Week 53: Awesome/Not-so-awesome

The Epic Vineyard District at Zone Conference

Hey everyone!

This week was pretty rainy, which is uncommon for here. Fortunately we never really got caught in the rain. There was one night where we legit just got drinks at Maverick and watched the lightning cuz it was pretty awesome.

Also, Elder Toro failed to mention to me until this week that he's MET Daddy Yankee!! He legit pulled up a picture of him when he was like 10 with Daddy Yankee. Turns out his mom's cousin used to like do sound or something for him and when he came to Florida one time he hooked them up. Blew my mind though.

Anyway, this week had some really awesome things and some not-so-awesome things. One of the not-so-awesome things was one night this lady was biking around our apartment complex and stopped us and asked if we were missionaries, and then she asked us for a blessing. Before we could give her a blessing though she proceeded to tell us her entire life story for a really long time, and she had had a really really sad life. She had struggled with addiction and substance abuse almost her whole life, and had been in a lot of abusive relationships. She just would not stop talking and she kinda said a lot of the same things, and she eventually told us that she has short-term memory loss. Then I realized that she had no idea she was talking to us for that long. We gave her a blessing and she was very appreciative, and then one of our ward mission leaders helped her out with a ride home.

One of the awesome things this week was Zone Conference! It was actually really good and I learned a lot of new things. President Evanson talked a lot about living the covenant path, which was cool. It was great to see all the homies again, and hang out with the old homies all day too. We talked a lot about inviting people to be baptized, which was very appropriate because we were planning on inviting Adrian to be baptized that night!

Which leads me to another not-so-awesome thing. We didn't end up getting to meet with Adrian that night, or the following night which we had rescheduled for, so we tried to reschedule again. When we tried to confirm that lesson, Theresa texted us and said that she and Adrian were going to need some time before we were able to meet with them again. She said it wasn't anything church related, but that she and Adrian just needed to work through some things together. It was sad to hear, and not just because Adrian is like our top investigator, but because he and Theresa have become my friends. I could really tell that the adversary has been working on them, now right as there are just barely getting started in choosing the right again, right as their testimonies are just beginning again. If you all could please pray for Adrian and Theresa, that would be so amazing.

Anyway, an awesome thing that happened this week is we found 3 more people to teach! Thank you for all the prayers that we would find more people to teach. I really have learned that prayers get answered. That Filipino family we met consists of the mom, her husband, and her parents. Her husband is actually American and doesn't really participate when we teach them, but this time we were able to meet the grandpa, Alfredo! He and his wife really only speak Tagalog, but we've got that covered with one of our ward mission leaders that always comes.

We also started teaching a young couple from Saudi Arabia. Their names are Abdul and Bayan. They go to UVU on scholarship and they wanted to come to Utah for school because of the strong religious presence here, which they are accustomed to from living in Saudi Arabia and being Muslim. They said they've lived in Utah on and off for about 7 years and have always wanted to learn more about the church, but have never known how they could even do that! After we taught them the Restoration, Abdul said, "Thank you very much! This was very informative and answered a lot of my questions." They both had lots more questions too, about doctrine and cultural stuff in the Church, and even expressed interest in coming to church too!

Another awesome thing was that Sley got baptized last Saturday! She's the girl from Haiti that was going to the family ward with her sister that we were teaching, but then she wanted to go to the YSA ward. She ended up being taught some more and baptized by the Elders we live with, and Elder Toro and I went to the baptism and it was awesome! Elder Toro and I got to teach the Restoration right after the actual baptism too as part of the service, which was really cool too.

So yeah, a lot of awesome things! I love learning about how Jesus Christ can help people whenever because of His infinite power. President Evanson did a devotional on our mission's Facebook page last night, The Road to Hope and Peace. He told a story about how he had just gotten called as a stake president and was feeling really overwhelmed. He and his wife went on a trip to Israel (which is a DREAM trip of mine) and he said when they visited the Garden of Gethsemane he was still feeling inadequate about his new calling when he had a thought that said, "Focus on what you can do and not what you can't. Because of what I did here, you can do anything."

I know that as we seek to do what the Savior asks us to do, as hard as it seems at times, we can have true and everlasting happiness.

Stay awesome!

Elder Snyder