Week 98: Kind of a rough week

My Companion, Elder Martinez, made this poster for our church building

Hola

Hey I am super excited to talk with you guys this sunday. I was thinking about calling at 4 so let me know as soon as you can if that works out or if you need me to call later or something. 

This week we had kind of a rough week. We struggled a lot more to find new investigators but our plan is to start working with the members more in order to have more people to teach that start to progress. Juan is super awesome. He is so ready to be baptized and he has all the support from his wife and from his in-laws. They have been helping a lot but he is all set and commited for his baptismal date may 20th. Our only problem right now is finding baptismal clothes that will fit him. He is kind of a big dude but we are going to figure it all out this week so that it all works out. 

As for Jesus we were not able to teach him this week. For the first few days he was never home. Then on Saturday we finally found him but he was completely drunk. His family told us that he has problems drinking and that he has been drinking this entire week and that was why we could not find him. We also went yesterday but he was still drunk. It was really sad because we want to help him but we cant do anything when he is drunk. 

Also this sunday it was super interesting because my companion tried to "kill" me. So there we were, riding our bikes to go visit someone. And we were riding our bikes side by side so that we could talk along the way, when all of a sudden, bam!!! Elder Martinez slams right into me. There was honestly nothing that I could do to save myself from falling so I did the only thing I could and jumped from my bike to avoid getting smashed in between the ground and my companion. I was able to catch myself with my hands but I still ended up laying down on the ground. I am not going to lie,  I was pretty upset at my companion because it was not the first time that he has not been careful and crashed into me, but this was the first time that he has knocked me over. So I get up and went to brush the dirt off of my shirt but then saw that it had a few drops of blood on it. and I was like, "oh great my elbow is bleeding also" but when I went to lift my sleeve I realized that it was my palms that were filled with blood and a bunch of dirt. At this point I was just ignoring everything that my companion was saying to me because I was just really mad that he knocked me over and that I was the one that had to pay the consequences. So then I got on my bike and was like, "lets got to the pharmacy," because I wanted to buy bandages and alcohol to clean myself up. But then when i got on my bike, I realized that my pedal was bent so much that it was hitting the bike frame and it could not turn all the way around. So then we had to go walking and we were kind of far away from everything. But it turned out that the closest house to us was our investigator Juan. So we went to his house and I was able to wash my hands. Then we left our bikes at his house and we walked to the red cross because it was super close to his house. But I was very disappointed in their service because they did not help me at all. They just sprayed water mixed with disinfectant spray and didnt even give me a bandage. I was like, "you are not going to wash the dirt out or anything?" they then told me that I can go home and wash my hands with soap and that would get the dirt out. I then asked them if I could just wash my hands at one of their sinks and they told me that they didnt have any. I dont understand how the red cross does not have a sink but I just left and went back to juans house. Then he and his wife helped me out. They gave me alcohol and a bandage. Alot more than the red cross did for me. But yeah that was the exciting thing that happened yesterday.

Today we went to Huatabampo to hang out with the missionaries in my district. We bought a pizza and hung out with some of the members in Huatabampo. It was pretty funny because we did not have bikes to get around, so I had to use my mexican skills that I have been aquiring for the past 2 years. I had one of the missionaries from Huatabampo sit on my handbars and I sat on the seat and was stearing the bike. It looked pretty funny but that is what it comes too. 

I love you all so much. I am so happy that I will be able to speak with you next sunday. Time flies so fast. 

con amor

Elder Snyder

p.s. they sent me my flight plan. I am going to forward it to you. :)

Week 97: Last Transfer!

Goodbye party for Hermana Upiachihua and Elder Nilson

Hola

Well it is my last transfer and my companion and I stay the same. Big shocker I know. But I am super happy that I am going to be able to finish my mission here in Etchojoa. 

Well we had a pretty good week this week. We were able to say goodbye to all of our friends that were going home and to say goodbye to people that were leaving the zone. 

