Better late than never!

Sorry that I'm not writing monday it was a holiday on monday so all the shops were closed so that means our access to internet was also closed. Also because the semifinals of the american cup is being played today in Concepcion everything is crazy. 

But yeah so my week was pretty good this week, work work and more work, but thats kind of the grind here. It may be hot up there but down here it got cold in a hurry. Light jacket at like 1-4 but before and after that its sweater and jacket with a scarf time. Like a boss. But yeah just kind of moving on here.

So thursday we had a conference with like half of our mission with the Area Presidency his name is Elder Gonzalez it was really cool the dude is crazy smart he would like start talking about something, cite three scriptures from memory, half in english and half in spanish because he likes how it says parts in english, then keep going. He would answer questions like that and just go. It was super cool, but he talked about the book of mormon and how we need to apply it to peoples lives in order to get them to read it not just have them read the introduction or the promise in Moroni but apply an actual part of the Book of Mormon to their lives before we read them the promise. Its really cool . We have given out quite a few Books that way now and it has really worked. Pumped. 

We played soccer on these hardcore turf fields that are close to our house on monday. It was pretty cool only because it was turf. Still haven’t gotten hooked on soccer yet but I'm trying. I scored a goal though but other than that I was mostly just goalie/defender. Got a turf burn and it reminded me of playing real football though. So that felt good got some blood pumping at least. Then on monday after playing we painted our house. It was bad before lots of mold but now it looks good, we used this paint that like prevents mold from growing again and so we are all happy. I switched things up in our room to so my flag is on my side of the room not over the desk. Holds up better. And my comp hung up this little Argentina flag. Its small and pathetic in comparison to the Stars and Stripes. But such is life. No its actually kinda cool looking now because its new and we both have our flags up in our room. Diversity! 

We also had a movie night as a ward put on by the missionaries and we watched Meet the Mormons it was pretty cool. Because it still isn’t here in Chile lots of people came like we almost had 40 people. Which for an activity without food is pretty big. Then our ward had three other baptisms afterwards which was AWESOME. Really cool people. And yeah thats kind of the week. 

Sorry for the long wait with very little reward. But I'm doing great still. Working, pushing along. 

I am still looking for a tailor but I think I found a lady gonna bring a pair of pants to her tomorrow to see if she can do them and do a good job. 

Love y'all have a great week week and a happy 4th of July, This is the land of the free and the home of the Brave.. 

'Merica!

Elder Galbreath

State shoot.

Ok so maybe that doesn’t actually exist down here but sounds legit. 

So this week was pretty good we just kinda went to town working getting stuff done. Found a new investigator this week but she couldn’t come to church this week. But hopefully next week. 

So this week we also offered service like 4 times. We painted a house, chopped wood, helped put drywall up in a guys house and completely took the outside of a house out. It was a pretty exciting. Chopping wood was...interesting. So this guy we found has a ton of wood outside of his house and asked us for help. So 4 missionaries show up at his house with 2 axes expecting to help chop a ton of wood. We showed up at 9, i didn’t do many exercises that morning so i could just go to town chopping that wood. Then we show up and they guy was still freaking sleeping we had to leave to go do other stuff. So we ended up only working for him for like half an hour. Then we went to our counselor in our stake presidency and helped him with his wood as well. So that was frustrating but we did work so that was fun.

Also new this week i gave a talk in church. First time i gave a talk in the ward i am in now. Every other ward you present yourself and stuff but here they don’t have us do that i don’t know why. But so no one in Chile can pronounce my name so its always fun listening to them announce my name. The final speaker will be elder...always a pause and then the attempt. So my joke is usually telling them how and a joke about being gringo. It works. Then i spoke about the importance of being examples as members to the world and always sharing the gospel and when it is necessary to use words. I love that quote from General Conference. And how being an example is great but we also have to share with our words and try and use the missionaries. Their are some really cool quotes from Miracle of Forgiveness i used and it was really cool. But the guy in front of me spoke forever so to not make sacrament go forever i only spoke for like 5 minutes. But good brief summaries of everything. But i learned a lot so that’s what’s important. 

Hey i love you guys have a great week!

Elder Galbreath

Baby it's cold outside

So whatever you got to do, write it in your planner and go walk around for 8 hours!

The cold front has officially hit and with it random spouts of hard rain mixed with days of lots of rain. Im cold a lot. But now I have a testimony of scarves. I love mine it is warm and I wear it a lot not gunna lie. They are dope. Also umbrellas, rain jackets, rain pants, over boots and gloves. Yay winter!

