The Worth of A Soul

I was going to title this one "There and Back Again: An Elder's Journey" , but I decided that would be a little cliche. 

     Wow...... I honestly don't know what to write about.... Is this real? Am I really going home this week? Do I finally get to hug my family and friends who I only get to think about while in Virginia? These are the questions and thoughts that go through my head as I write this final email home. This last Sunday, we had a mission homecoming talk and they had more time than he thought. So, with ten minutes left, the First counselor asked the full time missionaries to come up and bare their testimonies. He made sure to let everyone know that Elder Scholes and I go home on Friday. We went up and had the privilege of sharing our thoughts about our missions. 

     As I spoke, I remembered a scripture that President Hogge shares with me before I left on my mission. D&C 18:10, 15-16. In these scriptures, it tells about the worth of a soul to God and how great shall be our joy if we save but one soul. That one soul, is me. This is what I testified about to our ward. Anyways... I won't spoil any of my homecoming talk. If you have any questions about any part of my mission, you can ask me on Friday or Sunday. Maybe on Saturday... 

     One of the highlights this week was goat wrangling! We have a service project in Manassas. It was tons of fun! Our companionship's job was to catch the goats put them in pens and then look at their number and see if they were sold or not. It was a lot of jumping, diving, tackling, and, getting scratched up. It was really comical watching a goat drag Elder Hall around. He turned around and tackled the thing afterwards. Haha! That was a fun day. 

     Anyways. I really don't know what else to write.... Well, I guess I will see all of you in about four days. I leave on Friday morning and will arrive in the SLC airport at 13:14. That is almost exactly two years from when I was dropped off at the MTC. Crazy huh? I can't wait to see you all there! Love you!

For the last time, this is Elder Snell. Signing out.

~ Elder Zac Snell

Picture from Elder Hall taken Today. Centerville Zone. Of course Zac is the tallest by sitting on an Elder's shoulders. 

To Convert an Island

    This week was pretty good. It was a lot of finding and teaching potentials. We have found a couple new investigators as well! We also adopted someone from the Centreville 1st ward. We are now a trio and covering the Centreville 1st and 2nd. I will send a video of him to you. He is a funny guy. His name is Elder Scholes. He is from Rigby Idaho, sound familiar? Same place Elder Hall is from. Cool huh!? I thought it was pretty funny.

     We had a really awesome lesson yesterday. A member invited us over to their house to teach a lesson to their friend. He is a really nice guy and is super interested in family history work. Apparently, his family is from is island somewhere and President Woodruff went on a mission to and he converted half the island. He was very curious with why hey converted and what message they loved. We shared with him he Restoration. Elder Hall just took charge like a boss and taught like a pro. Elder Scholes added his testimony with awesome personal stories and I just backed things up with scripture. The lesson went super well and he asked if he could attend one of our services. I hope he continues to learn about the church and gains his own testimony. Probably the best lesson this week.

     Well here you have it! How to convert and Island. Teaching them the Restoration of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I love it here! Thanks again for all the support you give me! 

See you next week.......

~ Elder Zac Snell

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FINDING FURY

     Welcome to the awesome dictation of Elder Snell's email! This week was pretty cool. I don't know if I have a whole bunch of stories but I think I will do my best to tell you what happened. OK let's start!

     So the first thing that pops on mind is about the finding best! It was actually called the finding fury because we wanted to get an awesome alliteration that was totally non-cliché! Elder Jones's idea. Here's what happened, we took the entire zone and we split them into different areas and different companions, so I went with Elder Snow to Vint Hill.  Knocked on these HUGE houses and people sometimes answer the door, but I think that we did a really good job. That is his Asian man who talked us for a little bit but politely told us to go away but you could understanding is really trying to get out. There's just a ton of tracting. We went finding for about nine hours straight! The only thing that made this bearable was the fact that we were switching companions and areas every two or so hours. Our goal as a zone was to collect 188 return appointments. We did OK. We ended up with about 73. I thought of Caden when I heard that number. Haha! That was fun. Oh! I was also able to use some Twi!! We found some Ghanaian in this Hispanic neighborhood and it made my day!

