The Golden calf, Guadalupe, Drama, And Cambios

Querido familia y amigos,

I hope all of you had a fantastic week, and for the missionaries in the phillipenes, I hope you are drying up from the typhoon! This week was kind of nuts but it was good nonetheless. Monday after our pday we went to  our neighbor Daisy and juan carlos´s house. juan carlos went to college in the us so his english is almost perfect. I taught a lesson in english while my comp sat there and talked to the wife it was weird in my brain to hear both, understand both and try to not mix the words up! anyway, it was honestly way harder to teach in english than it was in spanish. I know why I am speaking spanish! anyway, I taught him about the first visión, and the bom and then did a question answer in english, it was cool. I also gave him one of the only english books I have, our heritage to help him increase his vocab, and also teach about the church LOL sneaky right?

 My district leader and I did divisions on tuesday and taught a family home evening to gina and miguel and man the spirit was way strong! we have been strugling on getting gina to get married asap so they can get baptized but we taught on the temple and eternal families and gina just was crying and was like yeah, now I know it is true and it is important. Lets get married this week. FLIP YEAH RIGHT?! then to put the icing on the cake, her Little boy emelio goes "mama, quiero tu y papa ser casada aquí" or " I want you and dad to get married here" and points at our pic of the temple! THANK YOU ADORABLE MEXICAN NIÑO. Gina Just starts crying and me and my companion are just tim tebowing in the middle of the room like yes yes that is right this church is TRUE! YES. haha it was good man. BUT we have to wait one more week because of Guadalupe.

This week was the week of Guadalupe, Guadalupe is the virgin that the catholics worship here and it was like Guadalupe day on the 12th. Basically Guadalupe is their Golden calf! everyone put lights and sirens on their cars, the busses, the taxis, shoots Fireworks at all hours of the night, and everything is closed, including the courthouse where gina and miguel can get married. The streets were filled with people chanting prayers, lighting torches and Fireworks, and just making noise, we didnt even get close to the central park in perote. We mostly met with less actives all day.

Church was good, one of our investigators, joseline came and so did her sister and brother in law who are members in perote, we drove in their sketchy car and that was....well sketchy. but we lived! it was cool, she was excited to go and liked it more than her member family did I think!

Now to the changes and drama from the week. My companion Elder abreu is 26 years old, and is one of the hardest people to work with I have ever met in my life. I really am struggling with him, but I have been loving him because he is my comp right? well yesterday night after church we went to lunch, and after lunch we went back to our district leader and his comps house so abreu could use the bathroom. Well the district leaders companion and my companion were like hey we are stressed, let us stay in perote tonight and I am like no that is dumb I want to go to my house and eat my peanut butter and sleep in my bed. So they convince the district leader it is a good idea so they leave and I am like no that is dumb man. anyway, our president calls last night to tell the district leader he was going to be with his comp for another 6 weeks, be patient, and love him! then he asks to talk to Elder maimo, his companion and he is like uh....he is asleep. so president calls my companion in perote, finds out that they did divisions, calls my district leader and goes "Elder, why did you lie to me? we will talk tomorrow." and hangs up. I was like DANG. glad I am an ignorant White guy. so presidente called this morning and was like uh youre retarded, dont do that again. and then tells me "Hey Elder draper, I am sorry that you got put in the middle of the worst of the worst" I was like, once again, DANG haha it was crazy. so we went to get our changes from our zone leaders and my comp is a junior companion, the district leader is a junior companion, I have a new trainer, and they probably are closing my área. DRAMA RIGHT. I know I was put in perote for a reason,and I have learned a ton, I am ready now to go to work for real though!

Funny story of the week, I eat a ton of eggs because they are way cheap and good. I eat like 5 a day. well this week I told an hermana that, and she makes us the spicest food I have eaten since I got here, eggs and beans with tortillas that seriously like burned my tounge. WELL. Lets just say I maybe got super sick the same night. Super Super Super, sick.

Anyway, I hope all of you have had a wonderful week! Don´t forget to eat your vegetables, make cookies for santa, and cook your eggs thoroughly.

Love you all,
-Elder Draper

LASTLY! Go read luke chapter two with your family, it is the story of christs birth and is way good.

Xalapa, Exchanges, and Ninis

Querido Familia and Amigos! 