On tuesday we had our district meeting and I bought a cake for the hermana upiachihua and for Elder Nilson because they were both finishing their missions. It is crazy to believe that will be me soon. We also had a really great sunday because 2 of our investigators were able to go to church. Juan whose wife is a member came to church finally. And he is still set on his goal to get baptized so we are excited for him. We were also able to help Jesus go to church. We have been teaching him for about 2 weeks now. And we had a really special lesson with him the day before he went to church. We had a lesson planned, but when we got there we decided to ask inspired question to teach him according to his needs. And after a few questions we realized that he did not know what his purpose was on the earth. He told us that there was nothing that motivated him to get up in the morning, so we then knew that we had to teach him about the love our Heavenly Father has for him and what his purpose in this life is. We felt that the lesson changed a little after that. Then on Sunday he came to church. :) 

Also it was 5th sunday in the branch so we decided to talk about the branch goals (we didnt have any so we were able to set them ). It was pretty funny. I got up and explained to the whole branch what the purpose was in setting goals. I remembered a talk that thomas s monson gave when i arrived. He talked about alice in wonderland and the cheshire cat. The story goes that alice asks the cat which path she should take. And the cat answers her and says, "well that all depends on where you would like to go." she then responded that she did not know where she wanted to go. And the cat then said, "then it does not matter which path you take." I like this story a lot because it applies to our life. 1) If we do not have a destination we will never be able to get where we want to go. Just like Alice we will wander aimlessly watching all the opportunities that life gives us just pass by. 2) that we need to set long term goals to know were we want to be and short term goals to know how we are going to get there. 3) Follow up on our goals and make adjustments as needed. 

Just learning this has opened my eyes and let me know that I have a lot of potential and how I can accomplish the things that I desire to accomplish. But it all starts with the destination. If we do not have a destination we will not be able to accomplish our potential. 

Also last week we had to attend the district meeting because our branch president could not attend. And something that called my attention was what the district secretary taught. He asked all the branch presidents in the room what their goal in this life was. Then after everyone answered he reminded us what everyone's goal should be, and that is Exaltation. If exaltation is our goal then we will be able to do all the other small things in this life like raise our kids and be a good husband or wife. And it just made me think. What am i doing to prepare myself for exaltation? I know that I am far from that point and that I need to make specific goals in order to accomplish my long term goal. 

I know that his church is true and that everything it teachs is to help us be better. I know that we have the potential to become like our Heavenly Father and that Jesus Christ is the key to helping us become like him. I know that everything that the church teaches us is to help us accomplish our goal in this life and if we choose to not obey the small things, we are only delaying our progress. I know my savior lives and that he loves me. He is my friend :)

I am excited to talk with you all in 2 weeks it is going to be super exciting. 

2 weeks mothers day!   4 weeks my bday!   6 weeks airport!

les amo mucho

Elder Snyder

Elder Ochoa is my ZL now, so this transfer is going to be even more fun!

Week 96: This morning I found a cat in our "sink"

This morning I found a cat in the place where we wash our dishes.

Hola 

Well this week was a pretty normal week. It has started to get hotter. We are also in the last week of the transfer, so next week I will be starting my last transfer of the mission. Time really goes by so fast. 

Well the good news was that this week we were able to commit pretty much all of our investigatores to a baptismal date and commit them all to come to church.  But out of all of our investigatores the only one that we didnt plan on coming to church came. His name is Ricardo and his wife got baptized like 8 months ago and all of his kids are active members of the church. He just has not joined because he is still not ready to give up his old life, but he is getting closer. He decided to go to church by himself so that is a step in the right direction. But our other investigator Juan did not go to church and we still do not know why. We have our next appointment with him tomorrow, so hopefully we can get him and his wife to come to church more so that he can start progressing. 

