power and authority to perform the ordinance of the sacrament and the other ordinances of salvation. 

But this sunday not all of the people that we assigned for talks came, so I had to speak for the remaining time. It was not too hard, but I just felt like I talked alot that meeting. I conducted the meeting, confirmed the young girl that got baptized the other day, and I had to fill in the remaining time. 

But that is about everything that happened this week.

I love you all so much and I hope that you are enjoying your summer. Stay cool for me because here it is super hot!

Love

Elder Snyder

Zone Conference with Pres. Myers

Inside the Casa de Oración (our church)

The outside of the church

The baptismal font

Week 54: Miracle at the Casa de Oración and ...I fell in the channel!

Hola!

I want to start things off by saying your prayers have been answered. We got our AC fixed!!! haha! We can finally sleep super well at night. This week was a little crazy with all the Guaymas stuff. When I got back to the house on Tuesday, I felt a little sick because I had not slept well the past 2 nights because I was with my generation one night then on monday night we slept in the house of Macapule. But it is all good now.

Our mission president changed last week also. I still have not met our new president, but he is coming to Los Mochis tomorrow. So afterwards I can tell you a little more about him. 

This week we also had intercambios with the zone leaders, and I stayed here in 4 Milpas and Elder Robbins came to work with me. He is from Canada. But it was pretty fun... the intercambio. I got to show Elder Robbins how enormous our area is. And afterwards, he kept saying that he is ready for president to send him to a pueblo and that he wants to have the entire mission experience, which includes serving in a branch very far from the city. But it was pretty awesome because one of the members in 4 Milpas has a friend that she wanted us to go visit. Her name is B. So we went to visit her, and we realized that she lives super close to the casa de oración.  So we got there, and she was saying how she wanted to go to church with us before we even started teaching. She has had a lot of difficult things happen to her in her life and she says that she is ready to change her life for the better. She accepted a baptisimal date for the end of this month. And she went to church yesterday. 

We also have another person that we are hoping gets baptized this week. Her name is T. She has been an eternal investigator. She has been attending church for about a year and she likes everything about the church, but she is just not 100 percent willing to give up her vices. She has a baptismal date for this saturday, and we have been working with her to get excited to be baptized. We hope that she will be ready to be baptized this week.

This week we had a miracle happen at church. We were all sitting in the casa de oración waiting for everyone to arrive to start the meeting. And as the meeting started, a bunch of people started to come in. We did not have enough chairs for everyone to sit. We had to take some chairs from the primary room for some of the kids to sit. We had 32 people in our meeting this sunday!!  Now I know that it is nothing compared to the 1800 that you all saw last sunday in Bear Lake, but 32 is a lot for our little casa de oración.

Well, I have a really funny story for everyone. So last night it was about 8 and we had to head back home. (It is about an hour bike ride from where we were.) And to leave we have to cross the channel. And we always cross on this little wooden bridge that takes you to the other side. It is about a foot and a half wide and is made of all different sorts of random planks of wood. So my companion and I decided to ride across it to get to the other side. So when I went to cross, my bike tire fell into one of the little holes in the bridge and I lost control and fell 5 feet down into the channel with my bike. haha! Luckily, I did not submerge and my scriptures did not get all wet. They were the first things I took care of after I fell. But yeah, I fell in the channel and the only thing that was wounded was my pride. I now cannot make fun of all the other missionaries that have made the same mistake as I. But I hope you all get a good laugh out of it. :) Afterwards we called one of the few members with a car to drive us back home. I was pretty upset at myself the whole night, but its okay because all is well in Zion. 

I hope that you all had a great time at the family reunion. I look forward to hearing about it from the rest of the "tousins." Love you all so much!

