October 12, 2015 - The One with Tracting in the Rain

This has been a great week here in Albermarle. It was pretty solid overall. Our investigators are starting to drop off but we have been taking in the counsel of a mission wide call in we had on Wednesday night and have found some wonderful new people we are excited to start working with.

The conference call was all about how we need to be putting more of an emphasis on finding new investigators and consecrate three hours a day to finding. That can be a bit tricky for us when we run from appointment to appointment but we are excited to see what miracles it brings.

One lady in particular comes to mind. We were in a town looking for a less active member we had never contacted before but it didn't work out. We were hoping to use Family History to bridge the gap for him to come back to church. Unfortunately he wasn't home so we tried talking to his neighbors. They weren't interested but when we asked who do you know?, he said we should go down the street onto another street and at the end of that street was a part of town where people needed the gospel. We followed his advice. After knocking on the doors of some disinterested people, we found tis woman. She was very open and accepting to our message. It turns out she had talked to the Elders about a year and a half ago but it never really went anywhere, though she did have fond memories of the experience. She seems a lot more
ready this time and accepted the invitation to be baptized. We are going back on Tuesday!

Funny side story, one of the ladies we talked to who wasn't interested was convinced that we were Amish polygamists from Pennsylvania. When we told her we weren't she said that's what she read. We told her that weren't again. But she still didn't get it. ;)

We were able to use Family History to pick back up a former investigator!  We went over to teach a different investigator one afternoon with a member but they weren't home. We knew this woman lived
right nearby so we went over to talk with her. Her issue before was that she was on a sabbatical from church. We introduced family history this time and she was really interested. We told our Family History director about her and he thinks he might be closely related to her! Him and his wife are going to pick her up and bring her to the church on
Wednesday night to help get her started! Our missions presidents son was right when he said that the Spirit of Elijah might be the only way to get people to the church!

This week we also decided to go tracking in the rain. Without umbrellas. We got absolutely soaked. We walked around and knocked on doors for two hours on Saturday morning. We thought that would be a good time to catch people at home. Turns out it wasn't.

This week we also went on exchange with our zone leaders. Elder Hettinger came here to Albemarle with me. It was a good exchange. We taught a lot which was nice. It's always good to show off all the great things happening here rather than having a bad day and having to be like,  I swear we do better than this!

Overall a good week! Hopefully everything stays the same this time
around for transfers.

Send me pictures, read your scriptures,
Love you!
Elder Galvin

In Honor of Columbus Day

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October 5, 2015 - The One with the Bug Investation

This week was a great week. It was full on a lot of non proselyting activities but overall it was fairly successful.

Last Monday we had a Zone Activity in Charlotte which was a lot of fun. We went to this park and played different sports and brought a bunch of food and had a little cookout. I saw Elder Burkhart again which was a little wired since he only just left but it was good. I played some volleyball and Ultimate frisbee which was fun.

This week we had an all day mission conference in Charlotte. We had to leave at 6:30 so we could there for when it started at 8:00. President and Sister Alexander's son gave a training on how to use Family History more as a tool in missionary work.  It was really good!

We also got these black boxes called Tiwi's put into our cars. They are basically Satans plan. ;) Even our mission president thinks so. They are plugged into the mainframe of our cars and monitor our speed and a bunch of other things. If we accelerate or brake too hard, turn too hard, aren't wearing our seat belts, have the tires come off the ground it reports us. If we get too many violations we lose our driving privileges. To make it worse it will yell at you as you're driving to tell you you're doing something wrong. 

We also had some more interesting bug stories this week. The first one is an ant infestation in our study room. I have now have a testimony of not leaving a cup with a milkshake in it on my desk. We came back from the nights activities and went into the study room to plan, inside my cup of milkshake there was about 100 ants. There was also
about 50 on my desk. We killed them all! The next morning they were all over Elder Simpkins desk too. We have been vacuuming ants up like crazy all week and they are slowly dying off.

The same night we found all the ants we also had an interesting experience with a cockroach. Yes, round three with the massive cockroach in the apartment. This time it was about 10:25 at night. I was sitting in bed reading Jesus the Christ and Elder Simpkin had just got in bed to lie down to go to sleep for the night. I look up for my book and on the wall I see a huge cockroach. I just sit there and say "oh". As soon as I speak it falls off the wall and lands on his pillow. I shout "get out of your bed!" And he jumps out of bed. We spent the next half an hour tearing the bedroom apart, throwing mattresses and
box springs everywhere, vacuuming it up, not having it die in the vacuuming process, and disposing of it outside. It was pretty insane.

