Week 64: October 22-28, 2019 The Good Samaritan

Hey Everyone

So this week was honestly such a blast we have had so much fun and have been able to teach so many people and help so many others grow their relationship with Christ. One of the highlights of this week was with a new family that we have been able to begin teaching. We have come a few times to visit with the Mother Alejandra, but almost always she has not been home. The first time we visited her she was intrigued in the message we had to share about the Book of Mormon and invited us to come back. This past Friday, we went to go visit them again and when she opened the door she had her coat on. I thought oh no she is leaving once again. but blessedly she had just come home and still had her coat on.  It was definitely the perfect timing. We began to talk with her, and heard her husband on the phone, and invited him to come in. We soon learned that recently he had an accident at work while carrying paint and damaged his sciatic nerve, because of this, Alejandra has had to get a job to help support her family. He, Ulises, told us of his pain, and we offered to give him a blessing. He accepted. After giving the blessing a sweet spirit came into the room, we soon after testified of the restored gospel and this family, you could just see their eyes light up! It was so amazing. We invited the father to offer the closing prayer, and it just filled me with joy to think how happy God is to hear one of his children pray, especially after such a long time. God truly loves us and wants to hear us, our words and feelings. 

So, Saturday night we had a last-minute text asking us to speak this Sunday. So my companion and I prepared talks to give the next day. That night I studied more of the parable of the good Samaritan. I actually didn’t write anything down until 20 mins before the meeting. I wrote down a few bullet points and scriptures. We finally got to the chapel at 10:30 right when the meeting started and four of our investigators came! We had a beautiful sacrament and a youth speaker spoke for like 2 mins and then it was my companion's turn. He gave a wonderful talk for ten minutes. He left me with 25 minutes of the meeting until the prayer and hymn. It was honestly one of my favorite talks I have ever given on the symbolism of the good Samaritan. It was such a spiritual experience. After the meeting and teaching a couple of investigators we went to the comida and the hermana told me she thought she was listening to a general authority, but I then found that there was the fourth speaker. So, I took the time of someone else.  I felt so bad when I found out. 

LOVE YOU ALL
LOVE ELDER SNOW

Week 48-49 July 1-15, 2019 President Has Come to Town

Hey Everyone,                                                                                       July 15, 2019

Haha As it says in the title President Maldonado has finally gotten to Pachuca! This happened a while back (about 3 weeks) but I haven't written for a few weeks, been super busy! It was so cool to finally get to know him, he truly is a man sent from God. I know he will be a great President! He truly wants the best for the people here in Pachuca! He is a really kind man! Also Happy fourth of July! A little late but I hope you all enjoyed your firework shows. That day we sung the national anthem in all of our teaching appointments. It was GREAT!

My companion and I were able to have a really cool experience with one of our investigators. Vania is a fourteen old girl her mother is an inactive member of over 20 years. Anyways by pure divine intervention, we were able to find and have been able to teach this lovely family. Vania has many health problems and one of the reoccurring issues that she has is painful skin rashes that are caused by many things such a stress, usually they last for weeks on end. At the beginning of one of these rashes we had the opportunity to visit her without knowing that she had a rash. When we got there, we saw her red raw arms and offered her a blessing. Two hours after giving her the blessing the rash was completely gone. It was a really cool miracle to see the power of God bless this 14 year old Life. He truly cares about each of our struggles and wants to bless and help us with them. All we need is ask. Ask in faith for his divine help. 

God loves each and everyone of us. He wants to Guide us to reach our full potential all we need is follow him! LOVE YOU ALL!

Love,
Elder Snow

Week 23.5 January 03-07, 2019 Guerrero del Gastralgia

Hey Everyone,

So, these past few days have been super fun-ish........ let’s just say I have tried a lot of new foods.  So, we have been contacting a lot here in Guerrero, and we finally decided to contact this taco stand in the town center, literally the only taco stand. We bought tomatoes and decided to give them to him, he kindly accepted them and asked if we wanted some tacos, I said no but my companion said yes and so we ate some tacos, made of fat. They were good, but I knew they were not good for my health...hahha. He is super awesome but when we went to his house to teach him and his family, he was super defensive and really blocked the spirit. Then, we also went to a comida with a member and her husband made me try pansita, a Mexican dish consisting of meat cooked inside of intestines inside of the stomach of said animal. It was seasoned great, but you could feel the rugae (the wavy lining of the stomach) and it was really hard to choke down, even for my companion whose Latino! Here is a picture for your enjoyment.

But yeah so these past few days I have been waking up in the night with super strong stomach aches and headaches so yesterday I actually missed church and slept. I hope you all enjoyed your first 2 hours of church.  I am excited to try it next week. Feeling a lot better now but yeah it was kinda chafa (crappy).

On that note, we have a super awesome family that we have started teaching. They lived in Kansas for 10 or more years then moved back to Mexico. Their daughter, Joseline is 12 years old and has been coming to church and is really making a lot of progress. Her parents are both progressing but at a slower pace. We are really hoping that they will be able to get baptized and make covenants with our Heavenly Father. When we gave the mother a Book of Mormon, she was so excited because she had only seen them in English back in Kansas two or so years. They are a golden family, they just have a hard time coming to church. We taught them the plan of salvation and the restoration and it went super great. It is so good to see this family progress. Please pray for them. (Javier, Rosio, Joseline, and Joseph, La familia Peña)

Love,

Elder Snow

Week 15 November 6-12, 2018 The Lords Work

HOLA Everybody!

This week has been a blast serving the people of Guerrero! The English classes are going well! And my companion and I are doing great.

