Week 4

I can't believe how quick it has gone by. I fly to mexico in flippin 11 days! so nuts. anyway, this week was cool last pday we went to the temple in the afternoon and man alive the temple is a good place. I had the most profound personal revelation I have ever had in my life. Just go to the temple, it really is the house of the lord. and the Lord answers our prayers you guys. we play volleyball constantly here, I kick butt. just saying. half of our branch left monday for their missions and we had a great last weekend  Oh we got new guys this week too! four sisters, and four elders. they should be good. I was way bummed when the old group left, they are going to be good misionaries and really helped me in the last month of me being here at the ccm. 

      This week we taught two new investigators victor and isela! victor is from houston, doesn't believe in god, christ, or the scriptures, and thinks god is vengeful. he also speaks really quick spanish. MAN! it was rough the first lesson, but we taught another one yesterday and it was way good. His question was "if we are commanded in the ten commandments not to kill, why did the lord command nephi to kill laban?" good question right? flippin hard to answer in english let alone spanish. but it was good, we talked about obedience and modern revelation, if pres monson  came out at general conference and said it was a commandment to only eat coffee and a lot of red meat, the word of wisdom would be partly nullified, and that would be the new commandment. again, hard to explain a little but good nonetheless. 

       We also skyped with a member in monterey mexico, not too far from where we are serving and had about a 30 minute lesson on faith with her, so fun to speak to natives. She bore such a beautiful testimony of her faith in the attonement and Jesus Christ. We heard from the primary general president sunday night, she spoke so eliquently and simply only as the primary president could :) I am learning a lot here, a ton about charity and how god answers prayers. If i pray for charity, god blesses me with opportunites to be charitable, same with patience, virtue, happiness, all things. I love the gospel so much, it is so true, if it wasn't true, us dumb missionaries that couldn't speak the language would have messed it up a long long time ago. the lord is hastening his work. from 1830 to 1947 the church gained a million members. since then we have gained 14 million more. I know that my redeemer lives, he loves us and answers our prayers. I love you all and miss ya, read your scriptures, haz lo justo, and always repent, we are a bunch of sinners ;)

Your amigo and friend,

Elder Draper

Week 3

Hey guys, this week has been good, we got moved up to main campus because a kid on west got ebola which was crazy...just kidding haha jk thats the joke here because it's like we are in quarantine. This week has been eventful, we heard Chad Lewis of the Philadelphia Eagles speak on sunday which was very good. He spoke on letting our light shine to the world, as members it is our duty to do the work of the lord by living his gospel daily! be good examples everyone. Tuesday we heard from Elder Godoy of the 70. He spoke on the attributes of a good missionary, go read alma 24-26 they are super good chapters and apply to how to be a good missionary. He also gave a good unintended message, he is from brazil and really kinda struggled with english in his talk but it was way good and everyone felt the spirit, so it taught all of us learning a language that it's not important to be able to speak perfect, just keep the spirit with us. Good lesson to learn. We moved wednesday morning to main campus, it is pretty different up here but I like it. I saw elder horton this week which was fun. we are going to the temple today i'm stoked, elder moulton worked at the temple for two years and always has some weird fact for us at the end its way cool. Oh cool thing I learned this week that helped build my testimony of jospeh smith and the book of mormon. So in 2nd nephi, nephi quotes Isiah a ton. if you read it however, it is different from the bible because the bible leaves out part of the translation from isiah, the part that was from greek. The book of mormon however has the greek part that is from the original text of isiah. What does this mean for us? It means either the book of mormon is true, or Joseph smith learned complicated greek poetry really quickly. Just something cool. anyways, miss you guys! Keep the faith, stay the course, the Lord is on our side!

-Elder Draper 

Week 2

Hey everyone, hope life is good out in the real world! I can't believe its been two weeks, I only have one year and 50 weeks left can you believe it? ;) this week was super fast and I don't even remember everything that happened totally but there were a few highlights I want to mention. First of all, one of the elders in my district has been ooing and awing over this girl and wanting her to write him so bad! It's super funny we get the mail every day and he is bummed every day. well we got sick of hearing him talk about it so I wrote a letter to him from the girl and when he went to the consolate the other day I put a stamp on it and put it in the box for him. inside it just had a little paper with the word "gotcha!" on it! Oh man I haven't laughed so hard in a year. He was so stinking excited for it and took a picture with it and goes "did i ever tell you how beautiful her handwriting is?" (my handwriting...) ah man it was golden. We had two devotionals this week the one on sunday was super super cool!! we heard from the president of the media department of the churches missionary sector, the guy who is in charge of those videos like "because of him" and the mom one, anyway he talked to us and showed us some crazy cool stats (mormon.org is in 20 different languages, and that because of him video was viewed in like 180 of the 200 ish countries) but the coolest was he showed us the churches new video they are releasing for christmas YOU GUYS IT MADE ME FLIPPIN CRY IT IS AWESOME! I can't wait for you all to see it. Our speaker last night was elder lawrence of the seventy and he spoke on satan's influence and how to overcome it. super cool, favorite quote was something Heber C. Kimball said he used whenever he got a bad thought "Mr. Devil, Shut up." Had the opportunity to go to the temple this morning, guys go to the temple it is a good place to be. Other than that kind of an uneventful week, we got two new investigators Carlina and Paco, pretty good so far, spanish is coming along. I would love to hear from ya'll! I miss ya, the church is so stinking true! Miracles are real, and God knows us so well. Oh also we played soccer yesterday and I'm gettting reeeeaaaalllll good. on another note, I have gained ten pounds.

