Week 28: Takin' It As It Comes

Livin the Dream

What is up party people?

This was a pretty average week with a lot of pretty average days. But I'd take an average day over a bad day any day. So pretty much just a lot of random stories from the week.

We had combined district council in-person this week which was cool. It's always nice just to talk to other missionaries. And living with another set of Elders we always get to talk about how it was over lunch right after, so we went to Waffle Love. If you haven't been to Waffle Love, please go to Waffle Love.

My mom was also in Utah for the weekend for my sister-in-law's baby shower, and she dropped off a huge bag of goodies for us! The best part is that most of it was from Trader Joe's!! A little taste of homeeeee. Also just some of my favorite things like circus animal cookies and a Chick-fil-a gift card. My Oma also added a jar of her homemade jelly from her homegrown current berries which is amazing. Speaking of my sister-in-law, she's having her baby in like a month!! Very exciting! My parents will be grandparents, my brother will be a dad, and I will be an uncle! Too bad I won't actually get to see my nephew until after my mission in like 17 months......

We got to do some service this week and we shoveled this lady's pickleball court in her backyard, and so we played pickleball for pday today! We'll probably be going there a lot from now on haha

We actually got to do service twice this week, and this lady was giving a lot of her stuff to DI so she said we could take whatever we might want. We did not exploit this opportunity mind you, rolling outta there with tons of random stuff we didn't need, but I did find one thing that caught my eye and I did in fact cop. Ya boy got a Ninja blender!!! In case I have failed to mention this, Elder Sherrod got didn't just get me into Kendamas, but also into making protein smoothies, and this was literally the perfect blender. It's one of those single serving smoothie-maker blenders, and it's my new favorite part of my day. I plan on bringing it around with me for the rest of my time in the UOM, and probably post-mish too.

Probably the coolest thing that happened this week was that yesterday we got a personal visit from President Treadway. It was kinda scary not gonna lie because none of knew what it was about, but he just wanted to talk to Elder Dieker for a bit. He said he just felt like he needed to have a conversation with Elder Dieker about how he's been doing, so it was actually really low key. It really showed us how President Treadway is a real person, not just the mission president we always see him as. He isn't as one-sided as mission presidents have to be at times, and he's actually really chill.

The Utah Orem mission is a very different experience from every other mission in the world. Obviously all missions are unique experiences, but not every missionary gets to serve in a city named after a Book of Mormon prophet gek gek gek. All jokes aside, in times like now where we aren't really teaching anyone, I've been trying to focus on what I can learn from all this. Coming from California and now being a missionary in Utah, I've learned that our Church is not just a group of homies that like the Book of Mormon. We are not just "The Church." We are a group of people that love the Lord, Jesus Christ, and desire to follow Him and become like Him. We are not perfect, and we can't expect people to be either. That's why we depend on Jesus Christ to make up for that. That's why we worship Him; because without Him, we can never be all that we can be. That's why we are "The Church of Jesus Christ."

Please keep praying for the Philippines.

I love you all!

Elder Snyder