Heather Ann Snyder
September 25 1992 – August 25 2009
I walked downstairs Wednesday morning ready to eat breakfast. My mom asks me who Heather is, and I say she’s my friend. My mom was looking on facebook and saw a post my friend Andrea had posted, that her friend Heather Snyder was dead. I couldn’t believe it. I just stood there, couldn’t think, couldn’t say anything, I just wanted to know, how? A car accident, loaded truck hits them at the highway intersection. The crash occurred about 2:30 at the intersection of the Lafayette Highway and Highway 18. Yamhill, Oregon. She had just started driving a few months ago and she was very excited about getting her 1990 Toyota Camry. Her dad was riding in the passenger seat, and was not killed; he was flown to the hospital.
September 25 1992 – August 25 2009
I walked downstairs Wednesday morning ready to eat breakfast. My mom asks me who Heather is, and I say she’s my friend. My mom was looking on facebook and saw a post my friend Andrea had posted, that her friend Heather Snyder was dead. I couldn’t believe it. I just stood there, couldn’t think, couldn’t say anything, I just wanted to know, how? A car accident, loaded truck hits them at the highway intersection. The crash occurred about 2:30 at the intersection of the Lafayette Highway and Highway 18. Yamhill, Oregon. She had just started driving a few months ago and she was very excited about getting her 1990 Toyota Camry. Her dad was riding in the passenger seat, and was not killed; he was flown to the hospital.
I had never met her in person. I planned on meeting her one day at summer camp or GYC, but I never made it. She lived hundreds of miles away, but she has been such an encouragement to me over the past several years. When she wrote her first letter to me, she was 13.
She was 16 years old when she died. In exactly a month she would have been 17. A happy, healthy, hard-working, beautiful Christian girl, why did this happen? Only God knows. And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose. Romans 8:28
She was 16 years old when she died. In exactly a month she would have been 17. A happy, healthy, hard-working, beautiful Christian girl, why did this happen? Only God knows. And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose. Romans 8:28
Heather played piano and flute and sang. She had an email newsletter she wrote and sent to her friends. In it she had bible study, prayer and poems. Every month she sent it out, and it always touched my heart, whatever she wrote always seemed to be just what I needed to hear that day. I saw Jesus in her. She went on a mission trip this Spring to Cosa Rica with YD. She wrote to me that her family was possibly planning another mission trip this fall or winter. She baked bread and did a concert with her sister Sarah to raise money for her trip. Her sister Sarah is 14, so please pray for her, and her parents. Especially her father, who is in the hospital, I haven’t had any updates yet.
She never forgot to send me a birthday card. On my 14th birthday, her card read:
Dear Alyssa, happy birthday! Thank you for being my friend! I’m looking forward to seeing you in heaven someday. May God always bless you, and give you many more happy years to live for Him! Have a Fantastic Birthday! With love and prayers, Heather Snyder
Little did she know, just 3 short years later, she would be sleeping in Jesus. Now the next thing she will see is Jesus and all the angels, and her friends and all the faithful Christians will meet them in the air.
1 Thessalonians 4:17 Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.
Fear none of those things which thou shalt suffer; …be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life. Rev 2:10 ~ on an letter written Jan 31 2009
God does not want us to be afraid of death. Because Jesus died on the cross, we have the hope of eternal life. We need to remember to live for Jesus everyday, because you never know when your time on this earth will be over.
Heaven, our Home
April 06
When Jesus comes to take us home,
We’ll hear the trumpet sound.
The angels will appear and then
We will be heaven bound.
We’ll fly to heaven, our new home,
Where we will live always
In heaven we will never sin
We’ll walk in Jesus’ ways
There we will meet family and friends
Whom we had thought were lost.
And we’ll find that our labors here
Have well been worth the cost.
We’ll live in beautiful mansions
God has prepared for us.
And best of all we’ll see our King,
Our Savior, Jesus.
“The Battle”
January 09
As we go about our lives from day to day,
A battle’s raging over you and me.
Two forces strive to gain our loyalty.
And who wins it is up to us to say.
By the little choices that we make we may
Determine who will win us ultimately.
On Satan’s side is sin and misery;
On Jesus’ side the everlasting day
The battle has been fought, the victory won.
The blood has been shed and the price is paid
All that’s left is for you to choose your side.
The devil wants you on his losing one.
But Jesus says, “Choose me. You’ll be repaid.
You are my child; it was for you I died.”
~Heather Snyder
Anticipating Trouble Doubles Burdens.--
We are in a world of suffering. Difficulty, trial, and sorrow await us all along the way to the heavenly home. But there are many who make life's burdens doubly heavy by continually anticipating trouble. If they meet with adversity or disappointment, they think that everything is going to ruin, that theirs is the hardest lot of all, that they are surely coming to want. Thus they bring wretchedness upon themselves and cast a shadow upon all around them. Life itself becomes a burden to them. {2MCP 459.1}
But it need not be thus. It will cost a determined effort to change the current of their thought. But the change can be made. Their happiness, both for this life and for the life to come, depends upon their fixing their minds upon cheerful things. Let them look away from the dark picture, which is imaginary, to the benefits which God has strewn in their pathway, and beyond these to the unseen and eternal.--MH 247, 248 (1905). {2MCP 459.2}
But it need not be thus. It will cost a determined effort to change the current of their thought. But the change can be made. Their happiness, both for this life and for the life to come, depends upon their fixing their minds upon cheerful things. Let them look away from the dark picture, which is imaginary, to the benefits which God has strewn in their pathway, and beyond these to the unseen and eternal.--MH 247, 248 (1905). {2MCP 459.2}