This week we did the most cliche missionary service project ever. We moved one of the members of our ward out of his house and into an apartment right across from the other Elders. It was a lot of fun. Especially since it was raining so we got pretty wet.

We taught some people this week.  Not as many as usual with all of the meetings we had but it was some high quality lessons even if the quantity wasn't as high.

Love everyone so much! Have a great week!
Send me pictures, read your scriptures!
Elder Galvin

At the church for General Conference!!

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September 28, 2015 - The One with the Most Normal Week EVER!

This was a bit of a crazy week here in Albemarle but it all turned.

First of all, congratulations to my cousin on getting married! Best wishes!

Unfortunately I don't have a lot of time to write this week, we have a zone activity in Charlotte all afternoon so we'll spend a lot of time there.

The week started off pretty bland. We didn't teach anyone on Monday night because no one was home. We were supposed to have a lesson at our Bishops house with an investigator but she ended up getting sick so
wasn't able to make it.

Tuesday morning we met with our ward mission leader to discuss the new and returning members of the ward and how we can help speed that process along. After lunch that day we headed out and picked back up a
couple of former investigators.
That night we had a great dinner appointment with some tasty food. We had a soup that a Lao lady made. It was delicious.

One of the most fun moments of the week was when we got to meet amissionary who just returned back from his mission in Chile. We made a poster and met him and his family as they came back from picking him up at the airport. We had dinner with his family that night and it was just a great experience!

The other Elders had a baptism on Saturday. It was a really nice time and a lot of people were there. Unfortunately we weren't able to bring anyone. I got to play the piano for the baptism. Afterwards one of the members of the ward wanted me to play a song on the piano so she sat down next to me and we did a duet of Be Still My Soul. 

This Sunday our mission president and his wife came to our sacrament meeting and taught our ward in the third hour block of church. It was really great! All of us missionaries here sat down with him afterwords and had a great conversation. He is really impressed with our ward as a whole and encouraged us to keep it up!

Overall this was a pretty typical week of missionary work. We taught people, had appointments cancel, had good days and bad days, and everything worked out in the end. Most importantly, we enjoyed ourselves and had a good time while doing it all.

Send me pictures, read your scriptures.
Love you!

Elder Galvin

Elder Simpkin, Lopez and myself on our way to our activity.

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September 21, 2015 - The One Where I get a New Companion!

This was another amazing week here in Albemarle. As I'm sure you have already heard my new companion is Elder Simpkin from England! He is from Southampton. We get along great and have a lot of fun together.
The new Elder with Elder Valgardsen is Elder Lopez. There are also two new sisters and one of them, Sister Flaherty came out with me and was just serving in Lenoir! She was able to tell me all the wonderful things that are happening there.

This week has been another really busy one. Our teaching pool is growing and we are seeing more success in the work. One of the families we are teaching continues to do well. 

We are supposed to be having a child of record baptism this week and his name is very American!. We think it's funny that the two people not from America are going to help baptize the person whose name is so very American.

This week has been full of a lot of meals from members so I  still haven't really even needed to buy any food for a while now so we have been eating out a lot.

Sunday was Ward conference. The stake leaders came to our ward and gave some great instruction. The mom of a ward member was there on Sunday. She is not a member but she has met with missionaries in the past. After church was
potluck which was a lot of fun as usual. I love all the members here in the ward and we have a lot of fun together.

I've decided that when things are going well there's not a whole lot to talk about. We spent so much time teaching people
there's not a whole lot of room for anything crazy to happen. Things are definitely going to look up this transfer. Hopefully we will be seeing a lot more miracles and baptisms.

There was funny thing that happened today. We have a member that works at a dry cleaners and was going to get us free dry cleaning. She told us to drop it off this morning and she would bring it to us. Long
story short. She wasn't there when we went and I'm too honest so I ended up dropping $35 there because Elder Simpkin
forgot his wallet. We did make a funny Mormon tabernacle choir version of The Circle of Life music video I'll send next week.

Send me Pictures, read your scriptures!
Love you!

My new companion Elder Simpkin and I taking a crazy selfie!