Merry christmas season! The snow is coming here in perote haha just kidding its just cold. Wow congrats to the peeps who got their calls in the last little bit! so sick! We are doing pretty good here, tuesday I was in xalapa with elder wright and the rest of my district, we had to go on a three hour bus ride, but once we got there we hung out in the office all day, and got to eat real pizza! little sleazers! it was great, we went to the visa office and put down our finger prints and signed some papers and that was it, so we were in the office from like 11 to 7. We got to go to walmart, that was pretty cool! It was fun to see all the guys from the mtc. We take this super nice bus service when we travel to the office or for changes it is called ado, and they show movies hahaha it is like a game here to see who can see the best movie, we watched this awful british movie translated into spanish.

Fun random fact: here we use this word ¨planch¨ it means literally to iron but it is also when you use the scriptures or gospel to put someone in their place. It is also known as bible bashing.

Tuesday night elder wright and I stayed in altotonga on our district leaders couch and that was good. their house is kinda gross, super mc moldy. Anyway,wednesday me and my district leader did splits in perote and taught some really good lessons and got two new investigators. we are doing this thing as missionaries that I am sure some of you have heard about, it is called HE is the gift. it is this video on mormon.org and we have these little cards that we push, we give out ten a day and it is working really well, last week we recieved maybe 8 or 9 reffrences and this week with the cards we have recieved 35 since tuesday. crazy stuff.

 Wednesday I talked with my ZL because I have been kind of strugling with my comp, he is dead because he has like a month and a half left in the mish and has flight plans home, so he is super trunky and doesnt want to do anything. Elder Lopez talked to him and it has been a ton better since then. 

BAD NEWS. No house of prayer here in perote for a while. Our stake pres told us there is no money, so yesterday in testimony meeting my comp and I told the ward the reason that people couldnt get baptized is because they dont pay there tithing and to repent and pay today. PLANCH. We had gina and miguel come to church yesterday which is great, I think they will get married friday cross your fingers! if they do we will baptize them on sunday. we have another guy named alejandro that is an ancient investigator who couldnt get baptized about 3 months ago for some repentance stuff and we talked with him thursday and he will probably get baptized next week as well. we are stoked. 

Thursday we talked with one of our new investigators named hasan. he is dating a member here and so we started teaching him, aparently the old missionaries didnt fall him well but he liked me and elder barth. thursday me and elder abreu went over and hasan was quiet and abreu was like hey whats up man? hasan goes ¨tengo pena con tigo¨ basically you embarass me. THIS KID IS A DORK. he is fifteen and chubby and feo and the member is a cute sister like she is not an ugly person, but her whole family calls him a nini. ni trabajo ni estudio ni hace nada. or ¨he doesnt work or study or do anything¨ haha tomorrow me and elder barth are going over to teach him again to try to gain his trust a little more.
Funny story of the week, dont use google translate for homework. Its aweful, all these kids here have english classes and they ask me to check their homework and when I read it its just super scattered and makes no sense. they just type everything into google translate and man it is for real bad. dont cheat kids.  

Last thing before I head off, we got the stats back last week and my mission is the second highest baptizing in mexico, we baptized 233 last month! The lord is hastening the work, and we live in a time with so many blessings, I dont know if you saw but the main header for youtube yesterday was owned by the church it was the he is the gift video, and the advertisements you have to watch 5 seconds of before the video you want to watch? he is the gift. It was estimated that 78 percent of the world saw at least a glimpse of the video yesterday. The church also bought out most of the electronic banners (the five biggest) in times square that showed on repeat what? HE IS THE GIFT. It was supposedly seen in 160 of the 190 countries in the world. The church is true guys, go watch he is the gift. It makes me cry almost every time. OH and last thing for real, go search ¨gordon b hinkley final testimony¨ I watched it yesterday and it made me sob like a six year old girl. So darn good. anyway, love you guys, stay safe, don´t eat yellow snow.

We are staying in teziutlan tonight again and in the morning my whole generation is going to xalapa to work on our visas. i guess we could get deported if it doesnt happen tomorrow so that is important. Oh also, today there was this giant freaking protest in altotonga for fresh water so we were worried about getting to xalapa. basically imagine that you had to get from lehi to provo, but three hundred people were sitting on I15 and that is pretty much our situation but it is going to work out, because we are leaving in the morning now.
Enjoy your week, I will talk to you soon!!