Talk to you soon!

-Elder Draper

Week 1!

HEY GUYS! 

Wow it's been a week here at the CCM (spanish for mtc) its flown by so fast I can't even believe it. So wednesday was a blur, right after I got dropped off I went to the book store and got all of my study materials, which is a lot, but we went from there over to west campus where we live. Main campus is for every language except spanish and spanish speakers are at west campus by ourselves, which is good because I can speak spanish with everyone. Anyway, we dropped our bags off in our apartment and then went to our first class. We walk in and no kidding he just started right in with spanish, so we were all like "uhhhhhh......HOLA" it was nuts but it was cool to see the learning from the begining to the end of the class. My companion met me there, he is also from lehi, Elder Martin and he is seriously great, the funniest guy in our district. Oh, my host was companions with elder ahquin so that was cool, I saw him first thing when I got there it was fantastic. Our district is good we all are going to Xalapa on the same day and live in the same apartment together. We do a community prayer every night in spanish and sing our spanish hymnos together. anyway wednesday was cool because we met the whole mtc presidency and their wives who are the nicest people. Thursday we started morning classes with our actual teacher, Hermana Boza she is from Lima, Peru and her english is about as good as our spanish. She looks like a 12 year old but is 34....kinda, she was adopted in peru and they lost her records so record wise she is 34 but she is actually more around 25 but she doesn't know for sure, funny story. We also met with our branch presidency. Friday we had class again its pretty much the same thing every day, three class sessions of 3 hours each with lunch and dinner in between. Got my packages friday THANK YOU FAMILY ITS GOOD! Friday we taught our first lesson with our first investigator michael, from argentina. He doesn't speak english, we did ok but our spanish kind of crashed and burned. Saturday we went up to main campus for conference it was so amazing!!!!!! I LOVED IT SO MUCH THE CHURCH IS TRUE YOU GUYS IT REALLY IS. Jorg Klogenbarg and Elder holland were my favorite talks I loved the quote he said by Mother Theresa "What we do is but a drop in the ocean, but if we didn't do it, there would be one less drop in the ocean." If you didn't see the MTC choir from priesthood session go look up the missionary medley it brought me to tears, so good. Sunday session was so good and it was so cool to see TWO talks in spanish, we were so excited every time there was a talk in native languages the whole auditorium full of 2000 missionaries just rumbled with excitement every time. I saw elder matua sunday, we talked for a long time in between sessions it was good talking to him, he is doing great! On a side note I'm glad I'm not speaking mandarin. Sunday night we had a devotional with Vai Sikahema, who played at byu, the packers, and the eagles, and now is a stake president and NBC sports caster. Super funny guy that taught us a ton. I was so tired on monday night I wrote like 3 lines in my journal so I don't really remember what happened other than we taught michael the second lesson and it went so good, the gift of tongues is so so so real. I can pray and testify in spanish no problem now. Yesterday like 20  elders and I went up to salt lake to the mexican consolate and we got our visas pretty much, the lady there told us as long as we don't do something stupid we should be able to leave on the right day.Today we went to the temple for Pday and man I love the temple, so good, and we can go over to brighams landing on pday to get cheese burgers and drinks with caffeine it was solid. Anyway, that was the week. Oh I met a guy yesterday on the train that was going to work out at the gym on 13th and 9th I think thats your gym dad, anyway I didn't baptize him so that was a bummer but it was a good talk nonetheless. Miss you all, Love you all, heres my spanish testimony

Yo se que jesucristo es el salvador y jose smith fue una profeta y yo se que el expiacion es verdadero y el libro de mormon es verdadero. Thomas S Monson es el profeta verdadero y la iglesia de jesucristo as mas verdad que todos iglesias en el mundo. Yo amo este evangelio. En el nombre de jesucristo amen.

-Elder Draper

Called to Serve!!!!!

Just dropped Elder Zacharee Thomas Draper at the MTC.   It was a great day together.  We spent last night together as a family after Zach was set apart.  It was sad and sweet and funny and exciting and scary and perfect.   We had lunch together  - All you can eat Sushi! - and then to the temple for some pictures and then dropped him off at the curb.  Tait didn't cry until we were in the car driving away.  so proud and so excited.

See you in Two!!