Ummmmm.......

Well this week was definitely full of interesting activities. Going to Concepcion, going to our local police department, general conference, all of it was awesome.

Yeah so starting out with the big news as far as yall don’t know, I got robbed this week. They took my sidebag from the bus terminal when i went with another elder to go see if the bus that pulled in was ours or not. So that is slightly really sucky. So list of stuff i no longer have, a bag, my carefully marked and loved scriptures, my camel, my carnet(id here in chile) my money for the month, my camera, temple recommend, my little study books i had been filling with scriptures, my scarf and those marking crayons i had. 

Worst time to get robbed is right before a huge trip where you plan on studying a lot. 

So the mission is letting me "borrow" a little bit of money to live for the month but they will take it out of future allotments. So this month may be interesting. Also the mission can’t technically help me with anything as far as getting anything again. So if its cool with yall i will have to be getting some stuff this week that is coming. Sorry I’m not happy about it.

But other than that black mark on my week it was super dope i loved it. 

So friday i went to Concepcion to do a return and report during my kids training. So that was cool got told how we all need to work harder cause if not our kids would suck.

But the cool part was definitely the general conference. Watched it in english except for like a couple talks I walked over to the sacrament room to check on everything. But it was super good i don’t have the time to express all my love for everything that happened but just know i was super super happy. Loved all of them. One talk I would like to stress is that of Elder Durrant of the 70. He talked about ponderize. Please if you don’t remember that talk go back and look at it its from the sunday afternoon session. I love the idea and am starting it today. Take a scripture, put it somewhere where you will see it often such as your wallpaper on your phone, the fridge or in your car and be thinking about that scripture during your free moments. You will memorize many scriptures but more than that you will have your thoughts constantly on good things and will be filling the commandment of "treasuring up constantly the words of life" I love the idea and am putting them on the cover of my agenda every week. Very excited to see all that will happen with this. And next week i will get to study another. But think deeply about these scriptures every moment you can. Super excited. 

Loved Elder Eyrings talk sunday i believe about the spirit. The spirit will make good things look better and bad things look better, that alone is reason enough to strive to have it. So really enjoyed that. 

Pres. Monson´s talk was very powerful and i was very worried but i took strength in the promise that angels will bear us up. There is a story in the old testament in i think 2 kings like 16 or something about Elisha being surrounded by an army but saying there are more with us than against us. Then the young man who was with him had his eyes open to see the scores of angels around them. I know that we cant see them but at every moment we have scores of angels around us and the prophet has legions to help him. 

I love the lord and the spirit that abounds from his servants. 

Love yall keep safe,

Elder Galbreath

Another week.

Hey yall! So this week was pretty fun didn’t do a lot but did some fun stuffs.

So last monday we went to the Colico Lake that is nearby. We hitchhiked out there it was super fun. Met a really nice guy named Jose that carried us out there. Then we just walked around chilled, ate sandwiches and had some fun. Very relaxing day. 

Wednesday we had our zone conference with President and Sister Bluth. It was cool, Hermana Bluth loves horses so she actually brought her bridle and talked about bridling our passions and our tongues specifically. As missionaries it is our most powerful tool. Reminded me of a story I think Sis. Payne shared with us in seminary. A young couple lived out in the forest and they had a cow who constantly got out. One day the husband was going to go to town to get supplies and he said sarcastically to the wife "Do you think you can keep the cow in while I'm gone?" She said she would try. While he was gone a huge storm rose up and when the husband got back all he found was a note that said the cow got out but...I think I can find her. He searched for them both. Neither had survived. Words are something that once said even God can’t kill them. So basically major palos to your incredibly sarcastic Elder here in Chile. But I'm working on it. So that was cool. Then I don’t know if yall have seen it a video called Missionary work and the Atonement it is with Pres Eyring and Elder Holland. Super great video that the Assistants showed. Pretty good stuff. The Atonement!!

Then we visited a sister in our ward who is in the hospital in Temuco cause she just had her cancer taken out. Ovarian cancer. So we stopped by and gave her a blessing and she is doing really well actually looks great and everything. So we are praying everything keeps going so well for her. 