-Elder Draper

Thanksgiving, Devotionals, and Dragons

Querido familia y amigos,


Hola! Wow today is my two month mark can you believe it? I am loving it here, we are struggling in perote still because none of our investigators can come to church but I talked to the stake president last night and it is looking like we are for sure going to have it for the 14th of december can you say merry christmas?? We are so excited because our investigators will finally be able to progress. We had kind of a crazy week, tuesday we were in teziutlan and I ate chicken feet with this giant mexican guy who hates gringos, it was pretty funny. he just made rude jokes about me and the other missionary from the states! fun fact, right now I can hear imagine dragons down the street, people here love them and blast their music alllll the time. 

How was everyone´s thanksgiving?! I hope all of you ate your hearts out and remembered the things you were thankful for. Our thanksgiving was good, It was my comps bday so I bought some little cakes and that was what we had in the morning after studying, he got some candy from this lady that loves the missionaries and also owns a candy shop down the road from our house. It was fun to see elder abreu blow out our "candle" that was really just a piece of paper rolled up and on fire that we stuck in the cake.
That is pretty much everything for the week! If you guys have the chance go check out mormon.org and watch the new christmas video it is super cool. I also read a great quote from president monson this week "despite what comes, this great cause will go forward." it is true man! nothing can stop the work of the lord. I love you guys, hope all is well. 

For lunch we had this mystery meat soup and crickets! crickets taste like pretty bad peanuts with legs. and for dinner instead of going out for tacos, I got way sick with the double headed dragon. If you don´t know what that is, lets just say I was very very sick!! hahaha it was goood though, I was fine the next day, I think it was either the mystery meat or the crickets. I think I have lost weight since I got here, we walk about 10 or 12 miles a day because our area is really spread out. I have giiiiaaaannnntttt calouses on my feet.

Last night was our christmas devotional and it was way good! we sang like 7 songs, watched some videos and heard some great messages. We had a ton of people there too so that was great, none of our investigators could go because it was too expensive for them to travel but a lot of misisonaries had people there and we recieved a ton of refrences as a zone. The devotional got over way later than we expected so we had to spend the night in teziutlan, and my comp comited us to move some people so we moved peeps from 10 until like 11 last night and that sucked. but it was all good!

Crazy Pedro, Botched Weddings, Satan, And Baptism #1.

Hola Amigos!

Wow I am starting my second month this week and holy cow it has been going by so fast. This week was kind of crazy and not so good but it had its high points. Pdays here are good, we play soccer in the mornings, and today I taught a bunch of mexicans how to play basketball. it was the funniest thing. We had fried platanos this week that were way good! they take the greenest bananas they can find, cut them into like one inch slices, fry them, squish em into a  little pattie and but salt on them. it kinda tastes like fried mashed potatoes and is way good, my comp loves them like cocaine.

The laundry we gave to the member last week is still in altotonga so I am hoping we can get them tomorrow at our district meeting. we will not do that again. we have to have members do it here or wash it ourselves bc the president doesnt want any random person who washes at the lavandarias to be cleaning our g´s. so I will probably wash them in the sink tonight. We ate mole for the first time this week and man mole sucks. it is this spicy chocolate sauce that they dump over tortillas and fried cheese with some chicken it is pretty aweful but not too bad. I got dared to eat a habenero today and I did, and that was stupid, is sucked so bad. I was crying for an hour and it literally burned my tounge to the point that it hurts. I wont do that agian! we eat a ton of bread here and tortillas bc it is filing, its hard to taste bad, and it is hard to get sick from bread. OH and there was a parade here this week on tuesday, we watched from our balcony and it was kinda fun to see all the people.

This week was weird, we go to teziutlan, about 2 hours away on the bus to practice songs for a christmas devotional on the 7th and it is way funny. latins cannot sing! me and this elder from penslyvania are the only ones that can hold a tune out of like 25 of us so we have 3 solos in the devotional out of the 6 ish songs. I see some guys from the mtc at the practice and that is pretty fun.

