We were all very exited to hear from Braden this last Thursday morning.  The whole family was down in Cedar City to be with Mackenzie while she attended college orientation at SUU.  It was so nice to be able to read his e-mail shortly after he sent it from Spain.  He had the opportunity to send us a one in the morning and then one later in the afternoon.  He apologizes for the scattered thoughts in his messages, but he said there are a limited number of computers at the Spain MTC and he wanted to make sure others had an opportunity to write home as well.  Here are some excerpts from what he sent this week:

"Ok lets see, this week has been really interesting.  Yes we´ve had gazpacho and yes tell Sydney the stuff they have in the MTC tastes awful. Apparently it is basically a blended salad with garlic, not the tastiest thing in the world.  We have a Russian roommate in our district for four more days and he is one of the coolest people I have ever met ... He has been such a blessing to have in our companionship, he is kind of light at the end of the storm. The storm being everyday of class, where they have us teaching imaginary investigators (our teachers) and working on our Spanish. Every spare moment we have in class is spent figuring out the next lesson and how to say it in Spanish. Last Saturday they turned us loose on El Parque De Retire, it´s their equivalent of Central Park and it has a lot of the same things minus the baseball fields ... they had a pond with people in row boats and they had a lot of people selling things at the side of the pond ... anyway they turned us loose to do some tracting and they switched the partnerships up for they day so me and Elder Hyatt one of the elders who sat next to me on the plane tried and failed all day, but in the end we were more interested in practicing our Spanish after people would turn us down. Even if we didn´t leave them a verbal message I figured it was a nonverbal one that we are good people. Either way we made ten different people´s day a little more interesting. 

To answer some of mom´s questions that I haven´t already, my Companion Elder Erickson is from Boise, more specifically Meridian. He didn´t know the Flemings but he had met several people from Weber at USU which was cool... I will try to sneak in another letter later today if I can, we were just told we have a devotional"

"OK, so I have to clarify something when I said stuff at the top. I meant the gazpacho was awful, the food at the MTC is actually really good. I have to say being here is so much better than being stuck in the Provo MTC, because we get to go out almost every day for soccer, basketball or volleyball.  We've mostly played soccer and come find out the two years I spent in AYSO were actually pretty beneficial.  Lets see..... oh our plans have already changed today, in an hour and a half we are going to the city center which will be really cool. It's a good thing too, I'm almost out of snacks my Twizzlers are gone. I only have a couple Reeses left and I've just opened my bag of Lays. I´m surprised they lasted this long. Sorry if this is all over the place, I don't have a lot of time in here to write and there aren't enough computers for everyone so i´m just throwing my ideas into this as quickly as possible. I've taken a bunch of pictures of the Temple we have a pretty good view of it as we walk up the stairs to our rooms so I snuck one in the other night (we´re not allowed to take pictures unless its p day). I also got a bunch of pictures of roommates as well.  Next week we are headed to the Prada museum, you can look that up on Google and find out what it is because apparently its one of the big tourist attractions here. We ride the Metro everywhere we go here, the metro is the equivalent of the subway. Out in Malaga I´ve heard the missionaries use cars though. I´m wishing I had more ties, I only have enough for a week. Oh, and last thing, tell Kenzie the¨"good luck Charlie thing doesn´t work for right now. The church computers don´t support the file or its blocked, either way we can try again once I´m in the mission field.
love

Braden"