Noah on a Mission

Dear friends and family, It doesn't feel real, but we have come to the end. 23 and a half months have passed since I became a missionary. This is the last weekly email. I was set apart on the day President Monson died. I've labored through all the many changes that have happened in the Church since then. I've seen new mission rules galore all across the board culminating in a new missionary rule book. I've read the New Testament and the  Doctrine and Covenants in their entirety for the first time. I read  Jesus the Christ  twice and the Book of Mormon 4 times or so. (I think I still am missing a bit of the Pearl of Great Price somehow.) I got to look at myself in the proverbial mirror, recoil in horror, and try to repent. I got to meet countless individuals who I will love and stay in contact for the rest of my life. I was involved in teaching 6 individuals who got baptized either while I was in their ward or afterward. I learned how to bette...

Well, I will wait to reflect upon my mission until next week's weekly. Despite the fact that I don't have too much else to say this week. The trio life is good. Elder Borden and Elder Schreiter are great missionaries. I think this trio is even better than the two other trios I was a part of between transfers on two separate occasions. I thought of something interesting recently. It was really uplifting and profound. I kind of forgot what it was. ...That's why you write things down sooner! All I remember, basically, is that it's silly to expect someone to get through life without having made lots of mistakes. It's a given that mistakes, even big ones, will be made. That's kind of inevitable. It's okay. Just move on. That's what I tell myself anyway. I feel like I had some cool analogy for this but I forgot what it was. I'm striving to stay focused. I am trying my hardest. I'm sticking it out till the end, feeling...

Dear friends and family, I met an apostle of Jesus Christ this week. I don't have the picture he took with the mission yet so if/when I get that I'll send it. (Provided they get it to us within the next two weeks.) On Saturday we arrived at the church building where it was to take place. This was the entire mission meeting in one location, which never happens unless an apostle visits. We were told that Elder Uchtdorf was in a meeting with the mission leadership so we quietly gathered in the gym to line up for a photo. We got lined up and arranged for the picture waiting for a while as more missionaries filed in and we awaited the Uchtdorfs. Finally I spotted Sister Uchtdorf walking in and going near to her seat. I don't know how many people recognized her--we don't usually see her, just her husband. A few moments later Elder Uchtdorf strode in and everybody went dead silent. He said something like "I've looked all over the building for ...

Dear friends and family, What is there to say this week? Hm... Well we had some success finding some new people, and we have appointments lined up. Pray those go well. Our main man on date, John, has been progressing except he said he'd come to church Saturday evening but the next morning something came up and he wasn't able to make it. Unfortunate, but not exactly his fault. Still worrisome though. Hopefully everything gets together and he is able to make his baptismal date for December 21st. This past week's  My Plan was really good--I got to the section where it has you think of who you want to be in one year and I unexpectedly thought of a ton of goals that I felt really good about. So I guess I'm pretty excited to make those happen. I have a lot of work to do. Love, Elder Gallagher PIC: An oddity of nature and gravity    

Dear friends and family, We sent out a mass text to all the people in our area book who were marked as "not interested". Someone responded saying they'd be happy to meet again, but the last elders never answered some of his questions. We said we'd be happy to try to answer them if we could. So we get emailed to us a 15-page document containing the lamest anti questions you've ever read. We're talking questions about Jesus being born in Bethlehem and not Jerusalem like the Book of Mormon says (he even had a visual aid for that one), Jesus and Satan being brothers, the Church of Jesus Christ prophesied to be undestroyable, why the passover isn't mentioned in the Book of Mormon (" Hmmm... Don't know, don't care. How's that? " - Emperor Cuzco), and even how Moroni became an angel (" Like anyone could even know that. " - Kip Dynamite). 15 pages of this cr@p! Haha. The actual visit with him ended up being no...