Then the rest of the week was just the missionary grind until Saturday. 

Saturday we went to Melipueco and we were just touching doors cause all of our appointments fell again. And so we were going to this part when we heard this guy yell Elderes. We get lots of people kind of making fun of us yelling random english words at us so we didn’t really pay attention to him but then he said it again so we turned and said hi and he shook our hands and started telling us how he had completely changed who he was cause he saw the love of God and Jesus in his life and he wanted to accept our message. He had shared with missionaries before but he didn’t like it back then but know he loves it and loves that we have a prophet. So we were like uhhh....but then we recovered and shared a book of mormon with him and a day to pass by later cause he was leaving. But it was super dope so I'm excited to see where that goes. 

Also a member brought their best friend to church and I had talked to him before and we get along really well so I'm hoping he will really take interest in our message and accept it. Nice kid by the name of Sebastian. He is like 16 if I remember right. But nice guy we actually talked to him at the 19 celebration. We had a pull up competition. He beat me. But nice guy still. 

So yeah that was kind of this week. We got a lot of rain and cold this last week. The weather is just so crazy here. Never makes up its mind. But yeah. So loved the hot hands.

Well I love yall so much have a great week!

Elder Galbreath

Independence of Chile

SO before anything else know i took a ton of photos and that i forgot my cord in the house. So next week.

But this week was super fun. We stayed here in Cunco and went to their big parade thing they have here. All the kids in the public school have to march. Or put on the uniform and walk 4x4 in a big line. Then all the clubs and old people and firefighters and cops and such. Kind of cool lots of participation here. LOTS. And the coolest part is here in Chile they like adore the cowboys so there were a ton of guys on horseback dressed in traditional huasso gear. Flat brimmed hats and the cool poncho thing. (Which i found out is about 26 thousand pesos so about 50 bucks. For the freaking poncho. Despite the desire might not be getting one here. But the hats are cheap.) But so they filed by and gave the "authorities" or the people on the stage some really nice wine that they all drink from the horn of a bull. The generals in charge, head firefighter, the Priest in charge of Catholic stuff here. Because only in Chile does a cowboy give a firefighter wine and its called tradition. YAY!

But then we walked around and we ate sopapillas and a ton of empanadas. So fetching delicous. Its crazy how good fried bread with meat is. Super good stuff. But yeah. Then the 19 is the other big holiday here with even more drunk people in the street so we went to Melipueco to the Vilches house and had a blast down there. My comp and i totally dominated the three legged race and i won musical chairs. You indeed may say i am a boss. Ok so i had to pull the chair almost out from under the other guy to win but hey i got the big candy bar. Thats the part we need to focus on. But it was super fun then after we went exploring in their fields and it was great. LOTS of food and super great fun. Had a couple investigators there so lots of member-shipping. 

So cool stuff on the side of missionary work. We were knocking houses and this kid invited us in and his family was all there and his friend. The first sign that this could not end well was that he had about 8 empty beer cans in front of him. All his family were not all there. Not like drunk but definitely getting close. But the mom and kid were nice so we shared with them quickly and got out. Then teaching another lady who invited us in this kid is literally crawling all over my comp, like this kid of 4 years basically sitting on my comps head. So Elder Duffin starts to play and does that thing where the little kid like climbs up your lap to do a flip while the adult is holding his hands. But then my comp lets go of his hands a second to early and the kid falls straight on his face. Funniest thing when we realized he was ok. He just stood up rubbed his nose and said it didn’t hurt. Super funny.

Elder Duffin is doing good he is progressing a lot, doing good work here. He almost gave a talk with no preparation because our President was like hey i forgot to assign talks Elders you have them. So we prepared them both and then a guy from Temuco came so my comp was off the hook. But i got to give a good 20 minute talk from my notes i could scribble down during the sacrament. But its a lot harder to do when you are also blessing the sacrament so i couldn’t get to focused on it. But it was good i felt really good about the talk. Talked about the name of the church and all the meaning of every part. I even quoted a catholic guy we taught once for the definition of a saint. Super dope. But i based it all on a talk i had read a bit ago by Boyd K Packer in a General Conference. I want to say 2011. Great talk yall should read it. "Whats in a name." 

