Halloween in Mexico?!?

Eating on P-day

First off, sorry for the grammatical errors, I am Mexican now, and this computer stinks....:)

Second, I love being a missionary!!! 

Ha-ha I can’t believe its Halloween, Halloween sucks in Mexico. There are just a bunch of little stores that they put and sell candy and disguises and stuff.  I do miss the holidays with the fam!  Those were the days! My family this Halloween will be Elder Draper, has a pretty cool brother! Ha-ha! 

I was asked the other day what I thought about the upcoming election…the truth, I don’t care who wins. It’s how the world has come to be that’s just how it will be.  It doesn’t affect my happiness nor my testimony.  Jesus Christ is the one that really govern the world, that’s who really matters.  I think we should try to focus on Him more in these days.  I never gave Him the importance that I should have before my mission, but now and forever more I will! 

It is very important that we have a testimony I can testify of that.  Our testimony is what will tell us that we are okay, it is what will keep us firmly planted when times get tough.  Something I have learned on the mission is that our testimony does not stuff at one level for much time, its either constantly growing or dying, and our actions are what determine the outcome. 

  

Hey I need to ask y'all to remember my friend Miguel Juarez and the Juarez Family.  Miguel was my Ward Mission Leader in Xico, and his little sister has been sick with cancer for a long time, and yesterday she passed away.  Hits pretty close to home right? Please remember this family in your prayers! 

This week I would like to testify of love and obedience.  I have been trying to love an elder that is a little difficult, and yesterday we talked and little by little I came to understand his situation more, oh and I have been praying for him lately. I felt lots of the spirit in that moment.  Friends I cannot stress enough that we don’t understand people and their situations, but it doesn’t matter, we got to love em! 

I also testify that the love of our savior is more than what we can come to understand.

Yesterday we were talking about the gathering of the house of Israel and the teacher testified and said, I know this church is true, for those of you who don’t know it, think, do you really think missionaries would come to Mexico of all places, to teach us about Jesus.  It hit home, I felt the spirit strong. 

The church is true, Jesus Lives and I know it!   

Elder Galbraith

Eating Breakfast with the Elders

Changes again.....

A good friend of mine Elder Davis, this guy is a champ!!

Well…Elder Draper and I have had a somewhat stressful cycle here.  We have struggled to find investigators, and we have walked a lot.  We found some very good investigators this weekend.  I felt the spirit with them. I could truly feel love for them.  I have been trying harder to feel love for the people, trying to put myself in their shoes. I have been looking for ways to serve and help others. 

And then guess what? They told us that we got changes.... YUP!!  Elder Draper and I will still be companions but they are changing the zone leader´s area!  We will no longer be in Xico; we will still be serving in Valle de Chalco but in another area called Anahuac. It’s actually super close to Xico…so we will actually keep going to the same chapel and everything, so it worked out pretty good, not too bad huh??? :)

Some thoughts I have had this week: 

1) We shouldn’t ever judge or criticize our leaders. We don’t know what is going on behind the scenes of our leaders in the church. 

2) We need to stop complaining. Our lives are too good. I see things here every day that make me wonder how it is that I can complain about how hard my life is!  Some people here don’t even have a house to themselves and I complain about having shiny shoes and stuff. 

I say this because this week we have been a little frustrated we some of the decisions that our leaders have made in the mission here.  We kind of started to complain and bag on them. But recently I have understood that this is not what God would want. We need to trust in God´s plan.  It’s perfect and I am not someone that can oppose what my Father wants. I have been praying to try and understand his will more in my life. 

I am working hard here. Something I have learned to love is the person I have become, and I have become that person because of turning my life over to Him. 

I know the church is true, I know that the BOM is true, and I know that my Redeemer lives. 

I LOVE YOU! 

Elder Galbraith 

Saying goodbye to some of the elders in the Helaman Zone

Love, FUN, and more Hard Work

First off sorry for writing so late, we had the day of sports for the mission and it finished tardy.

For the family…Heck yeah I’d like to get me some ornaments for Christmas! It makes Christmas better here!! I need something to make it more like Christmas! So go ahead and send me em! I would like that. 

And don’t y'all worry; I will always keep Grandma and Pops in my prayers! I always pray for my family!! Y’all after all the best family in the world!! 

Helaman Zone!

We had another day of sports in the mission, and this time my zone won!!! We only lost one game, and we took the trophy home. So that’s cool.  We had a race to start the day off, and i won it.  I know it’s got nothing to do with the work and the mission but I just thought you’d like to know, brag to the grandparents a lil :) HA-HA!  It was super fun, and the elders were able to play all day.  I saw them happier, not so stressed out, so that was good! 

