Antsirabe!!

I'm going back to Antsirabe! Transfers came in last night, and I am bouncing. Elder Yeagley is getting his mom and I am going to be zone leader in Antsirabe. The weird part is we are going to be doing the second half of the training program with someone who did the first half with his trainer but his trainer is in the branch presidency of manandona so he doesn't really have time to do the program right. So me and Elder Arrieus are finishing his childhood. Not really sure how this is going to work with the missionary terminology/slang but we will figure it out. 

On that note what can I pray for your for this week? 

I don't know, maybe that I don't die of excitement? I am doing great.

How are you feeling?  How is your hand? 

I am feeling good. I don't think this cold will last too much longer. My hand is fine, it was a little tender for a few days but now it is good. 

Eating well?  If the food is expensive suck it up and spend the money.  You can’t have energy to serve if your body is not getting good nutrition.  

I am eating like a king. Full pigs most nights. Definitely not rice beans and instant noodles. That would be terrible. 

Did you hear about transfers?

Yes. See above.

How did the baptisms go? 

They went great! I will write more about them below. 

Am I telling you things you want to hear about?  Anything I am missing?  

Yep. Keep up the good work. Seahawks updates wouldn't be the worst. 

Don’t forget the lawn mowing question.

I don't know, probably like five or ten bucks. 

Please tell me you did not have to use that bathroom.  that is one of my nightmares.  

Just to pee. 

Did you remember your planner this week?

Yep. Not a whole lot got written down this week. Just notes on a bible bash we stumbled into. 

Alright so baptism first. It went awesome! Pics on the bucket. They were so happy. The water was super cold, but it was alright. They both asked me to baptize them too. Man, I haven't been that happy in a long long time. Their baptism just felt so good. Then Marie asked me to give her the gift of the holy Ghost. Man, I have never relied on the spirit so hard in my life. I am not bad at malagasy right, but we don't give a ton of blessings and we definitely don't do it in front of a congregation. Fortunately the power was out so no microphone, and there was only 68 people at church. So that actually sucked. But yeah. It was awesome because they got baptized and confirmed.

Tuesday we had an interesting experience. We are teaching a reactivated guy's son. He isn't baptized (hence our teaching him). So anyway his son is 10 I think, and has a few friends that come and sit in the lesson ranging from 4 to 10. They are quiet and most of them actually listen so it's alright.

So Thursday we went tracting for quite a while and this one guy invited us right in. A little weird, but he seemed interested because he was listening very intently. Then he says, "Do you pray on the Sabbath or on Sunday?" and I was like, well, the bible says the Sabbath is on Sunday so yes? I guess would be the answer to your question. Proceed to slay him about the sabbath day. Then we were trying to explain how God doesn't change so there can only be one true church and we need to try to find said church. He proceeded to explain to me how every apostle started a church and they were all true and that is why there are a lot of churches. Interesting right? So we got out of there pretty quick. 

Yep. Friday we had 13 lessons scheduled for the day. that is almost one every half an hour. Fortunately they were all brand new people that we had tracted into the day before, so six of them weren't there. It worked out well. It does feel kind of nice to have more people than we can actually teach though. 

Anyway, not a whole lot going on other than that. 

Love you a ton, 

Elder Galbreath 5.0 (now with zone leader option)

Last week till transfers

Did you have the baptisms?

Not yet, but P and M passed their interview! This Saturday is the baptism for those two. And they both asked me to baptise them so that will be fun. 

How is the food gong?  Learning to cook anything good?  

I can honestly say most of my meals come out of a box or can.  Soup is my friend.  

Rice. Rice is where it's at. I eat rice and beans legitimately two meals a day six days a week. I am following the word of wisdom's admonition to eat meat sparingly. Not by choice though. Tamatave is just way expensive. 

So lately I have been taking notes on stuff I want to write about throughout the week. It works really well if I remember to take my planner with me on p-day. I haven't remembered that yet. Seems odd right? You use that thing every day but as soon as you put on a t-shirt you forget all about it. So yeah. No promises about how good this email will be. 

