Noah on a Mission

Dear friends and family, I am now in Reynoldsburg, which is pretty much the opposite of how Westerville was in that Westerville was mostly suburbs with some downtown and apartments whereas Reynoldsburg is mostly downtown and apartments with some suburbs. It is a car share area with the Reynoldsburg east elders, which means that we switch off having the car every week. This week we had no car. So we had usually been getting rides but two days ago our ride backed out and our lesson was super far away. We didn't have any time to spare; we hopped on the bikes (mine not having even been used for 4 months and that only for a few days) and sallied forth. It was the most intense bike ride of my mission---no, my LIFE. About an hour of almost non-stop pedaling. The really amazing thing is that when we made it to the person's house, John, I was still able to teach despite being exhausted. I couldn't do that at the beginning of my mission. It was a good lesso...

Dear friends and family, So transfers are tomorrow. We've been making some progress with people, and I'm excited for their progress. Heather texted us with doctrinal concerns and says she feels like we're diverging from the Bible which says you are saved by grace. But thankfully though we haven't met with her in a while she is being fellowshipped by a couple ward members and hopefully things will continue from there. I think she'll be baptized, but it will take some learning on her part. There are a few other people we are working with and several we are excited to start working with. I can't remember if I've mentioned Michelle before, but she's a very kind woman who's open to learning about the Church who we've been meeting with semi-actively for about a month. We had a great lesson with her in a member home on Saturday where we helped her to better understand the Restoration. She said something awesome in the lesson...

Dear everyone, So, our apartment flooded. Let's start at the beginning. On Saturday the 19th we received confirmation that church was canceled due to a bad incoming snowstorm. Now, the storm was already pretty bad before that so it wasn't a surprise. What WAS a surprise was waking up the next morning to Elder Lewis distressed about something. I heard water flowing. I sat up in bed and saw the kitchen floor had about a half-inch of water all throughout it. It was 5 AM. Elder Lewis had woken up to use the bathroom and stepped on squishy, wet carpet. He turned on the light switch right as I woke up as well only to see water pouring out of the light fixture. So we got buckets and tried to stop the leakage. We saw the bathroom had water all in it as well. The carpets were gradually getting soaked in nasty water. We called the apartment maintenance people and left a message. I was tired and kinda aggravated at my already-not-enough-hours-of-sleep be...

Dear friends and family, Jon was baptized on Saturday! This is my first baptism where I set things up and the person being baptized actually showed up to the baptism. Feels nice. And the next day I was able to confirm him a member of the Church. A first for me! We're very proud of Jon. He's come a long way. Elder Lewis and I have scheduled our year-mark temple trip, which will be this Friday. Because of how the rules work with us going to the temple (and since that was the only day we could get someone to drive us), this Friday will be our next P-day and we will not have a P-day next Monday. After that things should go back to normal. I'm very interested in/excited to go to the temple. On another note, since I've decided to head right into school when I get back, President Stratford has recommended a slightly early release for me (so I don't turn lazy again while waiting for school to begin) which will be... December 14th . So mark the date....

Dear friends and family, Something I forgot to mention last week--we went to tract a country road that we hadn't been on before. We didn't see a close place to park so we parked and walked a bit of a distance. Weren't a ton of houses on the street, it turned out. We knocked maybe four of them before we decided it was time to turn back. When we get back to the main road, a sheriff's car pulls up and stops in front of us. He gets out and tells us that somebody called them about two suspicious people in the area, and he guessed that it was referring to us. So yeah, I had the civil authorities called on me for the first time! I'd heard of that happening to other missionaries but this was a first for me. He was really nice though; after he ran our IDs he gave us a ride in his car back up the road to our parked car. Pretty crazy. So, this week's big news is that Jon passed his baptismal interview yesterday and the baptism will be on Saturday! ...

Dear friends and family, Three days from now I will hit my 1 year mark. I'm closer to that now than I will be by next week so I figured I'd make note of it today. I don't have much to say about it right now but I will be posting about it on Facebook on the day of. So, watch for that. Suffice it to say that this is by far the best decision I've ever made. Nothing too different from last week as far as the work is concerned. I think I mentioned that Jon's baptismal date has been pushed back. We're pretty confident he'll be able to make it by the 12th of January. I don't know if I ever mentioned this but the family we were hoping to teach kinda fell through. They still have a possible connection with some members we got them in contact with, but we sadly pushed them away for the time being with our imbalance of too much enthusiasm and not enough tact. Pretty sad, but I know one day things will turn around. The last two days ...