Con Amor 

Elder Snyder

P.S. I didnt take pictures this week because my camera broke. The button to take pictures would not come back up. But I got that fixed today. It was just a faulty spring so dont worry mom haha. I will take more pictures this week

Week 53: Arely and Metzly's Baptism

Arely and Metzly Baptism

Hello,

Dont worry I did not die. Sorry to scare you all about the water situation but right after we finished writing, we went outside and saw someone watering their dirt (oh yeah everyone here waters their dirt, it does not make sense because they say that it is so the wind does not pick up so much dust, but that only works for like 5 minutes because afterwards it is dry again.) But after we saw that, we realized that the water was back on. And we are happy because we have had water all this week. :)

Sorry I didnt write yesterday, I had to go to Guaymas to renew my visa. So they got all the missionaries from my generation together for one day. Everyone who did not live in Obregon got on a bus on Sunday, and we traveled to Obregon and stayed at the Asistants´ house. Then monday morning, we got up early to travel to Guaymas which is outside of the mission boarders so it was kind of an adventure. It was also super fun to see everyone from my generation and to ask all of them how it is going. Then afterwards they sent us all back to our areas. We got back to Los Mochis at like 9 at night, and at that time their were no buses to take us to our area, so we stayed with the Elders from Macapule...My very first area. It was a super long day and I was super tired. The house in Macapule is also super small for 2 Elders and with 4 Elders it is just insane. To sleep we pushed the two beds together and we all slept on the 2 beds. 

But I want to tell you all that Arely and Metzly got baptized! I got to baptize Metzly and my companion baptized Arely. (Metzly is the shorter one). But the baptism went really well. We had to go to Los Mochis to baptize them because their is no font in Rosales. But everything went super well. 

I also burned my shirt, but I will send that video next week. It was pretty awesome. 

I hope everyone has a great time in Utah and at the reunion. 

Love you all,

Elder Snyder

The Burning of the Shirt

Week 52: 1 Year Anniversary!!

HOLA,

Well, I can hardly believe that this week I am going to complete a year! It sure does not feel like it. The time seems to go by so fast. The days are long, but the weeks are super short. And alot shorter when you know Español. :) But this is the week that I burn my shirt. woohoo!

So this week was very stressful. As unofficial branch presidents of 4 milpas, we have many responsiblities. This week we had to plan an activity for the extention, assign people to talk, travel 40 min by bike to prepare some people that are going to be baptized, and many other things. When all in all, everything fell through. We had to cancel the activity because it wasnt planned well enough. We didnt have time to ask people to speak in church, so we both spoke, and the people that we were preparing to be baptized were not ready for last week, so they are going to be baptized this week. But it is okay because all this has taught me the importance of planning. It has also taught me how perfect the plan of salvation is. 

Our Heavenly Father created a perfect plan before we came to earth. He chose a Savior to come to the earth and make it possible for EVERYONE to return to the presence of God. That our time here on earth is to help us learn from our mistakes and to become better and that thanks to the Savior, we can start over. I am so grateful that Our Heavenly Father is a much better planner than I am. :)

Well something really funny happened this week. So I always joke aroung with my companion and complain that my bike has so many "sins" because it is constantly needing repair. So this week my bike decided to get "baptized" and get rid of its sins that have been lingering for so long. So in one of our areas there is a channel that runs along the town. It is like 25 feet wide and there are little bridges that you can use to cross the channels. My companion and I always ride across instead of getting off and walking across. So as we were riding my companion suddenly made a sharp turn and started to cross the bridge. But I was not ready for the turn, so I had to take my feet off the pedals to make the turn. I was then on the little wooden bridge without my feet on the pedals just hoping that my momentum would be enough to carry me across. But my bike started to get closer and closer to the edge. When I realized that I was going to fall in, I was almost at the end of the bridge, so I jumped over my bike and let it fall into the channel. So, I made it across the bridge, but my bike did not!! (My companion was dying of laughter at this moment). But wouldn't you know it, since that moment by bike has been free of "sin," and it hasn't had any mechanical problems. haha! Luckily my bike fell pretty close to the edge, so I was able to drag it out of the channel, but it was a pretty funny experience.