Went on a split on Tuesday. That was interesting. So the district leader is in the other area and had to do our baptism interviews. I went over there and he came here with Elder Yeagley. As it happens, Elder Ratsimbarison is training right now. His kid has only been here for four weeks at the time. So not a whole lot of language ability. Doing well for where he is at but he hasn't been here very long. So we went to our first lesson and he did pretty solid, helped teach a lot of it even though it was tithing. So that was a difficult one for him. Then we went to our next lesson. They weren't there. No big deal, we will just go tracting for a while and then go to the next lesson. They weren't there either. Well this sucks, let's do a little more tracting and then go to the next lesson a little early. They are on vacation in Tana. Then we saw the seven o clock lesson family on the street and they told us they couldn't learn because he is leaving town right now. So we literally went tracting all day except one lesson that was about half an hour. Not so terrible since in my area we get a contact about every ten to fifteen minutes that wants to learn. However, Ankirihiry is a whole 'nother ball game. Their area has zero men in it. Since we are trying to build up the leadership and priesthood of the church we have been asked to focus on finding men. So we found one family that was even remotely interested and set up a return appointment. One family. In a full day of tracting. The only up side was Elder Pinson is hilarious. There was this dog giving us flack and Elder Pinson goes "Shut up dog, I will put you in a PETA commercial. Sarah McLachlan's gonna come and start singing. Arms of an angel gonna take you away." I was dying. I couldn't even breathe. So yeah. 

Thursday we had a zone meeting. That was interesting. Talked about some really boring mission stuff you don't understand or care about, just stats and the like. Then we had the lesson. Well, the thing is there are two of us here in Tamatave that are good enough at malagasy and english to be able to translate well. Elder Gaul is one, and I am the other. The problem comes in that Elder Gaul is the zone leader so he gives the lesson at the zone meetings. So I always end up translating. It's not terrific amounts of fun, and I can't take notes on the meeting. But the malagasy elders need to understand what is going on too. So Elder Gaul leads off the lesson with the story of Rip VanWinkle. I know you don't know any other languages enough to translate, but imagine that story and trying to get the message across clearly. It was not easy. Who knows the word for rust? Not me, that's for sure.  So that was interesting, plus my nose is plugged up and keeps draining into my throat and making it hard to breath, let alone talk. I did alright though, the gasy elders understood the point of the lesson. It was based on President Uchtdorf's talk from last conference about "Don't sleep through the restoration". Don't sleep through your mission. It's possible, and very easy. But you won't learn anything and you will hold other people back in the process. It's easy for me to see the extremes,  So yeah. Don't waste your time. If you aren't going to do a mission right then just stay home. Borderline ranting here, moving on. 

So we left the meeting and went to go to lunch. I was hauling on Beast Mode, racing another elder, and destroying him. I turned around to make sure I could still see him, and when I turned back around and was looking forward again, I was very very close behind a sarety. A sarety is a welded steel flatbed with a large handle. Just a big cart, moving slowly and being very very solid. so swerved as best I could but one end of my handlebars caught the handle of the cart. It bruised up my fingers pretty bad on the one hand and almost put me over my handlbars. Not sure how that didn't happen actually. 

That's all I can remember. The ocean is freaking crazy. Just blows my mind that of all the things God has created we can know so little about so many of them. The ocean is just so much water. So. Much. Water. Such a simple thing, and yet it is one of the greatest mysteries on earth. Crazy. 

Anywho. Love you a ton. 

Elder Galbreath 5.0

Manahirana kely izany

You are right. I have been in Tamatave for a long time. It's wearing me down. Everything gets old after a while. I don't know. Just working hard, trying to do my best to find new people and get the ones we have to baptism. 

Speaking of baptism, we should have one of those next week! On the 27th there should be three people getting baptized. One of them is a guy that we tracted into literally like the second hour I was working in Morarano. His name is C. He is so cool, comes to church every week and just way excited about the gospel and baptism. He is 20, so that is way cool. We need more youth in the church. But he is way cool and I am excited for his baptism. The other people have been learning from the missionaries for a few years and just couldn't get their marriage papers done. It is really difficult sometimes to get that done here, especially if you are poor. But they finally got it done and so now there is nothing holding them back from baptism. So I am really excited for them. 

This week me and Elder Yeagley went tracting quite a bit. Actually we went tracting a lot. It wasn't tremendous amounts of fun but we found a pretty solid number of people to teach. So we have a nice full schedule this week but how many of the people will actually be there is anyone's guess. Then next week we will be tracting a lot again. Pretty fun little cycle. 

