Well thats freakin great i wrote two paragraphs and it all got accidentally deleted. basically i said that the library is closed so we are at a gaming center and everyone is playing world of warcraft and swearing and stuff and there is hardcore metal playing so yeah not very good place for missionaries but whatever. also i did get dads email last time but the page doesn't add new emails when i get them i have to update the page but i didn't do that until like i had 10 seconds left.
So i committed someone to baptism yesterday and she said yes and is gonna be baptized on the 16th of jan. but it was kind of cheating cause she called us earlier that week and asked what she had to do to be baptized but it doesn't matter cause she is getting baptized! We also have a new family to teach that some members referred us to. they are way cool and the mom is less active for like 15 years and her husband isn't a member but they are only like 30 and have 5 kids the oldest is seven they are way cool. and the mom wants to come back to church way bad but her husband is being pretty lame but it should be good.Christmas here was pretty good the members really took care of us and gave us presents and stuff. Got lots of candy some food and 4 pairs of socks and a tie...and lots of love.It was good to talk to you guys and florida sounds fun. it was good to see winston and some other guys in the mtc and thats pretty cool that he is in the philippines now. its pretty funny that i got put into an area where there is one store that does sell reeses, its called Taste of Britain, but thank you everything was good. also sending packages is pretty expensive and gay so whatever don't send me stuff. also if the girls haven't been wearing my shoes (like the plaid black and greyish white ones) then could you put them in my room if they aren't already in there please? uh thank you.
Well its blazing hot in here and i'm also being timed here...freakin $4 for one hour and people are just swearing like crazy so next week the library should be open again but i guess thats it for now. I'll probably remember something or think of something i wanted to say tomorrow and then i'll just have to wait a whole nother week to be able to tell you which is pretty gay cause that happens alot. but i love you all and i hope you had a merry christmas and have a happy new year!
Elder Salakielu
P.S. OH NO!! A SONG BY THE STROKES JUST CAME ON!!!

well the way the computers work at the library is that once you log on you have exactly one hour to email and stuff but surprisingly i've needed every minute every time. the mission rule however is your supposed to be only allowed like 45 min but it doesn't really matter...at least to our district. i get mail about once a week sometimes more, but we are about an hour away from the mission office so one time the zone leaders brought it to us and two other times it was cause we went to the mission office, and the other time cause we went to the temple. the mission office and the temple are right next to each other and there is a stake center right next to them as well. so thats how my mail process has been going. so speaking of which i got a package which contained the photo album and mini christmas tree and cheesecake mix and a mad amount of reeses and shirt and i love all of it thank you for sending it. and i was thinking how i didn't have any pictures from home and i thought that was really gay and especially how i didn't take pictures on my camera but its all good now that was perfect thank you so mucho. Since elder hamspon is district leader we have a cell phone and can use that to call home with a calling card so i can call anytime. i guess i should probably choose a time huh...well i guess i'll either call christmas eve there or christmas there and see how that goes.
The park right next to our flat is Dalvik park, we live right on the corner of blue mountain link road so yeah.But that brings up a good point...the work. The work is pretty hard and frustrating sometimes. especially with trying to work during this christmas season. but there was some stuff that i wanted to say last week but forgot. i guess there is really only actually about 4-5 investigators we are working with one of those being a family i don't know if i told you about them. they are a philipino family and the dad doesn't want to be baptized the rest of the family wants to and would if he would but he doesn't so that is gay. Oh yeah and we went to a baptism on saturday where elder hampson baptized two people from one of his previous areas and they wanted him to do that so we got to drive through the actual city part of perth with like the skyscrapers and all. surprisingly that was the first time on his mission that he performed the actual baptism, because he is a really good missionary and has been out for a while. also his family is pretty dang awesome cause they sent me a christmas package, nothin too big but just fun little things.Oh yeah so basically i only eat actual meals when we eat at a members houses. other than that i eat sandwiches, cereals, chicken burgers, fruit, yogurt, candy, and timtams. we don't eat out too much, but burger king is called hungry jacks here.
You can tell the ward that i got the package with all their letters and thank them for me i appreciate all they said and it was pretty uplifting i'll try and write something for them and the priests quorum sometime. you can also tell Austin Nielson that Elder Petricevich (pronounced peh-true-sih-vich if you couldn't tell) is in my district, thats who we share the car with and we see them pretty much everyday and hes pretty funny, but him and austin were companions for like 4 days he said, not cause they hated each other but because it was like a weird time inbetween transfers and austin was waiting for his new trainee to come in but didn't get in til like 4 days so thats pretty cool that they knew each other.But i guess thats about it for now, i love you guys i hope you all have fun in florida and disneyworld and i hope the rabbits are gonna get taken care of and also take plenty of pics so i can see when i get back.
Love you all Elder Salakielu

