Happy 4 months Elder Draper!

Canadians love Capitaine Crounche and so does Elder Draper!

What the heck!!?? I can't believe it!!! Time is going so fast!!! Ahhhhh...

This week was really sweet too. All of the senior companions went to meetings every day from 10-3. That left the younger guys back on exchanges! So everyday this week me, Elder Davies, and a new guy Elder Brandon were together. Holy cow!! Three new guys with hardly any experience!! What I learned is that the Lord will get his work done, no matter who the missionaries are. Whenever we were in this trio this week, out of nowhere I could understand 100% what people were saying, when normally I understand probably 60%. But then at night when I went back to Elder Christensen, my Spanish ability dropped back to where I am right now! SO weird!!! But it just proved to me that the Lord is in charge of everything, including how fast I learn Spanish. If I do my part, He will bless me with the amount that I need. It was really cool.

Another sweet miracle with Nellie this week!!! So we have an appt set up with them for this coming Thursday. That is way too far away haha so Saturday we decided to go by and just say hi and see how they are doing. Before we knocked on the door, we prayed that she would let us in to teach her, and that she would receive a witness during the lesson that she needs to be baptized. So we walked up to the door and starting talking. She was taken aback that we were there and insisted that we come back Thursday. We just said that we only wanted to talk for a few minutes. So we were just talking randomly and all of a sudden she told us to come in, out of the blue. We were like wow ok. 2 minutes earlier she told us to come back Thursday, but somehow we got in that door!! Miracle!!! Prayer answered! So we ended up teaching them for an hour about prayer and the Book of Mormon. She is still reading it daily which is awesome. At the end of the lesson we asked her to pray and ask God if these things are true. She said an awesome prayer and asked specifically if the BoM is true and if Joseph Smith is a prophet. She also said that if she received an answer, she would get baptized into this church. Super sweet and spiritual prayer, and after she closed, it got silent. No one said anything for a minute, everyone just looking at the ground. We know that she received an answer!!!!! We asked her how she felt and she said "Good how about you?" Ughhhhhh I forgot to ask in our prayer that she would RECOGNIZE the answer too!!! We are pretty sure she received the answer, but just didn't realize it! We are so excited to go by on Thursday and teach her about recognizing promptings from the spirit. We EXPECT a baptismal date set for her!!! Let's pray that she will act on it and join this church!!!

Prayers are real!!! Everything we asked for we received. Because we really had the faith that it would happen. If you feel like you really need something, just ask God for it!! If it is according to His will, He is bound to grant it!!! I bet there are so many blessings waiting for us, but we just don't ask haha. That is what I learned from this experience. My prayers have grown so much. Father in Heaven is there I have no doubt. Our relationship continues to grow and I love it.

Well that is this week. I am putting a few things together and sending home an envelope asap!! SO be on the lookout for it. I love you all so much and can't wait to hear about conference!!!

Love,

Elder Draper

Monday September 20, 2010

In the heart of the city - downtown Calgary - Stampede City

Pictures of the Bow River looking across to Downtown Calgary

I wonder if it freezes over in the winter

I had one of the coolest weeks on my mission!!!

MOM! What a day you had!! I am glad to hear everything turned back up, even though it trashed your day haha. What a miracle. Rachel!!!! Congratulations!!!! That is so legit!! I never thought you would be a baller, but it looks like your brothers influenced you a bit :) I can't wait to hear how all of your games go and how you play! Nice work Blake, I say you are in for sure now. Much better GPA than me and a solid act. Start those application papers!!

Ok to answer your questions first:

We haven't heard back from Nellie yet. We will stop by probably tomorrow to see how she if they are back yet. Hopefully they have been doing their reading! Teaching pool is about to explode. We have about 8 names that have invited us to come back to teach them, some of them formers, some of them brand new investigators. Hopefully there is 2-4 of them that are prepared for the gospel. We should have a lot of investigators this week.