We have a member here, name is F, who is a national champ marathon runner, in the southeast regional rugby 7s team, speaks english like a champ (served in Johannesberg) and is a genius. And he plays soccer way well. He teaches math and english to kids trying to graduate. He is stud. And he is a good looking dude too. It's not really fair. Point of the story is he helps us a lot and Saturday we had a branch activity where we were going to be playing soccer against one of the other branches. It started at eight. So at seven thirty we met him at the church so he could show us where the heck we were even going. So we get there about eight, and we are the only ones there. We did some rugby passes with coconuts for a while, then just ended up sitting in the shade talking about the different parts of Madagascar. So at eight forty five someone else shows up with a ball, and at nine a few young men came so we had enough to play a little game of four on four. We did that for a while, my team lost. Then we called it a day at about ten. Nobody from the other branch even showed up. Turns out they were going on a party bus thing so they cancelled the activity on friday night. Phone trees are not a thing here so the only people that knew where the elder's quorum president and the other branch. Probably a good thing though because we didn't even have enough people to play a full game.  

Yep. Not a whole lot else to talk about this week. Gonna be going on splits this week so hopefully there will be a couple interesting stories from that. 

Love you a ton mom,

Elder Galbreath 5.0

                                            The edge of the soccer field is a dump

                                            Soccer field

                                           Garbage is everywhere.

                                         ready for soccer

Mitady ho faty ianao!

First of all thanks for the sports update, please keep those coming, at least with the Seahawks. 

Do we have pigs? I am unaware of this, do explain...

Mom's mac sounds cool. Are we becoming a mac family?  If I buy a windows phone will I be a black sheep? Can I still come to thanksgiving dinner? 

Are you pumped for the shoot? I am, and I won't even be there. 

Not a whole lot happened this week because I have been super sick. Just this nasty head cold/flu thing. Killer headache, runny nose, coughing. My body has been just sapped of any strength I had. It's been going on like this for two weeks now. I don't know what to do, I called the nurse and she told me to rest and take some tylenol. Well I took a day off finally on Saturday and I still feel like crap so that was worthless advice, and I didn't get anything done. So no more of that noise. Elder Yeagley has been way solid lately, getting really good at the language. He is just leading the lessons and we just do everything we can to work hard. My biggest expense lately has been tissues. Fun stuff right? So I have been relegated to mostly clarifying things that my comp says which are not so clear. It is not a role I am entirely happy with. But it's whatever. Training right? It's a thing. 

I love you guys so much. We tracted into this family that was pretty interested but the husband was never there so we kept trying and trying and trying and finally we caught him there and taught a lesson and they have a ton of potential. Excited to see where they are going. 

I really don't know what else to add. Sorry, just a mediocre week. I love you a ton though. 

Elder Galbreath v5.0

Love his sense of humor.

Funny kid.

If you bought the fleece already, read this one.

I don't know where you are at right now but I am trying to catch you before the end of the night.
That fleece is bomb! Buy it! That jersey is way cool though, and the hats. Not asking for more stuff but yeah. Good batch of merch this year, I can see why you are doing so well.
I will send you another email in a minute with the weeks stories but I want to try and catch you.

If you haven't bought the fleece yet, read this one.

I don't know where you are at right now but I am trying to catch you before the end of the night.

That fleece is mediocre, don't bother. That jersey is way cool though, and the hats. Not asking for more stuff but yeah. Good batch of merch this year, I can see why you are doing so well.

I will send you another email in a minute with the weeks stories but I want to try and catch you.

Now that I am writing Wyatt every week you guys might get the same emails for a little while, until I can mazaka three emails.

Alright so this week was pretty good. I stayed home Wednesday because I was really sick and worked the rest of the week in spite of being really sick. Fun right? I was actually sick Tuesday too but the AP's were up here going on splits with us so I couldn't stay home that day. Elder Fox (from Bothel area) was with us and he is way good at Malagasy so he and Elder Yeagley handled most of the work. Actually now that I think about it Elder Yeagley did most of it. Elder Yeagley has been doing way good this last week, leading lessons and progressing like a mad dog. I wish any of our investigators would try that hard haha.

