Baptizing Kalifa

First things first, shout out to squad for putting out another
missionary. Skye Hall going to Argentina, super lucky girl!
Also I have a lot of pictures to sorry in advance.

Well a lot has happened so I'll cut to the chase.

I forgot to tell a story from last Sunday. Elder Reese and I were
contacting right before our weekly dinner appointment. I wanted to
contact this area I'd never been to before so we started walking and
quickly second guessed it. We had no idea why we were there. So we
start talking to people and got nothing. Elder Reese was like "you
wanna start heading back?" And I was like "yeah right after we baptize
this family walking towards us." So we start talking and they stopped!
What's more, is that the mom was American! So we start talking to them
and they were great! THEN THE CRAZIEST THING HAPPENED. ELDER REESE
PULLED AN ENGLISH BOM OUT OF HIS BACKPACK. I literally said out loud
"what the heck are you doing with an English Book of Mormon?" And he
says "I had a feeling to get it. Here, it's for you." And she was SO
GRATEFUL FOR IT. IT WAS UNREAL. Then seconds later we gave another one
to another family. So that's why we went down that street. Shout out
to my como for listening to the Spirit.

We taught Eric last Monday and it was great. Had a lesson planned, but
quickly realized that it didn't fit his needs, so we adapted the
lesson and had a great one about prayer. At the end, elder Reese and I
both got the feeling to invite the rest of his family to come watch
the Christmas video. So we had his whole family watching the video,
then Eric offered an awesome KNEELING prayer with his family. It was
unreal. The first of many 😎

Went to A Coruña and spent days traveling and beating the hermanas in
UNO on the train. Had a good Christmas conference with two zones
combined and saw the Galician beach for the first time in almost a
year. It was solid. Stayed the nights in Lugo. Beautiful city (sorry
elder priest for always make fun of it).

LESSON WITH ELISA WAS UNREAL. We walk in and she was so excited to
tell us she can come to church on Christmas! Also she now has a
baptismal date for February 18th! (Happy birthday Alyssa). Guys, I
promise you she will be the relief society president some day. Never
been this sure in my life. This lady is as gold as they come. She's so
prepared. The branch here NEEDS her. She's actually planning a service
project for us to go feed the poor, and she's cooking ALL the food.
She's unreal. I'm so excited for her.


KALIFA GOT BAPTIZED! It was so cool. It was my first baptism on the
mission and I'll never forget it. His face coming out of the font was
priceless! Biggest smile I've ever seen! We had our gospel principals
teacher baptize him and it was just an all around solid program.
Kalifa was so happy. He was supposed to give the closing prayer, but
got up and bore his testimony instead. It was unreal. He's come soooo
far and it was just the best. His prayers are SO sincere and
heartfelt. This guy is awesome. I remember the night we found him. We
were running home because we were late but we had a feeling to talk to
ONE more person. So elder Reese stopped Kalifa, he gave us his
address, and we taught him the next morning. He also got home from
work at 3 am the night before his baptism. He's so dedicated already
and is stoked to keep learning. We baptized Kalifa 😎

Love you all!

#ILUMINAelMUNDO,
Elder Gearig