The conference was really sweet! How cool was that!!!! Man I was just like what!!! Sister Williams said she wanted to call you right there and then but she was like oh mission president is here haha. That was so neat!! Do you like my new blue suit? Haha 15 bucks at a thrift store. The seventy is named Claudio Zivic. He serves in the South America south area presidency. He is from Argentina, so when we all went up to shake his hand and meet him I got to do it in Spanish!!! So neat!! This conference was actually the first time he had ever done one in English!!! It was pretty choppy and scattered but of course I was able to learn so much from the spirit. It was funny because he would ask a question to us, people would answer back, and he would just be like "good" or "anything else?" It was obvious that he didn't really understand the responses haha. But based on what he taught us, I created 2 goals for the rest of my mission, 1 spiritual experience every hour and to learn something I can apply to my life in every situation of every day. I think that will be a neat goal for me!

Now for the coolest story ever!! So on Friday we had dinner with a family named the Jimenez. (They are the same family that I called the wrong name twice during a prayer haha). It is just a couple from Columbia. All 9 of their kids are still in Columbia, waiting to get Visas to come here. Their ages are like 24-9. Yes 9 kids. So anyway we were just having a normal, yummy (kind of) dinner. Towards the end of dinner, Sis. Jimenez started bawling out of no where. She then told us that yesterday her 20 year old son was robbed in the street by 4 men, and beaten half to death with a baseball bat and stabbed in the side. They continued to beat him down on the ground with the bat until he became unconscious. The room got dead quiet, besides Sis. Jimenez. I felt awful, and had no idea what to say to that, let alone in Spanish. She felt awful because she says she feels trapped in Canada, and can't be there helping take care of her son. So Elder Christensen suggested we give them both a blessing. Sis. Jimenez is becoming physically sick from the stress and stuff so we annointed her with oil. Now, I was expecting Elder Christensen to do that, because he knows much more Spanish. But he is new to the area, and they know me better, so she asked me to the annointing, “uncion” in Spanish, and her husband blessed her. That part was easy because I have that memorized and have done it once before. But then it was Bro. Jimenez's turn to get a blessing. He wanted just a blessing of comfort, so we said ok. I again assumed Elder Christensen would do it, because I have never done it and wouldn't know what to say. But, Bro. Jimenez asked me to do it, and I tried to back out of it, but he said he feels like I should do it. I wanted to decline, but for some reason the words "Como se llama usted" came out of my mouth. Apparently the Lord wanted me to give this blessing, and I went for it. Never doing this in Spanish before, my mind experienced something I will never forget. It just opened up, like I had the whole Spanish dictionary memorized in my head. It was incredible. I promised him things that sounded way too unheard of, but I said what came to mind. The Lord through me told him that his son was going to recover completely, and that his son's personal plan of salvation required him to still be on the earth. What an amazing thing to be able to say to him. After the prayer I was literally on fire, I have never felt the spirit in that manifestation before. It was the coolest thing ever. SO we left, and saw them again yesterday. They said their son is totally fine. Not one bone in his body is fractured, and the knife he was stabbed with did not even penetrate passed the skin. What a miracle. My testimony just grew about a zillion times in one week, especially the power of the priesthood. I am so grateful I have it and that I can comfort and bless the lives of others with it. I love you all so much, and can't wait to write next week. Have an awesome week!!!!!!

Love,

Elder Draper

Calgary Mission Conference

Elder Draper and Elder Christensen eating yummy Cafe Rio burritos. Looks like Ryan licked his plate clean!

The District is all smiles after finishing lunch. That's Ryan's companion from the MTC, Elder Davies, sitting second to the right. His first companion in the field, Elder Rudd is sitting right in the middle.

Beautiful Stacey with President and Sister Zivic, her son's mission president who served in Spain. What a treat to visit with your return missionary's mission president!

"We are as the Army of Helaman, we have be taught in our youth and we will be the Lord's missionaries..."

"...to bring the world His truth!"