But yeah that was the week. Taught gospel doctrines and I'm here in the cyber. 

Love yall have a great week!

Elder Galbreath

P.S.

I don’t think i am losing really but i am getting stronger slowly and keeping everything off yes. 

Mom i thought i told you i got the one year package like a month ago. I am really sorry if i didn’t say anything yes i got it all. Thank you for the camel! For 2 reasons the first is he is adorable and the 2nd is i have been using it to teach the atonement and it works super well. 

Thanks ma i love you tons!

Exciting weeks

Ok y’all win the exciting weeks award. Sounds awesome. Love the pictures of the cousins at the fair. The picture of Saige with some little girl talking to her with her finger in the air looks very classic Saige. Nothing is getting through to her all she is thinking is sassy comments. I laughed a lot. But thanks i love the pictures.

So this week was not nearly as exciting as going to Utah and everything but we did go to Melipeuco so like yeah. Its cool to be jealous. Dope sunsets over the Volcano. 

Pics in the bucket. But we just kind of did our thing this week and to break up the monotony(?) we decided to have some fun.

So the pic of my comp and the ballon has a story. The balloon says "Gracias por todo su ayuda en nuestro rama" Pretty clear right? Thanks for all your help in our branch. And we had filled it with some frugele which is a little candy they have here. Nothing big but something little and fun. So we were going to give it to our mamita who lives back of us. So we start thinking of how we can give it without her knowing it was us. So we tape it to her window and yell and run like the dickens and hide behind a car. But no one comes out. SO we do it again and finally someone comes out and gets the balloon. We were super pumped and then kind of slowly came out of hiding to go home. So that was our thursday adventure for us. 

My new comp and I are getting along great he is super funny, and very, very hipster. Not quite as much as Elder Thompson was but pretty close. It makes for entertaining times. 

So this week is the week of 18. Thats right diezyocho. The independence of Chile. They start celebrating the 17th and don’t stop partying until the 19th. And the drunks finally leave the streets the 20th. But they party with a ton of asado (bbq) and empanadas (food of the Gods) So we are dang excited. But today we don’t have full pday because we get the 18th off. Which makes sense because you can not really work those days. But we are excited to party and be chilean. I will be buying a chilean poncho and cowboy hat before i leave Chile and will be sporting that to all nice cowboy events para que sepa. Super pumped. I’ll hopefully be sending lots of pictures to y’all this next week.

So my comp gave his first talk this sunday and i gave my first sunday school lesson that i actually could prepare for. Its amazing how much more you can learn when you actually can prepare. I loved the lesson. I always love how David A Bednar gives his talks in such a structured formal "I will talk about the following things..." way so i tried that with my class. But i was not planning on only having a little bit of time to do it so i had to rush on Charity and Degrees of Glory (thats what they are in english right?) But it was super cool i learned a lot. The last couple months i have really been diving into the bible and specifically acts so i have been learning a lot. Something that really impressed me this morning was in Acts 19-21 its Paul teaching obviously and he is able to use that he is a Jew and a Roman to like get people to listen to him and not be like beaten. So i think its 21 he talks in hebrew to get the attention. Then later he is like hey I'm Roman what are you doing to me. It helped me realize that the Lord is just preparing us so much every moment of our lives to be able to use it to preach the Gospel. And how we should look at everything as a tool. So that really impressed me. Once again i guess just how smart and good at planning God is. 

I love yall and I’ll talk to yall next week keep it going and I’ll send yall pictures of me very full and content this next week.

Elder Galbreath

It's a lovely day today

Well this week was super nice actually the sun came out for the first time for Elder Duffin. Literally all week it was nice sunny, warm, even almost touching hot. But not to bad. It was super nice. Of course now its raining a ton again but hey I’ll take what I can get.

Sorry no pictures this week they guy that supposedly sells the adaptor doesn’t feel like its important to open up before 11 nor does he want to post a sign of his schedule. So hopefully I will be able to send y’all that this week that is coming.