So Wednesday was no fun, but Thursday we went out and worked crazy hard. We ended up spending about an hour walking around trying to find less actives with this one kid who you could call the ring leader and not be exaggerating. Unfortunately, they were all at a soccer game so they weren't home. Or at church yesterday. So that's cool. Upside though is that while we were walking around the neighborhood there were at least thirty kids all playing a really intense game of war. Not the card game, like the ones with fake guns had those and the ones that didn't made them out wood. There were some really intense ones, and then there was also a kid who had a plank. So they were of varying intensity I guess. But there was a point where I saw four kids with a strangely detailed sand map of the neighborhood devising a plan to attack the other stronghold, and there were prisoners taken at one point. I saw a kid tied to a tree at one point actually and that was a little weird but still.

Friday morning the Rossiters came down to Tamatave. They brought a bunch of money and a plan. Also they brought two new bikes. So one of those is mine, a very nice Scott in Seahawks colors. I call it Beast Mode. It is so choice. Pics on the bucket. Expect very few Elder Galbreath vs the poopy bike stories for my duration in Tamatave. Then they set about fixing completely and replacing parts on every single bike in Tamatave. So every bike works great now. Not as good as mine, but still.

Saturday was pretty standard stuff. We got a call about half way through the day though that was alarming. The president of Madagascar had his power go out for some reason, so he got mad and threw six of the top Jirama (like the PUD, they do all the water and power for Madagascar) officers in prison. So then Jirama got mad and threatened to cut all the power and water to the whole island if he didn't let them out. So we had to top off our supplies in case that happened. So far we still have power and water so I don't know what is up with that but yeah, we are ready.

Yesterday we just taught some lessons and had dinner. Church was alright, nothing special.

This morning has been pretty chill so far. The cyber is way busy though.

I got my package, thank you so much.  ( only took three months)

Hope you guys are doing well all alone up there.

Much love,
Elder Galbreath

Lalàna ny Fiainana avy amin'ny Elder Galbreath Another life rule, with corollary.

Lalàna ny Fiainana avy amin'ny Elder Galbreath
Another life rule, with corollary.

Thou shalt share with thy neighbor that which thou hast in abundance.
.5 Thou shalt not assume to take unto thyself that which is not already in thine possesion, but shall rely upon the goodness of thy neighbor to give freely.
I think I figured out how to make life rules and why they don't come a lot as a missionary. I don't realize how strongly I feel about certain principles of life until someone breaks them. Then I am just like what the crap. Life rule.

So this week was alright. It rained every. single. day. Hard rain too. Our church attendance dropped from 110 to 115 when I got here to 78 last week and 73 this week. It rains all morning and I am pretty sure a lot of people just decide at that point that they are not coming to church so even if it doesn't rain for like two hours before our church starts nobody shows up. It's the pits. I think that before I let anyone get baptized here I am going to make sure that they have a clear and firm understanding of the importance of going to church even if it is raining and that the church is perfect and the people aren't. We have a lot of people go inactive because they get offended by something the branch president says, or a teacher. Not a problem specific to here by any stretch, I know people in Moses Lake like that. The church is perfect, look in my eyes and understand. The church. is. perfect. The people are not perfect, nor are most of us close. Yes, we shouldn't say offensive things. No we should not judge people harshly or say things out of anger or in the heat of a moment. However, we are just people. Even Moses made mistakes, and who doesn't like Moses? Even Muslims like Moses.

Thank you so much for your email. I got it on Tuesday when we went to take a survey about Preach My Gospel. I really appreciated it a lot. I mean I still appreciate it but I did then too. I feel a lot better this week, I just wish it would stop raining.

