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Family,

Well good to hear from you all again. That is too bad about Sister Rogers. Well before I forget, my shoes are doing excellent! So far I am still on the first pair and I am fairly positive that they will last to the end of my mission. Tony did well on his shoe recommendations. The chair I am sitting in right now is really uncomfortable, which is too bad.

So I didn't think I was going to have time to email you today, and that I was going to have to wait till Monday. But then we found a short bit of time here in the morning. this week was great. Not much too exciting happened, but still good.

Akeilah is still doing excellent, she has finished The Book of Mormon and is now on section 100 and something in the Doctrine and Covenants! She should be baptized this next week if everything works out like it should. She has also been bringing her friends to church so that is great too! The interesting thing about Akeilah is that she isn't all full of false doctrine. She didn't grow up going to church, in fact she didn't even grow up really believing in a God, as we believe it. Now that she knows the church is true and whatnot it makes it great to teach her because their isn't confusion from other doctrines that you have to try to resolve, it is all new to her and she just accepts it all.

Last preparation day we went and played soccer with these ghetto kids. It was a lot of fun. We played with these kids aging anywhere from 8-12. I think they were really surprised at how bad we all were at soccer, I think they expected us to be a a lot better. We might do it again here shortly.

Yesterday we went on an adventure to find an auto part for the bus that needs to be repaired, just some little window clip. Well we are driving down the road and we go down into this Gully and in front of us is some little Nissan, a van and then a giant semi hauling wood. Well to get out of the gully you have to go up a piece of hill that is about 30 feet and really really steep. So this semi starts to go up, gets about half way up and stalls. Well it starts to slide backwards onto the van. The van and that car start to try and get out of the way. It was quite funny to watch. In the end nobody was hit, the van and the car ended up just driving in circles around the gully waiting for the semi to figure itself out again. I love driving in this country, it seems like every time you go somewhere something ridiculous happens on the roads that just makes you roll your eyes and smile.

Hmm...what else happened. Sat in meetings with President a lot, we have been working on figuring transfers out. Spent a decent amount of time roaming through flights trying to find something that would work for President's schedule. Yet again I have become the mission travel agent. It is fun though, I enjoy it.

Elder Cheesman and President Hendricks had their birthdays this week. So we had a little office party for them. But we had planned this little party thing and then it turned out that their was a very small wedding going on at the office, so in the end it sort of became a mini birthday/wedding party. The cake and ice cream were really good. The Cheesmans go home soon, I hope their replacements are great. The Cheesmans have been a wonderful office couple.

This week I have thought a bit about how important it is to really have a vision of where your life is going, to have some goals about where you want to be in a year, in five years, in ten years. We have talked to a lot of people, particularly this week, that just have no idea where they want to go in life, and as such just do nothing. With no vision they have no drive. They will happily just get a job working at the gas station and never progress in life.

Today is district conference so we get to go to Spanish Town all day. It should be good. I look forward to what Pres. Hendricks has to say. They are close to a stake, very close, they really just need leadership at this point. they have enough members, now they need members who are paying their tithing and who can lead the church without the missions help. Hopefully the conference is good today and tomorrow.

Well, I wish I had more to say this week, things are fairly typical. Teaching is going well, E. Mcgrath and I are getting along excellent, I am glad that I got the opportunity to serve with him here before he goes home. Happy birthday Nathaniel, congratulations of receiving the priesthood! Sorry, no pictures again....I didn't think I was going to email today so I didn't bother to bring my camera with me today. Good luck this week with school and work. I love you all!

Love

Elder B. Kent Talbert