Day 275

ok almost 9 months?!?! crazyness!!! i still cant believe it. anyways this week has probably been my favorite week of them all we are just having so much fun over here. Elder Triana and i are just laughing and doing it big. its just a thing of attitude. and we had a lesson in priesthood yesterday from the talk from presdent uchtdorf your potential your privelege and it talks about the priesthood but i want to change it from the priesthood to life. because the girls can apply to this as well. one of the things i was thinking about is choosing to be happy no matter how hard it is. you cant change the circumstances really that are around you, the thing that makes the party fun or the activity fun is if you say man this is SO MUCH FUN! i mean thinking back and all the youth activities we did a lot of them were fun because we decided to make them fun. it was this decision. Well i was thinking about this a little bit. why do some people think that life is amazing and others think its horrible? living here in spain i mean my eyes are opening up more but really... its not that different we are all humans a lot of us believe in God. and are into the same music and books and movies. whats the difference? are we looking at the glass half empty or half full? we worry about what we dont have when the things we have equal out in the end. so i was thinking and this came to mind.

Life begins when we choose to utilize our agency.

lets think about this this week how this can help us be happier and more loving. Also read the talk tongue of angels by elder holland. The language that we use could be some of the most important things we do in our lives for good. we dont need to worry about bad because when we have an attitude that is positive we dont want to do the bad. so we wont focus on that. Elder Triana and i are doing our best. things are starting to spring up here in Valdepeñas we are happy and working hard.
The reason this week was on of my favorites is because it just worked out everything we planned worked out. we dont know why or how we got it to be that way but we just felt unstoppable. it seemed like every person we stopped and talked to gave us their information and a return date to go back . we jsut seemed to be flying high on faith. thats really what it was we have just been leaving every day knowing that something crazy is going to happen.
just know i miss you all and i love you all. keep being those examples that you need to be. haha like mom always says remember who you are! haha i hope all is going well with the family with the newbies and whatnot . port, congrats on the kid. like i said before he will take after me and be a BALLER!! haha anyways i gotta go sorry its short this week. short but profound. i love you!

Day 268

ok yall listen up....
we are just kickin it real big up here in V town. Elder Triana is a maniac. haha its so much fun with him. we are just having the time of our lives. ummm its hard to say what really ishappening because we are trying to figure out what to focuson. its been a rollercaoster week with its ups and downs like always but we are havign so much fun. he is from venezuela but grew up in the canary islands and he is learning english... i think he speaks pretty good but its nice to have a nativecomp finally. it just forcesme to speakspanish more. ok mom sorry about my punctuation... I HATE SPANISHCOMPUTERS! they never work well. and its frustrating me right now.. so our district leader elder hatch asked me how he could improve his scripture study habits to enjoy it more. i thought it was a perfectly great question to ask. seeing as we can all improve in that area and this is what i noticed this last week ... i have been doing the christlike attributes this week from preach my gospel. it has helped me find fun scripture that apply in my life on a daily basis. so if anyof you are wondering what can help you a little more.try that. i mean preach my gospel really is the way to go but if you dont then just think of attributes christ had and look up scriptures that go along. it should help. weare doing good trying to help the rama and it seems to be ... well i dont know if things are getting better or not everyone is on vacations andso its hard to do a lot of stuff plus its so flipping hot that people get mad that we are out in the stereets hha i think its funny.
so i am gladt o hear that everything isgoing goodwith cache money. dad sent me a pic he looks like a g master. i am super excited to meet him. haha he will be a maniac imsure i mean look at all the other boys in the family ... i think if thereweremore boys in our family we would have taken over the world already. haha anyways i dont have much time we are having a district p day and going to play some basketball. ill try and send som pictures next weeek. love you all watch yourselves!

Day 261

First off, We were able to email Brad late last night that Portia was in the process of having a baby. She just at about 11:00 Utah time had her baby. Cache Kelly Ames. We are so proud of her.

Brad is training and here is his excitement over that. Apparently a native speaker which will be good for him.


