Hey so it's Tuesday!

I’m sure you all almost thought you didn’t have to worry about hearing from me but haha surprise!!!!! So this week ,yesterday, we had a zone activity but because we have to rely on buses we had to wait to come back home. Unfortunately we had to wait 2 hours for a bus to pass. No idea why a bus didn’t come earlier like normal but we didn’t get back until like 6:30. And we had appointments so we had to go work. But good news is we got permission to write today instead.

So this week was pretty good we just kind of did mission stuff. You know zone conferences, exchanges, walking into the middle of nowhere to contact, and baptizing a 92 year old and her granddaughter. Yeah, you read that all right

So Tuesday I had an intercambio in Friere with a guy from my district name of Elder Sanchez. Cool guy from Peru. He is actually a lawyer legally licensed and everything. Convert of like 2 years. But he studied a lot before the mission so he and I had fun talking about books and stuff we had read. Both of us walked away with books we are going to read after the mission now. I’m excited. 

Then Wednesday we had to go to Temuco for a zone conference with President Bluth and the zone of Victoria. We are 2 small zones so we are together. But we had to be there at 9 which is impossible to do from Loncoche so we had to sleep all in Freire Tuesday night. Which is great and all unless you realize that they have 2 mattresses for 4 people. Gave my comp the couch and I took the floor. Wasn’t horrible. Slept on worse floors before of that I will not lie. Haha. But the conference was good we are really focusing on "teaching repentance and baptizing converts" so we talked a lot about that. 

Saturday was the big day. We have been teaching Berta and Katherine for a month now and the day of their baptism arrived. So we spent all day working on filling the baptismal font and stuff. And then we got a call from President Bluth saying how he was coming down for it. So that was like uhhhhhhhh AAAAHHHHH. Like I have always had that horrible doubt in the back of my head that says like oh no what if they back out, but that like doubles when President is there. Especially because Berta is 92 years old. And very deaf. She didn’t understand much she just liked how she feels when she comes to church and wanted to be baptized. But she is 92 and very old so we didn’t say no. But her granddaughter is 17 and she is super cool is thinking of serving a mission at this point. So we did that this weekend. Super fun days though. Everything went down good though actually we had our ward mission leader do the baptism so that was really cool. He wasn’t active when his son was baptized but he told me how that made him sad but yeah it happened so now he just has to take care of Katherine now. YYYEEEEAAAAHHHHHHHH hermanamiento!!! I think in english we say fellowshipping but I ain’t to sure at this point. But so that was super dope. 

Monday we went to some little waterfalls in Gorbea and it was super dope. Did some games and stuff and one of them was capture the flag. So I went hardcore and liked army crawled through bushes off to the side so I could get behind them and snuck up from behind to get their flag. I am also happy to report that it worked so we won capture the flag. It was super dope super happy about that. But really a fun pday. Also did some amateur rock climbing to get a rugby ball that fell into a river. Long story but it ends with us with the ball and the guy I was with was very dirty. 

I love ya’ll a lot and I hope ya’ll have a great week. Stay safe, be strong.

Profound spiritual truth cannot simply be poured from one mind and heart to another. It takes faith and diligent effort. Precious truth comes a small piece at a time through faith, with great exertion, and at times wrenching struggles. The Lord intends it be that way so that we can mature and progress“ (Richard G. Scott,Acquiring Spiritual Knowledge, Ensign, Nov. 1993,

Elder Galbreath

Happy Valentines Day

Well the day of love has passed. In other words absolutely nothing for a lone single missionary in south america. But this was still a good week so here we go.

So this week was pretty normal till Thursday. Because it is the beginning of a new cambio our district meeting was on Thursday so i did an intercambio here in Loncoche with a guy in my district called Elder Aravena. He is chilean and training a peruvian. So we worked together on Thursday, found some...interesting people. One lady we aren't quite sure if she was just super ditzy or drunk but she said yes to every single question, if the what are your opinion questions, but she also said yes to getting baptized. Granted we arent sure if she understood us but i had Aravena challenge her so i know it wasn’t my spanish, haha. Other than that we went to this place outside of town to teach and hopefully find some people so that was cool. Friday morning we go to Pitrufquen to get medicine for my comp because he has been under the weather for a while now so we met up there and he had called Hermana Balden to set up a Dr appointment in Temuco. So right after lunch we had to go take a bus up to temuco. But here in Loncoche the buses are less than punctual so the bus didn’t get there until it was 45 minutes late. So that means we were also 30 minutes late. So we finally get to the clinic when we find that the doctor had left but they fit us in with someone else and we had my comps appointment. So he thinks my comp has gastritis. So he prescribed him some medicine to help and we have to go back next week to make sure everything. But my comp is feeling slightly better so hopefully he is good. But we get out of the clinic at like 8:10 so we got to the bus terminal to find that.....there are no more buses. Yayy...... so we call the ZLs to see what they want and they tell us to call another sector in temuco and stay the night. Not much else we can do here. So we stayed the night in another missionaries house. The good news is they have a really nice house and extra mattresses so we did not have to sleep on the floor. But i woke up still pretty tired and we came back to Loncoche. So that was one heck of an adventure. Sunday another short adventure Elder Yson and I had to go to Gorbea because they do not have priesthood members to bless the sacrament. So every week some elders go over to Gorbea to help out. But being Loncoche the bus didn’t come till super late so we got there like 10 minutes late and wow I have never felt more like a movie star we called when we got into Gorbea and they sent a car to get us so we didn’t have to walk all the way to the chapel, we had like 5 people outside to greet us and found out they had delayed the meeting until we got there. Yeah we are kind of big shots here. Haha so that was my famous person experience.