Other than that, we have set a new goal in the branch. We have committed everyone in the branch to read the book of mormon in 3 months. We visited almost all the members in the branch and committed them all personally to read the BOM and then in church we official announced the goal to the branch. We have been seeing problems in the branch and after talking and making a plan with the branch president we felt that the thing that would help the members live the gospel more fully would be helping them to make daily scripture study a habit. I have started reading the BOM again also to support all the members and I have been reading with the schedule that we sent to all the members so that they will all be able to finish in 3 months. 

But an interesting thing that happened this week was that we left our keys inside the house and got locked out of the house. :( And sadly there was no window were we could squeeze ourselves into, so the only option we had was to break the glass window in the door. So now we have a hole in our back door. Dont worry because we put a safety in place so you can only open the back door with a key. But now we are a lot more careful with they keys. 

I love you so much. I cannot believe how fast the time is going by and how soon we are going to see each other again. 

te amo :)

Elder Snyder

The window we had to break to get in to our house. :(

Week 95: Happy Easter

P-day water fight activity

Hola.  

This week we had a pretty great week. First of all it was Semana Santa and here in Mexico it is a vacation week and it is also the week were everyone parties all week long. So there were many drunks and not to many people home, but we were actually able to find a lot of people. I started the week off with exchanges. I went to Huatabampo with Elder Lopez and Elder Nilson went to Etchojoa. I really liked Huatabampo. It is a really strong branch and it is also really big. I would have really liked to have had the oportunity to serve in Huatabampo, but I got as close as you can get :) I also learned alot about Elder Lopez. He is a very dedicated missionary and I admire the courage he has to be out on a mission. He is the only member in his family and his entire family thinks that he is wasting his time and that he should come home. He actually told me that his parents have not written him since he left. I dont know how I would be if I did not have the support of you guys. But he told me that what motivates him is the love that he has for God. And I thought that was really sweet. I hope that someday everything that I do will be motivated by the love that I have for God and for others. I have been studying the words of the apostle Pablo (paul). I just love pablo and I love what he teaches and especially what he says about Charity. I downloaded one of the Bible videos of the church a long while back and I have listened to it so many times that I basically have all of 1 Corinthians 13 memorized in Spanish. That is one of my favorite scriptures.

Our investigator Juan (he is the husband of the recently wedded couple) is so awesome. His goal is to get sealed in the temple with his wife and he knows that he needs to get baptized, so he accepted a baptismal date for may 20th. We are super excited. they did not go to church this week because of the vacation that they had but I know that he is going to progress very well. Actually this sunday we were pretty lonely in church. Not many members went to church. There had to have been less than 30 people there. Alot of the members went to go sell things because sunday was the last day of the fair that they had in town. It is kind of disappointing because the members know better. They should know that not going to work on Sunday will bring them more blessings in their lives than a few extra pesos will. But that was that.

I have started practicing piano on my keyboard again. I made it my goal to wake up at 6 so that I can practice for an hour, but I feel like I am a slow learner.  I want to be able to play the hymns in Sacrament meeting because we have to sing acapella other wise. But i just cant seem to learn the hymns fast enough to be able to play them well on sunday. 

Today we had a really fun Pday because one of the zone leader had his Bday today so we decided to throw a surprise party. Elder Reid (he was in my district in the CCM) planned to fill up a bunch of water balloons and later attack him with the water balloons. So that was what we did. We got to the church and Elder Reid and Elder Tice had already filled up 600 water balloons. They filled all the trash cans in the church with the water balloons. Then when the whole zone was at the church we hid all the trash cans in a room. Then the zone leaders and the sister training leaders arrived. They changed into their sports clothes and we put a cake outside as bait. Then we all hid in the room with the trashcans of water balloons and waited for them to go outside. Then the other zone leader (one of them was in on it with us) came into the room where we were hiding and said to us, "go get them." then we all burst out of the room with a bunch of water balloons and had a massacre. It was super fun it turned into a huge water balloon fight that lasted quite a while. It was a pretty fun day. 

