Happy Halloween Elder D!

Group picture from our Mission Conference last month with Elder and Sister Zivic seated with President and Sister Archibald.

We carried on our American LDS tradition and sent a "You've been Boo'd" package to Elder Draper!

Waking up Monday morning to white!

The mission life is GREAT in Calgary! Yes the weather has taken a dip...last night it did. I woke up this morning to a blanket of snow on the ground. I AM SCARED!!!! Haha it is going to get so dang cold I seriously have no idea. I am freezing today and it is only 32 Fahrenheit out. We will see what happens!

No we don't go to ward council. Because there are 6 elders serving in the ward, that would be too many people in the meeting. Plus they probably don't want us hearing all the crazy problems that go down. So we have a meeting right before called correlation with the ward mission leader, then he takes all of our info into ward council. Our church is at 1 PM. And then we are around the church for about an hour after trying to set up appts with members, etc. Then we take dinner, then go teach. So Sunday is almost like a pday for us...only 3 hours of working. That is just the way it works, kind of like the weekend for us including Monday. Music...that's a good question. Of course I am loving chill church music because that is all I get, but we will see when I get back. Nope not gaining weight thank goodness. Weighed in yesterday at about 165. Apparently you eat a lot in December so I am trying to control myself for that. My metabolism is still the same so no problem.

This week was pretty cool. Saturday night the Spanish branch, which covers the southern part of the city, had a big activity called the Vina del Mar . It is a thing they do in Chile apparently. People mimic celebrities and famous singers so it was pretty entertaining. Last night was the baptism of a lady named Ana. So I told you about those 7 day challenges we give to members? Yeah so we extended this challenge to Gerardo Reyes. He invited this Ana from his work. She had just moved here from Mexico the week before. However, we found out that she lives in the east so the other elders taught her and she accepted the baptism commitment the first lesson. So it was cool to kind of have a part in her baptism. And during the baptism I got to translate for President and Sis. Archibald! It was way cool! They were so surprised I could do it only 5 months out. And we did have a super sweet miracle!!!

So we extended this 7 day challenge to a girl in the ward named Camila, she is 19. She has a friend she has wanted to invite, but never has. Well last week she finally did, and we taught her. Her name is Kristina and she is almost 18. She doesn't speak Spanish which means eventually we are going to have to hand her over to the English elders. But she is so prepared! Last Sunday we taught her the restoration. Then this past Saturday we planned to teach her the plan of salvation, because she seems to understand lesson 1. But when we got there she told us she had a dream. She said she was in a forest and saw a bright light in the sky and saw 2 people. She said they looked like me and elder Christensen. (Girls dreaming about me? Akward! haha) No so she told that to us and we were like whoa that sounds just like Joseph Smith! So we changed the plan and showed her the restoration movie. During the first vision scene she was all "What the?! This is exactly what my dream was!!!" So basically Kristina has seen the first vision in her dream before she even saw the movie. We were like umm that is definitely a sign from God! She believe that Joseph Smith was a prophet, BoM is true, and our church is true!!! She is definitely going to be baptized, but she said she wants one more lesson to learn. So we will teach that on Tuesday, she will for sure accept to be baptized, then we will transfer her to the English elders. But we will get to go to baptism for sure because we started teaching her! I am so excited!! Just a really neat experience. The lessons we have had with her have been the most spiritual ones I have had so far. I will follow up next week!!!

Thanks for everything guys, I love you!! Have a great week and Happy Halloween!!!!

Love, Elder Draper