It is also starting to get super hot here. We still dont have AC, and we are waiting for someone that is willing to come all the way out to where we live. We now sleep with 3 fans. One in the window that lets in fresh air, and one fan in front of each bed, But it is still super hot!! We have goals to get it fixed by this week.We are also excited because Arely and Metzly are both going to be baptized this Saturday, so pray that they can be ready and that we can have all the legal issues worked out.

Oh and I almost forgot we have had another major issue this week!! Everyone here in our little pueblo decided that they dont have to pay their water bill and as a result we dont have water. The water system here is different. There are no meters that check how much water you use, so everyone pays the same bill each month because there is one pump that pumps water to all of the houses. So everyone has not been paying their bills for the past few months and the people who run the pumps dont have enough money to pay their electric bill. So the electric company cut off the electricity. And if there is no electricity the pumps dont work. So the water company decided to do something very sneaky. They decided to cut into the wires and steal electricity so that they could run the pumps. But they would only run the pumps in the morning and at night, so that the electric company would not notice. Well, they noticed, and now the pumps are stopped for good and no one has any water. Today we went to Mochis (an hour away by bus) to wash our clothes. Elder Remirez and I both served in Libertad so we went to our friend Hermana Cecy who lent us her washing machine to wash our clothes. We also showered in los mochis at another missionary apartment. Yesterday we went to the channel that is a good walk from the house, filled up buckets with water from the channel, and carried them to the house. And we have used that to go to the bathroom, but we are not sure what we are going to do to shower this week. On sunday, we had to shower with buckets. Luckily, we had water stored in the buckets from earlier because the water comes and goes very often, but now we dont have anything. And it is impossible to wash the dishes right now also. haha. We have no idea when the water will come back, but we hope that it is soon. It is kind of impossible to live without water. So please pray that we will have water soon. Everyone is so unhappy with the water situation here. The government says that it is a violation of human rights to deny us water,  but they still have not done anything about it. 

Well that is that... we dont have water or AC, but the mission is still super awesome and I love it :)

Love you so much

Elder Snyder

Week 51: Life in 4 Milpas

Hola

4 Milpas is pretty awesome. It is alot different than any type of missionary work that I have done so far. We mostly work with the members... trying to reactivate them and to teach their friends. Pretty much everyone here has spoken with the missionaries before, so it is a little hard to find new people to teach. But that is what happens when you are in a small town and the missionaries have been there for 4 years. They have basically spoken with everyone. 

Elder Ramirez and I get along pretty well. He is pretty funny and we both make the same types of jokes. In this area we live in a house. The house is pretty nice and we just finished cleaning it today. It has not been cleaned in a long time, so that is why I have not taken pictures yet, but next week I will send pictures. The only problem here is that they always cut our water. We have no idea why but suddenly when we try to use the washing machine (that we rent) there is no water. Or when we try to use the sink there is no water. So we fill buckets with water, so that we have water to wash our hands and stuff. But it usually goes out during the day and then at night we'll have water again, so it is not a big problem. But today there was no water in the morning, so I took my first shower with a bucket. It was an interesting experience that makes me grateful for shower-heads. We still havent gotten the AC fixed, but Elder Lowry gave us 2 fans that they dont use in their house, so now it is alot easier to sleep at night. But fixing the AC is our number one priority this week!! 

That is so awesome that school is out and it is summer for everyone. I am not too excited about summer because of the heat, but I know that everyone else is. 

So we are 70 percent sure that we are going to have a baptism this week. There are 2 girls that are 9 and 10 years old. Their names are Aureli and Metzly. Their mom is inactive, but we are working on that right now. The problem is that they live like an hour away from our house and their mom is never home, but last week we had some luck and we found her for the first time and we were able to teach her. 

We also have an old investigator that has a baptismal date. She aways attends church, but she has not made the decision to be baptized yet but she has a date for july 9th. Also we just received a reference from the branch that we are part of that someone wants us to come and teach them, so we are really excited to start with them. But we dont have too many details so I will let you know more next week. 

Love you all so much!

Elder Snyder

Elder Ramirez

Elder Lowry and all of his "sons" (the missionaries he has trained). Well, one of them is a "step-son" but it still counts.