Groundbreaking

So this week on saturday was the groundbreaking of the Concepcion temple. Was super dope I loved the ceremony. Actually my old Stake president got to give the first prayer, saw a couple people I know in the choir and of course my Mission President. President Bluth actually got to translate for the Sister Teixera. Actually if you have ever translated for anyone you know its really not to fun and slightly stressing because the person always talks way to long before giving you time. But he did a good job. But very spiritual the dedicatory prayer was super beautiful. Inviting us all to realize what a blessing the temple is. Elder Gonzalez is our area President and he is a boss. So other than that amazing spiritual high the week was all pretty good. We worked like crazy in all types of weather. Seriously like it rained like crazy one day and then it would get super hot. Today it was hot in the morning but it definitely looks like it is going to rain here in like half and hour. Yay. Gotta love chilean weather. 

Huge props to the name of Smoke. Dope name. I like it. He looks pretty good too. Skinny but hey I'm sure Ma will take care of that pretty quickly.

So other than that we did service a couple times this week, chopped a lot of wood. And still have both legs so thats always good.

Ok so did an experiment this week. So for one hour I counted all of my sins of comission. So all of my conscious sins, thoughts and actions I counted how many I did. Then I took that and did the math to find that on a 16 hours and hard core watching myself I sin approximately 6,508 a day. I did all the math and I sin a lot. And thats only the things I do. I cant even imagine all the things I don’t do and how many that would add up to. But a lot. So then I started thinking about how Jesus payed for all of those. Also how he was perfect so he literally committed none of them. Talk about feeling unworthy. Really gave me a good look on how far along the scale of perfection I am. I’m thinking

like negative 1 million. But it was still a pretty cool experiment.

Well other than that we made french toast for a family home evening. That was dope tasted so good. Love american food.

Well i love yall have a great week!

Elder Galbreath

Woo Hoo

Well this was definitely 7 days.

So this week was just so chalk full of fun and interesting stuff so I’m just not gunna mention any of it.

Just kidding nothing outside of the normal preaching the gospel and trying to not be discouraged in my quest to become more like Christ. Its quite difficult. But here goes nothing right!

So this week couple fun stuff we walked out into the middle of nowhere. Well we kind of live in the middle of nowhere but we went even deeper. We always see lots of little houses and stuff on the way to temuco and stuff so we decided that hey why not go over there and knock those houses. So we did. Walked for like an hour and half only but knocked some of the country houses. But don’t get to excited the people in the country don’t want anything to do with us either. But we are indeed trying. We did have this one guy come up to us and invite us to go to his house like 5 kms outside of cunco and we could do like

a reunion and stuff. So hopefully this week that is coming we can go out and meet with him and his neighbors. I really want to do like the old style get up and present our message to a large group of people

like you see in the old videos of missionary work. That would be super dope kind of excited to try it. Hoping it works out. Then we also got to go see this hermana that just left the hospital last week and it was the first time we got to see her in a while. She is recovering super fast though and is already walking around. So

thats super cool very impressed. She actually made the long trip to the church as well and shared her testimony about how merciful the lord has been with her though. It was super powerful. Then our mamita

shared how she feels horrible cause she has like a bad cold and almost stayed in bed this morning. But the Hermana Vilches is like the coolest lady here. She is super strong in the faith. And her son Mauri just sent his mission papers in. So hopefully he will be getting his

call here in about a month. He is our ward mission leader actually. Super dope guy and really wants to go to the states. He is super cool. Our attendance in church was the lowest it has been with a whopping 15

people this week. CUNCO!! But so testimony meeting was short because well 15 people cant take a ton of time. And not everyone shared. But of course the white people did. Also had a less active member show up

so that was super cool. So this month has been super eye opening for me. Basically in our branch we have seen, 1 major cancer operation, 2 deaths in families, 1

old aunt almost die then get better, 1 family of investigators separate and she took the kids, and the normal problems of the mission. So I have been stressed to the max lately and had a very direct and honest prayer this week about how i needed more help from the Lord. I had been feeling like i was just trying to do it by myself. Then i prayed and after i didn’t feel anything. All i wanted was to feel a little bit of peace, little bit of comfort. But i got nothing. So i wiped my tears out of my eyes and went to bed thinking

well tomorrow. That night i had a dream. Nothing amazing but for me it was big because i usually never dream. Like i cant remember the last time i had ever dreamed. But that night i had one. Just my comp and i

walking down the street talking about weird stuff when we turned into the seminary building back home. Walked in like it was normal and i just said hi to a couple of people i remember from back home. Then we went into sister Payne´s classroom and were just there for a minute. I woke up and it was morning. I realized that was my answer. Nothing big nothing overly dramatic just going back to a place that back in high school was such a place of comfort and peace when i needed it back when everything was just hectic. I just wanted to share that with y'all to let you know 2 things. 1 the lord answers prayers in any way possible but it probably wont be the answer you are looking for but it will come. and the 2nd is i just testify of seminary and church buildings. I miss seminary for the peace it brought to me. Always went to the seminary building for lunch and it was kind of a part of my day to be there. I love the gospel and everything about it. This is the only true church on the face of this earth that can do all this.

So answers,

Yes i checked back on my bag but they didn’t have anything. Gunna check once more tuesday. I don’t know if y’all want me to buy a camera or anything or just have yall send me one. I don’t know the price down here I will check. I would appreciate another scarf, they are super warm. Also I know this is weird but maybe if yall find another camel? I actually use it a lot to teach so it was very nice. Or if not a camel some other stuffed animal of approximately that size.  No my photos were not in it. I have this card still, didn’t lose my home credit card, and I already got new scriptures.

Thanks for being patient with me.

I love yall have a great week!

Elder Galbreath

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