Any way, this week we were suppoesed to have our investigators miguel and gina get married on friday morning so they could get baptized sunday but no dice because they didnt show up to get married! people here have no sense of being on time to something or even showing up. so they didnt get baptized. Our other investigators joel and lola and their family moved without telling us so we lost them wednesday and our other promising investigator juana dropped of the map today because of the following. We got her as a referal from this family gabby and ernesto, we go over there two or three times a week to visit with them and teach ernesto who isnt a member. well we couldnt find juana for nada this week and saturday we were over at gabby´s house and guess who was there? juana! it was great, we taught a lesson, and her little daughter sat there and talked to both of us during the lesson a ton. well today we talked to gabby and jauna told her that she didnt want to meet with us anymore because we had "knocked on her door at 1 in the morning and her daughter was scared of the guerro or white boy" which I will testify is a bunch of poopoo. so we arent teaching her anymore! Lastly, our investigator brandon doesn´t ever have time to be taught because he is more often than not, high as a kite on pot. so thats pretty cool

Saturday however, we talked to miguel and gina and set a new marriage date and they will be baptized next week. We called this number that was painted on the side of joel and lolas old house and asked their land lord about them and he told us where their new neighborhood was so we knocked doors and asked people in the calle about them for about an hour and found them! which is great. Then saturday night the elders in the area next to ours called and said that I would be baptizing a guy named victor the next day! Victor had been coming to church for 10 years but was never baptized so he met with the missionaries for a week, and I baptized him yesterday. Super cool! I am really loving it here and the work is going pretty well.

We are having right now a big problem with activity and getting investigators to church because the closest chapel is 45 minutes away and kinda expensive to take the bus that far for the people. so we have been working with the mission president a lot and the stake president and bishop to get a house of prayer here in altotonga where we can hold a sacrament meeting and teach sunday school. The stake president is fighting us on it because he thinks the members should sacrifice instead of the church paying to rent a building. SO, we are struggling with that a little, but I talked with president last night and he said if we cant have the stake pres help us out, he is gonna pull us out of perote. We´ll see what happens, and work hard in the meantime!

Now to address satan, and crazy pedro. Crazy pedro is this guy who walks around perote just kicking a corn cob. he is homeless, and yells grossero things all the time and man, it is pretty fun to see where we will find crazy pedro next. we see him every other day ish all in different places in perote, just kicking away at his corn cob.

 Next, there is this guy in our ward, who wont get baptized, meets with the jehovahs witnesses, and comes every week for one reason. at every single baptism, he sits front row and asks the person right before it starts "ya sure you want to do this? it is a big comitment...are you sure youre ready?" like 7 people have not gotten baptized because of this guy! he literally reminds me of satan. yesterday he did it to victor and the district leader grabs him, walks outside, and him and his comp basically told him in a cristian manner to shove it and quit being a korihor. I hate that guy.

Lastly, here is some scriptures I liked this week, go read Mosiah 2:22-25, Isaiah 35:3. they are super good! I came across a new personal mission scripture. It is in 1st corinthians 9:20 and it says "and unto the jew, I became as a jew, that I might gain the Jews" but I change the word jew to mexican as follows "and unto the mexicans, I became as a mexican, that I might gain the Mexicans" I am trying to dive in an be a mexican, but it is hard for a gringo! Everyone here just stares at me and looks like they have never seen a polar bear before! haha good times here in perote.

Anyway, that is it for this week, next week I will have 2 whole months in the mission! Love you guys, keep being gr8 people and God really will bless you. 

Your favorite Mexican,

-Elder Draper

FINALLY in Mexico!

WOW. Mexico is kinda crazy. This week has been super long, but so good! 

We left the MTC last week and that was great. We flew through mexico city and wow glad I´m not there, a city of 50 million it was nuts. It was kind of hard in mexico city. We changed airlines and had to print new boarding passes from the lady in broken Spanish but we made it! 

We spent the first two days at the secretaries house and in the mission office training. our mission pres and his wife are the best, she made like cafe rio for us the night before we left to our areas, way good. I got my comp! His name is Elder Abreu and is from the Dominican Republic, His Spanish is impossible to understand, he speaks sooooo fast. way faster than the Mexicans and he doesn't say his s´s which makes it even harder but I am learning really fast. 

I am in Perote, the coldest area in the mission. it is kinda like Utah in October all of the time. It is either too hot for a sweater or too cold for anything but a sweater and a coat, never just nice. and it changes four times a day between hot and cold. I like it a lot, the Mexicans hate the cold but it is like 45 degrees, so even at the coldest when it is misty, it isn't too bad. Oh here it doesn't rain, it just gets so foggy that you are just damp, its called Chipi chipi! 

Anyway, Cool Story! Our first day here we dropped my bags off at the apartment and went out to work, and literally 100 yards or less from our house this family of four stops us, says they have a testimony of the Book of Mormon, they just moved but were taking discussions, and want to be baptized, they are getting married this week and baptized on Sunday, also we do baptisms on Sunday here, kinda different. 

