Elder Draper has a temper! Who knew?!

Hey mom!

 I actually didn't get any more snow! Thank Goodness. No I really shouldn't complain, whenever I'm cold I just think of good ol' Eh'lder Baldridge in -35 degree weather! That's ridiculous! I like how he said that the work stops at -40... hahaha like -35 isn't already cold enough! I got my package like last Tuesday! It came way super quick! Thank you!!! It’s funny though because as of up until now, I still have been using the Japanese soap so I just have this huge pile of dove bars just waiting to be used. Also thank you so much for the floss! It was badly needed. I am healthy! I wouldn't say I'm warm but relative to Jared... I’m toasty! 

 My companion and I are still getting along for the most part. We are having more fun but we still have some moments.  It’s not just missionaries that don't have ovens. They just don't have ovens in Japan! It’s crazy! Our mission has a portal on the internet, actually some extremely talented missionaries from a couple of a years ago made it, and it has recipes on how to make cake and mac and cheese and other oven kind of stuff in a rice cooker. I haven't tried any of it yet but it looks interesting! Also Thank you so much for the Captain Crunch!!! I love it. I am eating it very slowly though. Not going to lie though, after eating Japanese food for so long, the mac and cheese wasn't very good. I guess I have been so accustomed to eating pretty healthy food that takes at least like 45 minutes to prepare every meal!

 So later in the night of last Pday, we went and visited a guy I met on the train. He gave me his meishi. His calling card. Those are way big here, it is a huge respect to both give and receive one. But he didn't tell us to come over or anything, but we decided to do it anyways! His name is Ishikawa San. He has like the biggest house I have ever seen in Japan. We knocked on his door and he didn't answer. Then we knocked again and he opened up a sliding door and was all like "Nan desho ka!?" What do you want? And then I said "Ohisashiburi!" "Long time no see!" and he said "densha de atta hito desu ka?" "Are you the person I met on the train?"  he let us right in! He showed us all over his house! He is a potter! He has some AMAZING pieces of art he has made! He didn't want to talk about Christianity really but he was totally willing to be our friend! He ended up giving us some bowls he made however many years ago. He told us to come over anytime! He is way nice and he has like the nicest house I have ever seen so far here.  Pictures later. I eat Captain crunch in his bowl.

Our microwave is awful.  And yes I have a washer and a dryer! Everyone has a washer but it s very rare to have a drier! There are dry cleaners EVERYWHERE! I haven’t used it yet though. I really really need to though. My bike gets them dirty. Almost all of my pants have ripped from my bike. But I just have to remember to tuck them into my socks and they are fine. But I can only wear suits right now. I just sewed one pair of pants the other day. I love sewing!

While it is still fresh in mind, we had a yoshioka san randomly call us this week and told us that he wanted to learn about Christianity and our church! We were like "Sweet! We will see you tomorrow!" So we met him at the church and he is awesome! We taught him all about the restoration and God and Christ. Elder Ishikawa showed him like a 20 minute video, I thought was too long but oh well, and then asked him to be baptized! He said eventually he wants to but as of right now, he isn't ready. So that was a miracle!!!

Also before I forget, I can't exactly remember if I have already told you or not, but an Eikaiwa student who always is way rude. Handed his homework in to Elder Christensen and he accidently dropped it. He flipped out and was going off about how all Americans are prideful and have no respect for anyone. Elder Christensen asked him to leave like 5 times. But he didn't leave; he just kept screaming and him. Everybody was WAY uncomfortable. I stood next to Elder Christensen and he asked him one more time to leave and never come back unless he will follow the rules that he agreed to. He kept yelling. I was getting ticked. I don't even know what I would have done if it was me from the beginning. But I stepped up probably 6 inches away from his face and said "Get out now." and my face was flaming red. I kind of did a chest bump with him and I think he understood that I was probably going to hit him. Because I really wanted to. He said " ok." and he left. It was WAY INTENSE. (anyone who knows how mild manner Haydon is should be laughing right now! I did! But then again I have seen him get mad so I guess I can picture this)

That is crazy about my room! (It’s covered in wedding stuff so it’s a good thing he isn’t here)  I have now had about 5 dreams of me waking up and I am home already. How long have I been out??? It is flying SO FAST!!! I think you or dad said I was approaching my 6th month. There is no way that is right. It's so weird.

