C'mon, Let's Walk N' Talk

     Welcome back! It is good to have you around again! Now, I am
going to visit the Zoo today, so I am making this email brief and
simple!

     Elder Babb and I have been doing some excellent and fun work here
in the Alexandria 2nd ward! The past few months, we have gone over our
mileage allotment for our car, so we are taking advantage of our
relatively small area we have to work in by walking around and talking
to everyone! This is excellent because this is Elder Babb's first area
he can get away with walking or biking. Can you believe that? He has
been on car his entire mission so far (21months)! It is fun to walk
and it is awesome exercise.
     So, quick story. While we were walking and talking, we were going
through our huge potentials list and we came across someone named
Austin. It appeared to be that he lived just across the street from
where we were at. The only problem was the fact that he lived in this
huge high-rise and we didn't have his apartment number! Thankfully, he
had a cell phone number, so I picked up the phone and put my bold
voice on. He answered and I told him who we were and asked if we could
drop by in five minutes. To our much surprise, he said yes! He gave us
his apartment address and we went in. He told us that he had been
thinking about giving us a call soon because he really needed church
in his life. The only problem we ran into is the fact that he doesn't
have a car to get him to church. *facepalm* This happens EVERY TIME!!
We are now in the process of figuring out how o get him to church
now...

     Well, thanks for listening to me ramble on about stuff! I hope
everyone has an epic day! Happy Birthday to Caden on the 13th! Whoot!!
Love you all!

     ~ Elder Zac Snell :)

Sent from my iPad
-=iii=<{

The Third Time is NOT the Charm

Hey, all you people! Hey, all you people! Hey, all you people, won't you listen to me! I just had this sandwich, it was no ordinary sandwich. It was a sandwich with jelly fish jelly!!

     Ok.. Ok... Maybe I didn't have one of those sandwiches.... But I am sure that if Krabby Patties were real and jelly fish made jelly, I would undoubtedly try one. On these serious side of things, we had a really busy filled week. :) haha! So let's start with the beginning of the week!

     First off, Happy Birthday Dad!!! I love you!!

     Tuesday. So our mission has been working on our driving, so the church gave us some excellent tools to keep us driving safe. They are called a TIWI. Haha! It will talk to you if you are speeding or are driving aggressively. I have been humbled over the past week knowing that I always have someone telling me that I am not the best driver in the world. With in the first 5-10 minutes of driving I was told to "check your speed" twice. Apparently, the flow of traffic in VA is a lot faster than the speed limit. Goodness gracious are drivers here super aggressive here! Haha you don't really notice a change in your driving habits until the TIWI kicks in. :)

     Thursday was a pretty busy day, we had back to back appointments all day long. You better believe we felt like awesome missionaries. The best part about it was that we were able to do a lot of them on foot! The weather has been warming up and the humidity has been climbing as well which causes much sweating! Huzzah for staying fit!

     Saturday is the cause for the title. Lemme splain... I finally was able to accomplish one of my goals for my mission. Baptize a Ghanaian with whom I spoke twi with about the gospel! CHECK!!! Turns out hat Ghanaians either don't like water or are super buoyant because if they don't go all the way under the first time, the phrase goes, "the third times the charm." So we tried again only to prove that the third time might work. It was either a toe or her hair, but plug for the font didn't work properly so I had little water to use.... Anyways, in total, 7. Not one time but one times seven times. Heh.... Thankfully she didn't back out after the fifth try.  

     Yup! Definitely an adventure this week! Tune in next week to read, Mission Work: Attack of the TIWI's. Don't forget about its sequel, The TIWI Strikes Back.

Love you all!!

     ~ Elder Zac Snell :)

Sent from my iPad

-=iii=<{

A Staged Failure

  First off, I will begin by apologizing for the lack of an epic
letter last week. Things have peen super busy. We got caught up with a
huge conundrum with medication for a missionary out here and they
didn't have anyone to drive them around, so there was that great part
of the day. The perks of being in a car area, right?