We played volleyball this morning against a bunch of Malagasy kids in a gym. Cement floor but a pretty nice gym overall. They pretty much just wiped the floor with us for about 20 minutes or so and then we were remembering how to play volleyball. I don't want to say I sparked the team into a winning streak, but I might have. They were scoring just every time. Then they were set up to spike it, right in front of me. So I jumped up, our hands hit the ball at the same time and I just demolished this kid. Not a little kid, like he was almost my height and kind of skinny but way good at volleyball. Destroyed him. Then we scored like 7 times in a row, and did really good the rest of the time we were there. Again, not saying it was me, but I am also not denying it.
The companionship is going pretty good. Elder Yeagley is making a ton of progress every day. Make me excited for Wyatt really. I am so pumped for him to make progress and see him grow from normal person to return missionary. He is going to do so good.
The rest of the week was pretty average, lots of people not home. Church yesterday was interesting. Since the teacher for Elder's Quorum didn't show up we just had a gospel discussion about 1 Nephi 3. Really interesting. Basically what I got out of it was this. Nephi decided that the scriptures and geneology were worth more than their lives and their money. Following the Lord is not easy. It's not cheap. It's stressful. Sometimes it makes you hide in caves and hit your brother with a rod. However, it works out in the end and it is so worth it.
We are still teaching the guy on the beach. Did I mention he is totally blind? I wasn't sure about that before, but he can't see anything. Not even shapes. He used to work at the port, and he would have to grind off I-beams over his head all the time and one day a bunch of sparks and dust got in his eyes and they toook him to the hospital and they couldn't do anything to help him. Bummer. But he is way good at listening and pretty smart.

The bikes are ridiculous right now. They just break all the time. So I had to buy a new axle a few days ago but now it is going good. It just sucks that they buy these really crappy bikes and then tell us to repair them. Then missionaries don't repair them because they are dumb and we get these low quality bikes that haven't been taken care of and that's how we have to get around. Not the best. Hoping I walk in my next area.

This week Elder Yeagley and I were doing a fair amount of contacting. Trying to find new people and not having a lot of luck. Then we get to this house and we are like do you want to learn and they are like no way Jose. So we start to leave and this kid comes out of a house we didn't even notice was there and says hey we want to learn. So we go to the door and see that the husband is there and they all want to learn. Mom Dad and son. So that was way cool.

On Friday I was on a split with Elder Gaul. He came to our area to do a bap interview for a girl who decided to wait now so kind of pointless. But anyway I forgot my raincoat and he doesn't have one and of course it starts raining which wasn't a huge deal. Then it really starts raining. Like romance movie final scene rain. I'm talking Sweet Home Alabama on the beach. I'm talking the very end seen of Holes when it rains at Green Lake. So then Elder Gaul (who used to work my area, about a year ago) says "We were teaching these way sick people before, I should show you where they live." So off we go. Well we end up walking up and down this main road for literally half an hour trying to find their house. We were so soaked. Just ridiculous amounts of rain. So we finally find the right gate. We go in and he explains that it is behind this house right here, we walk around the corner and we see... nothing. No house. It was literally just gone. So we just walked home. It was almost nine anyway. We got home and literally rung out my socks and clothes. It was just silly.

Tell me how things are going with your investigators.  Have you had any more success with your families?
Sort of. One of the way cool families we teach moved and we haven't found their house yet but we ran into them on the road and set up a place to meet them on Wednesday so hopefully that works out. I just wish people would come to church. It's frustrating.
mountain cabin or beach hut?
This is hard. Mountain cabin appeals to my lumberjack, gun loving, beard growing, kilt wearing scottish american roots. The beach hut appeals to my comfort factor and my love of the tropical climate. Flannel vs board shorts. A fight wouldn't even be close but a choice between the two is difficult. I might have to go with the mountain cabin. It's gun range in the back yard or learning to surf. I am gonna go with flannel shirts and kilts with a gun range in the back.
The gift of prophesy or tongues?
Prophecy. No contest. You can learn them both but prophecy is way harder. It would make decisions so much easier. Do I go to Georgia or Alaska? The Lord says this. Done.
The ability to sing any song on key or play any instrument handed to you?
I might have to go with the instrument one. Granted singing is more of a lady killer, but if I can play any instrument I can learn to be alright at singing and just play the bagpipes and ukelele like a champ.

Love you a ton Dad. I hope you have a great week at work. Congrats again on the steel challenge, two first place plaques is a big deal.