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September 14, 2015 - The One Where I Only Have to Make Two Meals

This was probably the best week ever. No joke. It went by so fast which was great and it was so full of so many miracles it wasn't even funny!

It started Wednesday with one of my best exchanges ever. Elder Mautz, one of our Zone Leaders, came with me to Albemarle. They came to our district meeting and our district went to this nice Japanese Restaurant for lunch. Then I said goodbye to Elder Burkhart and we headed back to Albemarle. By the time we got home we really only had an hour to proselyte so we tried to see some people quick and do exchange criteria and an iPad check. We got picked up by a Hmong YSA and a recent convert and we went to the Hmong house for dinner. It was a blast! Elder Mautz got a Hmong name by eating a pepper. He struggled, it was really funny. I got it on video.

After that we taught the recent convert and the lesson went amazing. We were really able to teach well and bounced off each other nicely. We got dropped off at the church where we met a YSA girl in the Ward who we took out to see one of our investigators. We couldn't stay long but it was a nice visit. Then we went and visited a less active lady and that too was a short visit because it was raining and she never lets us inside.

Since we already worked through our plans and it was only 7:40, we decided to go to Dairy Queen since our back up for the night wasn't home until 8:00. Elder Mautz and I have identical tastes in music so we were able to reminisce and remind each other of everything we've forgotten over the months. We then went to our next appointment and walked into a miracle.

We were intending to teach a recent convert about the temple, but instead found a members aid in the house. We decided we would read out of the Book of Mormon with them and invited her to read with us. She agreed and we read two chapters together. She loved it! We taught her all about the Book of Mormon and how it helps us. When we were talking to the member she was just sitting there reading it. She took our number and is going to call us and set up a time we can teach her family!

The next day was great too. We weren't exchanging back until 1:30 so we had the morning to get some things done. We headed to the church to make a Facebook post and I ended up teaching an investigator over Facebook. I was not intending to do that but we were not complaining. After that went to our first appointment for the day. We started teaching this one guy who we met on Labour Day but he left halfway through the lesson because he got called by his sister to go give her thirty cents. Seriously. He got a phone call right during our lessons and he had to leave to give his sister thirty cents. We were very confused but oh well.

We went to Sonic for lunch since Elder Mautz had gift cards and he spent over twenty dollars on the two of us. There was so much food! We went to the church to eat because we wanted to watch the new Addiction Recovery Program videos the church put out. They are amazing by the way. We ended up giving some of it away to the other Elders since we saw them at the church about to teach a Facebook lesson.

Sadly the time came that the best, most productive, most fun exchange I have been on came to an end. But we did see them shortly after they left because Elder Mautz forgot his towel. The rest of that day was weekly planning and dinner. We went out with a member but no one was home. Oh well.

This Friday we were very glad we didn't die. We got a voicemail from our mission president the day before saying that a bunch of stuff was apparently going to go down and there was a chance we might get shot or set on fire. That didn't happen though. We did help a lady in the Ward pack up and move some things to her new house.

That afternoon we ended up dropping one of our investigators. It was really sad but it was a clean break.  We got picture with him though and we left with hugs even though I hate them. He said to come by anytime. We had dinner with the C family that night and went out to Wendy's with them. I ate out so much this week that none of the food I bought last week I ate so I hardly had to buy anything today.

Saturday was full of miracles. We spent basically the whole day with a couple of recent convert YSA people trying to visit some less active YSA. We had moderate success there. We went out to lunch with them (more eating out) and afterward to visit the M family. They are the tracting miracle of the area. Since I've attempted contact with every former investigator on our area book,  and physically talked with about 80% of them, we have had to do something to try and talk to people. So we have been tracting. Everyone always knocks it (haha pun) but we have seen some great success from it.

We taught the M's the Plan of Salvation and they agreed to be baptized! After we taught them their friend walked in and said she was interested in learning more so we taught her right there too! They all agreed to come to church the next day but only the M's came.

There was also the Ward picnic on Saturday afternoon which were able to go to. It was a lot of fun and there was more food we didn't have to buy or make there. We were supposed to teach a YSA couple at the church that night but they didn't show up. Instead one of the other Elders investigators decided to show up to the church for the first time so we toured her around. She said she was going to McDonald's but ended up at the church for some reason. It was meant to happen that
way I think.