     So this week was pretty sweet! We had brother Jim Shanahan and
Ms. Marope at church yesterday! It has been a bit since I have seen
them at church and it was superb to see them there! So let me tell you
why I chose the title that I did.
     It all began on a Friday night. We were helping one of the youth
with his eagle project. Now, this was probably one of my most favorite
eagle projects because it required much creativity and tons of fun.
The idea behind it was to have a food drive and a talent show type
dealieo going on. You bring a can of food, you get in to see the
performance. Evan, the youth doing the Project, asked us to stand
outside and make sure that everyone donated before they entered. That
went rather quickly, so we helped in other ways. Now for a little back
ground... The day prior, I had just barely figured out the chords to
"We'll Bring The World His Truth" on the uke. Back to the story. I
look at Elder Babb (my new companion from Snowflake, AZ) while a
performance is going on and give him that look like I have an Idea. He
laughs a little and asks what I am thinking. "Do you know what we
should do?"
"No...?"
"We should totally go back home, snag the uke and sing a duet!
Remember, I learned that song the other day!"
"Uh... No."
"Yeah! It would be so epic!!" Sadly, my attempt to pump him up to sing
in front people was unsuccessful. "Come on!!! It would make such an
awesome story. Picture it now!" It was then when he probably
visualized us singing and sounding terrible being boo'd of stage.
"Come on! Let's just ask Evan if it would even be a possibility."
Finally, he caved!
     We went and asked Evan and he said it would be awesome! That
convinced my companion for sure. We booked it to the car, went home,
snagged the uke, and went back to the church. On the way in, my
companion informed me that I would be a one man act. Lame..... We
walked into the gym and Evan saw us and said, "And now, I have a
surprise for you!" I walked up stage with little to no practice of
this song I learned probably 18 hrs ago. I, being used to on stage
performances collect my cool and perform. And the rest is explained
through the title.... Haha! I will send you all a video of how I did.
Just promise to laugh at me. A whole bunch of people came up to me and
told me I did a good job, but I felt like I could have done better. Oh
well. At least there are a bunch of people who are now coming to the
youth activity we do every Friday night. Huzzah!!

     That's it for now! Love you all!

   ~ Elder Zac Snell :)


Sent from my iPad
-=iii=<{

Elder Snell and Elder Babb

A Mom's Favorite Day

So, not much time to write today. we have an awesome zone activity. We are reserving a super sweet park. Sweet!!!!!

     So, yes, I was able to Skype my family and I learned that they are doing great! Lexie is First chair and Caden is a drum major and will be coming to Indianapolis for a clinic. He will just have to come a little farther and I could use him as a member present lesson. ahahha! XD So proud of those two. I also was blessed to see my Grandma Wood. She is so sweet to have come to see me. I really appreciated her being there. 

     On the home front, we are doing well. We are setting BOLD goals to become better missionaries and truly become consecrated through our service. Deairdre dropped us then apologized and set up an appointment for Tuesday. So things are going good. I was able to participate in conferring the Melchizedek priesthood and ordaining to an Elder. It was a less active man that we have been working with. Great experience.

Happy Mother's Day to all who fit the criteria. Love you all!

~ Elder Zac Snell

Play Matters

May 4th, 2015 Letter..............

 So, not much to talk about this week. It was sorta sad because all of our our teaching appointments fell through, which was sorta disheartening.... Those people and their darn agency! As wonderful as a gift it is, people tend to use it in ways that I wish they wouldn't, but there are situations that are out of our control. What we did do, though was take advantage of everything that we could control! It was pretty sweet because we have been planning this huge service project for our district that our sisters found, so that happened this week.

      We built/ put together a huge playground for a rather ghetto community. Haha! It looked super good by the time we finished it. With about 200 people there, we built it in about 4 hours or so. There were team of people working with cement, some in mulch, some on the big toy, some on the hopscotch and four square, and some in the woodworking part where we built benches, planters, picnic tables, and pavilions. I was in the woodworking section with Elder Nielson. We built a bench by ourselves, so there is a wooden bench there that just the missionaries built. Coolieo, huh!? My group was the mustache group, so we had mustaches on our name tags. After it was built, we had some kids do a presentation on why playing matters and he educational benefits to it all. Really cool.