Week 2...i guess. well today (wed) is our pday this week instead of monday cause today is our temple day. we get to go to the temple once a transfer and so that is today. but yeah i opened up myldsmail and there was just like 10 new emails, which is awesome but i hope i can remember everything you guys said and asked. also i'm probably gonna always just write mom and dad...sorry meliss...and teki...but i'll hopefully address anything you guys say. Meliss yes i did get your email and i guess i didn't have anything to say about. i hope arizona was fun and its sounds like meles team is pretty good and that tekis team is da bombzz (jk) but really they sound good. there was an elder who was here before me who snapped his achilles tendon cause he was playing rugby and he went home to recover but is coming back so yeah. thanks for the advice teki, tracting is fun and gay at the same time especially when the people are rude cause its funny but at the same time its like you don't even know what your missing. and my hair is fine now...i think i told you last week but yeah its all good.Sounds like your birthday was good mom and hope you had a good time. I actually didn't remember it was your birthday until the night of the 12th but thats ok my body clock recognized that it really wasn't your birthday yet cuase it was only the 11th. I did get carsons email which was funny cause he said he hoped i could visit...yeah visit him in two years...no jk tell him i love him.
As for the area i don't know i'm still trying to figure out which city i am in cause i think the actually city is the city of Wanneroo but like they divide everything up into like suburbs so if you want to know which area from the city someone is thats how you find out cause they don't really divide the streets in to north/south and east/west all the streets are just names. but the actually mission area is called merriwa which is just a suburb of wanneroo i think and the zone is warwick zone. So the ward is merriwa ward and the other missionaries in the area are in the mindarie ward and together we are the merriwa district. but the ward boundaries are huge compared to home but normal to most of the other wards and small to some of the country boundaries. like the ward boundaries are like 20 times bigger than our stake boundary in utah. but really there are only like 5 or 6 stakes in all of western australia, and the stake i'm in is made up of like 5 or 6 wards but have a good amount of people in them. so most areas in the mission are within about an hour or an hour and an half of the city and so thats where most of the missionaries are but there are a few areas that are like hours away and are just in the middle of no where and just have like no members and only 1 set of missionaries, some of them are broome, kalgoorlie(i don't know if there is a "R" in it or not), esprints (not how its actually spelled, but its on the southern coast), and geraldton if you wanted to look those up. i don't know the name of the park but its way huge and just like 2 inches away. i'll let you know next time. but i'm pretty sure you can send anything to the mission office
Me
Perth Australia Mission
PO BOX 185
Tuart Hill WA 6939
Australia
but you can send stuff to my actual address but i dunno if thats so good cause of transfers and stuff and we aren't there most of the day. but i have 5 min left before the computer logs me off so i'm gonna try and hurry. christmas i can call on two days before, on christmas, and two days after christmas so let me know if there is a better time than when you told me (the afternoon here time). and i'll get to check email one more time before christmas so if there is better let me know. shopping is fine food is fine except for beef tastes a little different but oh well i'll tell you more next week cause 3 min left. but we have a washer in the flat but most missionary flats don't have a dryer. we do cause we got one of the side of the road. its spring cleaning and everying is just throwing stuff out including dryers. and the other missionaries up the street just recently found a good one too. but had to find out about 6 or 7 broken dryers in total before we got the two good ones. well i didn't talk much about the work and i don't have any more time (1 min left). but i'll talk more about that next week. tell dad i'm sorry i didn't get to write him and that i like his letters and that i love him and i love all of you bye.Elder Salakielu