Dear friends and family, We've been trying our best to make things happen in Mansfield. Progress has been a little bit slow. Adapting to new areas isn't my favorite thing. Hard to know if you're doing your best. But we're doing okay overall. So we got some incredible news... an apostle is visiting our mission. I've been waiting my entire mission for something like this.  Dieter F. Uchtdorf  is coming to visit the Ohio Columbus Mission on November 23rd. The entire mission will be together which in and of itself is unprecedented at least in my time. I am very much looking forward to that. In other news, I started My Plan this week, which is a 6-week program for missionaries when they are in their last transfer in order to prepare them for their return home and ensure they transition well. It's kinda weird because I've already partly gone through it with the three missionaries I killed off (Elder Penny, Elder Henrie, and Elder Miller ...

 Um sorry guys I'm lame this week PICS: Elder Cox and myself and Morgan Freeman as a grocery store bagger from the Shawshank Redemption This library book was mocking me ("RM")

Dear friends and family, I don't have much time this week because I have to spend time figuring out college stuff. Heh. Yeah... But I'm here in Mansfield with Elder Cox and things are pretty good. I don't really have much to comment on yet other than we had someone at church who is on date for baptism, so that's good! His name is John so you can pray for him. It's pretty off-putting going to a new area after having been in the last one for so long. I wish I had more time to write something inspiring... one thing I've been thinking about is how we need to develop a "hunger" for the gospel. Before my mission it wasn't something I did much or put much thought into. Kind of like vegetables. I knew it was good for me but wasn't head over heels about it. But now I've actually developed a hunger where I truly want to learn more about the gospel truths, the doctrines, and how I can be a better person and everything. I know ever...

Hello everyone, This week we had an epic exchange on the campus of Youngstown State University with our district leader and his companion. That was fun. Kinda weird being on a campus. It's a whole different world being swarmed by students and trying to talk to them. Thankfully the elder I was with, Elder Johnson, is amazing and talking to everybody. The campus isn't very big either, but there were plenty of people to talk to. That was fun. Now you may recall that Elder Johnson is the super tall dude from the pictures I've sent. And he plays basketball. Well, he actually found a finding opportunity through basketball--a guy on campus invited him to play with them. I didn't have basketball clothes and I certainly am not very good at basketball so I decided to just sit out and finish a poem I had been writing. But I watched the game too--he's REALLY good. Like, he already has a scholarship to attend college in Oregon and play for the Ducks. So ke...

Dear friends and family, Wasn't Conference great? Perhaps it was just me but the tone felt slightly different than most previous ones. Several apostles gave talks with tones they don't usually give. And I'm excited for whatever will happen next year during the bicentennial. I really liked a lot of talks, but off the top of my head I really liked Hans T. Boom's and L. Todd Budge's talks. Definitely excited to re-listen to/read them all over again. So there's a fellow who is the son of some recent converts, named Jon-Mike. He isn't baptized, though he was the one who first let the missionaries in the door. Though he heard the first lesson, his parents ended up taking to the gospel while he ended up getting busy with work and dealing with addiction issues. We've always seen him around but scarcely talked to him and never taught him though we had come close to actually setting something up once. Well... we finally taught him two days ...

Dear friends and family, You may recall last week I said this: • Vicki is awesome While on an exchange with Elder Johnson, we tracted into an old Greek lady named Vicki. She had a heavy Greek accent and was really sweet. I also said that we had a lesson with her that night. Well, turns out she wasn't home. It was pretty disappointing and I was ready to tell all of y'all that it didn't actually pan out and there aren't miracles anymore, apparently. But then...we stopped by a few days later--and met her husband Eugene. Well, he said she wasn't available and proceeded to spout his own opinion on religion (which we told him we agreed with). He wasn't that interested, though he was nice. Didn't really give us a time to come back or anything. So we were still disappointed. THEN last night we were working around her area and decided to stop by, really not expecting much. We knocked on her home and after a few minutes a you...

Dear friends and family, Firstly, someone I taught was baptized! Not by me though. It was Alberta, who I did not find but started teaching pretty early on here in Warren. We weren't really getting anywhere with her however and though I can't remember all the reasoning behind it as this point, we made the decision to hand her off to the sisters in the ward. From there Alberta seemed to take off, so I guess it was a good match-up. I also got asked to give a talk this week in church. I got asked on Friday. I spent most of my spare time writing it. I got the inspiration to actually tell a personal story, which I almost never am prone to do because I don't consider any of my life experiences very inspiring. This one wasn't particularly either--the talk was about "love one another" and I felt inspired to tell the story of when I trained a new missionary and failed to demonstrate love. It seemed to work out okay. The microphone has been broke...