Thanks so much for the package. We have been enjoying the candy all this week. It is hard to believe that in 8 weeks I will be home. The mission really is such an amazing experience. I love it and I love the Savior.  

te amo

Elder Snyder

P.S. I forgot to tell you about this weird tradition that they have here in the northern part of mexico. For the past few weeks there have been people walking around beating their drums with these masks on. They are called Fariseos (Pharisees). And they pretty much walk around town all day beating their drums and on Easter Sunday is when they burn their masks. This is one of the masks that I put on.

Prepping for the water balloon fight

Zone Birthday Celebration

Week 94: Everything but a kitchen sink…literally!!

Hola

I am happy to hear about all of the exciting things that have been happening. That video of Parker playing the piano is amazing. I think I know who my piano teacher will be when I get back home. :)

This week was a pretty good week. We were able to teach a lot of people this week the only sad thing was that many of them did not really want us to come back for a second visit... haha. There are so many people and we really only have time to visit people that really want to learn more. 

So in our house we have to wash our dishes outside because we dont have a kitchen sink. So we washed all the dishes and left them outside to dry but when we brought them back inside we realized that both of our knives were missing. Then we realized that the dish soap was missing also. We think that someone has stolen our stuff so now we have been storing everything inside of the house. 

Also this sunday we were able to have a miracle. First of all I played the piano in sacrament meeting. Wooooooh!!!! And it was not perfect, but it turned out okay. I played nearer my god to thee and sweet hour of prayer. During sweet hour of prayer i was kind of nervous and I kind of forgot to breath while I was playing so I think that contributed to my errors, but I later remembered to breath and it got a little better :p But besides that we were able to have a new investigator at church. They recently moved to etchojoa and her husband is not a member. They also got married like 2 weeks ago. He seems like he is really interesed in the church and we have an appointment with him in the afternoon so hopefully everything goes well. 

We also gave service one morning. There is a really humble member in the branch and one day we came by in the afternoon and saw that he was starting to build his house so we offered to come the next day and help him build. It was pretty fun and I got to learn how to mix concrete and build a house :)

One of the greatest things that happened this week was that I got to meet Elder Evans. We had a district conference for priesthood holders in the district and president Myers came to speak. But along with him came this Elder. I had never seen him before and from the moment I first saw him I knew that he was different. After the meeting, I started to talk with him because I could see that he was standing all alone. I supposed that he did not know how to speak spanish that well and that was why he wasnt talking with anyone. So I got to know him a little better. He did not speak spanish that well and he had just gotten into his second transfer. Then he told me with disappointment in his eyes and said that tomorrow he was going home. That he had some emotional problems and had to return home. I felt really sad and in that moment I sat right next to him and put my arm around his shoulder and told him that everything was going to be alright. That he had every intension to serve the Lord and that he did what he was commanded and now the Lord has a new mission planned for him. He then put his head on my shoulder and said very sadly, "I know." I was able to give him a few more words of encouragement but while i was talking with him the voice of the spirit whispered something to me. I could feel the spirit say, "he deserves to be here." I in that moment knew that this missionary was called to serve in this mission and that the Lord knew that he was going to go home early, but that it was necesary that he came. When it was time for him to leave I gave him a great big hug. And I was happy to hear him say, "thank you elder Snyder for being a great example to me." I am never going to forget that. 

Today was also pretty fun because we went to Navojoa with all the other Elders and played soccer in the morning. The sisters were also there, but they were playing volleyball. but when we were all resting in the shade after playing a round, those sneaky sisters had gone to the store and bought water balloons and filled them up in the bathroom. Then when we were all resting they attacked us with their water balloons. it was pretty funny. Then after that, we helped fill up the rest of the balloons and had a big water fight at the end. it was a pretty great day.

Love you all so much

Elder Snyder

Week 93: Conference!

"Tall and handsome"  haha! What can I say?

Hola

I hope you all loved conference. It was really awesome. I had to listen to it all in spanish, but I could understand everything that they were saying. It is crazy to believe that my first conference I did not understand any of the talks and now I can understand all of them. 