Today we went to Sweets Paradise in iu basho. It was ridiculous. It was like 16 dollars for an all you can eat pasta and cake. That's it. To get soda or pizza it was like 10 more dollars. Japan is crazy about their price. 

Yesterday we ate at the Toma family! He made rice and curry and salad and lots of ice-cream and cake. It was his son’s birthday, It was Sister tanimoto's birthday a while back, and it is Elder Ishikawas birthday tomorrow! He and his daughter is fluent in English. She got her mission call to the Temple Square mission! Her name is Elisa Toma! Go see her! She has glasses and is Japanese haha. I don’t know when she leaves though. She is still here as of now!

Also last night while going to the Toma family we ran into some other people also going to their house. I sat next to Brother ishikawa, not my companion, he is going to the Fukuoka mission later. He was really impressed with how well I can speak Japanese! He was way shocked when I said I was a transfer 3 missionary. We had like a completely normal teenager conversation! It rocked! Then coming home, we ran into 4 Americans on the train! They are all in the air force! One knows Mountain Home very well and he is LDS and he has a son in New Zealand on his mission! I love finding Americans! It is seriously so fun. 

Women's conference sounds like a blast! That should be way fun. 

This week I have been learning a lot about virtue. In order to have the characteristics that a missionary needs, we must strive to live on a higher plan of thought. A higher standard of living. In 1 Colossians 3 it says something like those who follow Christ have that responsibility to rise with him. To stand above the world. To be a standard to which those who are lost can find the light of Christ. We have a huge and awesome responsibility as members of Christ's true church to reach out to all of those who are lost and know not where to find the gospel of Jesus Christ, the answer to all of their problems, because they know not where to find it. Here in Japan it is about on average after 8 contacts a random person has with a missionary before they take lessons. We try really hard to get referrals from members, we ask "who know's you are a member around here?" That way we can skip a few of those contacts because they have already met LDS people several times! Then from that we have a higher chance of finding those who are prepared. This last week we had a worldwide broadcast with all of the missionaries. Our commission, as given by Christ himself, is to teach repentance and baptize them in the  name of the Father, The Son, and The Holy Ghost. As we do ALL we can to find those who are prepared, we will be able to be an effective tool in the hands of our loving Father in Heaven who so desperately desire that ALL of his children make it back to Him safely. Please prayerfully select people to introduce to the missionaries. That will help the work go along much quicker. 

I love you all so so so much!!!

Elder Draper

fun fact: President Wada created universal studios Japan!

P.S. I am getting Elder Lunt from Arizona as my new companion! I get him this next Thursday! 2 transfers is pretty much the max with one person. But It alsoisn’t really rare or common to switch after one transfer.

It snowed!

Hello there mother!

I'm glad that Mountain Home got a good snow season! Tokyo has also had a really good snow season! It snowed yesterday!!!! We woke up at 6:20 to go running but we looked outside and there was about 4 inches of snow!!! We got dressed and then when outside to play haha. Elder Ishikawa likes snowballs. He threw one right at my face and it almost hit my camera. It hurt. But honestly I don’t think that he sees snow that often so I figured he just didn't know how much it actually hurt. And then we built a snowman!!! In Japanese snowman is ( yuki damura). Then we went inside and eventually it started raining. Now everything is just slush. Then after lunch we went up to Ome. I love Ome! The trains were way way backed up but we eventually got there. I talked to a guy named Kizaki. He was really happy and just an awesome guy. He had recently traveled to Thailand. He showed me pictures of tons of really cool cars he saw in Thailand. He gave me a bottle of water and some roasted peanuts that he got on his way home from Thailand. He was way nice!!! 

In Ome, everybody was out shoveling snow. Like everybody! Ome reminds me a lot of McCall. Except I think it is even smaller. Or at least it feels like it. I wish I could live in Ome. We got to talk to a ton of people just but talking about the snow so that was really fun. 