Perote is super poor and the people are willing to be taught but our biggest problem is the word of wisdom and law of chastity. We also have a hard time getting people to church because we meet in Altotonga, a 40 minute bus ride that costs about 35 pesos each way which is a lot for these people (about 3 dollars.) but we are going to have a casa de oracione where people will take the sacrament and learn. we start that in the second week in December, I also start teaching English classes then as well, that should be interesting. right now we are teaching five new investigators and a bunch of less actives, the biggest problem is less actives here. Our ward has 800 people in it but about 45 come to church. We are focusing our Missionary efforts on getting people to the temple and enduring to the end rather than just baptisms.  Speaking of baptisms, Elder Abreu, my comp has baptized 72 people here. He leaves in February! Crazy. 

The work is good here. Another fun thing the Mexicanos cannot drive, they drive like mercielagos fuerra de infierno here. like 70 miles an hour, pass on a one way, no stop lights, we are lucky to be alive after a week. 

Church was good, I had to talk which was fun, the bishop just came up and was like hey can you give a 6 ish minute talk "Sure Bishop con gusto seria un plesur! haha I talked on faith, bread and butter of missionaries. anyway, sorry this was kind of all over, we don´t have a ton of time! 

Miss you guys, love you all, stay safe, read the book of mormon! Hasta la vista!

(edited by Jason Draper - something about the computers all being in Spanish(jajaja))

Last Week in America

Hello everyone! This week has gone by so quick and has been pretty similar to every other week here at the MTC. It's pretty repetitive here but its good, we learn so much every day. My spanish is getting a lot better, we teach about 20-30 minute lessons three times a day to random "investigators" from all over. We did have halloween here last week and that was fun, I said bye to elder horton and elder ashman the other day because they got their visas and are headed off to the brazil MTC. We got flight plans saturday! We leave monday morning at 6:00 and fly from here to dallas, to Mexico City, to veracruz. We are so excited to get out of here, as great as the MTC is, it's time to get out of here and teach the people in Mexico that are waiting for us! Tonight is our last lesson with Hermano Argyle, we are having a tie trade with him and listening to mission stories, I'm way excited. He is an awesome guy and cares about our district a lot, we will miss him for sure. My main man Elder Schaeffer left this week and got to Peru before I even left the MTC, what a spaz. I saw Sorella Puzey a ton this week and took a picture with her this morning as she was heading up to the consulate for visa stuff. 

My companion and I went to the temple and did initiatories this morning, we had the opportunity to meet the temple president, he was such a nice guy and talked with us for a few minutes. If you have a temple near you which is every person who reads this with the exception of a few missionaries, GO TO THE TEMPLE. It is the best way for any person to receive the personal revelation they need in their life, if they know they need it or not. 

Elder Horton and I talked for about 15 minutes last week about Portuguese and Spanish, and they are almost the exact same. He taught me basically how to bear my testimony in portuguese and that was neat. The coolest part of the MTC for me has been hearing the different languages. In the last six weeks I have heard testimonies in the following languages. Russian, Ukranian, Albanian, Bulgarian, Hungarian, Spanish, Finnish, Portuguese, Swedish, French, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, Tahitian, Samoan, Dutch, Tagalog, Cebuano, and German. Talk about the gift of tongues. This place is amazing, missionary work is crazy cool, and to quote President Monson "No force in the world can halt the Work of the Lord". 

If you want to read a cool section of scripture go read in Joseph Smith History...I think it's verse 31....not for sure, but it is the angel Moroni appearing to Joseph Smith. He quotes scriptures from Malachi, Isiah, and others. Go read those because they are prophesyings of the prophet Joseph Smith bringing in the restoration of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Lastly, I want to leave you all my testimony that I know that this Gospel is the only true gospel on the earth. I know that you can learn more from studying the Book of Mormon than by studying any other thing. I know that Christ came, He died, and on the third day, He rose again. I know that we will live with our Father in Heaven again. I know that families are eternal. I know that through the atonement, all weak things can be made strengths. I know that Joseph Smith truly saw God the Father and Jesus Christ. I know that Thomas S. Monson is the prophet and Jesus Christ is the leader of this church. I love you guys, I miss you.

Next time you here from me I'll be a regular Mexicano!

Hasta luego!

-Elder Draper

                                                        Elder Martin and Elder Draper

                                                                  MTC District