HELLO FAMILY!!!!!!
I bet you think I didn't make it through my first week huh!? Well I did!!! Yes my p-days are Mondays, however because of the Canadian holiday the libraries were closed yesterday. So every Monday at 11 AM roughly I will log on to email. We have an hour which is legit! I can email anyone in our family so hit me up with emails!
I cannot express how excited/stoked/happy am I am to be here! It is so, so sweet being out of the MTC and in the real world! It is so nice to walk down the streets here even if people cuss at you while driving by and flash inappropriate signs. I am so happy right now. So let's see if I can remember everything that has happened this week in Canada!!
Ok so my first area is the Spanish North Zone! My area is directly north of Calgary. From west to east, my area covers between that big green hill north of downtown and the highway, Deerfoot. Then the most southern part of our area is the Bow river, which is north of downtown. So that's it! My companion is Elder Rudd from Northern Utah. He is a farmer and very cool. Thursday is his hump day!! He has been out for a year and is way good at Spanish, makes me look so bad haha. We are having a great time here together. We live in an apartment towards the north part of our area, Hunt something I forget the name. They suggest you send all letters and packages to the mission office and they will get to me just fine. Sending mail directly to the apartment is hard to do.
So President and Sister Archibald are awesome! We had a great time spending the first day with them in the mission home. I sent a postcard with my picture with them. I don't know when you will get it. Then the next day we picked up some food, unpacked, and began to work! Elder Davies went to the south zone, south of the city. There are 190 missionaries in this mission, that is so many! There are 15 elders that speak Spanish, however 4 of them are leaving this week, so that will lessen our numbers. I will be teaching basically 0 lessons in English for the next 2 years. There are tons of Spanish speakers here that need the gospel! I am in a Spanish ward, the Crescent View Ward. There are about 200 members and there are 6 missionaries that are in this ward, so that's cool. The location of the chapel is amazing, I will send some pics to you.
This first week after transfers was tough. Many people are on vacation and things so the work has not started rolling the way we wanted it to. So far I have taught one investigator with Elder Rudd, whose name is Francisco. We have one other potential investigator, but that is it right now. The Spanish program English speaking missions are a little different, because we are trying to find a small population to teach. There are lots of Spanish speakers here, but obviously harder to find them. We basically work with members 24/7. We do not tract door to door at all. There are a set of English missionaries in our same area who have that responsibility (no golf ball needed Dad haha). We build the faith of the members, and get referrals from them. For example, this week we have set 16 lessons with members of our ward. We will teach all of them, and extend commitments to invite their friends. We do lots of role playing with the members too, like what Elder Zant did it sounds like. That is how we get investigators, and that is why it is definitely tougher for us. But we are working our tails off and the Lord will help us find those Spanish speakers ready. Another thing we do is while we drive around we are on the lookout for Spanish speakers. Flags of Spanish countries in house windows, Spanish looking people, and things like that. It is hard to find people to teach, but once we do, expect some great things from us!
Not too many members feed us. This month we have only about 6 dinners set with members, so we are mostly on our own for that. And because the members are from all Spanish countries, we eat some pretty intense Spanish stuff haha. There are people from Columbia, Mexico, Chile, El Salvador, and Chile. Those are the most common. So I will have to learn all the different accents and phrases/words from the different countries. SO the grossest thing I have eaten so far is crickets. Yes that is not a typo. Cooked crickets. I definitely must have had the Gift of Stomachs to eat those. EWWWW. But basically every meal with members is some sort of beans and rice. Looks like I will have a similar experience with food as Dad did. SO it is way nice to eat American breakfasts and lunches. They have bagel bites here Alexa!!! Those will save my life.
The weather has been so crazy. It has rained everyday since I have been here, usually just for a few minutes though. You will see a crazy flash flood video soon. But is it so pretty here in the summer. In 2 months, the snow will come and I will freeze haha. So I am trying to enjoy the nice warm weather.
I can't really do much in lessons yet. It is hard for me to understand all the native speakers, so basically I just bear testimony and teach a basic principle or share a scripture. Elder Rudd takes the bulk of the lessons until I can keep up. But I am seriously enjoying this time of sharing the gospel. Whenever we walk around we definitely can contact English speaking people on the street. I can do that just fine. We hand out tons of pass along cards, and just refer those people to the English missionaries. Canadians are super mean to Americans and Mormons though. I have been called every name you can think of, but it is way fun just to smile at them and wave. The Lord is most definitely working through me with street contacting. I just am trying to have as much fun as I can walking around talking to everybody. We have a 2010 Chevy Malibu which is pretty nice, so we actually don't do much walking. We have a phone (sweet!) It feels normal again to have a phone in my pocket.
Sounds like you all are having an awesome summer!!! Keep up all the fun stuff!!! And yes tell me everything you do, I have plenty of time to read all of your emails. Sorry if I forgot anything, just email me and ask any questions you have!
I love you all and pray for you every day! Thanks for the love and support! Being here is the absolute best decision I have ever made. I am already learning things that will stay with me for the rest of my life!!
Do work and I LOVE YOU!!
Elder Draper
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