Monday November 28, 2016 - The One with the Christlike Poker

Is has been a pretty great week in Pineville. We are trying to stay busy.

Tuesday we went on exchange with the Catawba Elders. I went down to
the Reservation with an Elder Johnson. We had a good time. We did some
service for this Children's shelter. We washed the windows on all of
the buildings. One of the lessons we taught was actually with two
kids there whose baptismal interivews I did last month. We went
to their district meeting the next day all the way down in Lancaster
South Carolina. The branch building there is an old Chinese restaurant. It was
like a fifty mile trip home!

Thanksgiving was good. We had one dinner with the Hernandez family.
That was a tone of fun. We played poker with them after dinner using
Hershey kisses. I was their daughter's partner who is eight and when
we'd win a lot of money we would give it away to people who didn't
have as much so they could keep playing. It was a lot of fun. We had
another dinner afterwords with two other families in the ward who were
eating together. That was a ton of fun too.

We went on another exchange Friday with the Elders in the Sharon Ward. It
was pretty good. We went and stopped by Adolfo's house. Someone I
taught back in the summer in our ward. He was interested in meeting with
the elders again which was really great to see. We went over to one of
their members houses for dinner. We had another thanksgiving and we
were coerced into eating ridiculously hot hot sauces. Oh well.

Sunday night was pretty weird. Elder Merrill went to a
 lady in our ward who is trying to help him with his headaches. It's supposed to
take some time to work but we're driving 200 miles round trip tomorrow
for him to go and see a doctor. We're hoping something helps fast.

Overall a good week. We are pretty busy with putting together the
choir and musical stuff for this weekend. Elder Rasmussen got a violin
on Saturday so we were playing around with it at the Alexander's house
where we picked it up. I was on the piano, he was playing violin and
Elder Merrill sang. It was really nice. I also got to play trumpet
again at Bishops house last night. It was fun.

Send me picture, read your scripture,
Love you!
Elder Galvin

We got treated to dinner out this week!

Elder Holman plucking my eyebrows ;)

Thanksgiving dinner at the Hernandez

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Monday November 21, 2016 - The One with the New Car

This has been a really good week here in Pineville. We had a good
District Activity on Monday. We had some Elders who got a couple of
racks of ribs so we cooked those and we made homemade French fries. After
eating we went bowling. It was pretty fun. That night our Recent
Convert Chris (he was the one Elder Peterson and I baptized in July)
asked us to come help with a Single Adults Family Home Evening
Fireside he was putting on. We gave a little lesson at the beginning
but had to leave before the food because we had another appointment.
The worst part was that I accidentally spilled Elder Rasmussen's food on
the floor of the car. Oops. Good thing we went to get it washed that
night before getting a new car the next day.

Luckily none of us were transferred. However we did have to go to the
mission office on Tuesday for us to pick up our new car! We traded our
car with another set of missionaries whose car was over miles. We then
went and picked up a 2017 Chevy Malibu. Oh man is it nice. It only had
30 miles on it when we picked it up. I think my favourite feature is
the fact it has WiFi in the car! Like the other two can be sending
emails or messaging people over Facebook while we are driving places.
Oh. And has OnStar too so we don't even need to navigate ourselves
using a GPS, we just talk to our car and it takes us where we need to
go. It's pretty nice.

Wednesday was good. Bunch of the usual stuff. We did have a Zone Conference
Call we put on in the morning to get all the new people in our Zone up
to speed on how we do things here. Sister Alexander was with a set of
missionaries in our Zone so was on the call. She said she liked it.
But she's basically the most Christlike person ever. We had a dinner
with a older couple who live in a nice house and he has the most
gorgeous library ever!! It's the picture from my Facebook post. She
works on antique clocks so they have some super nice clocks too.

We went on exchange after District Meeting on a Friday. Both Elder
Rasmussen and Merrill went to Fort Mill and I got Elder Bradley with
me. Oh man did we work hard that day. So as a Zone we have set a goal
to find a new investigator on every exchange. We had our teaching
appointment that afternoon fall though so we literally had five hours
straight to go finding. So normally as we got out knocking on doors we
are usually met with people who are at least sort of interested. We
knocked on probably 20-30 apartment buildings and got absolutely
nothing. We went from complex to complex with nothing but no after no.
We were both completely wiped but we decided to do one more building.
And it was a pretty big one. We had knocked all of one section and I
was thinking. Man. I really don't want to be doing this right now. But
we had a goal to meet! Long story short. Literally the last door of the last
building in the very top floor we met someone who was pretty interested
and we taught them, and set up a return appointment. Elder Bradley and I
were on cloud nine after that!

This weekend was Edith's baptism. We had a long day Saturday helping a
couple of people move in the morning. To be honest I was kinda glad
that our appointment in the afternoon cancelled because it meant we
actually got to eat something that day. Edith's Baptism was wonderful.
We had a really great turnout. Her and Lisa, the girl who was baptized
with her mom in September, are really good friends now so they get to
be each other's support system which is really nice. I have to say
it's nice that all of the people I've seen baptized in this ward are
pretty spiritually self reliant.