Conference talks rock! I love the spirit that they bring, they inspire and uplift me. They are great! The conference past I loved the talk by J Devin Cornish. I love it; I can’t stop thinking about it! Those talks are scripture too, and we should always STUDY, the scriptures! 

This week I learned from a member here that always goes with us to teach and work.  He gave us some advice to invite people to listen right away. Sometimes we have gotten caught up in making appointments and waiting until next week. Sometimes God doesn’t want his children to wait anymore, we gotta teach them babies right now!! So we have been working on inviting the people to listen right now.  We have been sharing more in the street, sharing as much as we can with the time that we have been given! We gotta take advantage!! 

Elder Draper and I have been pretty good…talking to each other and helping each other out with the obedience.  We have been able to communicate pretty well and that is always key in the companionship! Even though he is American we talk in Spanish mostly but sometimes Spanglish. I want to master Spanish, so I talk mostly in Spanish.

I was given some advice about the elders in my zone who have been struggling with disobedience.  I have been thinking about what I was told about loving, truly loving the elders. I gave it some thought and prayer, and decided they’re right.  So I have been working on it this week. I have felt better. It’s true, they just need some help. Some love. 

I will keep working on it and let you know how it goes.  We all need to love more! 

  

Letter to President Zapata!

President!

Well thank you very much President for everything! The sports day was super FUN! I loved could win my last sports day.

I want to tell you that I have been praying a lot to have more love for the elders of the Helaman Zone. It has helped me a lot! We adjusted several things of our work here, and we have had several good results. It never ceases to amaze me and brighten the mission. I am very happy here, and I will continue working on having love and patience.

We love you President and thank you again for everything! Elder Galbraith

  

I know this the truth, I feel very uplifted every time I read from the Book of Mormon.  I have felt the love of God in my life.  I can receive revelation.  I give a special witness of the Truth of The Church of Jesus Christ, because I know that He lives, I know it! 

I love y’all! 

Elder Galbraith

Elder Branson Brotherson! He is from Provo, Utah and went to Timpview! He's awesome! 

This Week Rocked!

Well I am super glad that things have been going so well with you guys! That seriously makes me so happy!  Keep yourselves busy! I am always busy and I have learned its better like that! 

Well this week rocked! 

We had our leadership conference! And this time they took us to some pyramids in Cuautla. We had to hike a long distance and it was pretty steep too!  But it was suuuuper fun! There are some animals up there and the stinking buggers stole my chips!  Ha-ha! But the pyramid was super cool! While up there President Zapata and the Assistants taught us about how to be better leaders and how to follow better.  It was honestly such a spiritual experience and I learned a ton!  We then on Monday (today) had our zone conference.  We have several disobedient elders in the zone. Elder Draper and I had to talk super straightforward with some of them; we had a pretty good meeting.  I felt the spirit a lot. 

Animals that stole my chips!

I learned this week that we gotta learn how to follow the Lord before we can be leaders; all of the greatest leaders have been great leaders because of their devotion to follow the Lord Jesus Christ. We can learn a lot more about how to follow Christ and by doing so, be better leaders. I learned that I need to improve a lot. I need to focus more on following Christ. We all need to follow him more; having said that it came to my mind this phrase from a General conference from years ago: it’s more important to walk how He walked than to walk where he walked. 

Let’s do it!!!

Solo quiero decirles que la Iglesia es la iglesia verdadera! 

I know that this church is true. 

You all are awesome! 

Don’t ever underestimate your divine potential; we are sons and daughters of God. 

Elder Galbraith 

Selfie!

Elder Draper and me!

Pyramids!

Fun at the Pyramid...crazy animals!

General Conference and Hard Work!!

My previous comp E Rod and myself

Well to start off I have to say that I loved Conference! It ROCKED!! It made me feel pretty cool! One thing that stood out…It went by too fast!! What in the world? 

I remember that it couldn’t go by fast enough before. What changed? I paid attention! I loved the talk by Elder Cornish

Am I good enough? 

Will I make it? 

The answer is YES!! 

We are good enough, we will make it! 

Simple but I loved it. I am sometimes a little hard on myself, and that talk helped me a ton! I as well like the talk by Elder Uceda.  It made a lot more sense to me, being a zone leader, having to care for lots of elders.  And I loved hearing about the spirit. 

I loved the focus on prayer that conference had. 

I learned that I need to improve my personal prayers! 

I have become too casual in my prayers, and have not been having the best talks with my Padre Celestial that I could have been having. 

I have changed a few things and with just a few things I have felt the difference!

This is how the week went…Let’s move on Elder. 