Written by Ryan's overjoyed mom-

We had an awesome family just move into our ward from Texas over the summer and as we were getting to know each other I mentioned our oldest son was serving his mission in Calgary. Angi, the mother, mentioned that a family from her ward in Texas had just moved to Calgary. In the church we so often have these "small world" moments! I thought Calgary is a such big city but quietly hoped that some way Ryan would cross paths with this nice Texan family. A month went by and this morning I got a call from Angi telling me her friend Stacey in Calgary was helping serve the Calgary missionaries lunch at their Mission Conference so she wanted to know what the Ladera Ranch missionary's name was! What a kind gesture and comforting tender mercy to know that Stacey was looking out for our missionary! I asked her to give him all our love and that if she could possibly take some pictures that would really make my day. At noon she called my cell to tell me all about meeting Elder Draper and later emailed me some pictures and shared the experience she had at the conference. You can read her email below. A huge, heartfelt thank you Angi and Stacey for giving our family something really wonderful to smile about today!

____________________________________________________________

Hi Teri,

Here are pictures of your darling boy!! He was a delight. It is so funny how excited we get at any small connection to home. I told him the story and about me moving and my dear friend moving and then my friend telling me to look out for him! He was so excited (they all laughed and were excited for him) How funny I was asked to help with this lunch today and I got to make that connection! A bonus for me is that the Apostle that was there was President Zivic from the 70's. He was my oldest son's Mission President in Spain!! What a fun surprise for me! Hope you enjoy these pictures. He was in good spirits and said to say he loves you all. They served them Café Rio burritos and brownies and ice cream. They were all happy about that! At the end they sang us Army of Helaman...and then sang and thank you for the food! It was touching and sweet.

Hope this brightens your day!

Stacey

Monday September 13, 2010

Elder Draper and his new companion Elder Christensen

How I love the cold! Yes, the cold is on its way here in Calgary. No me gusta. But it is a challenge I am ready to take on. Nothing is going to stop me! This week has been cool getting to know Elder Christensen. I love him and we are having lots of fun. Yeah he knows a ton of Spanish. He started his mission in Oaxaca Mexico and got salmonella poisoning after 6 months. They sent him home for 4 months and he served in the Toronto West Mission there. Then they sent him over here to be a little farther away from home, but still safe. He lost 30 pounds in Mexico so he is working to build it all back up again.

We had another lesson with Nellie and Gilberto. It went well. Nellie is still reading and praying. As of last Thursday she was in 1 Nephi 13. She is holding to her statement of when she receives an answer, she will be baptized. Unfortunately they left for Victoria, BC to visit their kids for a week and half. We are bummed about that but she said she would bring her Book of Mormon and continue to read. She is our only solid gator right now, we had to drop a few people this week which is so hard to do, but you can't waste your time with people who don't care. One day something bad will happen and they will want some help so until then we are here. Nothing new up here though. Just working and working and working to find people to teach. There are two families in our area who have families in mind to invite over for dinner and to meet with us. So we should pick up 2 new families this week, which would be sweet!! The fun part of missionary work is teaching. The hard boring part is finding, the stage we are at basically haha. The Lord is testing this whole mission though, so hopefully we will start to see the fruits of our labors.

Elder Davies came up to the west stake, so he is in our district now. We will probably be together again around Christmas. Prez likes to put new guys together. That would be pretty fun. Ummm everything else is about the same. Absolutely loving my experience here. So much fun! I am really excited to see my Spanish reach its potential. It is still hard for me to understand the members and say what I want, but eventually it will come.

Aww that is a cute story about Railey. I miss those girls they are too fun. Tell them hi for me. I will send something pretty soon, maybe for Christmas.

Are you guys stoked for conference!!?? That is so cool you are going! I am so excited to hear it. Luckily we can go to the English broadcast, I wouldn't learn much from the Spanish broadcast. Can't believe that it is already conference again though.

Any semi-worldy news? Haha you can tell me things like that don't worry. We don't hear anything up here about the US besides seeing the magazine covers at the grocery store. How is Kobe? Too bad about BYU losing.

