Week 12: a little RAY of sunshine September 21-27, 2021

 

Hey Everyone                                                                                                    September 27, 2021

 

A lot happened this week. It's been a week not gonna lie. A good, at times difficult, long week. And although it may not seem like it, I do try to keep these emails short... or at least not a Bible length long. Needless to say this email will be on the longer side. I'm sorry :) I'm just trying to stay true to character lol.

 

To begin, I'll talk about the harder part of my week. My dear Grandpa Gene passed away this week. It was sad because I won't see him again until the next life. He was and is a wonderful Grandpa and I am forever grateful that he is a part of my life. I know he is in a much better place and I am so grateful I have that knowledge. The Gospel brings peace. I know that Christ suffered unimaginably but He did it for us! So that we can live again and see our families again and to return to our Heavenly Father. And to my extended Snow family: I love you all! Even though I am unable to be with you in person I am thinking of all of you during this time. 

 

The day after receiving the news I was emotionally drained a bit. And I was very frustrated with our lack of success. I said a less than positive prayer to God complaining about things. I was kindly reminded of a scripture I had studied that morning where I had written "don't curse the One who created you when things aren't working out. He has an eternal perspective, with your eternal potential always in mind." That humbled me a lot. It is frustrating to not seeing immediate success, but I am succeeding. But God is always so good and less than thirty minutes after my prayer, we got a text from someone saying they wanted to meet with us. After some digging, we realized it was a person whose door we had left a note on the night before! Guys! No one ever responds to our notes! That was so insane and so awesome. So we are going to start teaching this guy named Joseph. Pray for him, please! 

 

We had another win later that day but this needs a little but more context. So, I have taught Ray since the beginning of my mission. He is 70+ years old, lives in the trailer park, has a tiny chihuahua named Chica, and for the past three weeks we've had about 7 goodbye lessons... he's planning on moving to "Joke-lahoma" as he calls it. So far he hasn't made it out of here. So we keep teaching him haha. But I love him so much! He is very interesting. He has a huge collection of Bibles, has only a few teeth, and we cannot get him to stay on track in a lesson for the life of us. Usually, we stay at his place for an hour to an hour and a half... He struggles keeping commitments (rip) but he loves meeting with us! It is always a major time commitment going to his place but I felt like we should stop by his trailer while we were visiting someone else even though we didn't have anything planned. When we got there, I invited him to the Saturday adult session of stake conference (Sundays just don't don't work for him Yada Yada). He mulled it over for a while and then said he'd try to. I told him I'd be waiting for him at the door and that I was excited to see which Bible he decided to bring. He just repeated that he'd try but no promises. I felt very optimistic that he'd show up! I have no idea why because he never actually shows up! But we waited by the doors of the church. And waited. And waited some more. And then the meeting started and no Ray. I was honestly so sad. Every time someone walked through the doors I kept looking up hoping it was Ray. It never was. Like thirty minutes into the meeting though the door opens and guess who walks in... RAY!! I could have jumped up and down I was so excited! We went over and sat next to him and he kept apologizing that he was late. I guess his watch had broken and so he thought he had time. And then he checked his phone. But it was so great! Ray came to church woo woo! Sadly it turns out he forgot to mention that he's part deaf so he couldn't hear anything the whole time. But progress is still progress. 

 

Stake conference was fantastic. Pres and Sis Rodarte were there and I just absolutely adore them. And the Meads came to the Sunday session and it was so great to see them. 

 

So much more happened this week but it's already half the Bible so I'll just end with I LOVE YOU, JESUS LOVES YOU, YOU ARE A CHILD OF GOD, AND PRAYER IS SO REAL!! 

 

con amor, 

Hermana/Sister Snow 

 

PS I just found out I'm getting transferred to Paraiso! I'm getting a new companion. I'm so sad to leave Kingman and Sister Smyth but I'm excited to finally get to speak in Spanish!! I'll let you all know how that goes