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!