Ha-ha I feel like that is what Elder Draper and I told ourselves all week…Let’s move on Elder. We had a week that turned out to be a little more stressful than others! 

A view of our city!

We keep looking and looking and had a little harder time finding new investigators. We didn’t have too many lessons.  But every day we came home feeling good, knowing that we had worked hard.  We looked and preached.  I remembered the whole week that it doesn’t matter.  I will continue and continue until the Lord says we will teach. 

I remembered that sometimes it will be hard because Salvation is not a cheap experience! 

We will keep pushing on. Like Job, that dude had it rough…I might even say his life sucked for a little bit ( sorry if that came off strong) And he never got mad at God, he never went apostate. He knew who he was, and who his Father was. 

He was not confused about his identity!  We will keep pushing on.

I love the gospel and amo a mi familia (translation…I love my family)!!!

We will be together for eternity! 

Elder Galbraith 

Obedience, A Crater and Alejandro!!

Things are going good here in Valle de Chalco!  Not as good as you guys though! or maybe better???? Haha who knows! 

So just an FYI...

Elder Draper is super cool! it’s a constant party with him! I have had pure awesome companions!  We have been working hard. We baptized Alejandro Vazquez! It was super cool! He got confirmed too, so it’s a done deal!  I felt the spirit super strong in his confirmation and couldn’t help but think that it’s true. The gospel is true, the church is true, and I know it.  That is one miracle that we saw this week or one blessing of this week! 

So this week I was a little stressed with some of the District Leaders. I was reading and found this scripture, D&C 3:2-3, check that bad boy out, that’s some good stuff. 

I learned a lot about it, we choose to get frustrated, and we need to choose not to! 

Frustration is not one of the feelings of the spirit! 

This week we went to a giant crater in our area! It’s on the other side of the hill we have, it was pretty cool!  We have been working hard and we have had some trouble keeping investigators in the teaching pool.  We have been trying several tactics, and we had our multi-zone conference too.  We have been giving our best effort and I know that we will find some investigators; we just got to keep trying.  Pray that I can have the diligence to keep looking! 

They have been emphasizing obedience here in the mission. So we too have been cracking down on the obedience here in the zone.  We don’t like none of that disobedience crap here! GIT R DUN! Ha-ha Larry-the-Cable Guy!  Let’s always try to be obedient, it is the only true way to have agency, to sin is to be subject to the consequences of sin. 

I testify that the church is true! It’s the truth. I testify that repentance is the only way we can truly present ourselves before God clean and pure! The church is true! 

Elder Galbraith! 

New Comp, Mexican Independence Day and More Hard Work!!

Saying goodbye to Elder Morales

Well another week come and gone! They go by pretty darn fast here. This week was a blazing hot one.... one week it rains and the other it burns…wish Mexico would make up its mind! ha-ha!

This week was the first one with Elder Draper! He is super cool! I love having an American comp! Its super fun, we understand stuff on the same level! Ha-ha! So that’s cool! He’s from Idaho so he understands pretty well the Utah way of life!  We get along super good! We've know each other since we started the mission; we were in the same zone together.

This week the work went super good! We have been working hard again and have seen several miracles this week. This week for changes and for the Mexican independence day it was a little difficult for the work. We had to go home early and so we just chilled in the house listening to music, we cleaned a little, and then watched a missionary movie, then went to bed, the  truth...BORING! I would have preferred working! Mexican Independence Day is kind of crazy, but weird, they don’t even care all that much, they barely even celebrate it!  They just stay up late drinking and throwing fireworks! That’s it... oh and FYI, I didn’t sleep very well that night.

Elder Draper and Me

Elder Draper and I have been working and we have found another baptism! This Saturday one of our investigators will get baptized at 6pm, his name is Alejandro Vazquez; keep him and his family in your prayers!

I learned this week about service…some elders didn’t have beds in their house, so we helped the elders with their beds and I felt super cool to help them out like that! Elder Draper came to the area with diarrhea so I got to help him out a little bit, and I felt happy to serve him. I learned that we need to truly love our neighbor, like unto ourselves, and more. If we don’t have charity we don’t have anything, we need to love more, and the rest will make sense, I have been trying harder to love the people here! It hard, but it’s coming along!

I can testify that the Lord knows what is best for us and if we trust in him 100 percent he will take care of us and lead us to the success we want in the life. I have learned to trust in him more and more with the passing time here in the mission! He knows best! I can also testify of the Book of Mormon, IT’S TRUE! Read it!

Tell the fam I say hey! And that I love them!

I love you all!  Keep up the good work.

Elder Galbraith

Being Silly