Well its been quite the interesting first few days. I'm in a city called Merriwa and its actually one of the nicer areas and there is this really nice huge park like 10 metres (ya know the metric system over here) from the flat. they call houses flats but ours is pretty nice. but also pretty empty. there are 4 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms with a kitchen and like 2 other rooms its pretty nice. but i guess they call them flats cause theres no basement and they're only one story. Oh also garages here are all wierd. they just have a big ol opening in the back that leads to the backyard, like there isn't even another garagae door its just all open and i guess the only thing keeping anyone out of the garage is the fence around the house. there isn't a door from inside the house to the garage. So we have a car but we share it with another companionship who live about 3 min away and so we drive for 3 days and then we bike for 3 days and so on. also i'm the driver and i've only driven on the wrong side of the road once and that was on this wierd turn and then we actually ended up in a roundabout going the wrong direction but there wasn't really any other cars around.So the members here, at least in the ward i'm in, are just about the coolest people ever. we've visited about 3 or 4 of the families and they are just way cool and nice and feed us (or try to feed us) like crazy and even some investigators and less active members are way cool. also some of the connections here are crazy which is wierd cause we're half way around the world. Like my companion elder hamspon (who is from queensland australia) went to byu provo for a year, but he's been out here for about a year and some months now. and one of the less active families the husband and wife met in sandy! and OH SNAP!! i almost forgot. when all of us from the mtc were getting picked up by our companions from the mission office i was talking to this elder that was gonna train one of us and i told him where i was from and he was like "Sandy...Sandy..hmm my brother was engaged to a girl from sandy..i think her name was Jenn Salad" and i was just like holy crapz! but really i was like no way thats my sister and he was all like "shutup! shutup!" which was really funny cause the mission presidents wife was standing like right next to us and she was like excuse me, and she got all mad at him, it was pretty funny. So there you have it i met jenns exfiancee's brother in Perth australia when i didn't even meet paxman(?)...pacman(?) himself. but also another less active member knows the taurima's and so that was cool.So i've been saying that all the people are awesome and all but thats cause they were either once members or still are or they have been investigating for a while now, like months, and are pretty keen to missionaries. I'm gonna go out on a limb and still say that about all australians. i'm not sure that i can say that cause we've only been tracting ONCE so far and talked to a few people on the street, but even then most of them were pretty polite, except for one punk who was a younger guy and he opened the door and we started talking and like he was just staring at us and then he kicked the door with his foot so it started closing really slowly and he was just staring at us the whole time til it closed and my companion was talking the whole time til it closed and it was just awkward...but pretty funny.Also more about the people is that most of em are white but there's a lot of philipinos and asians and black africans and white south africans...its actually pretty awesome. Well thank you for the candy and snacks from the previous packages without those and food at families houses i'd probably be dead...and no its not cause i can't cook but because there is nothing to cook. when i first got into the flat there was like literally no food in the fridge. some bread in the freezer and some cereal in the pantry and that was it but thats because elder hampson and his companion before didn't know who was gonna get transferred when i got here and so they were just eating everything, which means we have to go shopping today, which is pday. So still gotta do that. some of the stuff they say here is pretty funny like they say "true" alot, and "far out" and "spot on" and they call pharmacies "chemists" which is funny. Oh and so i'm at the library right now and they have a timer as well and so i'm just about out of time so i guess i'll talk to you all later. but before that, if you were gonna send something for christmas and you haven't done that yet and if you've found that all blacks rugby jersey could you send that as well but if you've already sent something then don't worry about it...like i'm gonna be mad if you do. but other than that I'll talk to you later and i love you all.