Overall a good week.
Send me pictures, read your scriptures
Love you!
Elder Galvin

Me in the best library ever!

Edith and I at her Baptism!!

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Monday November 14, 2016 - The One with the Concert Pianist

We were able to get back in time from our district activity for me to write a bit!

This has been a pretty good week here in Pineville. We got transfer calls on Saturday and I found out that I'll be staying in Pineville for the last transfer of my mission. 

Monday night was amazing! We spent two hours with this man we found at our Halloween party. He is a concert pianist and has been playing for fifty years. He was so good! I got play his piano. At one point I was playing and we had Elder Merrill sing. It was so nice. We taught him and he accepted baptism! The only problem is he lives outside of our area. So the Weddington Elders are getting a nice present from us. :)

Tuesday we were able to get back in and teach that Spanish coupleI've mentioned before. The ones that don't speak English. It was a great lesson. We were able to set a date with them to be baptized next month but we have to get them married before so hopefully we can get all that to happen before then. The man shared some scriptures with us he had read that impacted him. It was really nice. Tuesday was fun as well because of the elections. We stayed up until 10:30 refreshing our Facebook election updates trying to see who would win. It was pretty fun for me. To be honest I was surprised by the outcome. 

We had such a good zone meeting on Wednesday. In lieu of the presidential outcome I included a slide in my training saying to "make finding great again!" Our Zone went crazy with finding that afternoon and the next day. We found a total of 39 new people as a Zone this week! So exciting. That's three people per companionship!! The rest of the week was pretty typical for missionary work. Friday night I went on exchange with Elder Simpkin. It was really nice to get to see him one last time before he goes home. He leaves back to England on Wednesday. 

We had a good day. Tried to find some new people but weren't able to. We did get to go out to a late lunch with his friend from Asheboro I've been out to dinner with a couple of times now. That was a lot of fun. We are all really sad to see him go. 

Overall it was a good week. Sorry for the short email. We've been swamped today. 

Send me pictures, read your scriptrues!

Love you!

Elder Galvin

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Monday November 7, 2016 - The One with the Burnt Pizza

This was a pretty decent week here in Pineville. Nothing too out of the ordinary happened. Here's the run down. 

Last Monday was our Zone Activity. We did a Halloween party and it was a blast. Highlight was this giant three legged race that started in the gym, went out side, and ended up back in the gym. Our trio brought up the rear for our team. (I guess we made it a four legged race). Well I was in the middle tied between the two of them. At one point near the end of the lap while we were crawling under a table I didn't get up in time so I ended up being dragged on my back for like forty feet. We got it on video. It was quite the humorous experience. 

We had dinner with the Hernandez family that night and had a great lesson with the husband. He didn't join the church with the rest of the family but we had a really great lesson with him that night. Hopefully it goes somewhere. 

Our week started off with a ton of meetings. We had a meeting all day Tuesday. It was pretty good. Our Zone conference was Wednesday. That was good too. We had good trainings and learned a lot. Wednesday night we went over to Angelica's for dinner. That's Antonio's mom, the boy who was baptized last week. Our investigator Edith was over too. Oh man. We had such a good time. We laughed a lot, Antonio is such a funny kid. We sang primary songs to help them learn them and we had a great lesson with Edith. She got permission to be baptized from her dad so we are a go for the 19th! 

Funny side story. We were in the middle of the lesson and we asked Angelica a question and she started speaking to us in Spanish like we would totally understand. I had to interrupt and be like, English please. We had a good laugh about that one. 

Thursday was Zone Meeting planning with the Sisters. They brought leftover pizza from Zone Conference yesterday and nearly burned the church down trying to reheat it. We told them to put the pizza in the broiler for five minutes to heat it up. Well we neglected to tell them to open the box. We were talking about it a few minutes later and they were all like, wait, you're supposed to open the box? We ran down to a very smelly kitchen and scorched pizza boxes. Good thing we love them. 

Friday was probably the first day of like actual proselyting we got to do this week. We spent the brunt of the day finding and found two new people to teach. The Lord provides when He knows you're busy. It's been rough the past week too because Elder Merrill has be having these crazy migraines and they have been all day everyday for over a week now. He talked to the mission doctor about it on Tuesday and they made a plan. It's hard because we still go out and work and he really wants to work. But I can tell that he's in pain the entire time. He's such a trooper though that he is going to go out regardless. 

This weekend was a blur. Don't remember much from it. I do remember we spent Saturday on the other side of our area and we helped a member for a few minutes move some large furniture pieces. We helped them move across their neighbourhood a few weeks back and they are still unpacking. We went to Bojangles for lunch. It's is super nasty fast food chain in the south. Elder Merrill had never been. So we took him. We're not going back. 

Well that was my week. It was pretty decent. 

Send me pictures, read your scriptures,

Love you!

Elder Galvin

Saw a little bit of home!

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