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ok ok... just take it easy over there.
Elder Triana is a sick Elder. haha He is originally form Venezuela was raised up in colombia and the last 8 years of his life was in the Canary islands. ummm he obviously knows spanish like super perfectly and mine is already getting better haha. umm he is just so cool and we are having so much fun!!!
so lets start of with what happened with his very first cita here in valdepeñas haha . we went over to an investigators house and she wasnt there but we have a good relationship with her husband. ha or so i thought. i never have had a problem with him so we have to call up to the window to get his attention because the timbre doesnt work on their house ha so he hears us and has a glass of beer in his hand and throws it on the ground!!! like super fuerte haha it was intense and we were just like woah. he comes to the balcony and starts yelling at us. of course we can see that he is drunk but he starts yelling and saying how he isnt christian. his wife isnt christian and how we cant even say that we are christian. haha needless to say Triana was getting scared. The investigators cousin was there and he comes to the window and was like wait wait wait ill come down.. haha so he comes down and we walk into the little hallway before the stairs that go up to their door and he is saying how they are having marital problems and that he is drunk and stuff and so we are like yeah we know we dont want to start problems we will come back later. Right then The investigator comes to the stairs and was like well what are you waiting for youre here come on up. so we look at eachother and didnt want to make him any more mad and we didnt feel horrible about it so we went up and listened to him vent for 40 minutes. we tried sharing some scriptures and stuff but when they are drunk its really hard. haha they offered to make us food and then when we said we had to go back to piso cause of curfew he got upset again. Dont worry nothing bad happened ha it was just quite a first impression for my little hijo.
haha
Other than that the work is going really good we are just doing what we can and chugging along. i dont really have much to say except we are thinking about starting up mutual. we dont know why there isnt one right now but thats the plan. we are starting with the youth and then we will work our way up to the adults. trying new things here in valdepeñas haha.
oh the other thing . we decided to touch doors on this one street and it took us 4 hours to do just one street haha it was so much fun though! haha anyways i think that is all.
just the thought this week that elder triana and i are working on...
WHAT DOES YOUR FAITH SAY THAT YOU CAN DO? just know there is areason that is the first principle and ordinance of the gospel. i love you all! be safe and keep your heads up!



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Day 254

ok so life is going great over here. i just want to share the great news!!! lets see kelsey has a kid that is over 1. Portia is Pregnant and he will be born in September. well i would like to say that the succession is still in progress. i beat carson. Im pregnant. im expecting and the due date is August 10th ... aka IM TRAINING! haha its pretty intense of a feeling to know that i will be with a kid that seems like i was right where he is yesterday but im not scared we are going to have so much fun!
ummm i made the blog that was really cool!!! i hope you saw me in all of the photos that we had and that you enjoyed the brad classics of picture taking. dont worry the gespacho state of being is over and lots of people have seen the video but im definitely not the first to throw up. but if you are thinking you can im going to be bringing the recipe home and we will have a show down to see if you can really do it! its not as easy as it seems!!!

haha ... ummm im trying to get important things out. Zone conference was SUCH A BLAST i learned things that i never knew existed in the scriptures it just blows my mind. plus we had to teach presidente and hermana clegg in front of everyone hence the matching ties. we had to do it... we just had to . so i was in malaga and i passed by some of the homies down there i was on splits with Elder Hales from the MTC it was really really fun! and i got to see a lot of the friends from the mission. La mancha is the best district though haha we were going so crazy at Zone conference and now it seems like even though no one knows where it is everyone wants to be in la mancha haha and it is hard to be here becasue of the way the people are but im glad i am here. our district is the best.

ummm i think thats about all i have to share today just keep working hard. when you arent thinking of your self you are happier! its better that way too and the time goes by faster haha i love you all!!!

