Oct. 7th

Family, friends!

Thanks for your emails this week, Mom and Dad. You're wonderful. It was really nice to hear about "the property" (we should give that place a name, something with a nice ring), with nutmeg, and the trees, and the colors, and the dirt, and the smells of the mountain--dang I miss that.

Also, it was good to hear about the birthdays; did you guys receive my short videos I sent? I should've known that that rascal Skylar would pull off something... fantastic for that spoiled kid. :) Pictures! It would be nice to see pictures of the things you guys do, every once in a while. Maybe send me a picture of the "swag storm" and his new clothes and kicks and such, too. Mom, I know you don't like to use your nice, new, camera, but... use it! ;) (Hint: If you lower the resolution [size] of the pictures you take, you can send a lot more in one email, but if you want to print them they won't be as clear.)

Conference! Yes, we did see conference--it was even live! We took the bus to the stake center a few cities over where they were broadcasting it. The first sessions of each day, I had to watch in Spanish, it was actually kind of frustrating because the speakers start and you can hear the english, but then the translator drowns them out, but anyway, eventually someone with a key to the family history center would come and we packed about 10 or 11 gringos (white people) into this small room to watch and listen in english. It was good to just hear english and just speak english for a few hours. Thanks, dad, for that Zephyr speaker, it comes in handy all the time.

Guess what! We had a baptism this week! Guess what more!! We had their wedding the same day! It was excellent! We got up early the day before and spent a few hours draining and cleaning the baptismal font (you'll notice that I was the one standing in the cold water, cleaning, and my companion--from Peru, that's his excuse--waited until it was fully drained before setting toe in the font. They were civily married the next day early in the morning with their hair full of rice, and we had the baptism later that day.

The baptism should've started at 5:30, but no one was there, not even he who was to be baptised, then. Before the baptism, we called basically the entire ward, but no one gave us a sure answer.

Eventually our guy showed up, but just him and like 3 members of his family. It was kind of sad, but I didn't care. Around 6:30 we were about to start, when none other than the president of the mission showed up! So we started with a nearly empty chapel, consisting of the

6 missionaries and 2 sisters of our district, 4 members of family, the ward mission leader, and the mission president.

All, eventually worked out and right before he was baptized, 5 or so ward members showed up. We had a small little fiesta to celebrate their matrimony after; we started with nothing but soda and chips which we bought, but ended up with not one but two cakes, one of which was ginormous, and a platter of fruit which the sisters helped me put together quickly. So, all was well that ended well.

Okay, I have to finish, but this week is Transfers! We got the news of who is going to leave to other areas, and who is going to stay and whos getting new missionaries. There were a few missionaries that kept telling me that I was going to train, and that scared me because I only have  one transfer (6 weeks) under my belt, but turns out that...

we're going to have a trio again! My companion and I are staying and we're getting a new guy! How exciting! Anyway, gotta go.

Love you all, stay excellent,

Elder Bradley Turek

Mom, I have heard about people getting packages successfully, but each package when it arrives, is opened, and the missionary who recieves the package has to pay 50% of the value of the contents, so keep that in mind when you send things. I think it takes 3 or so weeks for packages and letters to arrive here.

On another note about pictures, I need them; seemingly everyone here has photos of things, except me and it's difficult to explain things without pictures! A photo of the car, photos of you guys, photos of me doing things (climbing, with friends, at camp, half-marathon, etc.), a photo of nutmeg, a photo of the house, photos of places that I/we frequented, photos of anything that I might bring up in conversation.

Check dad's computer for pictures (\Brad) and check my facebook to; if there's not one of something, give mom her camera and let her rip. I know that there is a Walmart in Neuquén. Maybe, just maybe, they have a photoshop, that you can upload photos to; I don't know be creative.