CHRISTMAS...and...

MERRY CHRISTMAS…and…

I just wanted to say that I love you all!!! 

Me and my nephew from the mission Elder Cuamani

The mission although one of the hardest things I have even done, has brought me more joy, than almost any other thing in the world, the only other thing that brings me more joy is my family! You guys!  The love of God is real, the love of our big brother Jesus Christ is real, and I feel it!!!  

 This week has been something weird, for Christmas we couldn’t really work all that much... But we got to sing in Chalco with a bunch of missionaries on Wednesday, we contacted a ton of people and gave out Books of Mormon wrapped up like presents! That was cool!  Christmas is kind of weird in Mexico!

Elder G taking advantage of Little Caesars Pizza

We found out that a Little Caesars Pizza opened!!!! So we took advantage of that opportunity! 

We have been working hard this cycle, working very hard, and we have seen the blessings and I can honestly say that we will baptize here in Huitzilzingo!  This is officially my last week with Elder Rodriguez... that went by waaaaay to fast, pray that he can have a good second comp, and that My new comp can be someone that will help me to progress. 

Missionaries on Christmas Day!

Not much changes here... Work, work, work,  but the work is amazing, it is the best work in the world.  It’s not really work, it’s more like helping. We help more than anything, we are refining ourselves and we are refining others too. I am glad that my testimony could touch your heart, I have felt my testimony grow so much here Mom, and I know that I couldn’t have done anything better to build my testimony than serve a mission. I feel so close to the Lord, I feel bad when I don’t obey, I feel amazing when I do obey and like I said I feel very good with my life, with who I am now! 

I would like to share my testimony with each of you...

Testimony of Elder Galbraith 

I know that this church is true, I got on my knees, and I asked the Lord if this is true, and HE ANSWERED.  He told me that this is the true gospel of Jesus Christ that this is the church that He established, and this is where he wants me to be, so this is where I will be.  I know that Joseph Smith was a prophet and it blows my mind the things he was able to accomplish, and he did it with the Lord.  I know that the Book of Mormon is true, I have read it and I have come to the knowledge that it is the word of God.  I know that we are not perfect and that we are nothing without God, but we are EVERYTHING with Him.  He has changed my life and continues to do so, because I let Him. I love this gospel and I love Jesus Christ and want to do everything I can to obey and follow him, so that’s what I will do. 

Now that Christmas is over, here’s a new year’s resolution for ya: Remember Jesus Christ every day.  Do it and I promise you the blessings from heaven will rain down!! 

I testify in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen. 

Love,

ELDER GALRBAITH 

I Testify of His Love for You!

I am super jealous of all the snow you are getting... I miss it so bad, it’s super-hot here, cold in the morning, but hot all day.... it doesn’t feel like Christmas, that’s for sure! We work all day long and it makes the time FLY.

My week went good, we have been running like crazy getting ready for the festivities and all that.

We are preparing 2 people for baptism this week; we have 2 baptism dates for the 26th of December. We will be working hard for those baptisms. We are this close! I feel it!! 

My weeks are super, super busy and super, super fast!  Things are good with my comp and I.  We are rapidly approaching the end of his training! We only have 2 more weeks together. We are getting along good.  He’s a good kid, with lots to learn but he will do great things in the mission. 

Well here for Christmas they sing weird songs, the Catholics walk around the streets in the night asking for food as part of some ritual... the members don’t do much, Christmas really isn’t all that big here, they put up lights and all that but I haven’t seen too many trees and they don’t really give gifts! And like I said, THERE IS NO SNOW!  Oh and they work all day long, so they don’t really do anything different on Christmas. 

I have really learned the importance of Christ in Christmas this year. I have come to understand a little bit better about who he was and what he did.  I read a talk that Jeffrey R Holland gave and he talked about his first Christmas away from home in the mission, and I can relate to it.  I learned that Christ gave us the greatest gift of all, his life.  He loves us so much that He would suffer, bleed, and die, so that evil, death, and hell would relinquish their hold on mortality. 

He loves us, he loves me, AND HE LOVES YOU: I do not have words to explain the love I feel towards each of you, and if you can imagine how much love you feel for me, and then times that by a million or a billion, that’s what our big brother Jesus Christ feels for you and me.  In this Christmas season I want to remember Christ more, and have a stronger relationship with him, and that’s what I will do. 

I testify of His love for you!

Merry Christmas!!

Elder Galbraith

#SharetheGift
#ASaviorIsBorn

The Mission Rocks!!!

First of all the mission rocks!! Life is good, I am good, God is great, what more could ya want!? I do need your prayers; my investigators need your prayers too! Very much in fact, we have to baptize this cycle, and I am kind worried I won’t be able to. 

I was able to realize that baptizing isn’t everything, and we cannot measure our success by how many people we baptize! We have to realize what it is that God really wants for us. 

This week went by lightning fast, and I can’t believe it’s almost Christmas! Loco verdad?  

I hope that you are enjoying the snow, are scary as it is, because I miss it! It’s still hot here sometimes....

I will be honest the Christmas season isn’t the same here in Mexico, it’s very very different!! It’s kinda cold here, and there aren’t very many lights, not very much Christmas music either. 

I will never forget the 12 of December though, that’s the day of the Virgin Mary here in Mexico.... ALL and I mean ALL of the Catholics come out of their holes and party HARD. We didn’t have that much success that day, it was a challenge for sure, we stuck it out and worked but it was rough, I had to repeatedly pray for strength and forgiveness that day. 