On Wednesday I went on companion exchanges with Elder Dale from Tepa! it was a blast! During the time with Elder Dale we were able to visit quite a few people and teach them about the gospel. We were able to visit one of my contacts from last week and teach them about prophets and our Heavenly Father. The family was very receptive, and I hope to keep progressing with them!  We were able to do a lot of work!

This past week end we were in the absolute middle of nowhere (also known as Guerrero Uno) we were contacting and visiting references with an RM. It was super dusty and windy so for some reason one of my contacts decided to fold in half in my eye. So, I pulled it out to fix it. As soon as I was about to put the contact in my eye it blew away. Never to be seen again (by me because I literally couldn't). I was kinda like shoooot. My other contact was fine but having the difference in both eyes was giving me a head ache, so I took the other one out as well. I was now completely blind. Well, I guess only mostly. But as the night went on, I really learned to appreciate my glasses and contacts. Safe to say I always carry glasses with me now. As the night drew on and I was able to visit people and contact. I ended up contacting several members I knew, and they were like “elder you have eaten at my house. (i then apologized and told them what was going on, but I don´t think they believed that I couldn’t see them). Anyways everything looked very different, the lights were a lot brighter and the darks darker. I had to rely a lot more on my companion and on our Heavenly Father. Riding a bike and not being able to see is not an easy task. It made me realize how grateful I am to have an eternal perspective because I know the truths of the gospel. I can see clearer and I never want to lose it. I know the Lord works in mysterious ways, because while I was in this state, I ended up contacting someone Elder Cruz and I had contacted before. The last time I contacted them they refused and basically ran a way. But this time she agreed to have us teach her this week. I hope it will all work out. But everything happens for a reason.

This week we were able to work a lot with the members to contact their friends and neighbors. They have been such a great help with the missionary work here in Guerrero. You all should go help the missionaries in your area members + missionaries = success. I know that Heavenly Father loves each and every one of his children and wants us to help every single one of them to come to know him. Us as members have this divine role of gathering Israel. I know that God's hand is in all of our lives we just need to take a moment to see it. Love you all!

Elder Snow

Week 14 October 30 - November 5 Dia de los muertos

Hey Everyone,

These past few days have been so much fun. Honestly, it was such a great past week. Everything I have done/seen has been super interesting. For those of you who don’t know, November first and second celebrates the Latino celebration of Dia de Los Muertos (Day of the Dead). It was a super awesome that I got to experience this tradition. Here in Mexico fireworks are always going off, celebration saints, deaths and other things. These fireworks are more of a pop with almost no flash and a loud bang. They will sometimes go off at like 5 am. So that’s pretty cool. For Thursday and Friday, it was so cool to see the way that people celebrate it. Most just spend time with their family at the graveyard and in the centros (cemetary) where they have musical celebrations. The movie, Coco, is pretty accurate. Decorations and flowers are everywhere. The orange flowers can be seen literally everywhere. It is a cool holiday, and we were able to take advantage of it to teach the Plan of Salvation. It is super cool. Skeletons and Traditional Mexican Dances can be seen all around. It was really cool to see the people so animated about everything with their families. It was awesome to see the carpets made of flower petals, rice, beans, and other things.

This week has been super cold because it has rained a ton, which usually never happens this time of year. In our apartment, we could actually see our breath. Everything is super great though.

Yesterday, while we were on the way back from visiting one of my companion’s old areas for a baptism in ixmiquilpan, we were on in a combi (passenger van, like minibuses, super great) that was packed with about 15 people. I started to contact a 20-year-old mujer (woman) that went to the university in Tepa. It was super dark, being about 7 pm. A short while into explaining a little bit about the church, I realized that another college student was listening to us, so I began to talk a little bit louder. Also, the combis here have four rows that face each other like a rectangle. I gifted them both a Book of Mormon and I asked if I could read a passage. It was too dark to read, but without me asking, another woman shined her phone light that I didn’t realize was listening to me. When she turned on the light, I realized the entire combi was looking at me! I continued to testify of the Book of Mormon and responded to the questions people asked. The spirit was extremely strong. People asked me how much the book cost because they wanted one. A majority of the combi asked for one. After I started handing out Book of Mormons to everyone, and we ran out! I was so sad because not everyone was able to receive a Book of Mormon. It was so cool we ended up handing out 11 Book of Mormons on just that one combi. This experience was so amazing.

On Friday we had a super awesome zone conference. Valle de Mezquital and Tezontepec. It was great to be so spiritually recharged and to see other missionaries. In the talk given by Hermana Kimball, she talked about the Brother of Jared and how we need to be obedient like the boats they were instructed to make. Tight and strong so that we don’t let any water in to sink us. And God gave the Brother of Jared a solution, but not a perfect one. He didn’t give him a way to breathe or see. The brother of Jared had to ask God to help him fix these problems so that they could cross the waters and survive. God knew that there were flaws with this design, but because of it, the Brother of Jared had to come to the Lord with his own ideas, with his own work, and with his own faith. Because of this, the Brother of Jared was able to see God’s hand in his life. I know that God gives us solutions to our problems. He gives us companions, families, friends, and many other solutions. But not a single one of them is perfect. But because of that, we learn to grow, we learn to ask in faith for divine assistance. We learn that God is our Heavenly Father and that through Him, we can do all things. This is such a powerful story to me- that God gives us a perfect faith, a stronger testimony, a stronger family. I testify to you all that God loves us and hopes for us all to be better and we can do that through His Son, Jesus Christ.

LOVE YOU ALL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Love,

Elder Snow