Week 33: GENCON

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Kamusta kamo

This was an overall good week. Obviously, the mission isn't all fun and there is a lot of hard work involved, but there are great moments that happen amidst all of the hard work that make it a great work (see what I did there hehe....).

One great moment that happened this week was Elder Phelps and I had just picked up our dinner from somebody and were about to eat it at the church building when we thought of a couple more houses we could knock before eating. So we put our dinners in the fridge and then went back out. No one even came to the door at any of these places, but on the way back to the church building we ran into a lady that we knew from one of our wards and as we were talking to her she offered to make us dinner the next day! If we hadn't gone back out, we would not have secured some delicious pulled-pork sandwiches. Blessings!

Another LIT story is that as Elder Phelps and I were out just walking around, I was gonna walk one way but Elder Phelps suggested a different way, so I thought, "Why not?" As we're walking down this street, we see a small fire in someone's garage! Elder Phelps knocked their front door and I whipped out LDS Tools to call the mom (because we knew they were members hehe). After no answer from both, we started knocking neighbors, and still NOTHING. I called the mom back, and Sister Kitchen finally picked up and I told her there was something on fire in her garage. She came outside and then went and got their fire extinguisher, but Elder Phelps just went and got the front yard hose and put it out. One of their neighbors who had also seen the fire then came over, and then told us that she had already called 9-1-1. In a matter of minutes, there were 7 firetrucks in front of their house, along with most of the neighborhood, only to find out that Elder Phelps had already put out the fire. Turns out, one of the Kitchen kids had left a lighter in a bucket full of rags and it had somehow ignited. There was no damage to the car or the garage either, so everything turned out okay. But that was pretty awesome not gonna lie, seeing Elder Phelps put out the Kitchen fire! (see what I did there too....)

Something cool that happened this week was last night we were chilling at the same view spot in our area and this old lady pulls up and talks to us for a little bit then drives away. Then this high school-age guy pulls over and starts talking to us too, but he had some genuine concerns. He just wanted to know what we had to say about gaining a testimony because he said he'd been working on that a lot lately. We tried the best we could to give him advice, and we gave him a Book of Mormon too which he really appreciated. As we were wrapping up with him, the same old lady comes BACK. She gets out of her car, walks up to us, whips out these little blue cards with the lyrics to a song she wrote about Utah Valley, then proceeds to SING the entire thing for us. She offered us more cards too which I gladly accepted. It was one of the weirdest, funniest things that has ever happened to me.

General Conference was excellent though. We ended up watching with our landlords which was really fun. I loved President Nelson's talk on increasing our faith. One of my favorite suggestions he offered for increasing our faith was to imagine what we think we would be able to do if we had more faith, and then do those things. As a missionary, I can definitely think of those kinds of things, so it's awesome having such a clear suggestion for how I can increase my faith. Thanks, President Nelson! We are so blessed to have a living prophet in the world today.

I also became an uncle this week! My first nephew's name is Leo and I can't wait to see him one day (when my mission is over in about 16 months....).

I also found out that Elder Sherrod, my second companion (the one with the kendamas), is going to his original assignment in Cambodia!! I'm soooo happy for him because he has been here in the UOM for all of COVID, so a good minute. I got to see him probably one last time this morning when the whole mission was getting vaccinated at the Orem Walmart.

Anyway, I hope all of you have an amazing week!

Elder Snyder