A visit from an Apostle yesterday

Love this picture with Elder Quentin L. Cook! Such an amazing man!
Smiling in short sleeves - happy the Canadian winter has been so warm this year :)
Good ol' Elder Soliz getting ready to hoop it up with Ryan on Pday
On the way to the temple last week

Good morning!

Sheesh what a great week. Maybe one of the happiest most fulfilling weeks of my mission. We just got after it and worked our tails off...it feels so great. Yesterday was pretty cool because we had a special stake conference with Elder Quentin L. Cook. We got some great 2nd row seats and were right there in the action. He spoke about past prophetic counsel we have received, and how they came right before big problems struck, like Hinckley warning us to get out of debt, then a few years later the economic crisis hit. Very uplifting talk, and of course he bore a powerful testimony of Christ and his Atonement. Through "special spiritual experiences", he knows that Christ fulfilled the Atonement. After the conference, he walked off the stage and everybody ran up to him. It took him 20 min. to get to the foyer, shaking every one's hands. It wasn't until he got out to the foyer that I got my chance to shake his hand! I went up to him and he asked me how I was doing up here in Canada and if I was getting fed well haha. Then a member in our ward quickly snapped a photo of us with him! Pretty neat!! It was funny, we walked out with him and the stake president, and both of them got into the stake president's huge Toyota Tundra (super weird seeing an apostle of Jesus Christ sitting shot gun in a huge, raised truck haha), and while they were backing up to leave, the stake president backed right into a pole!!! Haha the look on Elder Cook's face was priceless. GOOD TIMES!

Ok as far as investigators: Heidi, the daughter of Luz and Miguel Baca, should be getting baptized this Sunday. We are going over to eat tacos al pastor with them tomorrow and teach Miguel how to perform the baptism (he receives the priesthood this Sunday). Last night we taught Victor Morante again (he was officially adopted this week by his aunt and uncle!) It was an amazing lesson! Last week we gave him a plan of salvation pamphlet and he read the whole thing and answered all of the questions that it has, also read all of the scripture references. He basically taught us the whole thing! We read with him out of 2 Nephi 31 where God himself says to repent and be baptized in the name of Christ, but Vitor said he doesn't feel he needs to be baptized to show God he wants to follow Christ. He just does not understand the doctrine of baptism well enough, so that is our focus for Wednesday. But, he is very humble and said a great closing prayer asking to know if that if God's will for him. We are super confident that he will be ready to be baptized on the 25th of March, as long as he makes the decision. Estefania, we weren't able to teach her this week, but will be visiting her tonight. I felt like we were kind of attacking the Catholic Church too much last lesson, even though we just pulled out scriptures to show her. We are going to focus on the Restoration and the Book of Mormon, because if she can strengthen her testimony of those things, she will be more willing to change. We want to try to build her faith in Christ rather than destroy it. We are doing absolutely everything we can for these 3 people to get them into the waters of baptism this month. We'll see what happens.

It is super warm here, so I am having a blast being outside walking around and talking to people. The last few months have been spent in the car, and it is hard to feel like a missionary doing that. So this week has been super refreshing for me. There was one baptismal date set in the zone this week, for next Sunday. So we just need 4 more from our zone in order to complete our share of the 100 in the mission. Let's do it!!

I love you all and hope you have a wonderful week.

Love,

Elder Draper

P.S. Travel plans are here!!! I got an end of the mission packet with that included. We gotta figure out what we wanna do the day I get back, because I land at 12:15 pm!!!!