But I’m doing super good it was a fun week Elder Duffin is doing really good its super fun to see him grow as a missionary. Always enjoy that. Also a couple people in our ward have taken it upon themselves to make sure he enjoys all aspects of chile so they have made us completos, empenadas and a ton of stuff. I love it. I’m fat but happy, don’t judge me. 

This week we had a couple of cool experiences. So one I had an intercambio with a kid from Santiago who is also a new missionary he got here with my companion named Elder Montoya. Super nice guy really funny, slightly odd. But he was fun to work with I always thought how nice it would be to have served in the states in my natural language because i always figured it would just take out the difficulty of teaching like all your doing is talking about stuff you have known about your entire life like thats easy. But my other latin comps have both been converts, and pretty recent ones. But Elder Montoya is a member his entire life and it was interesting to see how even he struggled with teaching at first. Granted it wasn’t because of the language part but still it was very interesting to see that. I am grateful I have been able to learn the language so well to now i don’t struggle to share any story or anything in lessons. Its very satisfying to see the "fruits" of my continuos labor studying. Gifts of the spirit. And with that I can connect with people better now and can share scriptures now. 

So yesterday (sunday) we were contacting just touching doors trying to share the plenitude of the gospel with everyone (all in a days work right?) and a lady let us in. Turns out she was an old investigator and she doesn’t know why the other guys stopped passing by. So we started to share with her, help her remember all the stuff, and we could both feel like she was really worried about her kids who are both slightly rebellious according to her. So something we always try to do is share a scripture that affects them personally before we read Moroni´s promise to be able to help them see what things they have received and give them a reason to read the BoM. And so i was like alright what can we share with her...a story of a mom worried about her kids. Oh yeah Sariah and her kids. But i wanted to share a scripture that would give her comfort not help her identify problems no mas. So i prayed real quick and opened 1 Nephi chapter 5 and looked really quick to where i could share. And i read verse 8 and i was like perfect who doesn’t want to know with a surety that her kids are safe and God protects them? So I shared that and it worked super well i was so happy it worked. I love little moments of the spirit guiding like that. So that was my fun story this week. 

Umm other than that i am pretty good just kind of working and doing it all. And being beaten with the humble stick at every turn its great. Needed at least. But i feel better after so I’ll count it. 

I don’t know if i told you the mud on the shoe picture. Thats kind of my fun story but it is from last week. But my comp and i were talking and walking to a part of our sector and there was this road that wasn’t paved with a puddle at the beginning part. So i just jumped over it like it was nothing and i landed on the other edge and proceeded to sink in just a little bit over my ankle in mud. I just kind of sighed and pulled my foot out and gritted my teeth as i heard the suction release on my foot. So had another hour and a half walking around with my foot just covered in mud but luckily it was raining like crazy so it kind of washed some of it off. But there is a lot of mud and big puddles here in Cunco. Its interesting but almost every day we always see at least one drain backed up and just almost flooding the street. Pretty great stuff. 

But yeah. I love yall have a great week. 

Elder Galbreath

Birthing pains

Just kidding there was very little blood. My kids name is Elder Duffin. He is indeed a Utahn but i can forgive him for that. He is not a native, he speaks pretty well but its hard to understand chileno so he struggles with that. So we are working on those. My spanish is coming. I can understand everything, speak my mind and communicate and everything but i am trying to work on my grammar so i can really speak fluently and be good about it all. So lots to work on but i never have to worry about not being able to communicate with someone. Gift of tongues!!  He makes me feel at home though because if yall have check the bucket he is HUGE.  Almost disappointed though cause I know now that my actual kids are gunna be taller than me. The Lord is just preparing me for that fact now. It’s great we are pretty sure he is the tallest guy in the mission at this point. So thats dope.  But he is working hard he got broken in pretty well. It has not stopped raining since he got here. Like usually it rains about 5 days of the week or less. It rained all 7. And not like just a little bit of rain but rained well. But he has good boots. He has the same overboots i have but new. It was super funny he pulled them out and said that he never thought he would use them. I testified that he would. It was great. 

But this week was pretty good we worked a lot and had lots of cool success actually. Found like a total of 10 people that are new to us. So that was more than i think i have ever found in a week. Super awesome. So now its gunna be getting them to listen again. But i have hope. 