Me and Elder Ishikawa have been doing a lot better. The last couple days I haven't gotten mad at him really at all. This week we found a new potential investigator in Akishima. He liked tennis, there is a huge, still not as big as the racket club, tennis club, and I talked to him a while about that. We asked if he would meet with us again and he was like "Yes!"  And then I had splits with Elder Allred. We found another guy in Akishima. He asked why our church was different than other Christian churches. We were like "Great question! Do you have a little time now?"  So we taught him all about the restoration. We also found a guy from Osaka in Haijima. Man Osaka people are SO NICE. Like they all have a super contagious laugh and a huge smile and love to make jokes. Instead of saying Wakaranai (I don’t know) they say Wakarahen (I don’t know). 

Elder Allred loves SpongeBob as much as me! We got lost like 4 times just because we were way enveloped in talking about SpongeBob. We finally realized we were on the side of a freeway where there was NOBODY  we were like " How they heck did we get here?" it was really fun.

 I forgot to tell you all that my p day was on Tuesday not Monday. So I disguised a message in my  post and you got it! In the Japanese post  I wasn’t so specific about when I was going to the temple, but in the English I wanted to make sure you all knew. 

I watched Allies video on face book!  The answering questions about Nate one. It was way funny. I’m so excited for them!

I'm so excited for Allie and Aunt Tammy on going to the temple. I am writing while on the train coming back from the temple. This morning was crazy on the train! There were probably like 200+ people on each car.  I took a video. I also found out it's illegal to take videos of people. Oh well haha. 

This week was so great! I have been getting along so much better with Ishikawa Choro! I can't believe how fast time is just absolutely flying by. I know it's still only my 2nd transfer, but I have been waiting for ever to leave for my mission several months before that, and before that I waited years to put my papers in! And at the time I remember looking forward and thinking to myself that it would never come, and now I am in it and the time is going by even faster!

We had dinner with the Igari family. They were the first family I ever had a meal with. They have two little boys and they are so stinkin cute. The cutest Japanese kids you will ever see. They love to shake the missionaries’ hands at church. The one is about 3 and the other is 1. The 3 year old is learning English and is pretty good already. They each have an old missionary tag that has their names on it they are adorable. Missionaries aren't really supposed to play with kids because of legal difficulties. So I really miss Tripp and Krue right about now. I have talked to a lot of people this week! We have gotten about 4 or 5 new
potential investigators. Once we meet them again they will turn into investigators. As of right now we have Hiroshi San and Okamura san, and Ito san, and we have been visiting a less active family in Fussa
every Sunday. That family is the Uchiyama family. Their son is really having a hard time. He thinks church is boring. He told us that he doesn’t really have any friends there. I told him how I was like the
only one at church for a while, when Tanner went to singles ward, and how yes friends are important, but not having Tanner there really made me focus more. Through that I learned a lot more and church became that much more important to me. The next week we looked back and he and his dad were sitting in the back!!! Unfortunately I think he was forced and left right after sacrament. But little by little it will get
better!

 I am getting to know the area very well! The members are awesome.  I have some people I really like! Our bishop is about 30 and is just awesome and cares about everybody and loves to have fun
with the gospel. He understands that the gospel makes us happy, not just serious. Also in the Tachikawa bike parking lot, there is this old guy who always re organizes the bikes as a volunteer, he is always
way nice. I look forward to talking to him.

We had free Ramen again at Sister Kyo's ramen shop. Her 5 or 6 year old daughter, Mai-chan, liked my picture of the yuki damura I made. She usually only likes Sister Devey so I was surprised when she liked me! Haha. 

I have been re learning Kanji lately. When Elder Allred was on splits with me he helped me rekindle my love for Japanese and Kanji. Kanji are so so so awesome. For example... 船 means boat. ハmeans 8 and 口means mouth. There were 8 mouths on Noah's arc. The first radical just means boat or ship. And then 禁means forbidden. 木means tree and 示means to show. In the garden of Eden there were two trees shown, the tree of life and the tree of knowledge of good and evil, they were shown both of them and forbidden to eat from the one and then the other. Then 魔 refers to evil. Again 木means tree. 鬼means ghost or demon. The outside thing that looks like and upside down L, I can't write it, means like some type of enclosure. There were two trees and a demon inside of the garden of Eden, an enclosed place. So basically I found out haw awesome kanji really is. 