Dear friends, Jon's baptism date has been moved back to allow him more time to get ready. Our tentative date is the 12th of January and we believe he will be ready by then. It will work out better that the 29th of December (our previous date) for a number of reasons. I've received quite a bit more Christmas gifts than I expected from members, family, and even some non-members this morning. I'm grateful for all of them. I was thinking yesterday about God's mercy. Alma chapter 26 summarizes my feelings pretty well, on that as well as another topic. 17 Who could have supposed that our God would have been so merciful as to have snatched us from our awful, sinful, and polluted state? 19 Oh then, why did he not consign us to an awful destruction, yea, why did he not let the sword of his justice fall upon us, and doom us to eternal despair? Something to ponder on. Why doesn't God condemn us to the destruction we deserve? Because ...

Hello everyone, Transfers are here. I am staying in Ashland with Elder Lewis. Which means I will have been in Ashland for at least six months (or a quarter of my mission) by the time I leave. This past January I never would have thought that one year from then I'd be in this place! But I do enjoy this area despite its challenges (which are numerous); the weather has actually been really decent, with some shockingly warm days (like today). And I am glad to still be with a lot of these members. Though I plan to one day return to every ward I've so far served in, I am, I think, especially looking forward to one day meeting again the people in the Ashland Ward when I am not under a 1-hour time restraint for dinner visits. Also, I've only been threatened on a doorstep here once! 🗡 :) Jon is still progressing well so far (though whether he will make the 29th for baptism or not is still kinda up in the air). Many things have been going very well w...

Dear people who I put on my email list often without first getting their approval but who I've now been sending emails to for months so I guess I'll keep going, I lost my life this week. But I'll get to that later. The real news is that Jon is still on date for baptism by the end of the month. Continue to pray for him. He can make it by the end of the year but it will take everything falling into place perfectly because for one thing the bishop and other important people will be out of town that weekend so we're gonna be figuring some things out with less help than we would otherwise have had. I must say though, I love our bishop, Bishop Dahl. He's wonderful. I have so much more appreciation for bishops than I had before. How they do it I do not know. Or anyone who's at bishop-level or above (I know it's not a hierarchy but you know what I mean). It's an incredible sacrifice; as a former bishop-now-seminary teacher friend of mi...

Happy 11-month mark to me! Hey everybody, this week was pretty great. Before I get into that though, I have an absolutely brilliant idea. I call it: Missionary Quartering . With this enormous area to cover and us pinned down with limited mileage and an apartment to return home to every night, I think our outreach would be much better if we could instead quarter ourselves without warning in any members' homes for a night! Think of it, we show up on your doorstep, announce our need for a good night's rest, and you have to provide it! It'd be amazing! We could go anywhere!! Heheh...Yeah, that was a joke, in case you were wondering. That'd be a sure way to get everybody's names removed from Church records! So as for people we're teaching, first there's Juanita. Things are moving a bit slowly with her but we are having a lesson tomorrow morning. She intends to know for herself if the Book of Mormon is true but she's taking it rea...

From my companionship to yours... - Elder Gallagher

Dear friends and family, This week was the first time we've had someone at church for about two months (or more). He's a man we've been working with named Jon Figley. Our first teaching visit with him was very much not promising, but we have met every week since then and he's changed and grown in understanding. He was able to come to church for the first time yesterday, and he really enjoyed it which was a little surprising to me considering one of the talks a member gave in sacrament meeting had pretty much nothing to do with the gospel whatsoever 😒. He's also probably reading the Book of Mormon the most out of anybody I've taught, which is awesome. He's already on 2 Nephi! He told us over text yesterday evening that he could definitely see himself becoming a member of the church, that he learned more there than at any other church, and he plans to return next week. Definitely pray for him, and pray that this ward will be able to receive ...

