New sector here in Freire

Hey fam,

So this week was a huge change for me as I went an hour north of Loncoche to my new sector of Freire. I am still in the same zone and still in the same district as Loncoche so that's a pretty big change. Actually it was funny I left a suitcase in Loncoche and just had Elder Ormeño bring it to me at district meeting so I could help Elder England with his stuff. It worked well for me.

So this week was a rollercoaster backwards as switching sectors always is. 

So directly after writing last time we went back to Temuco to drop Ormeño off so he can go get his kid from Concepcion, then when we got back all we had time to do was go get my shirts from a sister in the ward (she was whitening them) and come home to pack. We did get a picture with my favorite person ever in Loncoche, The Hermana Quezada. She is awesome and always helped us out. But it was sad that I could only say goodbye to a couple people. But I will be fine I called a lot of the members to say goodbye. 

Tuesday we went to Temuco for the bus station, i said goodbye to Elder England, Elder Sanchez and i got in a truck of some members of Gorbea (the sector of the Sisters here in my zone) and headed off to Quepe to our house. So my sector is called Freire its a tiny little city about the same size of Cunco if not a little bigger. But we live in a town like 15 minutes north of that called Quepe. (say it ke-pe) Its cool but it sucks because we waste so much money of tickets having to travel everyday. But its cool its a nice little town. 

My new comp like i said is Elder Sanchez. He is like i said from Peru and is a lawyer. We get along really well he is really funny and we enjoy the days. The good part is that he is also really new in the mission (just finished his training) but he does have more life experience so it works well. But this makes my 4th comp that has less than 6 months in the mission. Pretty fun stuff. 

So i cant even explain how AMAZING general Conference was. Oh my goodness it was amazing. Just wow. I loved all the talks and i cant wait to download some and i eagerly await the next liahona/ensign so i can read them all again. It was awesome. If i had to choose a favorite i would say that it is impossible but i did love Elder Bednars talk, as always, and Elder Mervyn Arnolds. They were both super awesome. Elder Hales talk was very inspiring and I just love hearing the prophets amazing experience and testimony. Also the emotion in Pres. Uchtorfs voice after Elder Kearsons (i think) talk about refuges was just so heartbreaking. Oh how i love this Church and how obviously truthful it is. I offer everyone a modified version of the challenge the Lord makes in DandC 67:6-8 (revised) "now choose the General Conference and someone is who is very intelligent among you. And if they can do the same thing then you can say it isn’t true. But if you can’t then you are under condemnation if you don’t testify of the truthfulness." Obviously very edited but you get the point (hey I’m working on memory here don’t judge)

But Mom I got my package. Thank you !! All the gringos in the english room enjoyed the candy I shared (I couldn’t not) and I am waiting for the cookies. I am finding the right moment. I would also like to mention it is cruel to send someone wrapped gifts 2 months before he is able to open them. Not cool. I know what 3 are but the 4th clothing feeling one has me confused and anxious. Not cool. I’m going to eat a chocolate bunny out of anger. haha. 

But I am doing wonderful here in Freire with my buddy Elder Sanchez. 

I love yall

Elder Galbreath

running out of titles

So that was definitely a week. Sorry i am running out of ways to start these letters. So sorry about this slightly awkward prelude that i kind of always start with. Anywho.....

So this week was kind of normal until thursday. Normal in the sense that we worked our butts off like always and basically walked all day. But thursday we woke up and my comp and i had service to cut some ladies wood. But my comp was sick. Not horrible but still sick. I was to but i wasnt going to admit it so we went to the ladies house and i cut like 4 meters of wood in the morning. So that was cool. Actually felt dope. Also realized that while i can walk for 8 hours straight and be fine, my work stamina has gone down. I can still cut wood for 2 and a half hours without a break but it did get me tired. So thats some news. But the sister in our ward was super greatful that we could help her out. She lives with her son who is like 9 so she needs help doing some stuff like that. So good times. 

