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!