Well, my emails are pretty much boring lately sorry about that. Things are slow, but they will pick up. I hope you all have a wonderful week and we will talk next week!!! Love you guys!!!!

I love you!

Elder Draper

Congrats dad!! That is so exciting!!! You are going to do an awesome job! You are a super hard worker and I really appreciate that example you have set for me. I complained a lot about doing work and I apologize haha. Now I am understanding the importance and I will come back ready to help you and mom out in any way! The car damage was not bad at all, just a few scratches. We have not done anything with it. It can probably be buffed out. Yeah we had a zone conference 2 weeks ago, I learned so much. We combine with the Calgary West Zone (English elders) and the Mandarin zone (about 8 of them). Then our Spanish zone has 13 elders. This week we have something called mission conference. A general authority is coming and basically we have a another zone conference. That is Friday so that will be fun. Keep up the good work dad! You are so cool and I appreciate everything you do for me, financially, spiritually etc. You are the best! I love you and hope you have a fantastic week!

September 7, 2010

This is a picture of a Photo Cop, he takes a picture of your license if you're speeding and mails the ticket to you. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police don't mess around.

Copies of the traffic accident report and my witness report.

Holy cow I have been here for 6 weeks already!!!! I can't understand this time thing here on the mission! Well the big news, Elder Rudd is leaving for the Central, but I will be staying here in the north. Elder Christensen from the East is coming over to be my new companion. He is a pretty cool guy. From Toronto. Well I already know him because the elders in the west, north, and east all serve in the ward here so I see him all the time. Plus he is in my district so I know him pretty well because of that. He goes home after Christmas so he is on the way out. It will be another fun 6 weeks!! He will move in tomorrow and the work continues!!

Well this week was so much fun for me. Thank you for all the emails!! I won't have time really today to respond to everyone because it's transfers and we are all on the phone with everyone figuring it out. But next week will be back to normal, and thank goodness a Monday pday. Yes Labor Day is a holiday here, well I mean Labour Day haha.

So some other big news, yesterday we got in a car crash!! I am the junior comp so Elder Rudd was driving. It was weird he hit us so hard it felt, but there was only a few scratches, on the car, not us! Some man behind us didn't see that we had come to a stop and just rammed into us. It was pretty weird, I had no idea what happened. So this accident happened to take place right in front of some Calgary cops! So they told us to pull over and get it all figured out. Then, the cop that happened to come over to us to figure out the situation was LDS!! Can we be more watched over and protected as missionaries? Holy cow it was such a neat experience for me. So the cop was like, "yeah I got you guys, don't worry!" He ticketed the man for reckless driving and everything worked out perfectly. My first car accident: In Canada on my mission, never would have thought haha.

So we had stake conference this weekend too and we got permission to attend the adult session Saturday night. Again, my first adult session was on my mission. Now I know what goes down at that meeting haha. Then stake conference on Sunday. It was hard for me a little because theCalagary north stake center is a carbon copy of the Mission Viejo stake center! Same everything down to a T. So of course home flowed through my mind the whole time which was hard but everything is cool now.

Nellie and Gilberto have changed DRASTICALLY! The Holy Ghost is real that's all I'm gonna say. First time we taught them they would not even pray and ask God if this is all true; apparently you can only ask Him for health and stuff. But now she prays and asks for wisdom on the subject every lesson. Incredible. She is flat out reading the Book of Mormon cover to cover. Things like this make me love the work. We still have her committed to be baptized the 25th of September if she receives her answer before then. We also need to get her to church at least twice before baptism, so that will be Elder Christensen and my goal this week. And we picked up a new investigator named Manuel from El Salvador. We taught him the restoration and he has some of the same beliefs as Nellie and Gilberto: already baptized by immersion, etc. So we will keep contact with him as well.

So that was my fun week. The work is definitely progressing, which is nice to see because I can't imagine how hard missionary work is when you can't see any visible progress. But I know that is going to happen sooner or later. Thanks for all of your love and support; Have a great week!!!

