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