Week 10: It Snowed!

 

How is everyone?!

I don't have a lot of time today, but this week was an awesome week!

This was my first full week of work since being out of our quarantine. Part of our area has a lot of new homes and so there are a lot of new people moving in all the time! Lots of new families with young kids and there are just some awesome people. I really am having so much trouble remembering what happened this week.....

Elder Petersen and I have been working pretty hard lately. I feel like we are always going from one thing to the next, whether it's and appointment with a member family, or just going to visit someone, or teaching visits too. We actually had some really awesome experiences too. There are a lot of people we are teaching that are making really good progress in the gospel. We are trying to help them keep commitments and teach them more. One of them is a guy named Shane, and he has just had a really hard life lately. The missionaries started meeting with him before I got here, but there has been such a change in his life in the last couple weeks. He is really busy with work, but he is just so much more happy and hopeful. The gospel really has the potential to help anyone in their life, and with Shane you can really see it. Please pray for Shane! 

There was one day we went to visit a guy who is a nonmember who we've been trying to start teaching because he is interested, but we've just never been able to find a time. We knocked on his door the other day, and when we asked him about how things have been lately, he just like totally opened up to us about some of the struggles in his family right now. It was a really spiritual experience because we got to give him a Book of Mormon and testify of its power to him. He accepted it too, and we have a return appointment with him soon! I love testifying of the power of the Book of Mormon because it really is a powerful book. I've come to learn in the past couple weeks of the necessity of the Book of Mormon to the gospel of Jesus Christ, and how important it is that we read it! If anyone reads it and gives it a real chance, with the intent to find out if it is true, then they will find out it is true! That is what is so great about the Book of Mormon. It can help us to feel the love of our Heavenly Father!

There is also a sister in our stake who is super cool. She is from Rome and she works in the church translation department. She oversees the translation of things like General Conference talks into 42 different languages! She has such an interesting perspective on the gospel and she is so motivated about missionary work! We've been able to visit her a couple times and it is always so cool! 

Anyway, really short email, but I'll include pictures too haha. Hope everyone has an amazing week! 

Elder Snyder 

Sunsets

"Look at all those tickens!"

Me with my favorite street sign, again! It snowed on Sunday!

We live in a member's basement and this is their dog, Akoa

Pizza from Village Pizza. (Missionaries eat free! haha!) 

Week 9: Look, Don't Wait

At our church building. 

 

Kamusta kamo?!?

How was everybody's week? I had a very interesting week here in the Eagle Mountain East Stake. Lots of cool experiences, and I even went to church!! Only in the year 2020 can you leave on a mission having not gone to church for 8 months haha. 

The first part of our week was still spent in quarantine, but it was fine. Things got easier as time went on and the days started to go by faster. My companion and I are total homies now because we have been the only people we've seen for the past week haha. Anyway, we thought our last day of quarantine was going to be Thursday so we had a ton of stuff planned for Friday when we could finally get out, but then we got a call from Sister Treadway on Thursday morning telling us that we actually weren't allowed to leave our apartment until Saturday. It kinda sucked trying to move everything we had planned for that day, but it was fine. 

The day we were finally able to leave was such a glorious day. We had some service we were gonna go that morning, and I remember just smiling the whole bike ride there haha. A big part of our area is where they are building a lot of new homes, and after a week of not seeing and of the changes, it looked totally different! There were new grass fields, more new homes going up, and whole new foundations laid and everything. After the service project we were riding around contacting people and then my bike tire went flat. Kinda put a damper on our first day out, but it was okay. Our area isn't that big, and it really could be a walking area if it needed to be. Bikes just make things so much faster. So we've been walking since then but it really isn't that bad. We're gonna try to fix it today.  

Anyway, last Friday Elder Petersen and I had to Zoom in to our district council, but one of the sisters in our district gave a really awesome lesson about listening to the Spirit. A lot of people have concerns about being able to discern if something is the Spirit or their own thoughts. But in reality, if a thought in your head prompts you to do something good, does it really matter where it came from? Any thought that prompts you to do good is of God, because all things that are good are of Him. A first thought to do something good is from the Spirit, but thoughts afterward that cause us to doubt our original good thought are not from God. God uses tools to accomplish His work, and Satan will work just as hard to use those same tools for evil. A thought telling you that a spiritual prompting might just be your own thoughts is how Satan is able to hinder God's work. However, those doubtful thoughts will always come second. God's influence will always come first! That's why it is important to follow the first thoughts, because that is when we will become the most effective missionaries we can be!

Something hilarious that happened in the quarantine was while we were calling members to set up appointments for our 15-minute member message. We always call the mom, then the dad, and then text the mom if nobody picked up. After we called the dad, we got a text from his number that just said, "Wife's in labor." Elder Petersen and I both about lost our minds laughing when we got that haha. I guess that explained why the mom didn't pick up!   

