Week 11 October 9-15, 2018 Intercambios

Hi Everyone!

This past week was great, it was a lot calmer, which has been very nice! On Tuesday and Wednesday, we went on companion exchanges with two elders in our district. On Tuesday, I stayed in Guerrero with Elder Gonzalez, and Wednesday, I stayed here with Elder Ponce. They are both nice missionaries, and both are from Mexico! It was nice to see different forms of teaching and contacting!

So, this week my companion was "sick" for most of the day on Friday. So, we didn’t make our goal of fifteen contacts daily and only got 3. It was really frustrating to me so on Saturday, I wanted to make up the difference, we ended up doing 40 contacts and me making up 30 of the contacts haha. I was a little overzealous. Guerrero needs some help in the interest category. Everyone here is very devout Catholic or drunk. It is very hard to teach these categories.

Every day, except Mondays, we go and eat at a member’s house. The sisters here are amazing, but sometimes they forget that we are humans and can’t eat as much as fifteen whole cows. Meals usually begin with Hot rice or Hot noodles in ketchup water, then we eat chicken (usually chicken) cooked in a spicy temperature wise Hot red sauce, or sometimes we eat other meat, but on rare occasions, (barbacoa, carnitas, and chorizo). Also, with the meals, we are served with either apple soda (manzanita) or fruit puree water (Floaties and everything).

Honestly, I can´t complain the food is really good, but with hot food and the hot sun mixed with carbonation, being overstuffed and spiciness, you can see why my American stomach begins to have issues hahaha.

Anyways I had a really great experience during one of my personal studies this week. I have been trying to study the topical guide scriptures on Jesus. It has been so cool too, little by little, come to know more about Christ, his life, and how he is our mediator between God. Because of Christ´s atonement, we come to know him and because we come to know him, we come to Know our Heavenly Father. This past Sunday, the primary had a program during sacrament and the theme of it was I am a child of God. It was cool to see how similar everything is between Utah programs and Mexico Programs. The children still act like the children in Utah, just they speak Spanish. It was cool to hear them sing about how we truly are children of a loving Heavenly Father. This fact is just so amazing. God loves each and every one of us with such an infinite and wholesome love. He truly wants us to be not just happy but joyful. I know that He knows me and that He knows you too. He has given us commandments to protect us, to help us find the best way back to him because we truly are His children. Love you all and God loves you all!

Elder Snow!

Week 10 October 2-8, 2018 Fecha Bautismal & General Conference

HI EVERYONE!!

 So, this past week has been full of adventures! Today we were able to hike a cliff called Frailes (the monks), it was super awesome and cool! The rocks were huge (but sadly my camera died so I have no way of getting pictures of it). 

{(I, the mom found these on his hard drive so maybe he actually does have pictures)}

This week has had its ups and downs, as well. We had our bikes break three different times, on the same day we both got flat tires. During intercambios (splits) the Elder that borrowed my bike complete broke-off the hand breaks it kind of sucked! I was able to do two different set of intercambios with our zone leaders, Elder Gledhill, and Elder Dale. It was really fun to serve in Tepa as well, we were also able to go see general conference in a chapel in tepa so that I could watch it in English and that my companion could watch it in Spanish.  It was such an amazing to time receive both personal revelation as well as revelation for the entire church! If you haven´t seen it go watch it with a question in mind!! I really loved Elder Hollands talk!

So, we are going to have to drop the Lopez family because they don´t want to hear any more about the gospel. It was really hard to have that happen. But after we were told they didn’t want to have us visit, we had an amazing lesson on the restoration with Anselmo, He is a fifty-year-old man that looks thirty and just came out of an 80´s rock movie. During the lesson, we asked him to be baptized on the 27th of October! It was a really amazing spiritual lesson, but I was still a little heartbroken about what happened with the Lopez family. 

While I was on intercambios con Elder Gledhill I had an awesome experience with this old lady. We decided to go visit one of their investigators but they weren´t home. So, as we looked around we tried to figure out what we should do instead. I looked across the street and saw this old Hermana that appeared very catholic, I decided to give it a try. I knocked on the door and Elder Gledhill said you do this one your own. So, I kind of did. She told us that she did not want to change her religion or listen to us because she knew that she didn´t want it. I asked her how she could know she didn´t want something if she never tries it. As we were talking she slowly opened her semi-closed door more and more. Finally, a truck passed by very close and the sidewalks here are more like fat curbs, so she invited us to come in and talk to her. She told us about her beliefs and she talked about Adam and Eve, so I slyly twisted the conversation to talk about how the fall was essential to the plan of God and then taught her about the plan of salvation. I felt bad the entire time because every time I looked to pass off the lesson to Elder Gledhill he never looked back. Turns out he wanted to see how I teach so he kindly let me teach by myself.  As I taught the Hermana. the spirit testified to her of the truth and the lesson was going very well until.... Her Borracho (drunk) Husband entered the room. He was hammered, his speech was completely slurred, and I could not understand one word. He kept smacking his fist into his other hand and raised his voice. I thought he wanted to hit me. We calmly explained to him that we were only sharing a message to strengthen their faith and we kept hoping he would leave. After 10 minutes we realized he wasn’t going to leave us alone. We told them we would love to come back next week and talk more. They agreed, and the Hermana appeared to be happy we could continue the lesson at a later time. When we said goodbye, we did a Mexican farewell where you shake hands, hug and pat the back of the person you are saluting, and then finish with a shake again. When he shook our hands, he tried to squeeze as hard as he could, which was not very hard, and pat our backs. It was basically a five star when he "patted" our backs. Haha but yeah that was my week.

Love, Elder Snow

I taught my kids how to do the "Blood" sign years ago.  I never expected JJ to one day flash this sign in Mexico.

The Photoshoot