Hello, everyone!
I hope that all is well with each and every one of you. It's been a while so I am glad to be able to drop you all a note. If candy and dressing up is your thing then I wish you a Happy Halloween. I'm going to be a missionary for a second year in a row. However, we are told not to go door to door or to stay out late so we will be indoors tonight getting things around the house sorted out. We got a new fridge today, because our last one would leak. Our "new" fridge came with a funky odor so we have Arm N Hammer powder and an open bottle of vanilla on the inside of the fridge while Elder Stevens decided to spray the outside with Axe body spray and Febreeze. Hopefully that will do, but if not then we will be cleaning that up later today.
The church did a Halloween activity, which had a really good turnout. There were games, candy, and even a magician. Seth helped us out in setting an obstacle course booth that even had a leader board. It became competitive in a fun way as the kids wanted to better their score and wanted to be in the highest rank possible. On the candy side, one family went above and beyond in decorating their car trunk by parking it behind an inflatable Halloween entrance way with spooky music and all. It definitely was an attention getter, because after we mingled for a bit and allowed the kids to get their candies we went car to car and that specific car was all out and had nothing more than a giant witch pot full of popcorn.
On the missionary side of life, Carol was baptized October 15th. She's doing great and is looking forward to doing genealogy work and hoping to know more about her family from her mother's side. I apologize for the lack of pictures. The computers at this library read some flash drives and for whatever reason it will not detect my camera. Branda was doing well and she still is since she reads and comes to church almost every Sunday, but we haven't been able to teach her as much. She has been spending time with her family especially after her father had surgery on his foot and has been laid up in bed for a few weeks now.
We have been finding a lot of great people to begin teaching. The one climb has been getting a set return appointment with them. They either get called to work, have a court date they forgot about, or have to watch grandchildren at the last minute. However, we're staying hopeful and working hard. There are definitely some experiences within the last two-three weeks that I would love to share but time is short.
In closing I'll leave you with an experience that happened just this last week. As it gets darker earlier I become a bit reluctant on knocking someones door unexpectedly even if they have talked to us in the past. So unless we have an appointment or someone who has specifically said that after 5 PM is best we will walk around and talk to people. We did a lot of walking on Wednesday night. When Thursday morning came I noticed that my name tag fell off within a couple seconds during our hour walk.
Thankfully I had a replacement so I wasn't really worried about it but I kept a prayer in my heart that if it's meant to be that I'll find it or a good person will find it that won't go around posing as me on Halloween. :X Well after knocking some doors Thursday afternoon Elder Stevens and I were wondering where to go next. He wanted to knock some houses that were on dead end small streets off of the street we just talked to people on. I insisted we keep walking and maybe go to another street or go talk to some people walking by.
The first person we see I say hello to. I introduced myself and I was confused by his confused look. He made mention that he found a tag for an Elder Gallefer or something like that and he put it on top of a stubby pole, because he was thinking it was from a baptist church or some other church in town but he didn't have the time to go and return it since he had to return to work. He took us to the pole and..yeah...you guessed right, it was my name tag. We thanked him, talked briefly, and let him go about his way. It just so happens that he shared the experience with someone who attends the church in Dixon. The good news in all of it is that he welcomed us to stop by and speak to him again this week so we will see how that goes.
If there's anything to get from all of that, never give up on the power of prayer. If a plastic name tag can be returned, many greater things can happen through prayer. Well it has been fun catching up. That might be enough to last until my next letter five weeks from now. I hope not. :P I hope to write more constantly especially since time is just going on by. I hope to get pictures to you all as soon as possible. I think about you all constantly. Again, feel free to write me or e-mail me at any time. Although I wish to be able to write you all, I cannot. However, I DO read every letter that comes in.
Make it a great week, everyone!
- Elder Gallegos
