Hola familia!
Feliz Dia de Los Reyes Magos! As in hispanic tradition, this is the day the wise men came bearing gifts for Jesus Christ. In most households here, this day is bigger than Christmas as far as presents go, so they get pretty excited for it ha. They leave their shoe outside the door and the wise men come drop off gifts at their house, too! I'm jealous. They get 4 Santas! ;) I hope this day finds you well, and you are enjoying your Day of the Wise Men. Also, Happy Anniversary to Mom and Dad! Thank you for being such amazing parents to us! I sure hope you have a great day, and I look forward to hearing where your vacation will be this year! CONGRATULATIONS! :)
As I explained last week, right after getting off last week, I went to the mission office to pick up my son! His name is Elder Silvester from Clinton, Utah. He loves hunting, puzzles, magic tricks, swimming, and his favorite color is green. He's a cool cat. I couldn't get him to smile at the camera, and we haven't had a chance to take a companionship picture yet, so this is the best I could get for now. ha He is such a good missionary, and I do not feel like I am training him. He already knows his stuff really well, and is already really good at staying involved in planning, teaching, etc. His Spanish is already pretty good, too! I got lucky! ha He's way awesome, and I can tell we are going to have a lot of fun together! Elder Dehlin stayed in his area and welcomed Elder Urrutia from Santa Ana 5, as I said last week, so here's a picture of them, too! This is going to be a great district and transfer!
This week was a pretty good week. It was a very basic normal missionary week. We picked him up, had a few meetings this week, and had a lot of studying to do. During the first 12 weeks of training, we are inside for 6 hours! So, we don't get out until 2 on a good day. If we have meetings that day, too (which we had every day last week), we basically learn and study all day, get out for a couple hours, then have to call it a night. It's pretty rigorous work, as you can imagine. ha It's a joke that we spend all day studying for our investigators just to go to sleep and do it all over again. ha This week will be good, though, and we are going to have a lot more opportunities to work hard! We're excited.
Depite all the time in-doors, we still focused on helping the investigators we do have. We are also working on bringing this area back to life. When Elder Smith left, our area basically went dormant as I was moved into the north area for a couple weeks until I got a new companion to join me once again in my area. So we are excited to do a lot of finding! Woo! We still kept up with those preparing for baptism-Elvia and Joaquin-and continued to contact referrals and visit some potentials when time permitted. We still got to teach our first lessons together, and it's crazy that we already teach with great unity! He is really a great missionary, and I am going to enjoy having him here with me. He's a hard worker, and he's ready to go! He actually reminds me a lot of myself when I came in....I don't know if that is a good or bad thing yet...stand by. ;)
For New Year's Eve, the ward had a party with a lot of food and music to welcome in the new year. We could only stay for a little bit because there is only so much missionaries can do while music is being blasted and people are dancing. So we enjoyed the food, talked with a few members (so Elder Silvester could meet them), and then took off for home so that we could unpack and get to sleep. He had been up for almost 24 hours due to the travel time and jet lag. He was a trooper!
It was nice to welcome in the new year this Sunday, as Roberto Sanchez had the awesome opportunity to baptized his son! He turned 8 in September, and really wanted his dad to be the one to baptize him. So, it was good that they waited a little with him! It was an awesome experience to watch someone who has come so far get in the water and do what had just happened to him a month and a half before. They were both beaming with excitement. He did a great job-although it took 3 times. ;) He REALLY dunked him on the 3rd try haha. I was also invited to join in the circle for his confirmation. So excited for that family, and can't wait to come back for their temple sealing. :) So happy for them!
I hope you all are doing well, and that you started off the year, well! I love you and miss you and pray for you constantly. Please be safe-I sure love hearing from you all. Sorry if I don't respond too fast, but I'm working on it! Love you and hope to hear back soon. Take care!
-Elder Gallego
“I am so thoroughly convinced that if we don’t set goals in our life and learn how to master the techniques of living to reach our goals, we can reach a ripe old age and look back on our life only to see that we reached but a small part of our full potential. When one learns to master the principles of setting a goal, he will then be able to make a great difference in the results he attains in this life.” Elder M. Russell Ballard
P.S. I solved one of those crazy Japanese metal puzzles! Took a while, but I feel pretty confident. ;)
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