Day 247

Subject: ké ponokekioakua

ok cool story email i guess. 8months down 1/3 of the way done and going strong!!!!
first off. you are probably wondering what the subject says at all haha its not a spanish word. so take a breather there when i was in the mtc in provo in my zone there we had elder kunahi parker. from hawaii. haha he was way cool and he gave me this name "ke´ponokekioakua" which in english translates to righteous child of God. i dont know if that has been mentioned before but i was reminded of it when i took out my beautiful blanket aunt kristi made for me for my companions so that we can plan where elder rencher will sign it. We are both feeling like he will be leaving on the tenth which means we will find out this thursday or so. Just a fun little get to know elder bradley experience. and yes. you will all call me that someday. hahaha
next so that you all stop worrying my foot is good. the mission nurse says its something i will probably jsut deal with the rest of my life but only when i exert a lot of energy in my feet. so it will be off and on throughout my mission. as for now it doesnt hurt and we are good.
on to other health issues. I am not a spaniard. i cannot lie and say that i am. want to know the story??? ok well here in spain the make all their food. there isnt really much known as fast food restaurants. of course that doesnt mean there isnt mcdonalds and stuff becasue there is but they usually go to restaurants bars or just make their own food. soo, on sundays after church we go to a menos activos house and share a message and then the mother gives us food. they have this thing here in spain called "Gespacho" which the best way i can explain it to you is a weird v-8 juice thats like vegetables and stuff. as those of you who know me texture stuff is not elder bradley in any way shape or form and to add to the fun they put hard boiled egg chunks into it. now most of you are probably thinking not too bad, i mean i had worse on my mission. and i remember before the mission everyone was saying get used to eating weird things on the mission. NOTHING i repeat, NOTHING PREPARES YOU FOR GESPACHO! haha. so A BLESSING for this experience starts at the beginning. we dont eat the food at their house. we take it back to our piso and eat it there. Elder rencher can eat anything. he bet me 10 euros if i drank the rest of it. so i accepted. i mean 10 euros. why not? i poured the first cup and as all my sisters know i dont have the strongest stomach in the world in fact they are laughing right now reading this because i have probably the weakest one in the world. i BARELY TOOK A SIP and i threw all my food up. it felt so good to throw up,... (it didnt taste as good as the french toast i threw up in Bishop reeces driveway) and now that i think about it i think that was the last time i threw up its been a while but it was horrible and im just glad that we were in our own piso becaue i just couldnt handle it.

alright now on to some other stories,
all of you should know emlio by now. the man who was never happy who wouldnt accept a book of mormon from us and it was just trying so hard to get anything out of him, it was like each time trying to convince him that life was fun and it took the whole time and all of our energy to do it. well we were doing an english class activity on pronunciation of words. well one of the only things we have in english is a liahona so we had given him one to practice with. one day we wanted to do it again so elder rencher left to look for one in our chapel. i proceeded to talk to emelio about life, how his day was going and so on. I asked him why he thinks life is always so bad. it couldnt be. so a little bit back and forth and we found the problem. part of it is the poor in the world, another he misses his mother who died a while ago and finally he compares himself to everyone. So i proceeded to tell him how elder rencher and i are different, we came from different backgrounds and so on. he tried to say how we know eachother before becasue we are both missionaries. i explained how the process works. he was surprised to know that he knows elder rencher longer than i have. well we finally got him to admit a couple things.. HE IS HAPPY! he ADMITTED HE IS HAPPY, he also TOOK A BOOK OF MORMON! he finally accepted one! AND the final one is he wants to meet with us more than just thursdays and saturdays during english class so we will start going on tuesdays too. i have invited him to baptism more than 3 times already but he hasnt accepted yet haha and the other thing, he doesnt know what he is getting into over here. it might take some time but i think we can get him baptized haha he is just a funny man.

Thank you family for the package. starbursts and sourpatch kids are AMAZING!!! they dont have candy that compares to american candy over here. haha starbursts just have the flavor in your mouth even 10 minutes after your done eating 1 here the flavor of the candies are gone before you swallow them haha. but i have to be honest, i didnt recognize ryker at all. HE IS SO BIG!!!! and i am so happy he blew me some kisses! haha that was so cool!!!! definitely a good thing to see, thank you :)

anyways life is going good i get to go back to malaga this weekend to have a zone conference and we will be doing exchanges down there for a little bit while we wait for the train and what not so i am hoping that i get to see some of the people that i was able to teach down there and see some of the homies. anyways other than that everything is going really well i miss you all keep doing good!


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So seriously we were laughing because he can't even clean out the center part of a pumpkin so it was just a matter of time. We sent him a new camera and put pictures of home and a home movie of his nephew Ryker. Fun times!