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