Week 22: Just Another Day in Paradise

Kamusta kamo?!?

Imagine serving your mission in a place named after a major figure from the Book of Mormon. Not a lot of missionaries get to do that I guess, unless you serve in Nephi, UT. haha!

Anyway, this was a good week. Elder Dieker and I are really starting to move past the whole whitewashing thing and are starting to just work now. Crazy to think we've only been here for 3 weeks, but it's also already been 3 weeks. We're halfway through the transfer, which is insane.

We did a lot of member messages this week, and a lot of contacting too. We got a new member message from President Treadway recently too, and it is really centered on using the Book of Mormon for missionary work. The Book of Mormon really is the Lord's tool for the gathering of Israel in our modern time, and that's why it is so important to use it as much as we can. I love telling people about the Book of Mormon, because it is such a powerful manifestation of the restoration of the gospel. In order for the restoration to really be valid, there had to be something new. There had to be a new thing the Lord could use to distinguish his true church on the earth, and we are blessed to have the Book of Mormon as a means of clarifying truths that were lost over time.

I know you all saw this coming, but there is a recurring theme in a lot of my emails lately that I have to stick with: food. We went to a lot of the usual places, but also tried some new places too. Don't worry though, this coming we're planning on only eating out once, because we need to save our money a little better haha. We went to Costco a couple times this week for lunch, Don Joaquin's again, a Thai food place, Chip cookies, this dope chicken place called Super Chix for pday today (shoutout to Brother Cobabe from online MTC for that recommendation), and Domino's for dinner one night too. We actually had a gift card for Domino's but as we were walking in this guy offered to pay for us, and then the manager gave us half off and told us to go crazy haha. We had quite the feast that night.

Many of you probably heard about the missionary in Arkansas who passed away in a car accident. It was really tragic, and it turns out he was from Lehi, and the funeral service was held at a church building just up the street from where we live. We heard Elder Andersen from the Quorum of the 12 spoke at it too. Anyway, after the funeral they had a procession down 900 North to the Lehi Cemetery, and President Treadway thought it would be cool to have some missionaries along the street at the procession, so the whole Lehi zone got to go to the funeral procession. We just kind of stood out on the street for a bit, but it was still a cool experience to be able to at least be a little part of honoring Elder Jake Smith.

Also, this week I had an interview with President Treadway, and he said he knows as much as I do about missionaries going to the Philippines, which unfortunately is nothing. We will just have to see how things go in the next couple months as things continue. What a time we live in! We're going on a year of COVID-19, and it has been so interesting thinking about how my life has changed. The Lord has big things in store for us, so we must now more than ever look forward with faith!

Palangga ta kamo gid! God is good!

Elder Snyder