Sunday was great. The M family came to church and loved it again. They are coming again. Lunch yesterday was one of two meals I made all week. Oh I just remembered. We got transfer call on Saturday night and Elder Burkhart and Kristensen, and Sister Stiemle are getting transferred. It's sad to seem them all go but we're looking forward to new missionaries!

Well, it's time to play some uno!
Send me pictures, read your scriptures!
Love you!
Elder Galvin

Elder Mautz and I

Our "tough" District Picture

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September 8, 2015 - The One with the Blackout

First of all Happy Birthday to my dad! He got older this last week! 

This was a really great week. We were able to teach a lot of people and I was just really good.

Everyone under the sun decided they wanted to move so we spent a lot of time moving people. We helped the couple families pack up and move stuff onto U Hauls and it was actually a lot of fun. I got to sweat a lot and it makes up for my poor morning workouts! I've actually been repenting about that and have gone for a run a few times in the morning. Actually I run and Elder Burkhart rides his bike next to me.

We had a zone meeting this week. The musical number went amazing. I think it sounded really good. The funniest thing was after zone meeting though. The Concorde missionaries accidentally locked their keys in their running car. So how it happened was the one missionary turned on the car while the other one was standing outside.  He then got out of the car and closed the door, not realizing that the door was locked. Luckily we were in Charlotte so they were able to call the vehicle coordinator and get it sorted out. After zone meeting the couple that drove us took us out to a 50's style diner. I had a very delicious hamburger.

Friday this week that was a really crazy storm that knocked out the power in town. Going in between teaching appointments was really spooky. We had to cancel one of them because of a hailstorm. But the other two went really well. It was like driving through a ghost town because none of the street lights were on and the only thing that was illuminating the road was the headlights of other cars. Luckily our apartment had power. 

We had a bunch of people at church this Sunday. Jeff came to church but we will probably end up dropping him tonight. It's a really sad thing but he doesn't want to be baptized because we are the 'one true church. ' Doesn't make any sense I know but that's basically why. It bothers him that other churches are wrong and we are the one true way. We're gonna teach him tonight and make it sound a little less harsh but still get our point across. We'll see if he's accepting or not.

We also had a family at church that we tracked into last week. After we met the lady we found out that she's actually really good friends with a less active member and afterwards we were able to utilize the inactive member to help and we are teaching them all on Saturday.  We're going to reactivate the one girl,  baptize that girl's boyfriend and also baptize the new family. It'll be great!  At least that's what the plan is but when have plans ever worked out?! :(

Send me pictures.  Read your scriptures.

Love Elder Galvin

Albemarle Elders today at the church playing UNO!

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August 31, 2015 - The One with Lots of Sleeping People

This was a pretty average week. And that's a good thing. It started great and fizzled by the end. It was overall pretty average.

Monday night we had the most perfect lesson ever. It started by having dinner with our bishop and our progressing investigator. We had some great conversation over dinner then we went into the living room to teach. And this on its own would have been fantastic but it got even better. Not only did we have a member home lesson in the bishops house but then the High Priests Group Leader walks into our bishops house and sits down to join in the lesson! Two of the powerhouse members were both present at a lesson! It went great. The best part was just after the lesson was going stale, we asked the investigator to pray and sincerely ask if what we taught was true. He gave such a heartfelt prayer and we all just waited. He sat with his arms folded and head bowed for like twenty seconds. Then he looked up and said, something
tells me it's true. It was such a great moment!

Tuesday morning we did some service at habitat for humanity. It was different than the usual moving furniture around. They had received a truckload of stuff and we helped them unload and inventory it all. That afternoon we had a pretty neat experience. We were having a not so good time that afternoon so we decided we were just going to go knock some doors where we were parked. (One of the few places in this town I haven't been) as soon as we get out of the car the lady on
the porch of the house we were parked in front of asked who we were. When we told her she was a bit hesitant but we were eventually able to get her to listen to us. Half an hour later, she was convinced that what we taught was true, she cried her eyes out as she prayed for the first time and it was pretty amazing. Unfortunately she has completely ignored us twice now. That's pretty typical of most people even when they have experiences like that. The best time was when we knocked on her door and she yells who is it, we respond, it's the missionaries, she then yells back, I'm asleep, and then never answered us when we yelled back. Oh well.