     Another really cool thing that happened was on Sunday. There were five kids being baptized and one of them has a less active father who doesn't hold the priesthood yet, so he would not be able to baptize his daughter. So I get a call from Sister Suarez informing me that her daughter asked if I would baptize her on Sunday. I was shocked and humbled at their request, so I accepted the invitation. That was an awesome experience. Her name is Mia. She remembered us from a couple weeks ago when we came to teach her about baptism and the story goes from there. The baptism went very smoothly and the chapel was packed to the brim for those five kids. Definitely a day to remember. :)

     Not much else happened this week, but I hope you enjoyed the stories that came from this week's adventure! I love you all and thank you for all the support I receive. I promise it doesn't go unappreciated.

     One final thing.......... HAPPY BIRTHDAY, LEXIE!!! I hope you had a stellar one! I will give you a big birthday hug soon! Love you!

~ Elder Zac Snell :)

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Mia & Elder Snell

God's Sense of Humor

Aug, 17th, 2015

 Well, this email will probably not be as long as usual. Just FYI.

     Hector was baptized! Whoot! It was really good. Tons and tons of people showed up and we were stoked about it! Elder Hall, King, and I decided that we needed to do a musical number so we sang Nearer my God To Thee in A'Capella it was sweet! Is really funny, because we went and push the first note Elder King started 3 1/2 steps above what our starting note was. We would've gotten away with it, but he was the starting soloist. Other than the screwup in the musical number, it was pretty good. Other King was asked to baptize Hector, so that was cool. He did a good job. Hector then asked me to confirm him the next day and some of his friends showed up to that so that was cool. And that's about it Hector.

     

     Dad, mom, you'll be so happy for me! I cook delicious chicken with the help of Elder Hall! We got it for Costco for about 12 bucks and it fed us for three or five meals! The chicken was super super delicious, so yeah!

     So, I taught district meetings this week! It was EPIC! We mainly talked about goalsetting and then set a big goals! We are going to 100 member lessons! Whoot!! So far on track we have six weeks to meet this goal. This week we had 22 member lessons all together as a district. Last week we had seven. It's awesome because we improve! So that was fun.

     Oh! I totally forgot! Elder Hall and I were in this sketchy neighborhood and we go down this trail. I turn to Elder Hall and tell him, "we are totally going to get mugged." Haha! We did... By six year old kids with their semi auto nerf guns. God surely has a sense of humor, haha!

     So I'm not sure what else to talk about, so I'm going to count to five and see if I remember anything. One… Two… Three… Four… Five… Yup... Nothing. Let me know if you have any questions for what's going on over here! I would be happy to address your questions and or comment. Love you people!

     ~Elder Zac Snell :)

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Downpour

August 24th, 2015

Hola! Not much that happened this week to report about. Elder Hall is keeping us busy. He is an awesome missionary! I went in an exchange for the night with a Zone Leader and he did very well leading out the area! He is going to do very well throughout his mission. I am really sad that I will not be here to watch him progress. Hopefully he will email me. :) oh! The Downpour!

     So this week has been crazy with the rain. On Thursday, I had Elder Ramos over from the Manassas second ward to be on an exchange in my area. It was really fun to get to know Elder Ramos! He is from Mexico and his family are pretty recent converts. Anyways. We are biking home and all of a sudden he wind gets really cold. Well! Time to head back to the apartment, there is going to be one crazy storm ahead! We booked it back on our bikes back home. As soon as we walked inside, it just dumped buckets of rain on us. Thankfully, we had Brother Nanto to take us around places for the night. On the contrary, Elder Hall and Elder Medina were in Manassas on bikes. Elder Hall showed me a video of what it was like during the storm there and how soaked they were. Haha! I felt so bad for them, but it is the first of many rainy days for the both of them. I will attach a video with the email about it. 

     Well, other that that, not much happened. We are always busy and I have realized that when we are where Heavenly Father needs us to be, then he will provide us what to do and say. I have found that from the past few days and has strengthened my testimony about finding that one person who needs the Gospel. He really is aware of where we are and what we need at all times. It blows my mind to think about how many people on this world and the individual needs of each specific Person. We have been able to be in the right place, at the right time for His children. I LOVE being a missionary and wouldn't change or trade it for the world!

~ Elder Zac Snell :)

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I was sent this pic from members Bob and Sheri Walter. She said that Elder Hall and Snell are filled with the spirit and they love being with them. She said thanks for sharing him. (Wendi)

The Fourth Movement

AUG 10, 2015 

Good morning everybody! How is everyone? Good answer! I guess you're wondering how my week went, so I guess I'll have to tell you. Let's go!

     On Monday, we played football. It was sort of fun, it was cool because I threw touchdown! That was a first, because I usually throw interceptions. That was about the coolest part of the day. Anyways... On to more interesting stuff!