We went to Temuco this morning to do my paperwork to get a new carnet as I just got my passport with the new visa stuff. So that was pretty cool. And also sucky cause imagine the lines you expect at like the DMV but like double that. About and hour and a half wait. Super dope.

So I love y’all keep going strong. I ponderized the standard of truth this week. It was super awesome I really liked it. Especially about how no unhallowed hand can the stop this work from progressing  (or something like that not sure how it goes in english) but it was really cool. This is the Lords work.

I love y’all more than you know,

Elder Galbreath

I'm a grandpa! My trainee is training

Elder Duffin called me this morning to let me know he is going to be training. Sorry just super pumped about that. I’m a grandpa Anywho so this week was super good though had a couple stuff go down. So we started off the week we did an activity in our plaza here in Loncoche we put up a whiteboard and a poster and asked the people “How do you show your love to your family" and had people write their answers on these little hearts we had cut out. It was cool talked to lots of people and we got some good people out of it. Fun little activities to get our name out there a little more.

Saturday we had our zone conference and had some good training stuff. But right after i made pancakes for the zone as a way of saying goodbye to those who are leaving. They turned out alright. Nothing great out of this world but alright. Only had one guy die in our zone this cambio Elder Espitia from Columbia/spain. He was born in Columbia but at like 12 he moved to Spain. But real nice guy helped the zone out a lot. But he is also tiny hence the photo in the bucket. 

Then after the conference we had to help a family move from their house to another one close by. Actually we are in process to find them a new house so we can get the house they are in now because it is like a perfect mission house. But that is on the backburner for now. So we went, ate lunch, ate a lot and helped move the big stuff right? So we are moving the refrigerador when they call us over and they had also made an asado! Oh my gosh so much food but it was so good. Had 2 plates of spaghetti for lunch then an asado. Great way to start a fast in my opinion. But so we ate again and kept moving stuff. So that took up like a ton of time with all the food and the couches and big freezer they have. But it was good. Then we went to visit a couple investigadores and that was the day really. Sunday was super dope so saturday we had taught this old lady and her granddaughter about tithing and fast offerings and committed them to pay after their baptism like normal but on sunday the old grandma who is 92 just came with some money and payed her tithing. So that was like awesomely super dope. Probably the coolest thing that happened to me during church. So after church we had our branch council which...well we showed up so that was good. Like noone was there. Super funny. But that is kind of our life here in small branches. So sunday night we were walking and just kind of contacting until we had to go back all our of appointments had fallen. So we were contacting and we went to this street we had contacted like a week before so we started to turn around when i got this hard ugly feeling in my gut so i was like no we are contacting here. So i felt better when we started contacting and we yelled at the gate and heard a guy yell come on in. So we started walking in and there is this guy working so we presented ourselves said what were are doing and promised blessings. He said come in and we walked into this woodshop.

This guy makes the most beautiful things i have ever seen in my life from wood. He starts telling us all these stories of stuff he has made and i am flabbergasted. It was so amazing. Turns out he had made a tree of life scene for a mission president in Osorno and has 2 kids that are members of the church. Super awesome very spiritual man very deep spirit. So that was super dope.

So i realized sunday I haven’t shared my testimony with yall lately. So i know more than anything else that God loves us and he takes care of us all the time. That he has never, will never and is not abandoning us. He is always by our side and showers us with his love at all times and in all places. He loves us so much. I know Jesus suffered everything for us to let us be here and enjoy what we enjoy. I know that when one repents of our sins we can feel better and cleaner than we have ever felt. I love the Savior. I know that the Book of Mormon is the word of God and helps us draw closer to him. I have seen miracles come to pass because of the power behind this book and the restored priesthood. I love the scriptures and how i feel when I read.

I love yall

Elder Galbreath