Time for a mini rant. I think the one thing that absolutely blows me away is how much time people spend sleeping. Like I feel awkward knocking on someone's door at eleven in the morning just in case they're still in bed. The amount of times I have seen a groggy person in their pajamas answer the door at three in the afternoon is crazy!

Thursday night our friends from Habitat for Humanity took us out to CiCi's pizza for dinner. They have loved us helping them out for the past months and wanted to thank us. It was great to see how thankful people are when we serve them. The other Elders have actually taught a couple of the people that work there.

Thursday we had Zone Conference. It was great. We got some amazing trainings on using the Bible and music more in our lessons. I was part of a musical number that we did. We sang let Zion in her Beauty Rise. I had to sing the tenor part which was slightly less than fun but it sounded good. The zone leaders liked it so much we were asked to organize the musical number for the upcoming zone meeting. I received some inspiration during a person study the other morning and we are
going to sing the words of Precious Savior, Dear Redeemer, to the music of O My Father. It sounds really great!

Friday we applied our trainings from Zone Conference and were able to sing for and use the bible with our investigator. He really enjoyed it. We had a less active man out teaching with us. We have been trying to think of
different ways we can get him to feel the spirit and motivate him to come back to church so we brought him to help us teach our lesson. It worked out pretty well.

Saturday I went on an exchange with Elder Kristensen. He came to our area. Exchanges are probably my favourite part of missionary work. You get to spend time with someone different and they break up the monotony of mission life a bit. Plus Elder Kristensen is probably the best person ever and him and Elder Valgardsen are the missionaries
I've spent the most time serving around on my mission so I know them pretty well.

Overall this was a pretty decent week.

Send me Pictures, Read your Scriptures!
Love you!
Elder Galvin

The only picture I took this week was
of a very large spider!

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The One With the Mosquito Bites

Me in Brother Champagne's hat!!

This has been one of the most up and down weeks so far. Not because of how high or low or got, but because of how frequently everything shifted back and forth. So many days started awful, got good during the day, then were awful again it wasn't even funny. Just as frequent were the great start to a day, then awful most of the day, then good in the evening. It's hard to keep up with everything that's happening and it's very draining. Balance is impossible to maintain. But onto the week.

Monday night we had dinner with the Champagne family. Brother
Champagne picked us up in full army gear. I took a picture wearing his
hat. It was great. After dinner we role played with their family. It's
something we have been doing with our dinner appointments. Our goal is to get people more comfortable with talking about it. We all know the
points of the restoration of the gospel, but we hardly ever speak
them. It's a really unique experience teaching the gospel for the
first time as I'm sure every missionary will agree with. But it's
really helpful.

Tuesday I went on exchange with Elder Valgardsen. He came here to
Albermarle and Elder Burkhart went to Albemarle. (That's supposed to
be funny) We had a really great day. We went to Wendy's for dinner and
then saw Sister Champagne at Snobiz afterwords for some fancy shaved
ice/ice cream concoction called a gelatti. It was tasty. Tuesday night
I also finished volume one of the Elder Galvin Mission Chronicles, or
in other words, I finished my journal.

Wednesday marked a reunion I wasn't expecting. While in Kanapolis for
our District Meeting I met Brother C from the Lenoir Ward! He
was at the church tuning the piano. The even crazier part was after
district meeting we were at the church in Albemarle syncing our area
books and he walked into he relief society room there! He was going
around and tuning a bunch of the pianos in the area. He was going to
say hi to everyone for me.

Thursday night we had some interesting experiences with the
mosquitoes. We were out visiting a less active member of the ward and
normally when we visit her we sit outside in her backyard. So we
sat outside and talked to her for only about 10 minutes because the
mosquitoes were so bad. They're normally pretty awful but this was
worse than normal. Elder Burkart got about fifty bites on one arm. I
was using this technique to be constantly brushing my hands over my
arm so none of the mosquitoes were able to bite me. It worked out
pretty well. I did get a few on my face though but nothing too bad.

Friday we planned am meeting with the other elders in the area. We
were going to talk about the fireside that were planning on doing for
our ward at the end of September. It ended up taking over an hour and
a half to start because they were teaching a Facebook lesson. The
Facebook listen clearly went on for a whole lot longer than they were
intending but we're glad that it went well. Elder Burkart and I were
basically stuck at the church waiting for the meeting to start because
we kept on getting five more minutes, five more minutes, we ended up
going to Orange Julius at one point. Delicious.

