Week 26: The Highs are worth the Lows

What is up peepz?

This week was a good one. Some good weather days and some not so good weather days. If you live in the Utah area, and if you ever find yourself praying for snow or praying that you are grateful for snow, I would invite you to stop doing so. As great as it is to have "moisture" or "beautiful snow" around here, those are only perceived as blessings for people with cars. So in consideration of your favorite 2-wheeled missionary, I would invite you to begin praying for no snow.

All jokes aside, this actually was a great week. We walked into the area a couple times this week, and people always honk at us or pull over to say hi or pull over to give us money. Not even joking. Walking is kinda the move low key. Even the Elders we live with who have a car have taken to biking into their area because then they just get to see people more.

There was a time this week when Elder Dieker and I were in the driveway seeing off Elder Thomas and Elder Carlin on their bikes and I saw this girl looking at us from her car so I waved at her, and then she pulled over and got out and walked over to us and said "Hey I wanna start going back to church." It was super cool and she was super nice too! Our mission president is pretty strict though on the fact that we aren't supposed to do reactivation with people, but we know exactly who we can refer her to. She gave us her address and her phone number, so she'll get the help she wants in no time!

Food places this week: Buffalo Wild Wings, El Mexiquenze, Waffle Love, Zupas, The Habit, Chick-fil-a (twice hehe)

The dopest thing that happened this week is that not only did we FINALLY get to meet with Maria again, but SHE IS GETTING BAPTIZED ON FRIDAY! She's already been taught everything and she really wants to get baptized, and the only thing really holding her back was that she was living with her boyfriend. But now that they are married, we were like "Okay, what day?" and she was like, "How about Friday?" She works so much and all the time (like on Friday she's literally getting baptized between shifts) but things are really lining up for Friday now.

Going over the baptismal interview questions with her was seriously one of the highlights of my mission so far. Hearing each of her faith-filled and honest answers to each question strengthened my own testimony so much. She seriously was so prepared to hear the gospel. She grew up Catholic and became dissatisfied with it because she was seeing a lot of hypocrisy with other people, so she started looking for other churches. Then she started dating this guy (her now husband) and they moved out to Utah together, and through meeting a lot of members of the church through her job, she found that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints was exactly what she was looking for. She has been reading the Book of Mormon and going to church and she is so ready to become a member herself now. She even bore her testimony in her friend's ward yesterday!

What I realized from meeting Maria and seeing her finally being able to get baptized is that if I had never gone on a mission, I would have never been able to be a part of this amazing story of her's. What I realized from all of this is truly that the highs are worth the lows. There are a lot of lows as a missionary. People that don't want to talk to you, biking up hills (in snow), getting up early, and it really just feels like a grinddddd sometimes. But this past week with meeting with Maria made it all worth it pretty much. This small part of it all was such a meaningful experience that I would have never had otherwise, which is what makes the mission so special.

I love you all so much!

Elder Snyder