Love, Elder Draper

The Spotter

No biking in Calgary, this is their brand new 2010 Chevy Malibu. Can't complain about that but...

for insurance purposes mission rules require one companion to spot the driver every single time they back out of a parking spot even if no cars are in view. They might want to rock, paper, scissors for this duty in the winter when the temps are sub-zero!

August 30, 2010

Happy 3 month Anniversary Elder Draper!!!

1/8 of your mission completed!!! Not that we're counting or anything!!!

Me and Elder Galloway. He is one of our Zone Leaders and has 10 more months to go in the field.

This is Elder Nelson who was 26 when he finished his mission, he went home the next day.

Elder Kruegar (left) was Elder Rudd's trainer. So Kruegar was my grandpa who I only knew for a week. He went home the day after this too.

ALOHA Ohana!!

Well I guess that is the last time I will be saying that until next summer. How is the beautiful Hawaii?? 80 degrees sounds so good right now. Last night we had a special missionary fireside that President Archibald spoke at. We walk out of the chapel around 9 PM and it was 4 Celsius. Ummmm I am pretty sure winter is not for another 3 months. Then I wake up this morning and it is -1 Celsius. Elder Draper has a loooong cold 8 months ahead of him haha.

Yeah these 3 months have been the fastest in my life. Fastest summer ever. It is kind of scary because I do not have those 3 months of my mission back. I just want to be able to look back with zero regrets about my work and everything, so I am motivated to do all that I can in serving the Lord. Thank you for the cd's and pillow case! Yes so fem dad haha but I loved it so thank you for that. And thank you for this email! Wow dad that was sweet!! You have saved like hundreds of people, last one I remember was at the Laker game.

I'm trying to think if I have any funny stories....Well Spanish culture is just so funny as you know. Especially Mexicans. Last night we had a fireside where two new members spoke then President and Sister Archibald. The members had about 15 min each, then president about 20. Spanish people love to talk and talk and talk. They both spoke for 50 min each. Ummm what the? Then during the second recent convert talk, he is a Mexican and his cell phone (definitely one of those prepaid things) starts ringing as he is speaking. So there is funny things like that every single day no joke, I try to write them all down in a journal.

Alright so question, next week is transfers (by the way, because of that our p-day is Tuesday next week) and there is some Elder Nielsen coming in. I know Cameron Nielsen I think is his name (Isaac's brother) is speaking Spanish somewhere, so I am wondering if it is him. That would be cool.

So yeah Nellie and Gilberto of El Salvador are our solid investigators right now. We have had a couple lessons and they are really starting to open up to the spirit, it is so amazing to see. She has doubts about the Book of Mormon and Joseph Smith still. She told us if she comes to know Joseph Smith was a prophet, she will get baptized. I know with 100% surety, if this is her time, the Lord will tell her the truth of our message. SO NEAT!!! They are both really old, but I can just see them in the temple together one day. That is the goal of missionary work, not baptisms. You have to prepare these people to go through the temple. We are excited for this week and hope to have a baptismal date set.

That is about the biggest news I have here this week. I am just loving this mission so much! It is totally worth being here and doing what I am doing. I can see why missionaries get sad to leave by the end of it. Working with these people makes me most happy here. I have already built fun relationships with the ward members and leaders, all just amazing members. Thank you for your prayers and love and remember that I love you all! Jesus Christ is the head of this church there is no question in my mind. Don't let J dubs tell you otherwise!! Haha take care and enjoy your last week in the islands!!

Love you all!!!!