     That is probably the highlight of the week. Stake conference was awesome! President Riggs spoke with Sister Riggs, so that was cool. Great talks and things pointed out. The theme for it was all on missionary work with the Ward Council. I really liked it. We also had Duty to God, Dodgeball, and Doughnuts! I don't know if I wrote about that yet, but it is a young men's dealing that we are doing to ultimately get them worthy to come pass/bless the sacrament. Anyways, that went super well, so that was awesome! 

     Not much else to write about, but I do love you all and hope you have a stellar week as well! Happy Star Wars Day!!!

~ Elder Zac Snell :)

-=iii=<{ 

#Jog4Jesus

So, awesome title, right?! Hahaha! So, I don't think that I took the time to tell you all, but Elder Nielson and I decided that We would run a 5K to talk to people. Little did we know that while you are running, it isn't fun to talk because it makes you run out of breath.... We talked to people anyways. There was one guy who wanted to talk to us and told us that our religion was fake and we needed to come to Jesus. Man! We are Jogging for Jesus! What did he think we were doing in a white shirt and tie running a 5K? Trying to bring others to Jesus! He wasn't a fan of us, but he loved talking with us while running. Anyways... The real success happened after the race was complete. Others would come up to us and ask us our time and why we were running in a suit (25 minutes flat btw. also, I finished before Elder Nielson, but the count didn't say so... Lame....). We handed out a bunch of cards and invited everyone we saw to come to church the next day. Twas epic. I will upload a recording of me running the race and talking with people afterwords. Also maybe a picture or two.

     We had Zone Conference this week. It was epic because it was President Riggs last set of Zone Conferences. He told us a bunch of life secrets and stuff like that. Something that really stood out to me is that when we receive a prompting for a goal, that goal is inspired and we should stop at nothing to achieve that goal that was given from Heavenly Father. We talked about Faith and how everything we do is based off of our faith in Jesus Christ. Think about it! Why do we repent? Because we have faith that Jesus Christ performed the Atonement so that we can get clean and return with our Heavenly Father! FAITH!!!! So we have taught that a whole bunch this week to those we teach.

     We found some awesome people to teach this week too! We were checking up on some Less active members and the people in the apartment below the less active was walking in and we opened the door for them. As they walked inside, they said, "Hey! You are coming over tomorrow at Three, right?" uhhh....... YES! So there. Lesson set up and we show up the next day and find out that they are searching for truth in this world and are really confused with some teachings that other churches believe. So Prepared for the Gospel! I love when Heavenly Father just gives us somebody. He has to love making us happy. :)

     Well, I will now recover from that 5K. We didn't really train for it.. We just decided to run it and we did. Good stuff! My legs are super sore still, but I did hit my goal. I set my goal to be 25 min, and I achieved it!!! Good fun!

Love you all!

~ Elder Zac Snell :)

NOTICE: This email message is for the sole use of the intended recipient(s) and may contain confidential and privileged information. Any unauthorized review, use, disclosure or distribution is prohibited. If you are not the intended recipient, please contact the sender by reply email and destroy all copies of the original message.

SPECIAL EMAIL SENT TO ME (WENDI) BY A WARD MEMBER.(ALEXANDRIA).................

Hey Wendi,

You're welcome! Yes, they ran in their white shirts and ties and they received a lot of attention from fellow runners. People were taking their pictures and Elders Nielson and Snell were able to pass out a lot of pass-along cards with their contact information. I think it was a great missionary opportunity that will help the public see the missionaries in a new light. Elder Snell said he was still a bit sore when we had him over for dinner last night! 

My wife and I have had the opportunity of having your son and his companion over to our apartment many times for dinners. These two missionaries are absolutely wonderful. Elder Snell is always smiling and enthusiastic about the work. He is one happy and diligent missionary. I have also been able to go to teaching appointments with Elders Snell and Nielson and they are fantastic teachers. They listen to the concerns of their investigators and respond accordingly which helps them have strong and personal relationships with those they are teaching. They teach in a simple yet powerful way. It is always a joy and a great learning experience for me to go teaching with them. 