So just so yall know this week and the next couple weeks is the american cup. Like the world cup but basically for latin america. Super big deal down here. Never heard of it before hand but hey now its all about the copa americana. but it makes it super hard to work during the games. Like when Chile is playing we are told not to be in the street. 1st its dangerous if chile looses and no one will let us in. Its basically a bigger deal than christmas down here. Super big deal. So we get to watch the chile games though. Last time we went to a recent convert named J. He is super cool. also he is studying to be a vet! So he and I talk about that and he is a really nice guy to. So thats super fun. I’m glad for all the years i spent reffing soccer or else i would be completely lost watching this thing. But luckily i understand everything so its kind of fun. Not as good as the super bowl but I’ll take it! Haha

So something cool/interesting about my comp is he is super good at chess. He told me he participated in like competitions and did pretty good. He is ranked nationally or something like that. So he is really good and like math stuff which also means he can do rubiks cubes. He has one and taught me basically how. So after several hours last pday and much thought I CAN DO IT! Thats right I Elder Big and Fluffy Galbreath solved a rubiks cube and can do it constantly. Boom, drop the mike. Just something random and cool that I learned on the mission. 

So other funny story we were talking to this guy named R and he was trying to tell us about this restaurant place that spins. Like you go up in this elevator and you sit and you spin. But he didn’t know where it was he thought maybe Argentina. I started thinking and was like wait a minute. Thats my state. He spent like 15 minutes describing the Space  Needle without me realizing it. So fun story our state is awesome and famous. Even if it is for the west side. 

So last little story for the week, this sunday we were looking at our goals and realized we are lacking a lot of stuff to be able to complete them. Also I have told you guys that this sector is a little hard to enter into houses and teach. But sunday we knocked three doors and the third house let us in. We talked to her and her son who is 9 for a couple minutes when her phone rang. So she left for a minute when all of a sudden her daughter came down and sat on the couch. So we thought sweet 3 new investigators. Then came another kid. And another. Then she came back. We ended up teaching 5 people all of them are above the age of 8, all of them are interested in our message and they all promised to read the pamphlets and pray to look for an answer to see if they should be baptized. Miracles, they exist. 

That is pretty much my week. 

Answers

1: I have lost about 50 pounds at this point. I am looking for someone who can shrink my pants at the moment. 

2: My comp and I are working well together now found the balance and my spanish is getting alot better. I talk english almost never at this point. 

3: Am I staying dry? Most of the time kind of. 

Scripture or church article. Well I am reading general conference and everytime i love the talk about hearing the music not just dancing. Also don’t know if i told you their is an activity in PMG we are doing as a mission. Read the BoM marking every reference to Jesus (name, title, etc), every doctrine and principle, attributes of Christ, and everything that is a direct quote from Jesus (and jesus said, the lord said to me, etc) It is super cool to see how much of all of that there is. It is hard at times to discern what is doctrine at times so you really have to think about it. Super cool. There is a lot. 

Love yall be strong the Lord is on your side

Elder Galbreath

Transfers! (Cambios)

Cambios. So Elder Ehlen is officially out of here. He is in the office and will be chilling with his family wednesday. It was pretty weird seeing him pack and everything. I was able to do it without getting to trunky but still a little bit of me I think went home in his suitcase. But I’m doing good. This cambio a lot of really good missionaries like my "uncle" Elder Midgley is going too. Oh lots of cool dudes. But I am getting my first latin comp. He is from Argentina. I can’t spell his name sorry only heard it once and its different so. That’ll be interesting. So hopefully my spanish will shoot up. That’ll be dope. 

But this week was just kind of going and saying goodbye to people for elder Ehlen. 

But first TUESDAY. It was great we made the cake before district meeting it was super great. We made the analogy to the fruit of the tree of life which is the atonement. How after eating a little bit I wanted to share it like Lehi did so I cut it all up and gave it to my district and most of the zone. It was a super good lesson actually worked super well. Cause then we all just enjoyed the cake for like 5 minutes then compared how everyone is enjoying the cake because it truly was delicious. So worked great!

Thank ya’ll for the presents, the cookies are more than greatly appreciated I am super proud of myself they are not all gone yet! The tie is also super legit I love it. Not everyone appreciated it but I plan on wearing it with pride, often. But yeah. Also Garrett wins with the lightsabers. Hardcore. Best comp inventory ever. My comp broke the lightbulb not me. Just saying. NOT my fault. But thanks for the videos and everything those were super great. Garrett. Your weird. That is all. Love ya bro. 

Then that night we had a home evening with a family we are trying to activate and they made this huge pizza for us. Like literally bigger than my arms in a circle. Huge. And a cake and they sang and put my face in the cake. So they have a tradition here in Chile than you make your wishes, blow out the candles, and then take a bite of the cake. But then as the person takes a bite you shove their face in the cake, gets all over the face and stuff. Super funny actually I will be bringing that tradition back home. But I was dirty afterwards let that suffice. 

Wow graduation is coming up. Thats crazy. 

