Week 25: Transfers...but like not!

Me in front of the sign of our neighbor's "Ranch"

Kamusta kamo?!?

Hope everyone has been having an excellent week. The weather this week has really picked up; I did my language study outside on our balcony a couple times this week, and today on pday we just threw a football around for a while in short-sleeve shirts!

The four of us Elders have been playing basketball a lot lately. It's been pretty fun because none of us are that good honestly haha. I don't have the best shoes for it, but it's been fun to do something different to exercise in the morning. There was one afternoon where none of us were that hungry for some reason so we decided to just go shoot a little bit at a nearby church building during our dinner hour. While we were there, this random guy also showed up to also ball out, and he ended up challenging us to a game of Pig, and if we won he would buy us dessert. Thankfully, Elder Dieker won so we went to a bakery on Main St. in Lehi to get some donuts. Upon arrival though, we found out that missionaries eat there free, so the guy didn't end up having to buy us anything haha.

Now, speaking of food, we had a lot of good grub this week too. Not just eating out though! Elder Dieker made a really good soup for lunch one day, and needless to say it was delicious because I ate three bowls of it. There's also this bomb Mexican place called El Mexiquenze we went to, and then we went to Waffle Love too (which requires no description, because Waffle Love is truly exceptional food), and for pday today we went to Cafe Rio. We also went to this Hawaiian food place called Rumbi, which was honestly kind of a let down. If you wanna get Hawaiian food in the Utah Valley area, I would recommend Mo Bettah's or Aloha Plate (on BYU campus hehe). We also ended the week on Saturday with Pizza Pie Cafe over in Highland, and then with Crumbl that night, where it turns out missionaries get 50% off!

For those of you who may be concerned, I'm not really gaining weight or having to get new pants. Big Donna and all of our balling out are taking care of that. Elder Dieker and I like to say though that if we did have a car, that may become an issue because we both love food so much haha.

No updates really on any of the homies we're working with though. We didn't get to meet with Maria the other day, but we hopefully are going to meet with her again tomorrow. Other than that, it's just a lot of member messages and knocking the few doors where we know there are nonmembers haha.

As for transfers, everyone out of the 4 of us that live together are staying, so a pretty uneventful night of transfer calls last night. I'm glad I'm staying with Elder Dieker because he's awesome and he's really made serving in this area a lot more fun. He's originally assigned to Vina del Mar in Chile, and there are people from this mission that have left to go back to that mission in the last few weeks, and someone from his online MTC district is leaving for Chile in a couple weeks too. So he very well could get a call from President this transfer about that and then get YEETed to Chile soon!

Here's my last thing: throughout this last transfer Elder Dieker and I have been joking that whenever somebody asks us, "What is your favorite thing about being a missionary?" we'll say "Oh it's gotta be living at the church building." We thought we were so funny whenever we would say that, but then we got thinking. Maybe that joke wasn't just super funny, maybe it's also super GENIUS!!! Hear me out, but what if 1 church building in every missionary area had a built-in basement apartment?? Then no one would live outside their area, because every area has at least 1 church building (hopefully hehe). The church would also save TONS of money because there'd be no more rent to pay for every missionary apartment. And with all the missionaries living in the exact same kind of apartments, there'd be a greater sense of unity amongst the missionaries because they all have the same living arrangements. Cuz here in the UOM, there are some pretty boujee missionary apartments. If you want details, ask me about the Lehi Zone Leaders' apartment in Draper Suncrest...... Anyway, thank you for coming to my TED talk.

If you read all of that, you're pretty awesome. The mission is such a learning experience, and I've really learned in the last couple weeks that it's okay to have absolutely no idea what you're doing haha. The Lord appreciates the sacrifices we make for Him, big or small. Sometimes I've thought about how other missions have most definitely been/are harder than mine, but that doesn't mean mine still isn't hard. The Lord gives us challenges in our lives that will be hard for us individually. Those things may be easy for other people, but the Lord knows what's going to push you and how you are going to grow from it. That's how we know that His love for us is personalized to each of His children because our trials will end up being exactly what we need.

If you read all of THAT, you're even more awesome.

I promise that I read every email that is sent to me, and I realize that sometimes I'm trash and don't always respond but I will work on that!

I love you all so much!

Elder Snyder