Other than the rain and rain and more rain it been pretty great. Its really fun to be with Elder Duffin to remember what it was like being new, and getting to see him introduced to new chilean things. He is gunna die when we have completos. And fun things like that. Its pretty great. 

This week we contacted a lot and kind of wearing ourselves out but that is really the mission. Its great. 

So story behind the sandwich is members give us stuff a lot. (Mom please be giving the missionaries like cookies and stuffs when you can) So a member gave us bread one day, and almost all the bread they have here is homemade, another lady gave us real like made from a cow cheese, which is also super common down here, and i had tomatoes. So my comp bought like 2 things of ham and we had a mega man sandwich. It was truly delicious. 

The miracle of the week is really just elder Duffin. This guy was here for an hour and a half, and we found two people that are super nice, really receptive that invited us in and accepted a baptismal date for september. So that was super awesome to see. And all week was just like that. I’m so excited. He gets kind of down at times with the homesickness and the spanish but he is working on it and is gunna be a great missionary. #glorifythefatherthroughtheson. Pumped. 

So this week a lunch fell through so we had churascos at a local joint and we finished eating and all of the sudden the cook started asking questions about us and our religion and we were able to share with him all about the book of mormon. Gunna visit him tomorrow, teach english and spread the gospel. All in a days work. 

But yeah thats pretty much the story. 

Piano is going. I can play anything there is in the simplified pretty easily top hand but i don’t have a lot of time to practice the bottom hand. So working on that. 

But I'm doing great I love you!

Love yall,

Elder Galbreath

Cambios

well its official my connection is leaving me. Elder Ordoñez is getting out of here to go to Los Angeles and I'm going to be training so I have no idea who is my new comp but I will be telling y’all about him next monday. 

But this week was good, but one part was crazy.

Ok so Friday we had a "Zone Attack" where we all went to Temuco and helped a couple sectors that are big find new investigators. Which was awesome I worked with an elder Barco and we worked in the rich part of this sector which was cool change but usually the people don’t let us in much because they don’t feel like they need something. But so we were contacting and not having much success when we yelled at one door. This guy came out and was pretty much telling us to go away when all of a sudden he was like yeah come on in. So we go in and have this super awesome lesson with him where he tells us all about this stuff that happened in his life and his family. Completely opened up to us. And after the lesson he was like I don’t understand, I usually don’t let anyone come in, when he pays someone to clean the chimney they have to show id first and they do it outside, they don’t come in. And he is a very closed person that’s why he has a couple problems that he does because he doesn’t like to share with anyone. But he just opened up to us completely and he doesn’t understand why he feels like he can trust us. I wanted to just scream “Its the spirit!!!!!!!” And it was. 

But then in the night we were in the micro going back home and then we realized my comp left the phone with someone in temuco. But the last bus that leaves for Cunco leaves at 830 and it was 8. Its usually half an hour to get to the station from where we were. So we practically jump off the bus and are running round trying to figure out how we can get there a bus passes by that takes us perfectly where we need to go, but my comp says thats weird cause it almost never passes. So we get on, get the phone, get to another micro that takes us to the terminal, and get there all before 830. Every step of the way I was just praying my heart off asking God to help us with the next step. It was cool because the thought entered my head what happens if with all this praying, we don’t make it. So i thought for like 5 seconds and responded to that little doubting voice then at least I will know I tried my hardest to do it. And it worked. That would be my miracle for the week. God answers prayers. 

So this Sunday was our branch conference, where guess who was asked to teach Gospel Doctrine 30 seconds before it started. thats right the elder from Washington. So I was trying to read the manual to see what the heck I had to teach when the stake president was like when can we start.  I asked for like 5 minutes to read something more than just the title but he was just like nahh its cool its already planned. So i did it. Started out having people read a bible story before i could recover and figure out the topic. Then proceeded to teach an hour lesson in front of our stake leadership. Nervous? Of course not that left a long time ago.......but it was cool. Again I give thanks for the Galbreath BS skill and the spirit. 

That would kind of be my stories for the week. I love yall. Yall look great in the photos. I love the carnival food. 

Love yall.

Elder Galbreath