Love,
Elder Galbreath

Training

Elder Yeagley is the lucky missionary. He is pretty cool. He is from Roy, Utah. Born in America, so there goes that streak. He is a convert actually, got baptized December 2011. He found out his parents are inactive members right after his baptism, pretty crazy right? So now he is here serving a mission in Madagascar. He said it really helped his parents get excited for him when he got called to a cool place because they were less than excited about his choice to serve a mission. So it kind of opened my eyes to how fortunate I am to have a family that supports me in what I am doing, I think if I hadn't had support in all this I wouldn't have done it at all. So thank you, I guess is what I am saying. I feel like I hit a major turning point in my life this winter and I could have gone either way, but with your help and the support from the rest of the family and Sister Jones and everyone else basically I did the right stuff and made it back. Not that I think the hard parts of life are over but I made it through a very sketchy portion of life. Anyway, more story on Elder Yeagley to come.
I am getting better rapidly, I can walk again now. Making improvement, got a new kind of cream that is making a big difference and got some powder to keep everything dry. I talked to the mission nurse and we keep in contact. I am anxiously awaiting the package though. Please send me some more pictures, I am trying to be good and send some to you so if you could give me like one a week I would be happy. It's summertime so I know things are happening.
The cybers here are pretty nice, this one is really nice. Sometimes we have to go somewhere else because it is closed and those are mediocre but this one is way nice.
Investigators are pretty solid, we made contact with a couple of investigators who had moved houses but are still in our area. Pretty cool. Our attendance at church was terrible though, we only had 3 people there. Most weeks we have 10+ so it is pretty bad.
So Sunday night transfers came in, Monday was P-day and Tuesday morning eight of the ten missionaries here in Tamatave left to go to Tana. We got on the bus at 7:30 in the morning. We rode all day to Tana and got there about 4:30. Made for a long day. Plus it was freezing in Tana. Significantly colder than here in Tamatave. Made me grateful I was only staying for a couple days. So we went on splits with various areas around the office. The worst part of it all was that I would see a missionary I didn't know and I would introduce myself and they would go "So you're Elder Galbreath". What is that supposed to mean? So apparently I am famous. Hopefully in a good way. The best is when I meet people that worked in Andranomanelatra. One guy just got transfered out of there when I met him and he goes "They talk about you all the time"So anyway then Thursday morning we had breakfast that Sister Adams had made. Holy cow, sometimes I forget how nice it is to not have to make your own breakfast. Then a training meeting for the trainers where they told us about how important our job is and that our main focus is helping our companions. Even the investigators take a back seat to that. Pretty intense stuff. So then the meeting comes and we get to find out who our trainees are. Of course it's long and dramatic and of course I am the sixth of seven to get my companion. Elder Yeagley. Pretty studly guy, looks like a bit of a dork but he played football all through high school. Cool guy. Did computer programming in college and wants to be a mechanical engineer. Well rounded right? He isn't much for pop culture updates but he went into the MTC two weeks after I left so there isn't much he knows that I don't. Then the ride home. We went by night on a huge tour type bus. So we stopped for dinner and had some mediocre rice and loaka for his first Malagasy meal. Not terrible. We pulled into Tamatave at 4:30 in the morning and it was pouring rain. Just buckets. Welcome to Madagascar kids. So we get a taxi and call it good. Off to sleep. We slept in that morning. Elder Yeagley is exactly the definition of bright eyed and bushy tailed. He always says how happy he is to be here serving and how cool he thinks everything is. It's nice to get that fresh perspective on a mission.

                                                            Mada jungle

Smiting story. Probably my favorite is when Elijah was up on the mountain, and the fifty army dudes went to get him and Elijah was just like "What did you say? I couldn't hear you over the sound of fire falling from heaven and killing you." then another fifty army dudes came and he was all "Wow this must be an epidemic." and they were all like "oh no, fire came down from heaven and destroyed us". Then another fifty dudes come and the captain is like "Please don't destroy us" and Elijah was all "That's cool" and goes with them. Pretty intense. Or there is the one in Acts where Peter is collecting the tithing and offerings and this couple decided to hold back some of what they should have payed and the husband brought the money they thought was enough and Peter was just like "You know this isn't right, why are you stealing from God?" and he died. Then the wife came later with her part of the money (still not all they should have paid, she didn't know her husband had died) and Peter was like "Seriously? Do you really think God doesn't know what you are doing?" and then she died. Pay your tithing is what I am getting at here.
Side note: The new AP is Elder Fox from Seattle. He is from one of the little towns that are basically Seattle but aren't, like Renton, but I can't remember which one. Pretty cool. He liked my Sounders jersey.

Well Mom, I love you. I can't wait to hear from you again next week! Don't go crazy grinding poop in the heat. Love you a ton.

Elder Galbreath