Also J did come to church it was awesome! Super excited about that. 

Yes I am keeping a journal. Not everyday but whenever there is something I want to remember or if I go more than a couple days. 

Love yall, pray for me

Elder Galbreath

The most important day of the year! My Birthday

And I wont be there to share it with you. But don’t worry tomorrow is our district meeting so I will be making the cake and partying with my district that day. Its awesome. 

So some cool stuff happened this week. Basically to start off it rained. But not like oh its sprinkling. 

I’m talking Chileno rain literally all day hard core with wind. Basically super legit for a while. Then it kinda sucks. But my rain pants work fabulously and the over boots as well. I was dry all day it was awesome. Great buys mom and dad. High 5! But that was super exciting but I got a little cold from it so I am coughing a bit but luckily there is a fall back. So chilenos are great at giving drugs out. I walk into a house cough once and they give me like 17 pills. So I've been sleeping really well and having awesome dreams about dragons and stuff. Its only slightly awkward when its during a lesson though.... Just kidding I only take the ones I’m sure about. And I'm getting better now. 

This week was also super cool like spiritually. So we visited this lady her name is J. Very nice older lady runs a little store like a lot of people but is having a little bit of monetary trouble so she hasn’t been to church in about 3 months because she keeps her store open. So we have been stopping by once or twice a week to help her realize that the best way to make money is to not work sunday and get the blessings that God will give us because its not really our day to work. But to no avail. And these last 3 months have been horrible for her. Just with her family and everything going on its been horrible. So we had a lesson just with her none of her family just her. And between me and my comp we pulled out everyone of her doubts and problems so we could help her.  The spirit really helped and me and my comp worked super well as a team to do it. And the end we gave her a blessing of comfort and she left with the resolution to come to church and close her store for a little bit to be able to do it. And then she got sick. But hopefully next week she will come. 

We also had a super fun lesson with a family here. They are called the Family R but we mostly call him Hermano Open the door. Basically he knows like 8 words in english like most people here and he always shouts that at us. But he is by far the coolest family in our ward. So we stopped by so we could set up a family home evening/goodbye to my comp who will be returning to the states next week. And when they found out he was ending his mission they all started crying and gave us both super good advice about ending the mission. I’ll share a little bit. basically she said that every mother can’t wait to see their kid and the missionaries who say they don’t want to go home make her sad because when her kid comes home he better be excited to see her. I liked that. I am excited to see y’all. But not for a while. But then he shared his testimony to my comp and I and it was awesome. I want y’all to know I'm in good hands down here in the hard south. Its great I love the people here. Well most of them. 

So to answer the question of mom. Kids do  not follow us. We have a dog that follows us all day though we call him Rocko because we kick rocks and he goes and gets them for us and brings them back. But only the ones he likes. He is hard to please at times. But the kids are either scared of us and run, stare at the white people, or cuss at us because its funny. Kind of depends on the age. But its great I love the people. 

So today we all(the boca sur 8) went to our chapel and played huge game of nerf wars. It was awesome. Most fun ever. Another elder here his dad is a tactical firearm guy and has a gun store so he and I wrecked house together. Very tactical it was awesome. And him and my comp and I killed because my comp just has fun and goes. It was a great activity as a group. Then we had sandwiches next to the chapel. I love the sandwiches here they are called mechada. I don’t know what type of meat it is don’t know if I want to know but its just good. With tomato and guacamole. Super good. My favorite pday meal. 

But that was kinda that. I Love yall. Be good. Love the lord, don’t squat with spurs on. 

Elder Galbreath! (still 18) until tomorrow!

Do they speak the same spanish there?

If they speak the same english in England as they do in WA then yes. Its same thing but different accent, with lots of little words and phrases they say here that don’t exist outside of Chile. Kinda like english in the south. Y’all ain’t a word. But it is. 

Also I almost died laughing at your video. Thank you. 

Boca Sur

So my new area is pretty legit. We are the nicer part of the armpit though so its pretty cool. We have like 800 inactives in just our sector. And we have 4 of them in our ward. Crazy right. So we are just kinda going and going with those. We have so many crazy people. Oh man I am going to have many stories from this sector. We have a lady who says she has the gift of prophesies. Its funny. She told my comp she saw him fighting before the mision and he is good with kicks. He jumps like a rabbit. Direct quote. Frickin hilarious stuff. But yeah.

So my comp is called Elder Ehlen. He is super funny. Makes for super funny times contacting. But his accent is super good so its really funny when he talks super flighty. Thats gangster here in Chile. But the zone is weird. I just need to get used to being in a new place I still dont feel like I am a San Pedro elder still though. But I'll work on it. I am enjoying being here though its pretty cool. 

So yeah. I have stuff to write about. But I dont remember what. Is that bad. Crap what did I want to say..........

This is annoying. 