Missionary Mondays are back. We had Stake Conference yesterday, presided over by Elder J. Costa of the Seventy as well as Elder Kunz. Before it began Elder Costa came up to us in the back of the gym, greeted us in Spanish, and hugged us. I didn't even fully realize it was him--I'd seen a picture of him but it's always a little different seeing them in person. It was a good conference. Most of it was the release of a longtime stake presidency and the calling of a new one. The new stake president, President Coburn, didn't even arrive until midway through everything because he got his call kinda by surprise and he was in Utah at his son's or somebody's temple wedding. So he and his wife flew back on a red-eye flight which I used to know the definition of but all I know now is that (I assume) it's inconvenient, and arrived in the nick of time I guess, haha. Things are getting pretty cold here. Already it's snowed pretty decently heavy...

Hello everybody, Here are my notes for things to communicate in my weekly email to you all: • It's cold • I'm 22 Yeah, that about covers it. Okay, a little bit more information: things with aforementioned people we're teaching along with some others are progressing slowly but somewhat surely, with many delays. We'll get there... A guy named Jon who we recently started teaching has had work these past two weeks preventing him from coming to church. Then he tells us that he is free to come next week! We mentioned that this past Sunday morning at Ward Council and the Bishop reminded us that next week is Stake Conference. ...So close. We've been raking a lot of leaves. Yesterday we raked an entire backyard of some members and it took two hours. Mountains of leaves take a lot of effort to move. Oh yeah, so the transfer ends tomorrow and I'm staying in Ashland with Elder Lewis. This is the first time I have been with a companion f...

Hello everyone, Before we begin today there is some business to take care of. P-days are changing to Mondays. (There, I said it.) My feelings about this are not, not, not, positively un-negative. This will be effective November 19th. The area presidency has spoken--we are conforming to the rest of the world's missions and joining the Monday P-day cause. At least District Councils will be on Wednesdays instead of Tuesdays. This has been a super spiritual week. I know now, personally, that spiritual gifts are real, that the Spirit is an active being, that the Gift of the Holy Ghost is a true gift, and that God truly does not leave us comfortless; He will come to us. "He hath filled me with His love, even to the consuming of my flesh." The best thing that happened was something that I have been wanting ever since I came out on the mission............. WE FOUND A FAMILY TO TEACH!!!! I am super grateful that we have begun teaching this family. T...

So, We've had a slight uptick of missionary action here this past week. We are teaching a lady named Juanita--she came to the ward Halloween party a couple of days ago, which was pretty cool. That happened immediately after we had the bishop and his wife meet her at her home. She told us that she is willing to read and pray about the Book of Mormon, that she wants to know which church is true, and that so far the only answer she's received from God about the Book of Mormon is "It's okay to read it." So pray that she DOES read it as she said she would and receives a witness of its truth. We are meeting with her again tomorrow, to be joined by some great members who volunteered to join us for the lesson even though they have to get a babysitter! Wow, that's cool! We have met other people here and there, but meeting with them is still a challenge! We will keep at it though. Due to it being Halloween, our P-day today is from 1 PM to 9 PM, w...

Hello ladies and gentlemen, We have been putting good effort into our missionary work here in Ashland. I can say I'm proud overall of our effort. But we have not seen much success yet, so I'm not sure what I can say in this email. I don't have any pictures to share either. But I've had a weekly email every week since I started so I'm not gonna quit now. I did realize that I hit my year mark in about 10 weeks. That's pretty crazy. I guess what I've been facing this week is the fact that, as Adjusting to Missionary Life puts it, not all of life is deeply meaningful or exciting. Even missionary work. Sometimes life is just work. But if you work for the right reasons and with the right people, that work and that life will still be fulfilling. I wish you all the best--that each of you will work through the bland times of life and treasure the parts that are meaningful. Strive to make each day count. As President Stratford has told me, ...

Hello, Sometimes we copy and paste stuff from our weekly letter to our friends and families into our weekly letter to our mission president. This time I'm going to do the opposite. Things have been different ever since the Assistants came to our area and rescued us last Thursday. We picked up new people to teach, we have more things to do, and we're more filled with faith to find. It hasn't been a 100% turnaround by any means yet but it's going well overall. The area isn't dead. In fact we have someone on date for baptism: Dillan, an 18-year-old with a really crazy life who had to grow up very fast. We're excited to keep teaching him, though it so far isn't going very quickly due to his crazy work schedule. He doesn't quite understand the Restoration yet but he wants to be baptized, so that's good. I think what I've found the most throughout my time here is just how few people are searching for the truth. Most eve...