Another cool experience that happened this week was as Elder Petersen and I were walking back to our apartment after church, the sprinklers were on on the grass right next to where we were gonna be walking. But as soon as we got to where the sprinklers were, they turned off! It was cool and we laughed about it, but right as we got past the area where the sprinklers were on before, they turned right back on! It seriously was amazing! One of those moments where you could easily chalk it up to coincidence, but I choose to believe it was a miracle. Because why not? Why not believe that God's hand is in every part of our lives? It sure is a lot more hopeful than saying things are just coincidences. It really wouldn't have been that inconvenient to walk by the sprinklers when they were on, but the Lord decided to help us out a little that afternoon. If you are struggling to feel God's love in your life, start looking for ways He shows it! There are endless ways He shows His love for each of His children every single day, but unless you start looking for them, you're never going to find them. Feeling God's love gets so much easier once you start looking for it instead of waiting for it! Even if it seems silly, I choose to see these experiences as a manifestation of God's love in my life, because we can always use a little more of that. 

I love all of you and I hope everyone has an amazing week! God loves you soooooo much!

Elder Snyder

Views in our area. Peep the Saratoga Springs temple construction site!

Me on a pretty street in our area

Elder Peterson jumping on our trampoline

Fire in Provo Canyon...Just like home! 

Some pictures from our apartment

Weeks 6, 7, and 8 The Time is Far Spent!

Kamusta mga tawo?!? 

It's Elder Snyder again! It has been a while and the last 2.5 weeks have been soooooo eventful so I'll get right to it! 

I finished online MTC at the end of September, and while I was at home I kinda just did a lot of getting stuff together and packing for when I left. I did get to go through the temple though and that was amazing. The Newport Beach and the San Diego temples opened right before we were going to be leaving, and while we couldn't get a spot in Newport Beach, we got one in San Diego on the 2nd day they were open! We got an 8 am time slot, so we left at 5 that morning to make it on time haha. It was seriously one of the coolest things ever and I can't wait for when we will all be able to go back to the temple someday. 

Anyway, I did not get the airport mission drop off experience because I drove with my family to my mission! We decided to make a whole trip out of it so we could watch General Conference with our extended family before dropping me off at the mission home.

So the Tuesday after General Conference was when I started, and it has been so awesome so far. We did some new missionary training that day, then stayed in a hotel with all the other new missionaries that night. The next day we met our trainers and drove to our areas. My companion's name is Elder Petersen and he is seriously the best ever. He is so funny and so patient and so positive all the time. He's from Northern Idaho, and his original mission assignment is to Peru. He actually just finished his training in the mission, which is your first 3 months, so he's pretty new too. I'm excited for our companionship though. Our area is the Eagle Mountain East Stake. We are the only missionaries that cover the 9 wards in this stake, so we are pretty busy! We do a lot of working with members, but there are also lots of nonmembers we are working with too. Things are going great here though! 

My first 2 days in the field were awesome. We were talking to lots of people, and meeting lots of awesome families, and riding our bikes around our area in the beautiful Utah fall weather. On Friday though we found out that my little brother tested positive for COVID-19, so our mission president put us in a 7 day quarantine. So yeah, we haven't left our basement apartment since Friday and I'm spending my first PDay inside. But it's okay, neither of us have any symptoms so this is really just out of precaution. And my little brother is doing great now in case you were wondering! 

But yesterday we were teaching our 15 minute member lesson to a certain family over Zoom, and neither of us had met them yet, but they were from the Philippines! Not only that, but the dad is from Bacolod AND speaks Hiligaynon!! That about blew my mind and made me soooooo happy. He said he would practice with me too! I know that our Heavenly Father seriously knows each of His children individually, because he sent me to maybe the one place in Utah county where somebody speaks Hiligaynon! You are a child of God! Never forget that! You are infinitely loved by your Heavenly Father, and He wants what is best for you. If you are seeking direction, or feeling confused about anything in your life, you can turn to your Heavenly Father for what to do and He will answer! God hears every single one of His children's prayers and He is always absolutely THRILLED to heard from YOU. 

Malipay ako nga nakamisyon sa 2020 kag sa Eagle Mountain! Kabalo ako nga si Jesucristo ang Manluluwas sang kalibutan kag palangga niya kita!! 

Palangga GID ta kamo 

Elder Snyder 

Some highlights from the last few weeks:

Filipino dinner with Elder Stout from our home ward and their family friends who are from the Phillippines.

Jollibee: Filipino fast food in LA

The Temple!! 

President and Sister Treadway

Me and Elder Peterson

Me with the best street sign in our area (My eyes are closed lol!)