We had a pretty great week this week. Starting off, we were able to find many new investigators this week. We also were able to have our first Branch FHE. It was really great. Most of the branch members were able to come and we were able to teach them about the importance of a prophet and how they can take full advantage of the conference talks. Also one of our investigators went to conference and really liked it. We hope that he can continue to progress. 

Of all the conference talks, the one that I liked the most was by Elder Rasband when he talked about obeying the first prompting of the Holy Ghost. I think that listening to the Holy Ghost is the most important thing that we can do in our life because the Holy Ghost will always guide us to make the right choice. It can also be one of the hardest things to do because it involves lining up our will with the will of God. I know that the only way that we can respond to the first prompting is by being obedient to the commandments and having a complete desire to do what it right. I also know that we will be happier if we live in this way. Our Heavenly Father desires us to be happy and if we do what we wants us to do we will be blessed. 

We are also planning a branch mission activity. What we want to do is some sort of "meet the mormons" type thing, but we want to do it here in Etchojoa. The town is kind of small so everyone kind of knows everyone. So we want to have an activity were we show all the different members of the church and what they do in their everyday lives. We still have not planned out all the details but when we do, I will be sure to let you all know. 

Today for our PDay we went to Alamos, which is a little town that is like an hour away from Navojoa. It was really cool. We went to see the catholic church (I know…it seems like we go and see catholic churches a lot, but there are a lot of them here), and we were also able to climb up one of the hills that is in the middle of Alamos and see the entire town. Also something interesting happened up top. One of the Zone leaders got to the top and then had an asthma attack and did not have his inhaler. So we brought him a plastic bag so he could breath in and out. Then when he had calmed down a little bit, he asked me to give him a priesthood blessing. So we went to a place where it would not call the attention of all the rest of the people and i was able to give him a blessing. And in that moment a miracle occurred. Like a minute after I had given him the blessing, his companion, out of nowhere, pulls his inhaler out of his backpack! His companion was like, "what the heck is this doing here?!?!" It was truly a miracle because he was able to receive instant relief. But it was a really fun activity. I will send you more pictures when I can get everyone else to send the ones that they took. 

Love you all. I hope that you all got the best out of conference. It truly is such a blessing that we have living prophets on the earth today that are guided to tell us exactly what we need to do and know. 

Con mucho amor

Elder Snyder

Hiking up the hill in Alamos

Hermana U with her super exaggerated tiredness!

My District

Me with Elder Martinez

Week 92: First Week in Etchajoa

This was waiting for us when we got to our house. A present from the previous Elders. 

Hello

Well Etchojoa is pretty awesome. It was very interesting my first few days here. My zone leader showed me around for 2 days. So I had to days to remember where all the members live and how to get around. But I got it down really quick. It was not that hard to learn where everyone lives. The hard part now is to find people to baptize. We kind of struggled this week in finding new investigators, but we were able work with a member and talk with one of the members of her family who is not a member. She seems really interested in going to church. She was not able to go last sunday but we are going to try and get her to go this week. 

Also the branch seems to be like a typical branch. There is a lot of drama between the members but we hope to be able to fix that. One of the member is super awesome. They own a restaurant that is very close to our house and they told us that the missionaries always eat for free :) They are the Velez family. They are some of the oldest members here in etchojoa and they also have a daughter that is out on a mission. The attendance here is around 34 with a lot of young kids. There seems to be an active primary here. We also have bikes. But my bike is not as good as the bike that I had in Alameda. I have had to invest money into my bike but it will be worth it. It is also kind of funny because this is my companions 2nd area in his mission and his first time with a bike. But Elder Martinez is a hard worker. He is going to help me work hard my last few weeks here. Can't believe I only have 11 more weeks. It sounds so short when I say it like that. 

I also forgot to tell you, but I am also the DL here. My district is really small. It is just us and the Elders and Sister missionaries that are both in the Huatabampo branch. My whole district is branches so it is pretty fun.  

Love you so much

I will try to write more next week

Elder Snyder