It was definitely an experience of a lifetime!  

I did come to realize that this people are slightly confused and all I really wanted to do was help them!  They need our help and that’s why we are here.  We are not here to preach to them the same lesson over and over, nor are we here to mess around.  This is serious work here, these people told us to visit them in the life before and they are waiting for us!!

But let’s see here best thing that happened this week: we had a cultural event for the dedication of the Tijuana temple ad we invited an investigator and when we passed by to take him to the church he wasn’t there, and he wasn’t answering our calls, so we thought he wrote us off, but when we got to the church, there he was!!!

What I like most about being a missionary: speaking Spanish, hearing someone pray for the first time, and the food... oh and of course the spirit!!

I testify that Jesus is the Christ, he atoned and died for us, but he lives!

I testify that Joseph Smith was a prophet and that he saw God the Father and Jesus Christ the son. The Book of Mormon is real, I have read it, and I asked and I got my answer! It’s the truth! 

Love

Elder Galbraith

Mis Amados!

Mis amados! 

Let me start off with this... 

I have truly grown in this week, I learned a ton! 

 First off, I applied Alma 22:16 to my life. This scripture has changed my life, and since I have done that I have felt the spirit fall upon me like no other. It truly has become a privilege to have the spirit in my life! 

I have also learned that we need to be willing to listen to the Lord, to his spirit, and to put his spirit as priority, we should always pray, and then listen always willing to do exactly what the Lord says!

We need to have the spirit in our lives, we cannot navigate this life without it, ¨by small and simple things, bring to pass the greatest blessings of God

I want to share with you what I wrote to President this week! 

Presidente

Esta semana fue muy bien, trabajamos duro pero también mas eficaz, pudimos subir nuestro logro de lecciones con MP.

Y vimos milagros, nuestro investigadora esta progresando sigue con su fecha y hablamos con su esposo sobre su matrimonio y el si quiere casarse! Solo nos faltan a conseguir la fecha y hacerlo.

Otro investigador nos dijo que el sabe que esta iglesia es la verdadera, pero tiene dudas en cuanta a la virgen. Pero si quiere unirse con la iglesia de Jesucristo! 

Este mes verdaderamente es el mes de milagros! Se lo es. 

Siento muy animado.

También hoy tuvimos la oportunidad hacer divisiones con los asistentes! Elder Reidhead me dio algunos consejos bien bien buenos, y los voy a aplicar. 

Esta es la verdadera Pres, sin ninguna duda en mi mente! 

Le amo mucho y no puedo esperar a ver que mas es Señor tiene para nosotros! 

Elder Galbraith 

You will need to translate it...=) 

I went on divisions today with one of the AP´s and he is a great friend of mine, and he taught me something super powerful today, I have been worried lately because I haven’t been baptizing like I did before, and like I mentioned in my letter he told me that there is something that the Lord wants us to learn, something that will make us stronger, something that we need in order to push on, something that we cannot live without! 

The Lord wants me to be a man, he wants me to leave my anger behind and to be more humble, and right now that’s more important than baptizing, but don’t be confused, I will baptize this month, we have baptism dates and we will baptize this month! But only because Heavenly Father permits me to be successful like that! 

…and I want to know that I am loving this work.  It has been the best decision I have made in my life. I don’t have words to explain it. 

I Love you!

Elder Galbraith 

First Week of the New Cycle

This week was the first week of the new cycle, E. Rod and push on together! 

  

Well let me tell you how my Thanksgiving was... I completely forgot.... It was on Wednesday I am pretty sure and on Saturday i realized I missed Thanksgiving.... so that’s how it went for me, ha-ha pretty lame right??  I am glad that you had a good thanksgiving!

Anyways in this week, we worked hard again, we found new people, taught lessons, walked a lot, and worked hard to change lives. 

Elder Bramble (one of the Elders in our apartment) got sick this week, like super sick.  He had a seizure or something like that one day and we ran around town looking for medicine and we took care of him for a bit. He is better now!!

We played soccer today in the church, and I finally scored some goals again! This is progress! I am still by no means good at soccer but I am improving! But the thing that I am dying for is lacrosse!! I miss it soooooooooo much! I wanna play so hard sometimes! But I will have to wait! 

Pics before changes with Elder Riedhead and Elder Vazquez

This week I have been super focused on the rules, I know that one could easily say that it’s okay not to obey all of the rules and one could easily do that, but then there is always the question of ¨what if¨?  I hate this question, it always leaves people with doubt, and it always leaves regrets.  Now we come back to this speech, Live Without Regrets, and I could preach about living without regrets all day long, but all I am going to say is this, Elder Dieter F Uchtdorf has a talk in the Liahona of October and it’s called Finish With Your Torch Still Lit. It talks about finishing a race with you torch still lit, talking about Greek runners that ran a marathon with a torch and it’s not a sprint, they won by finishing with their torches lit.  We need to understand this profound lesson.  Dieter says, we need to acquire the faith to work hard, give our all, leave behind fear and do what the Lord wants us to, to finish strong, and if we do so, WE WILL NOT HAVE REGRETS: 

I am positive that if we apply this in our lives we can be servants of Heavenly Father with faith so strong that it won’t matter what trials we have, we will have our torch lit, and burning brightly! 

I love you all

Elder Galbraith