Tuesday April 19, 2011

No pictures from Elder Draper this week so I'm posting a picture of the two missionaries in our ward. They came to dinner last night and it will probably be the last since they are both almost finished with their missions. We love Elder Odell and Elder Freeman! They are wonderful missionaries and substitute "big brothers" for our kids :)

Como estamos?

Hey mom so a couple favors: I got a watch from Tony Davis a couple years ago and the battery just died...I was wondering if he could hook up his favorite missionary with a new battery?? Also my Wells Fargo card has a crack on it and is about to break...I am going to need a new one if Dad could do that. Thank you! Oh and funny you should ask, I have never been sick on my mission really up until this weekend as you'll find out later in the email...

Well this week was just incredible with hundreds of miracles and I don't have time to explain even half of them! Basically, we picked up 3 new gators, 2 of them have agreed to be baptized on the 8th of May, if they receive an answer to their prayer by then. Their names are Patricia and Ernesto Navarro. They are from the west coast of Mexico. I gotta find out what city because I bet that Dad would know the area from his mish. Super prepared and such a nice couple.

The other lady is Marta Briones from Colombia. Her husband is "retired" from the church and she is not a member. Now this situation has so many awesome mini stories attached to it, but here is one: I have knocked her door like 50 times since I have been in this area, but they are never home. Then on Wed. we knocked and just out of the blue and she answered...she told us that 5 minutes before we knocked she was praying that the missionaries would come to her house. She lived in Utah forever with her inactive husband so knows all about missionaries. So we answered her prayer but didn't know the reason for her prayer yet. Her husband wasn't home so we set a return appointment for Friday. We show up then and they sit us down at the table, and she tells us that the day we came by, she found out she had breast cancer. She has surgery on my birthday, the 27th, and will know more about it then. Just crazy how the Lord really works, his timing, and that I have knocked the door for literally months, but just finally got in contact with her. She loves the LDS church way more than the Catholic church, reads the BoM, and she said she will be baptized! We are shooting for Mother's Day as well for her. The husband also promised that if she gets healed, he will come back to church after 20 years (He kind of put conditions on God). So those are a couple of miracles that happened this week!

This weekend with Elder Scott was so amazing, but also super tough. We started fasting Sunday after lunch to be spiritually ready for him and his message to us. Monday morning I woke up with an awful stomach ache and a super dry mouth. I went into the bathroom to cut my hair (yeah I can cut my own hair now...thanks mission!) and I got superrrrrr pale, felt the same way I did on graduation morning for those that remember that story. Basically I almost passed out, but I grabbed some water and got through it. We drove over to listen to Elder Scott, and it was amazing (besides the fact I felt like I might get sick the entire time). He didn't have anything prepared, he just followed the Spirit. It was interesting because he hardly talked at all about missionary work. He talked mostly about getting home and getting married haha! That must be one of the bigger problems of the church, as we saw in conference too. He of course talked about his wife and how amazing women are, and pretty much bashed men haha, humbling for sure.

After that spiritual experience, we get back to the pad and I feel half dead, so I crashed for an hour and woke up and feeling even worse. We called Sis. Archibald and it turns out I have all the symptoms of the flu. Yesterday I spent all day in bed because I couldn't move. Not fun. Luckily I had a blessing and woke up this morning a lot better, but still not much energy. So it was just really bad timing with the fast for Elder Scott but I'm glad I was still able to see him. Pray that I can get back to work asap because sitting around as a missionary is not fun at all.

That was my week in a nut shell. Well sorry there are no pics this week, I will try to take some more when I'm better. Send me another sd card so I can send you mine with lots of videos!!! I love you mom and hope you feel better to! I will be praying for you!! Love you all and talk to you soon!!

Love,

Elder Draper