Week 56: The Top of the World

Me and The Salt Lake Valley

Hey everyone!

This has been a crazy week. With getting transferred, and just with my new area in general, it's been a ride. And BYU beat the U for the first time since I can remember! I think if I was at that game, I probably would've cried haha.

Anyway, Draper Suncrest is a whole other world nestled on Traverse Mountain between the Salt Lake valley and UT valley. We have excellent views of both from our area, as well as just great views of Suncrest. There's views everywhere. Somebody told us it's about 2000 feet above the valley, so we live at like 6000 feet. I like getting to drive again, and just in time to get the windows down and thoroughly enjoy the excellent UT fall. Probably the best time of year in this state. But I've heard Suncrest gets pounded with snow in the winter and I'm not excited for that.

Anyway, my companion is Elder Ropka from Kansas City, Missouri. He's mad chill, and I'm actually the one that replaced him when I came into Eagle Mountain way back in the day. He also used to live in the apartment I just left from too, so I've basically been following him around my entire mission and finally caught up. He's also my mission grandpa (meaning he trained my trainer, Elder Peterson). I also may have forgotten to mention last week that Elder Phelps is training 2 new missionaries (having twins), so I got 2 grandsons in this transfer too! Elder Ropka is probably my most obedient and hardest-working comp I've ever had, which is good for me, and he's going home in October so I just wanna help him finish strong. He's also been here in Suncrest since March, so he knows everyone.

Our apartment is insane though. We live in a member's basement, and it's pretty boujee. We've got views of the Salt Lake valley, a rain shower, a sauna, and my bed is a queen size bed. So everytime I get frustrated with the work or with my time-consuming ZL responsibilities I have now, I just remember that I sleep in a queen size bed and things could be a lot worse.

Speaking of the work, location is not the only thing that makes Draper Suncrest different from any other area I've served in (or even in the mission). This area is 65% nonmembers. It's like serving anywhere else in the world honestly haha. There are entire streets where it's all nonmembers and it blows my mind. A lot of them don't really want anything to do with the Church, and they probably thought by moving all the way up here they'd be getting away haha. There are 2 church buildings up here though, so I don't know what they were thinking haha.

That being said, there are plenty of people that are willing to hear about the Church. Legit just on my third day here we knocked a house (which was probably worth a couple million dollars) and the guy said, "Hey we just moved here from Northern CA, and everyone says "oh moving to UT, the Mormons and everything,' but I actually do wanna learn more about the Church. Do you guys have any written stuff like I could read, and then you guys could come back in a few weeks and discuss them with me?" So we gave him like 3 pamphlets and a Book of Mormon and are gonna hopefully meet with him soon!

I haven't really gotten to meet with a lot of our investigators yet, but we've got a lot actually. A lot of them are very smart people, so we have some pretty deep discussions haha. There's a guy named William we're teaching, and he's very much a devoted Catholic, so he recognizes that we really do agree on a lot. His wife is actually a member and was baptized while she was living in the Philippines because that's where she's from. She's not really active though. He's reading the Book of Mormon though, and every time we meet with him we just talk about his reading and teach with it. He's very intellectual though and in my opinion he overthinks a lot of stuff in it haha.

We're also teaching a man named Brian. He's been around the Church his whole life because he's from UT, but he's honestly had a lot of legit not-great experiences with members of the Church over the years. His wife is an active member, but he is Baptist. They're both wonderful people and I love his thoughts and perspectives on Jesus Christ. He is a very faith-filled man. He also plays the piano and the organ really well and even played all the music for stake conference Saturday night!

This area is a new challenge, but I'm excited. I think I'll have to do a little more defending of the Church here just based on some experiences from the past few days, but it will be fun honestly haha. I know that Jesus is the Christ and that He lives. I know that His gospel is the only source of real TRUTH and light in the darkness our world contains. Thanks to His church, we do not have to discern which voices are correct, nor which we should listen to. The way of the Savior is the only way to navigate our world safely and joyfully.

I love you all! This was a long one, but there's lots of pics!

Elder Snyder