So like yeah thanks for the compliments on the pictures. I feel better. Wow i am really sorry i can not think of what happened this week. Sorry. But lots of pictures!

Love 

Elder Galbreath, the one and only. 

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It's been a week

So this week may or may not have sucked the eggs of a grand chicken. I think it was thursday we had like 12 citas set we called them they all said we could pass by we had members set up to come with us and everything. And literally every cita fell through. We were walking around the entire day the only type of lesson we had was 2 prayers in different houses we squeezed into before they shut the door. It was horrible. I was so depressed like i just went home we planned a little bit I ate some pity pan and I went to bed. It sucked. 

But saturday was super cool like we stacked a poop ton of wood for a lady in the campo then like chilled in her house basically planning for an hour then she took us to our almuerzo. It was awesome literally her couches were the comfiest thing I have sat in since before my mission. It was awesome. So that was a beast day. Don’t think I told you though our ward boundaries changed so all of our campo is gone and the sector where we live is part of the other ward. So that’s weird. We still live there though. 

We have a kid in our ward who sent his papers in for his mission this week! The kid is super cool gunna be a great missionary he wants to go to the states for his mission so he is working like a boss to learn english. Gunna be interesting next week probably when he gets his papers. 

Elder Thompson is super cool. He introduced me to incense. He is super hippy like holy cow but he is super nice too. Really chill and smart. Having a pretty fun time together explaining how no we aren’t from Washington dc yes from the same state and no we didn’t know each other before hand its a big place. Literally every house. Pretty fun stuff. 

Spanish is definitely still there. I can communicate everything i need to and can understand pretty much everything. Still working on learning more. I have taken to translating the PMG for language study then seeing what i need to work on. 

The mission is super hard. But its awesome and I am gunna keep on pumping. The Mission President just changed our rules so we have more rules to follow and be more obedient. Gunna be hard its a lot of stuff. Here we go!

Love 

Elder Galbreath the 6th

Last week-

ok what the heck hawks. My comp is from Washington to so we are going to be a disappointed sector this week. Dang it.

So cambios happened. Elder Sanders is now in Temuco which is down south of my mission. It was weird seeing him get on the bus and leave. But yeah that happened. Then i was waiting in the terminal for Elder Thompson when the phone rings and it is Elder Thompson. He was letting me know he wasn’t going to be there until wednesday because he had to help finish the cambios with everyone. So I was like oh ok. So I worked in a trio with Elder Haynes and Elder Langeveld for a day. That was super weird, none of us were used to the others teaching styles or working in a trio. So we just kinda did it. It worked ok. But then wednesday came and Elder Thompson is here. 

He is from Washington! From Kirkland or something like that by Seattle/Lake Washington. He is very west side. Super hipster. Big glasses, plays the guitar like a boss. Just is kind of super hipster, but he is a super cool guy we get along pretty well. He scared me though at first we went to get him at the terminal and he said to me the first thing was "I have entered into a covenant with God to only speak spanish" in spanish obviously. I was like oh freak what on earth did i get myself into. But its pretty cool we just talk in spanish all the time and its cool. But i was frightened. Nice guy

So his first day we had a couple citas and took a member with us and it worked really well we put a fecha with a kid named Sebastian, this kid is golden. I think i have mentioned him before, but we stopped by and he hadn’t read the book of mormon because his sister took his but he is searching for it. That’s cool. And he accepted the baptismal date really fast and stuff. But he was going to Santiago this weekend and we have a rule in the mission if they don’t attend then the fechas falls. But he was like i have seen a chapel up there i’ll just go to that one. And he did! He attended up there by himself for the first time. Was awesome. Super pumped for him.

Another cool thing that happened was with MJ. So we were talking with her and she never reads or prays so she isn’t sure if baptism is right for her yet (duh) so we were talking and i just told her listen if you want to know you have to read and you have to pray. If you pray every day and read you will get an answer. And her parents don’t support her at all but i told her that its important what is gods will not her parents and she is going to read about nephi and his family. So Then i challenged her to be baptized the 14th of february. And she accepted.  It was awesome i have never felt the spirit as much as i had in that lesson. So here is hoping.

Hey ma. 

So the food here is pretty just kind of there. At times its really good though. We eat a lot of rice and chicken or potatoes and meat. And bread. The bread here is heavenly. Like holy cow. Great. Its horrible for the body but great for the soul. 

I  teach the plan of salvacion. To people who know something about it it is a lot easier but to people who have never heard about it it is much harder. But we use 1 Corinthians 15 to help and they are usually like oh its in the bible its ok then. So that cool.

Favorite lesson to teach is either 3 or 1 Gospel of restoration. Both are good. Super fun stuff. 

I love you mama.

Elder Bubba

I love you guys muchly have a great week!

Elder Galbreath XI