Elder Salakielu

G'day! well I got here okay, the flight was killer and felt like forever. Whats worse was that everyone around me was watching movies on their screens and i just had nothing to do. but we got here and the mission president and his wife and a few assistants met us at the airport and we did a lot of stuff yesterday actually. we went and got our licenses and some of us got used bikes from the old missionaries, and then we had dinner at the mission home which was way good. Sleeping wasn't too bad although i woke up at like 3 a.m. since it was like 1 or somethin in the afternoon in utah, but it wasn't too hard to go back to sleep. we just ate breakfast which was also way good. pancakes eggs and ham and lots of fruit. oh also we had some lychee last night. its pretty warm here but it seems like perth is a pretty isolated city so it feels kinda weird. but just emailing you from the presidents computer to let you know i got here ok. pdays are on mondays so i guess you could look for emails on sunday nights. well we got to go and do a few more things and then we're going to have lunch and meet our trainors and then its off tracting. i love you all.Elder Salakielu

well i don't know what to say cause there isn't much time at all. but i still haven't sent out thank you cards. theres always something to be doing, theres class, personal and companionship study, teaching appointments, large group meetings, or calling people to see if they recieved stuff they've ordered from the church. oh and there is firesides on sundays with church movies to watch after, and then there are devotionals on tuesdays. Well only like 5 more days left here in the mtc and it seems like i haven't been here that long at all. i've learned a ton but it still seems like not enough and that 3 weeks isn't enough preparation for the next 2 years. well i'm gonna go now but i'll probably check my email again in a few hours cause you can split your half an hour of email time so if theres any questions and you're fast enough i could get them but whatever.oh and we fly out to L.A. then to Sydney and then to Perth

FIRST WEEK - Well i got the package so thank you for sending that. One of the Zone leaders let me borrow one of their towels until it came. also thank you for the snacks! so i only got to send that first email when i did cause that was when we set up or accounts and we weren't really supposed to send any emails but i did anyways cause i needed a towel. other than that we can only use computers on pdays and are also only supposed to write letters on pdays. we went to the temple this morning and am gonna go to lunch after this and then do laundry. classes are crazy long and sometimes really boring. my companion is elder brock nichols from lindon and he's pretty cool. we've taught 3 lessons to fake investigators (other elders) and i guess they were alright although at times it was a little brutal. theres 12 elders in our district half going to riverside california the other 6 going to australia. something pretty cool is that Bruce R. McConkies grandson (elder McConkie) is in our district and our campanionships are rooming together. He's pretty cool. another pretty cool thing here is the referral center where we get to call people and talk to them about some of the stuff they ordered like a bible or book of mormon. the food is exactly the same like at byu and the cafeteria there. One day at lunch some guy saw me walking and called me over and asked me if i remembered him and that he knew jenn and mele and that he used to live by us in hawaii or something i don't know, but his name was elder ulu'ave i think and his first name was something like liah? i dunno. so you can just tell them that cause i don't think i'm gonna have time to write another letter (still have to do those thank you cards). there really isn't time for much except for everything already have planned for the missionaries. like the day goes by way slow but at night its like k where did all this time go...even on p days there's hardly any time to just relax, but i guess thats not what i'm here for. So those jeans you sent weren't the ones i was thinking of and they fit but are just way small and dorky looking, but i guess some of my other ones have holes and junk. also there were some other things i forgot or could use so if you could have the girls send them if you're still gonna be in hawaii for a while. oh and i forget to tell you that we leave for australia nov. 30. so i'll only have one more pday and then let the international stampage begin. so i could use a sweater/jacket so just that white dc one will do, meliss should know which one that is. oil that should be on meliss' black dresser in my room and my mini book of mormon should also be around there somewhere too. So i guess thats it for now but love you and miss you and send my love to all the family.Elder Salakielu

First day at the MTC - I forgot to tell you my scripture for the plaque... it is 2 nephi 31:20. Also i forgot to bring a towel!!! oh well. I saw winston at dinner and that was pretty funny. also could you send me the best in shape jeans along with my cargo shorts with those shirts you're picking up tomorrow...that'd be swell. but Love you and all the family. talk to you later.