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