"Out of Great Tribulation" (12/9/2019)

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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 better talk to people, how to talk to strangers, how to give priesthood blessings, and unlearned how to talk to girls.

My life has been changed forever. I don't know where I'd be without my mission. It hasn't been perfect or even close to it. I don't feel like my life post-mission is going to be easy. But I know it will be better. I look forward to it with both excitement and trepidation. I trust God. I know that good things are in store.

This week we gave a priesthood blessing to a dying man. He was very old and dying of natural causes, and his daughter had called us over asking us to give a final blessing to him. I got to anoint and our ward mission leader sealed the anointing. He died a day or two later. That was a valued experience. His funeral is tomorrow.

This week I also happened to look through the FamilySearch app which I never do and discovered that I have an ancestor who lived in Ohio!!! This whole time I had no idea. At first it looked like he lived in Warren, which is the last area I served in, but upon closer inspection I realized that he lived in Warren county, which is actually not in our mission boundaries. So I don't know if I necessarily served where my ancestor lived but either way it's pretty cool.

I thank all of you for your support, for your interest in what I've been up to even if that's only been skimming my emails. Hopefully if you took any amount of time to read what I've been doing, you got something out of it. I feel like they were better during the first half of my mission than the second but oh well. I probably should have done a better job of keeping them positive (and rated PG, in some cases 😖). I wasn't the kind of missionary I felt I should be but I learned that that isn't the point. I became closer to God and that is the point. I spent way too much time on my mission and before waiting for things to get better, agonizing over problems and imperfections, when what I should have been doing was being happy and patient and learning the gospel.

But on my mission I have learned much and I feel like I can grasp a future that is bright whereas before I couldn't even see the light. I know that this life is about good and evil and the anguish of challenges that can push us either to God or to despair. Choosing God in the midst of a world of crippling, choking imperfections is what purifies us and draws us closer to God and makes us more like God. Oftentimes I feel the weight of the wickedness and pain inflicted upon innocents and wonder how this world could be God's. But I believe it is. I have to! That's where joy comes from. God is the only source of joy...His love is the only thing that makes this world make any sense. Without God's love all is vanity, all is temporary, all is damned. That's why I seek His love--to reach it myself and then share it with others.

I look forward to seeing all of you again someday (some soon, some later, possibly some very much later). I want to do good, and I will need your help as I go onward.

With God's grace I feel that I will do great things. However long it takes to make it. I thank God for this opportunity that I did not deserve but have benefitted eternally from.

Signing off...for the last time.
- Elder Gallagher

FINAL PICS:
- A Christmas death for myself and Elder Lewis with our district
- Christmas card 2018, remastered for 2019
- My Ohioan ancestor




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