Hope all is well back in Utah,

Steve.........

MY SPECIAL EMAIL SENT TO ME (MOM)............................................................

Thanks for the recordings and pictures. They were cool, but nobody was talking...... Maybe I should have been more specific. I have jazz music. Anyways.. I am glad hat there are youth that get it. I honestly don't think that the others have no idea what an impact this has on them. It one that affected me eternally and I will be forever grateful for it. :) I hope you like my pictures and recordings! I am doing my best to make one each week or so. Just that kind of stuff. :)look a trumpet! We played Ultimate Frisbee and it was super fun! I want to start a team or something when I get home. That would be Epic! Life is sweet! We had an appointment cancel tonight, but that is ok because we need to do more finding anyways. We will FaceTime with them during the week. Stoked!!! By the pictures, it looks like Lexie is taller than me. Hahaha! They are changing so much since I was home. Holy cow! Do down, I just knew that I would be the shortest out of the three of us..... Who knows. I could come home taller than I thought I was and I will be taller than Lexie! (Secretly hoping for that) hahaha! I love having all of my best friends out on missions. It tells me that I made good choices about who my best friends are. Good people. :) I am content with life. I think that when I get home you might be surprised with how much I have grown. Spiritually, that is. I feel really close to Heavenly Father and I am grateful for that. I am changing into the man that He would have me be (even if that man is shorter than his little sister). But, you know what the Prophet Alma said about Small and Simple things. With them, "the Lord doth confound the wise." XD Using scriptures to my benefit. Haha! Thanks for your unconditional love and example you always give to me! You and Dad are my Hero's and have been excellent in guiding me back Home. I have a long way to go and so so much to learn... Haha! I think I will just take it one small step at a time. 

     Anyways... Thanks for letting me vent out my thoughts. I am working on pondering more. Is is one of the ways I do so. I love you! I have something for Mother's Day, I just need to go to the post office to send it. Expect that coming some time this next week! Can't wait to talk to you!

Love you!

     ~ Elder Zac Snell :) 

Sent from my iPad

Let Us All Press On!

Letter April 20th 2015

 This song has been stuck in my head all week! Well, actually all
month. Ever since the choir in conference sang it, it has been a
motivating factor for is week. Believe it or not, but we faced quite
the adversity this week. Haha! We were walking to save some miles in
our car and we went between two apartment buildings and out of nowhere
comes this egg! It hit the fence right next to Elder Nielson and it
got all over him! Crazy huh!? So he then went into a nearby apartment
complex and washed off the egg from Elder Nielson's pants. Oh
goodness. The audacity of some people!

    So I bet you are all wondering if Deairdra was baptized this past
week. She did not because she wanted her family to understand what she
was getting herself into and to support her. It makes me sad when
people have to post pone, but it is for a good reason, I know. On the
other hand, we got together with all the inactive young men and did
Duty to God with them. We have a deal with the, that every Friday
night we all walk over the the closest church and have a lesson, play
dodge ball and eat doughnuts! This was the first week we tried this,
and it was a success! They loved it and can't wait till next time. A
lot of them have a bunch of potential.

    Ok! Here is something sweet! After the epic success of the Metro
Blitz, our zone is on a creative finding kick. We are putting together
this EPIC BBQ for Father's Day. We are having 8 wards combine and
bring all of their friends to it. We already have the Stake President
on board and ready to speak at it while everyone is eating. Part of
preparing for it is creating a Father's Day video that we can show just
before President Davy speaks. It will be an interview of a bunch of
people off the street and primary kids saying what they love most
about their dads. We are all stoked!

     On the home from news, Caden is a Drum Major for he Davis High
Marching Band! I am so proud of him!!! He is going to be the best
ever! Also, Moonlight is this week. If you have never been and don't
plan on going this weekend, then you are making a huge mistake. Just
sayn'. Remember that when in the Service of The Lord, we are entitled
to his aid! Love you all!

Hobey Ho!
     ~ Elder Zac Snell :)

Sent from my iPad

Cavaliers Show this year. "Game On" for the mission too!

Companion Elder Nielsen and Elder Zac Snell