So this weekend marked episode two of poor Elder Burkharts stomach
problems. He's been having really bad stomach pains after he ate for
the past three days. It can be really hard to feel the spirit when
your stomach is making more noise that you're unable to hear yourself speak. 

We ended up calling our mission doctor and he sent us to the Walmart pharmacy.
Hooray for probiotics and Tums!

We had a miracle field Sunday. We were so blessed to see J
come to church. I've been teaching him for about the last week and a
half and he came to church this Sunday. It was amazing! He really
enjoyed it and we're teaching him at our bishops house tonight. He's
coming over for dinner and we are teaching him afterwards.

This week was pretty good I hope yours was as well.

At the top of a mountain with my district and a ward member  on P-Day

Elders Valgardsen, Burkhart and myselSend me pictures, read your scripturLove,

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The One Where We Get "Illegal Hand Sanitizer" ;)

This was a really good week until Saturday but more on that later. 

We had a great Pday last week. We went to the same trampoline park we went to a couple of months ago. 

Tuesday night we taught a lady in our Ward and her son who is eight and we are preparing for baptism. She works as an overnight cleaner at a doctors office and they rotate the hand sanitizer there so frequently that they throw out so much. So what happens Is she takes the hand sanitizer they would throw it into the dumpster and keeps it for herself. She has so much of it overstock at her house that she decided to give it to us. We're not sure what we're gonna do with it but at least your hands will be clean! It's even really good hand sanitizer that the surgeons use. It's in the upside down foam canister it's amazing.

So on Saturday we have to set up for the others baptism. We filled the font for them and it was pretty interesting. We opened up the doors and there was two huge brown recluse spiders in the front. The one of the most poisonous spiders down here in the south and one bite would probably kill me. Luckily Elder Burkart is a champ, and he used to corn broom to kill the both of them. That was after we tried flushing down the font but they decided to walk on water. That's why I named one of them Peter. 

We had a bit of a miracle with a man named J this week. He was someone that we had found about a month and a half ago but it kind of been in and out of contact over the weeks. We found him again last Sunday and he started wanting to learn more again. On Tuesday we went over not expecting to have any miraculous lesson but he ended up accepting a baptismal date. We taught him a couple times this week. Unfortunately on Saturday when we went over to teach and he told us that he was too old to change churches but he did say that he was going to come to church next week and he wanted to continue to meet with us. We're not sure how well this is going to turn out in the end but hopefully he will decide to continue with it.

This was also the week of everybody dropping us. All the good people that we found last week and people that we've been working with previous to that one by one began texting or calling us or not showing up two appointments. So many people told us that they weren't going to continue learning about the gospel it was pretty sad.

Even with all the down side to this week it was still pretty good. Had a great birthday this week and we had a great district lunch. We went out to this nice restaurant had a really tasty southern cooking!

Birthday Cupcakes from my Mission Mom

DQ treat on my B-Day from Artie!

Artie, Me and Elder Burkhart

My Cake from Artie and Sister Johnson

Elder Burkhart, Me and Sister Johnson

 Lots of people wished me happy birthday and I'm grateful to all of you who did. I even had two birthday parties this week one at a dinner that we had on Thursday night with Arthur Bailey and Sister Johnson. 

Send me Pictures, read your scriptures

Love you!

Elder Galvin

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The One Where We Hang Out With the President

This has been a pretty decent week. We're teaching a few more people so that's nice. We have been doing a lot of knocking on doors to try and build up our teaching pool because all of our other efforts aren't working.

Wednesday night we got a call from our mission president, President Alexander. He asked us what our plans for the next night were. We didn't have a whole lot planned but he said he wanted to come teaching with us.

We had dinner with a great family we are working with and he came afterwords to teach them with us. Then we went out with him and Brother C. We got to see and teach a couple of people. We met this one family that was
really nice. We got let into the house since they were a media referral from forever ago. The man who answered the door said we could come sit down while he went to get he lady we were trying to see. She was not interested but our mission president convinced her to listen to us. So we got to teach her. It was great. We also taught the kids of a less active family. It was a bit of an awkward situation but it turned out alright.

