Week 19: I'm a Teenage Dad

New Copan Crew

Yep. As the title says, I have a child. In mission terms, I'm training!! I still don't know how or why because I just finished my own training 4 days ago but we are trying our best! My new companion is Elder Abarca and he is from Mexico and has such a strong testimony and desire to be the best missionary he can be. It's honestly pretty fun being the one who takes the lead and starts all the contacts and discussions and it is actually crazy to see how real the gift of tongues is. Thank you all so much for your prayers because they are for real being answered. It's kinda funny too. In lessons, I can communicate myself better than I ever have before. But in the house, it's kind of a struggle to communicate and teach my companion what he needs to know about the area and the people. It's hard but my Spanish is improving like crazy because now the only English I speak all day is my personal prayer in the morning and night!🥲 But for real I'm extremely blessed to have this opportunity and to be learning so much.

So this week Elder Perry left. It was honestly a lot harder for me than I thought to watch his bus drive away because it hit me that time is actually flying by. Miss you Elder Perrito go kill it in Santa Barbara🫡.

Went to the Mayan Ruins here in Copán for Pday last week and holyyyyy they are insane. So huge and there's still so much there. We went into the tunnels that the Mayans built under the temples and it felt like we were in an Indiana Jones movie. It was also just crazy to know that the descendants of those we read so much about in the Book of Mormon built these structures and walked that same ground so many years ago.

On Wednesday, Elder Evanson and I worked together in here Copan and it was sooo good for us (he is also training another Latino right now). We were able to teach some solid lessons and gain confidence in our ability to lead the area and train. On Thursday, we went to La Entrada because we needed to travel to San Pedro to pick up our kids the next day and the Zone Leaders sent me and Elder Evanson to contact the streets of their area. This was also super good practice for me and now I have basically no fear to start talking to someone in the street. But La Entrada is a little crazy and we'll just leave it at that haha.

Friday I got my kid and we received an awesome training from the leadership of our mission and it was awesome.

Other than that we are just working and finding new people to teach. I'm honestly pretty stressed because we have some really promising people who Elder Perry connected with really well and I just don't want to mess it up. So, like always, prayers are much appreciated.

One thing that has been on my mind a lot this week is the importance of our efforts. Many of you may know that I have a pretty bad case of perfectionism. I want to do everything perfectly right so then I get perfectly good results. However, that's just not how the mission works. I have come to learn that because I think I have been the furthest from perfect in my life in these last 4 months. But that doesn't matter one bit. What matters is our true desire and our efforts. May we all try to align our desires with those of our Heavenly Father and then try our hardest with our imperfect efforts to do His will. I know we will see blessings, receive strength to keep going, and see immense improvement when we do this.

The Gospel is true and it is how we change for the better! We don't need to change before we come unto Christ, we need to come unto Christ to change.

Love you all so so so much!

Élder Snyder