Week 17: Shkrate up shnow

Elder Sherrod's "Light the World"

Kamusta kamo?!?

Lots of ups and downs this week. A good week nonetheless though. It is really great being a missionary during Christmas, and even though it's really starting to get cold now, we will all press on in the work of the Lord!

Our mission president told us in a mission wide Zoom meeting yesterday that there are too many missionaries getting COVID in our mission (which is still very few), but we have to start cracking down again on rules. The main one is that missionaries with cars can no longer give rides to other missionaries. That means no more trips to WalMart, or the Saratoga Springs temple, and most tragically, no more Quick Quack. However, the elders in the area next to ours that have a car were gonna lose their car anyway, so even without these updates, this was inevitable. We just have to get members to pick up our groceries now or something.

We did a youth activity for one of our wards this week which was super dope. Elder Sherrod and I had a lot of fun with it. I wanted to show the kids how a mission seems a lot farther off than it actually is. Growing up I always thought the missionaries were so much older than me, but I had the kids who were juniors or seniors raise their hands and then I told them that we were in high school at the same time. They were all pretty surprised at that actually, so it was cool to see that haha.

We did a member message this week with a younger couple, and Elder Sherrod kept talking to the guy about buying and selling streetwear and stuff. Then he goes down the hall and he comes back with a box of Dior Jordan 1s! He said he won them in a raffle straight from the Dior store, and he had to drive to Vegas to go pick them up. They're worth like $9000!

It also snowed on Saturday! Elder Sherrod and I got to shoveling snow right away and it was kind of fun because there wasn't a lot of snow. We messed around and made some fun designs in the snow, and Elder Sherrod wrote, "Light The World" in the snow on the basketball court across the street from our house!

Seeing as how there was snow, there was also ice on the roads too, and Elder Sherrod and I have both fallen off our bikes since Saturday. Mine was on the way into church in the church parking lot, so plenty of members saw it haha. I was in my suit too, but nothing happened to it thankfully. It was honestly hilarious, and we're both a little more cautious now haha.

Okay, it's already a long email, but if you had made it this far, you a real one. The members here are literally amazing though. I don't know what I did to get to spend my first Christmas as a missionary in the Eagle Mountain East stake. One family gave each of us a huge box of hand warmers, and another family got us both stockings full of stuff! The stockings had socks, a little wood Nativity scene, loofas, and a neck scarf for each of us! That neck scarf literally is a game changer when we're riding our bikes.

Anyway, that was my week. For those of you that didn't make it to the end, I'll add a lot of pictures too haha. I am still excited to go to the Philippines someday, but I really feel so blessed to be a missionary in 2020, in the Utah Orem mission, and here in Eagle Mountain too! I have met some really, really great people and I am growing to love Utah even more than I already did. I will go to the Philippines someday, and the day I get that call will be a very exciting day and very sad day all at once. I know the people there need help, but there are plenty of people here that need it too.

Palangga ta kamo tanan! Sulaton sa akon (write to me)!

Elder Snyder