Friday night we were out with our High Priest Group Leader. We had an appointment set up but they weren't there when we tried to see them. Instead what happened was he took us to see his friend. He was like, hey I know someone who lives over here, let's go see him. We taught him the restoration and he accepted a return appointment with us. We
should be seeing him this Wednesday.

Sunday we gave talks in sacrament meeting. We were called at 9:45 the night before by our bishop to speak. I spoke on the Plan of Salvation. It went really well. I'll pridefully say that it was referenced twice throughout the day on Sunday and I was told by the high councillor that it was the best talk on that subject he has heard. ;) Clearly he has
never seen a general conference before but whatever. I basically just took the long lesson plan outline from preach my gospel and inserted a bunch of scriptures. I made a fun puzzle analogy too.

Today was really hectic and busy, that's why the email is so short. We had a zone activity at defy gravity which was a lot of fun.

Hope you have a great week!

Send me pictures, read your scriptures!

Elder Galvin

A Picture I took for my new Profile Picture on FB

The Police had the road shut down because they were chasing some guy in the woods!

Me and my Mission Pres!!

Selfie Time :)

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The one where I have a lot of late nights

This week was very average. Not a lot happened, which for most people
is great but for us it's basically the worst thing. We did go on two
exchanges this week. They were a lot of fun. But I'm getting ahead of
myself.

Monday night was good. We went over to a family in the wards house for dinner
and they served us a pork loin. Unfortunately, two very bad
circumstances came into play. One, Elder Burkhart is allergic to pork,
two, Elder Burkhart is unable to recognize if the meat he is eating is
pork. Long story short, he had to excuse himself from our reading of
the Book of Mormon and we left with a
bottle of Pepto Bismol.  So I had to punch it
home, 80+ mph on backroads, passing semi trucks like its my day job,
just so we could make it to the church in time. There was no way he
was having round two in the passenger seat. #jesustakethewheel

Tuesday was the first of the exchanges this week. Elder Kristensen,
came with me to our area. It was great. It poured rain which put a
damper on our plans but it all worked out in the end. He felt really
bad because he called one of our investigators intending to teach a
phone lesson and set up an appointment but ended up getting dropped
instead. Oh well. Our next exchange was Thursday. This time I went
with Elder Kristensen to his area. That was a lot of fun too. We
talked late into the night.

This Friday we had a zone meeting. The wonderful Sister Champagne
brought us donuts. They were delicious. We learned so much at our zone
meeting about being consecrated. Granted it is a bit of a confusing
topic. We got told last time we had zone meeting that we are supposed
to be using our personalities. This time they told us that we have to
give up anything that makes us unique if we want to be an effective
missionary. It's weird. There are a lot of contradictory things about
missionary work. So I just do what feels right.

Love you all!
Send me pictures, read your scriptures

Elder Galvin

Me and My Mission Mom Sister Champagne at our Zone Conference

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The one with the birthday party and the return of the cockroach

Hello everyone! 

Hope you had a great week! Sounds like there were a lot of big things happening at home that I'm glad to hear about!

This week was pretty alright.  We were able to teach a few more people than last week which was really good. We are trying to surround ourselves with members because we know that this connection is what makes the transition to accepting the gospel easier. Nobody wants to talk to a couple of strange kids in ties, they want to talk their friends. So we are trying to become friends with the members so that they will feel comfortable introducing their friends to us. 

We went to a birthday party this week! We texted a lady in the Ward to see if we could come over and she said it was her daughters birthday. We didn't want to crash the party but she said we could come over anyways. We went equipped with party hats and a 'Happy Birthday' banner. It was such a blast. 

Last night we had a sequel. Phantom Cockroach 2: the Reckoning! I went to get some water last night and when I got into the kitchen it was waiting for me. This time we decided to end it. After chasing it from under the fridge, inside the couch and a myriad of other places, we finally herded it outside. I was able to sleep easy that night. Let's be honest I never sleep well anymore. You would think that a missionary would sleep really well being completely exhausted all the time but for me it's otherwise. I'm beginning adopt my fathers sleep habits which is a sad thing. 

We went over to a members home on Monday night and played some volleyball with his non-member daughter. We are starting to teach her so that should be good. She was supposed to come to church but didn't which was pretty disappointing. 

We went on exchange this week. I went to the "other Albemarle" with Elder Valgardsen. It was a really good exchange. We were able to talk a lot about some things that will help me out as a missionary. We also got to teach some really great lessons. 

