4 months more!

Service with a smile at the local food bank

Yum - Venezuelan Arepas

Ahora amados hermanos mios,

Sorry just been reading the Book of Mormon so much that the phrases from it are running through my mind. We had a stellar week this week and this next week is going to be even more fruitful. It's all about the faith!! That is the biggest thing I have learned about in this particular area...I would have loved to learn it in my first area, but it is starting to finally click for me. I read those lectures on faith by Gene R. Cook and that is what really helped and inspired me.

Glad you and dad had fun in Vegas, haha that made me laugh about the older LDS couple hitting up Sin City before their mission. Seeing the Donny and Marie Show is pretty safe I'd say! That's nice they have that new clean smoke and casino free hotel. Sorry I will take a picture of out apartment this week, I forgot. No, it isn't newly renovated, we just keep it lookin fresh ya know? Elders have lived in it for a few years at least. I love it because I feel like I am in a 5 star hotel seriously. The bathroom smells like a really nice hotel bathroom haha ok maybe that's weird to say. It's a little paradise in Canada :) Yeah ZL for 7 months, we'll see if I die as one or not (missionary term for ending the mission as a ZL). I have really enjoyed it because it is just an opportunity to serve and think less about yourself. I love helping other people become better, it just makes me super happy.

Anyways, yeah the meeting Friday was called leadership training meeting. All of the district leaders and zone leaders got together and got trained on Preach My Gospel, it was pretty good. Oh I totally have thought about what you said about being able to see how everyone has progressed and changed. I won't be judging though so no worries ha, I am far from perfect too. Hopefully you can see some good changes with me too :)

So on to the week: It was filled with little tender mercies and miracles, and I have learned to not believe in coincidences. It is Heavenly Father, no question about it. We had dinner with this less active family (we ate venezuelan arepas) and then shared the first missionary lesson about the restoration. We gave them a 7 day challenge right after, we challenge then to have to have a nonmember in their home within a week to meet with us. Literally right after finishing the sentence "Who do you know that needs to hear this message?", their door bell rings. A man with a familiar face walks in. Turns out, it was a man that we had met a few days earlier. His son is an inactive member but he and his wife are not members. He just happens to know this family and just happened to walk in when we asked who do you know that needs this message. Uhh you can assume what our plan is there haha. Super sweet! Hopefully we will be teaching him this week. We picked up a new investigator named Aaron from Chihuahua. He is here with his wife and 2 teenage sons. They were a referral from members and we finally got to teach him. He is super tied to his catholic traditions, but that's ok because we are going to help him anyways. He knows about the church pretty well and doesn't like that we have a lot of "rules". He thinks it's ok to drink once in a while because he is not doing it with the intention of getting drunk. Ugh we are trying to help him understand the principle in Romans 3:3, it does not matter what we think, that does not change the truth or what God thinks! So we'll keep working with him. Tonight we are going to be teaching a lady who owns a Mexican restaurant right by our house! We have eaten there a bunch and it is wayy good food, like real Mexican food. So hopefully we can get her baptized so when she signs up on the dinner calendar, it will mean a trip to the restaurant for free now haha. The fellow shipper of that Mexican family we are trying to work with down in High River finally got in touch with them after almost a month and they have been reading in the Book of Mormon and loving it! They are superrr interested and have a ton of questions, but just don't have a lot of time to meet with us. That situation seems super promising. There is a ton of other things like that happening, which tells me that the Lord is truly preparing the people around us to hear the gospel. He expects us to exercise faith by doing everything we can to persuade them to accept the gospel. Only until we put forth that effort does He bless us with more faith and greater miracles, like baptisms. Elder Brandon is from Fresno.

Well the time is going way to fast to keep up. I really want to finish this strong and give it all I can. Just a few minutes left in the fourth quarter, down by 10. That's the attitude I have. Let's do it!

Thanks for your prayers and support I love you all!

Elder Draper