     So, on Monday night, I received a call from Elder White and he informed me that I will be a district leader and I will be training. Whoot! So yeah. That's fun! Elder King is going to be Finish training. Transfers came up really fast and I am now with my new companion. His name is Elder Hall. He is from Rigby Idaho and loved to play rugby. Yup! So that is super sweet! Yes, he is taller than me, I will attach a picture of us at the Baseball game! Oh yeah! I have to tell you about that! The baseball game was epic! There were so many missionaries there. Washington DC north and Washington DC South Mission were both there. I met President cook of the North Mission. He's nice. We got really far away from the game, but what else would you expect. I have this awesome picture of all the missionary sitting in the stands. It's a section filled with white whites and ties. We even got on the Jumbotron! No picture of that, it came really fast and left really fast. I saw a whole bunch of friends there! Mission friends that is. A whole bunch of my friends went home this past transfer on Thursday. Anyways, the metro was really really crowded, but no metro dominos this week. On the way home we took the wrong bus, so we had to go back to Ballston from McLean and then to West Falls Church. Then get on the metro at West Falls Church and head over to Vienna where the Zone Leaders were waiting for us. I promise my goal is to get home by 22:30, but the game ended at 22:30. Thus making my plan I dream that was destined to not come true. We wound up getting home around 01:00. Now get this, here's the best part. Since I am the district leader, I have to wait for my entire district to send me a text telling me they got home safely, thus pushing back my bedtime about 30 minutes. I was so dead tired and many of you know how I get when I'm tired… Let's leave it at that… well that's the adventure of the metro place. Turns out that the train derailed couple nights ago, so that caused a whole bunch of confusion. Have been out of happened we would've been home safely and a lot sooner. 

     Well, thus begins the fourth and final movement! It's time to be epic and Go Forth baptizing everybody! NOBODY CAN STOP US!!! As the song says, "ain't no mountain high enough, ain't no river wide enough, ain't no valley Low enough, to keep me from getting to you babe!" WHOOOOOO!!!! BRING IT ON!!!

~ Elder Zac Snell :)

Sitting On The Bench

August 3, 2015 


   This week was a pretty average week.... Well, I type that and instantly flashes through my mind all the awesome stuff that actually happened. Haha! I will start with Tuesday's rain storm. We were walking over to Brother Wolford's house to return his shovel and we remember to bring an umbrella and jacket for the walk because he clouds look a little grey. Suddenly, we start to feel rain drops. Not two minutes later, it felt like we were walking through a Hurricane. I didn't bring my rain jacket because I had an umbrella, but Elder King had one. Here we were, two missionaries trudging through what felt like a waterfall, with shovels in our hands. He world was only left to question what in tarnation we planned on doing. I was huddled under my umbrella and felt like a boss battling the wind and rain with my trusty semi-water-resistant deflection shield, while Elder King had his epic body suit which quenched the icy blows of the storm. Eventually, after walking a mile or so, a member drove by and insisted on picking us up to take us to the Wolford's house. 

     We had a bunch of lessons at Hector's "House." He always wants to meet at the bench in front of his house. We had some great lessons. It was at the bench when he told us that he was getting kicked out of his house. The lady he is renting from got really mad a him and decided to kick him out. He had until Friday to figure out where to go or else he was sleeping in the streets. One of the saddest phone calls I have ever received was, "well guys, you will find me under the nearest by bridge." My heart about melted. The moment Hector told us this, we knew it was time to fast. So the next day we fasted for him. Fasting has increased! Let me explain why. Come Saturday, we were looking for Hector. We went to his "house" and asked the lady if he knew she knew where he was. She said that he was upstairs napping but she will go wake him up. Was surprising her eyes met him again at the bench. We talk to him and he said that she feel sorry for him and will give him a second chance. Talk about a miracle! No one can tell me the fasting does not work it should be for a righteous cause. We were really relieved! He is scheduled to be baptized on August 15! We cannot wait!

     Transfers of this week, so going to happen! I will see you in the end of this week. This week should be insane! I have a departing Temple interview trip thinking. Since this will be my last transfer I need to go to the temple with all the other missionaries to end soon. Should be fun. Ha ha, I am so excited for this week! You should be excited for the next email.

     Thanks for reading! Hope you enjoyed it. Tune in next time for awesomeness!

     ~ Elder Zac Snell

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