This Saturday morning we were at the library setting up blogs. It's not ready yet but it will be another thing that we can use to share the gospel with people. It will be like Facebook posts only a bit longer. Stay tuned for the URL!

Sorry this email is a bit lackluster. I'm just really tired and can't think super clearly. Hope everyone has a great week! 

Send me pictures, read your scriptures!

Love you,

Elder Galvin

The Party Hat!

The District

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The one with the car breaks down and we shoot rubber bands of toilet paper

This past week happened. 

Monday night was filled with some really great non missionary work things. We tried to see some people but no one was home expect for this one lady who was busy so said to come back the next night. To continue that story, we showed up and parked out on the road (she lives in an apartment complex). We saw her sitting out side of her house as we walked up. We walked around a building and she fell out of view. When her apartment came back into view she was no longer outside. And then she didn't answer us when we knocked on the door. 

We did get a text from my missionary mom, Sister Champagne, telling us to come by the shaved ice place where she works for a free treat. Which we did and it was wonderful. It was the first time that Elder Burkhart had met Sister Champagne so that was fun. Funny side story, this Sunday at church Sister Champagne totally put her hand on my shoulder and went into hug me not thinking. I just looked at her funny with my hand out. She then realized what she was doing and shook my hand instead. We had a laugh about it. 

Monday night also featured the most beautiful storm I have ever seen. We were heading out of the church when we could see these huge storm clouds just flashing with lightning. We sat and watched for like five minutes. After planning that night I sat outside in the rain with an umbrella watching the Lightning for almost an hour. It was insane. 

Tuesday was actually a really good day. It was the only really good day this week as far as missionary work goes. That morning we went over to A's house and taught his father's aid. Then we went with him across the street to the house of his neighbor. She recently moved in with her son.  She wants to get back into going to church so we were able to teach her. We also taught her again a few days later when we brought the relief society president over. We have a dinner planned with her, Artie, and two other women form out Ward this week. We hope that we can get her son into the church as well.

That night we were out with a member from out Ward and the GPS took us on a whole lot of roads that weren't really roads. It was quite the adventure. We were driving past people's deer stands in the middle of the forest and on peoples driveways and stuff. It's the problem with being on a reduced mile budget and having to drive everywhere using the shortest route. 

Wednesday we had interviews with our mission president which was good. It was nice to finally get to talk with him and get to know him a bit better. We were driving with a recently returned missionary in the Ward. As we were driving home the steering on the car was being really off. It kept on pulling one way and the other and the car was swaying a lot. As we were about fifteen minutes from home we were stopped at a stop light and we could smell this horrible burning smell. A couple of miles down the road the car started making this horrible noise and smoke was billowing out of it. Long story short, his dad and brother came to our rescue and we got driven back to the church. 

That night I had a really great little experience. It made me happy. The night before during planning I felt really impressed to go visit this one less active man who was on a Do Not Contact list. So that night we were in the area and we stopped by. He didn't come to the door right away and I was writing him a note. My companion was already standing by the car when he showed up at the door. He stepped outside and told us he was about to start dinner but asked if we could leave him with our number and he would call us. He never has called and I really doubt he will but I feel good about following a spiritual prompting. 

This Thursday we went on exchange with the zone leaders. We were able to call on a member we did service for as a last minute backup to drive us that night. We would have had to drive to Wadesboro (42 miles south of Albemarle) by ourselves. That is why you do service for active members! Because they will like you and you will repair the trust lost by other Elders! Plus they also take you to SnoBiz for shaved ice and another Sister Champagne visit. 

This Friday and Saturday aren't worth mentioning. We had some great days planned with some not so great results. Sunday was a lot of fun though. Elder Burkhart and I taught the Gospel Principles class. That went really well. 

Sunday night we went to Hmong Family Home Evening. It basically a party where a bunch of the Hmong members get together for food and they do a lesson and activity. The activity was a lot of fun. They took empty pop cans and tired it to a roll of toilet paper and you had to shoot and break the toilet paper using elastic bands. For the lesson we all got blindfolded and we had to wander around until we found the prophets voice. It was great. 

Hope you have a great week!

Send me pictures, read your scriptures

Elder Galvin 

At the Hmong FHE

The Broken Down Truck

Elder Lesueur and I (he's one of our ZL's)

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