Friday and Saturday were incredibly unproductive as far as knocking doors goes because of the Expo. The expo is a HUGE event here in Loncoche where artists from all over Chile come to sell stuff and everybody comes to eat and do rides. Basically it was a county fair. Like seriously felt just like it. So my comp and i went and we contacted more than 70 people in one day. I gave out 2 books of mormon and a ton of pass along cards. Met some cool people. Funny story so we are leaving when we see this guy that made me stop. Its a big guy with a pearl snap western shirt tucked in to his jeans with a camo hat on.  And he is a big guy, walking with a kid that is dressed the same and is getting distracted by a laser pointerlight. I literally stopped my comp and said oh my goodness that is a redneck. So i went to contact him and found out....he is from missouri. He doesnt speak great spanish so it kind of gave it away when i asked where are you from and he responded Loncoche and pointed a lot at the ground. So i repeated the question in english and he was just like oh im from Missouri. Super funny. He is a baptist preacher here to grow his churches in this part. But its funny here in chile when i see a catholic priest or an evangelical pastor i can talk to them and we get a long really well because we do have a similiar purpose. But i get the feeling more and more that you cant do that in the states. Just something cool about Chile. 

But i saw a ton of cool stuff at the expo including.....a rodeo!!!!! Finally saw a chilean rodeo it was cool. I walked in and watched a lot bit and kind of got hooked so i got in it but in Chile you dont yell or act excited at rodeos. I found that out after yelling. The entire stadium turned at looked at me. (Mom i feel like i should blame you. Just something i feel like i inherited from you.) But it was still cool. I just held up a little photo of jesus and everyone went back to avoiding eye contact with me. At times i love being a missionary haha. 

So friday Elder Parkin came to do a baptismal interview for the other elders so we had a bon fire out back. Dug a hole and had hot dogs and marshmallows. Pretty ghetto but it was fun. We used wire hangers for skewers. Fun stuff. 

So the other fun news this week is that we are getting kicked out of our house. Apparently you cant rent the house we are living in. We did not know that until the government came snooping by we found out. So we have like 23 days to find a new house. In a town where noone rents houses. So prayers would be appreciated in that part. So we are looking. Hard. 

The expo was awesome and i am basically done tourist shopping. Got something for almost everyone. 

I love yall a ton. 

Elder Galbreath

Just kidding!

So this week was good but pretty normal so as far as cool exciting stories go i am lacking this week. Sorry. 

Love yall

Elder Galbreath

Just kidding that’s not my email. Not kidding how we didn’t do anything exciting this week though. So sorry no exciting stories.

So, this week we had zone conference, but only one district leader had to talk so that was cool. We all thought that that would mean it would be shorter but oh nay nay. It really just meant the Zone leaders wanted more time. So they took a while on the presentation of how if we are distracted by anything in Chile we are sinners and aren’t worthy to be missionaries. Ask me how I feel about our new zone leader. Go ahead. 

So after that fiasco we got back and went to lunch. It was cool we have good people to have lunch with, Tuesday we teach them after because they are a part member family, Wednesday we have the primary president who is really nice, Thursday we have the BEST FAMILY EVER for lunch. Seriously they are super awesome. Then Friday an inactive lady gives us lunch in a pot and we bring it home. Its good food but it’s weird she doesn’t want to share with us or anything but if something happens and we don’t have lunch with her she like gets upset and chews us out because she is worried about us. So we are working on her. Saturday is our mission leader and his overworked, overstressed but kind hearted wife. I always feel guilty eating with them but i try and help as much as I can. Then Sunday we are usually on our own. So I usually cook something for my comp and I. 

But on Thursday we went back to La Paz which is that sector way out in the boonies to the south of Loncoche, it was a really good day because we found 5 people to teach, and like every door that answered was really nice and gave us a number to call them and find them next week. So that was amazing. I’m convinced that if we plan ahead of time and give the Lord time he will place people who are prepared in our path but we have to be praying and asking for it. 

Sunday was a verrrryyyy interesting day. My comp and I got to the chapel and opened it up and got some stuff ready for the service and waited until like 10:20 when the branch president still hadn’t gotten there. So we called him cause he has a lot of medical stuff going on and this week he couldn’t go to work because of his back. So I called and he sounded super sick so our mission leader stopped by his house to get the keys to his office. Which said keys proceeded to break upon entering the key hole. And break off inside the keyhole. It was pretty impressive. So we spend the next hour almost trying to get the darn thing out to no avail.But it was probably the funniest priesthood class i have ever been a part of. An old branch president, a mechanic mission leader, and a recently baptized unemployed guy all going ham on a door trying to pick the lock. Good times. Only in the mission.