Dear friends and family, Another week where we're plodding along, trying to do our best, but waiting for stuff to really get moving. Learning more and more...about how hard it is to improve. I feel like I understand, cognitively, what I ought to do to be a better man but I don't understand how to actually DO it. Feels like God hasn't told me that. Maybe He won't tell me that... Hoping I'll figure it out eventually. So we are teaching (or attempting to) a guy named Billy. Billy is an interesting fellow. He's extremely devoted to one thing at a time, pretty much, and what he's devoted to at the moment is remodeling a house. It's a personal project so it's just him and maybe a couple of friends or something and he's making crazy progress. He put in some new kitchen counters where previously there was nothing and they're super slick, like, better than our kitchen haha. His work ethic is amazing, only problem is he seems t...

Dear friends and family, We've settled in for the transfer. Things are going decently well. Some things keep getting delayed, like the next lesson with our golden girl, Kelly, or our main guy on date, Bruce, to beat his smoking habit and find work. Just being patient. Kind of just thinking about how I can continue improving. I've feared that what I've really been doing rather than improving is stand still. Kinda feel like I've just been in a state of stasis. I wish I better knew how to be in a state of constant improvement. Is that even possible? Perhaps not. But life is fine. I try to let things just slide off of me. I feel too enclosed in myself. People don't really ask me to share, and I don't really know how to share very well, and when I do it doesn't seem to accomplish very much anyway. People on the outside of mission life are pretty busy. I feel like we're all turned to our own endeavors. Cool things like school ...

Dearest families and friends, The news is in: I am staying in Warren for the third transfer. I'm happy with that overall because of the options we have for people to teach. Things are getting really good. Allow me to explain why. This past week I had both the best worst lesson and the best best lesson I've ever had. Meaning the best lesson that was terrible and the best one that was incredible. First, the best worst one. This was with a lady named Vera. When we first met her on her porch, she was willing to listen at first but quickly told us she thought we were "programmed robots" and she didn't feel the Spirit. Holy cow, lady. No one ever reacted like that before. We had a long back and forth trying to get words in. She's a super spiritual lady and rebuked us a couple times, mainly my companion, saying we needed to be humbled. Pretty weird. She took a Book of Mormon and said she'd read it. She missed the next few appointments...

I totally put the wrong date on last week's email subject and nobody said anything! Dear friends and family, Another week just blazed on by. We only have two weeks left in the transfer too. I've had an interesting week. I started feeling sick about three days ago and wondered what it was. I had some flu-like symptoms like low energy, aches, and having to pee too much. The morning after I admitted I was actually sick we shortly called the mission doctor to ask what we should do. So he sent me to a home clinic place and kept asking me if I had diabetes or if my family had a history of diabetes. I said not that I remembered. But we drove to the clinic and I was waiting in line to get checked up. Well, on the way there I remembered that my grandpa actually did have diabetes. It's been a decade so I totally forgot. (I also didn't even know that my other grandfather died from diabetes too.) I started to get a little worried. Do I have diabetes?!? Is...

Dear friends and family, Yesterday we saw a ridiculous heavy storm come in and flood some streets. It also knocked a huge branch over a parked car across from our apartment. Pictures below tell the story better than I could. We cleaned up the baptismal font on Wednesday for a chapel tour (it was not in good shape and as pictured below we were ill-equipped for it but we did it anyway). Sadly he did not make it for the tour as he thought it was supposed to be for another evening... Also yesterday, we had a bedbug scare. One of the bishopric saw one on me and church and sent us home. We put our clothes in the dryer and everything but we haven't seen hide nor hair of any other bedbugs so we don't know whether it actually came from us. No clue where it would have come from either as we hadn't been in any homes recently. I learned this week about not being "satisfied". It seems that there's part of me that's content with what I'...