Elder Draper

August 22, 2010

Pictures of the missionary pad

What's up everyone!? Don't worry I am not jealous that you are in Hawaii!! Haha my turn is in 2 summers!! So this week was pretty much the same haha, that's missionary work I guess. NO progress on investigators. Cesar and Angelica cancelled on us and wasn't at church, so that was a bummer. We have not been able to get in contact with them. But we have picked up another couple!! They are old Salvadorians, Nellie and Gilberto. Gilberto has Parkinson's which is sad, it was funny though he fell asleep like 5 times during the lesson. But it was neat we taught the restoration and had a great discussion. They are Baptist I think but believe in basically every Mormon doctrine too. Baptism by immersion, gift of the holy ghost, etc. However the kicker is living prophets and El Libro de Mormon. They believe the bible is sufficient and that she could have written something like the Book of Mormon. Yeah I don't think so Nellie haha! But they are very open and we are happy and excited to work with them. Return appt on Thursday. Then we have one other couple Yohana and her husband who we don't know yet. We haven't had a "cita" (appointment) yet so we are still working on that. She definitely wants to hear from us, but they are just busy working and things. It is hard to work with Spanish people because they all work like 24/7 so it is way tough to set things up. Everything falls through but that is just life as a missionary. We will continue to work and preserver, the Lord is testing the whole mission with that right now.

We have been able to reactivate some less actives, so that is way cool. There are about 5 people who haven't been to church in a while but have been coming every since I got here. It is way cool to see. Another thing with Spanish people is they get offended way easily. So there a ton of people who just don't go to church because of another member. Reminds me of Elder Bednar's talk about that.

Funny story mom!!! Sorry you missed Sister Archibald's call. Dang that is pretty cool she called you straight up!! Yes I am healthy and happy. Wow Elder Zant is already headed out huh? He sounds like a great missionary. No we don't hear "eh" too much because I'm with Spanish people only. Ok it looks like I answered all of your questions...

My testimony is growing stronger and stronger every day. I absolutely love the scriptures now. I just can't see myself ever missing a day of scripture study for the rest of my life. I feel the Spirit way too strong while I'm ready them, I want that feeling all the time! My work ethic is really on fire too. I want to be working all the time, kind of unlike my life before the mission haha. Those are the two biggest changes I have seen in myself so far. And of course serving others. There is so many ways we can serve, not just missionary work. We mow the lawn of this really old lady weekly, and you just feel good doing it. Plus I'm learning how to mow a lawn dad! (you can fire the gardeners when I get home) But other than that I am having so much fun.

I miss you all a lot, but Heavenly Father is helping me with that. That is really the only tough part about my mission after 3 months, just being away from the family. But there is refuge in the work. That is what keeps my mind focused on helping these people come unto Christ.

I hope you have a fantastic week in Hawaii! You are all in my prayers and I love you so much! See ya!!

Elder Draper

Thanks Dad! I wish I was in Hawaii enjoying that, man haha. It is starting to get cold here, 50s I guess in Fahrenheit. Yeah I heard about Utah but wow now BYU is moving! That will be so weird for me when I get back haha. Yeah I am adjusting well so far, but it still just hasn't set in that I am on a mission. Like this week we took one of the priests out with us, and it just made me think that I was going out with the missionaries what feels like last week. Now I am taking priests out, so weird. I guess it won't even set in until I actually come home. Eating basically chicken and beans with the members. I have had more beans the last month than my whole life!! I have had tons of central and south American dishes, it's kind of scary going to a dinner appt and knowing you might be eating something crazy. Yeah we do all our work with the members. There are 6 missionaries that serve in our ward though, because there is only 1 Spanish ward and 1 Spanish branch. (The other 6 serve in the branch). So really we only get to work with 1/3 of the members of the ward that live in our area so. Just us two in our apartment. Zone conference is this Tuesday. Well we speak English around the apartment and with other missionaries, but all of our appts and church is in Spanish. There are a lot of members that speak English too, mostly the younger ones, so we speak English to them too. Thanks for all the updates. Time to start the family email!

Take care Dad and enjoy the sun I love you

Hurricane Earl hits Calgary

Ok just kidding - it did hit Nova Scotia but these Alberta summer storms really pack a punch and gives Elder Draper yet another reason to be grateful his mission doesn't implement the 10 speed program!