Thanks for the photos, but we received word from Hermana Bluth that they will probably not be able to return to the mission because of the following treatments that will be necessary. They did find cancer in his tumor but it should be able to be beaten by chemotherapy and treatments. PLEASE keep praying for him and his family. I am super sad to not be able to say goodbye to them but i know that God does have a plan for us. 

Other than that I love y'all and have a good week!

Elder Galbreath

Howdy Neighbor

So wow, yeah yalls week was definitely bigger than mine. High 5 for that.

SO this week was pretty cool though not gunna lie. So to start off we had to go to Freire tuesday night again to stay the night because we had to be in Temuco at 8 in the morning. So we stayed with the other 2 elders. This next piece of advice could save your lives someday please pay attention. When talking to a peruano and a chileno in spanish late at night DO NO ATTEMPT SARCASM. Usually we take the mattresses down, put them next to each other and sleep sideways on said mattresses. I jokingly said ehh lets just keep them normal in your bunkbed and we will just sleep 2 and 2. They believed me and bought into the idea pretty hard. So they put me(the biggest person in my zone) on the top bunk and my comp shared the bottom bunk with the chileno. So head to feet. Luckily i had brought my sleeping bag so we were ok. Super fun times. Especially considering i usually sleep diagonal and curled into a ball because if i don’t i am to big for the bed. So my feet hung of the edge that night. Super comfortable. But the next day made up for everything. So Elder Bednar came to Buenos Aires and did a conference with the South American South area missionaries. That means Argentina, Chile and i think like Paraguay but not sure on that one. But very small area. But his conference was amazing!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It started out with technical difficulties and then after like 30 seconds of him talking but us not hearing anything it got fixed and we ended up watching the rest. But he is such a good speaker. He talked about like everything from note taking to how to teach. And at the end he did a question and answer session with the missionaries that were at the conference center in Buenos Aires. But he started out explaining that there will be very few times in the life of those missionaries where they will be able to ask a member of the quorum of the 12 questions in  as small of a setting as 800 missionaries is. So he advised against certain types of questions. His example " Where is the sword of Laban?" He just looked dead into the crowd and says i don’t know. I don’t care. Neither should you. Then he explained we should ask questions that would lead to an answer that only someone in his position could answer, such as what are the concerns of the first presidency and the quorum of the 12 for this area? It was an amazing conference and I'm sorry i don’t have the time to write it all out for you. Then after the conference we had an intercambio (exchanges) with the Zone leaders. I worked with Elder Dayton. Nice guy, it was a good day we enjoyed it. We got here at the same time so it was interesting to see how we have changed. In other words how everything has changed. Like almost literally everything. August 13th was a long time ago. But it still feels like yesterday. 

Anyway so the other day we made fried oreos. And yes they were delicious. Then Elder Yson and i woke up early to do insanity. So i think we almost burned off some of the calories we had eaten the night before. It was glorious i shall not lie. Worth it. 

Also to explain the picture of the cat, the other elders got home and found a cat in front of the house. So obviously they picked it up and carried it in the house and put it in my comps bed. Where it proceeded to cuddle with his teddy bear for a good half hour. Until we came upstairs. It was pretty hilarious not gunna lie. MY comp took a video of it. 

I am so sad that Brother Hickman passed. He was definitely the biggest old man boss ever. "You preach, I drive" was that guys motto for the 4 years we were together and he used that every month. But he taught me so much that i use that in my companianship almost everyday. Everytime Elder Eyring talks about the "old man who taught him the importance of....." i always think of Brother Hickman. That really stinks that he passed away. Send my love to his family.

Ok so last notice. President Bluth went to the states this week because he has a tumor in his throat that is stopping him from being able to talk. So the doctors here in chile sent him back to the states for an unknown period of time. So while we are waiting we are asking 2 things as a mission. 1 prayers, and lots of them, and 2 the mission is doing a slideshow of papers that say we are praying for him. For yall it would be just a paper that says "We are praying for you in Washington." In the bucket is an example simple but a guideline. If you could send that to me in email next week i would appreciate it. You can color it or do whatever you want. Thanks i love yall

Elder Galbreath

So i thought about something i would like in my package. If you could send me a rubiks cube that would be cool. And any other little mind games like that. I miss thinking and im training to get that part of my brain back in use. (maybe a little booklet of like math wouldnt hurt) 

Also thank you for teaching me how to lead music. Since Elder England plays the piano like a boss i lead the music every week and Hermana Bluth complimented me on how well i do it. So thanks mama.

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