I recently was reminded about the purpose of life. We all came here to be tried and tested to be found worth to become like God when we return home to His presence. Everything we do on this earth is supposed to lead us back to God. That should be our purpose for everything we do. Often when we meet people here they don't understand why believing in God or Jesus Christ will help them. Not even often, never is a better word. But I was thinking about how the gospel isn’t just some really cool thing placed in the world, the world is just a cool thing inside the gospel! The gospel is everything!!! God’s purpose is to bring to pass our eternal life and immortality. We can taste a little bit of that joy when we help ourselves and others progress towards that goal. We are on this Earth for a WHOLE different and infinitely bigger plan. But coming here was vital to achieving the entirety of that plan. Everything we do, church, the Book of Mormon, Prophets etc., is to help us along that path and to point us in the direction of Eternal life. In 1 Collations chapter 3 it says something along the lines of how we need to raise our standards and stand with Christ. We are called to live a higher standard, a higher way of living, a Celestial law. If we can abide a Celestial law, we will receive Celestial Glory in the world to come. I love you all so much!!!!

Elder Draper  

18 weeks down!

Hello there inhabitants of America!!!

This week has been better! We had a good talk in weekly planning. Things are a lot better. However, we still get one each other’s nerves every once in a while.He said that I study too much and he can never talk to me because I am always studying. I tried studying less, like in between lunch and whenever, to see if he would talk to me more. He didn’t. SOOO I studied some more! Haha I just want to work all I can so that I can receive maximum results. If he wants to talk he can talk to me, and if I want to talk to him I will talk to him. Everything is all good. But don’t worry I am having tons of fun! It’s just I am devoting my time to God and I want to be able to look back and be proud of the time I gave to God. I’m just learning how to have fun and be exactly obedient at the same time! 

You already know who my president is???! No one here knows yet! Who is he??? I love President Wada so so much. I’m going to miss him a lot. But I also hope that the new president will be good for me. I’m sure he will! 

Being a teacher sounds so hard!!! Those little kids I’m sure are crazy. How did the whole Harry potter thing work out? (talking about Allie’s new classroom)

Hahahaha I’m glad that Tripp is still protective about what people say to him when they aren't me!!! haha 

(Tripp informed Allie that they were Haydon’s nephew’s, not hers. Also when she asked Krue who his favorite person was he yelled, “Haydie!” So they haven’t forgotten him)

I had a dream last night that I was already home. I have had 2 actually. But in my dream I was just looking back on my mission and being so stunned as to how fast it flew by. I keep reminding myself that MISSIONS END. Which means if there is anything I’m struggling with, I don’t need to worry! God promises us a promise land and if we will endure the trials we have in front of us and rely on Christ to "make the sea our path" (2Nephi 10:20) and we will be happy. Also it’s good because it keeps in perspective how easy it is to let it go by without doing much with it! Every day counts and I need to make it the best I can! Forever is made up of now’s and I want to fill my Mission and Forever with awesome Now’s!!!

 Yes I do Eikaiwa every week! (English Class) I am currently teaching the advanced class where there are 2 people (one in particular) who like to talk the ENTIRE TIME. It is way way hard to deal with. One student actually told me he was moving classes because he never got a chance to talk. But I still love Eikaiwa!

There is absolutely no way of telling if I will be here or transfer the next transfer call. I kind of hope I transfer! I am kind of tired of biking 30 minutes to visit the closest person to us. Transfers are every 6 weeks. I am almost in my 3rd transfer!!!! There are 16 Transfers in a mission. 

It really is hard to be away from you all. But like I mentioned before, it will fly by and I am learning SO much! I know that the things I am doing for the people here and the things I am learning are of great worth so it is all worth it. 

On PDay we can basically do whatever we want as long as we represent the church in a manner that it ought to be represented. And we just have to keep finding people to teach. But we usually just go to Tachikawa Eki and do something there. I need to get a haircut way bad today!!

This week I went on 2 splits. One with Elder Driscoll and one with Elder Fenton. I stayed at their house one night then my house then their house again! I love sleeping over there! It is always way fun. With Elder Driscoll I learned that in order for people to stop and talk to you, you first of all need to be the happiest person they have met all day. Then use English! A lot of people here like English! Everybody studies it but it is SO broken that it is barely understandable.  We pass out fliers at ekis and I learned to have way fun with that. He taught me the "Belly button poke". Basically the goal is to see how many belly buttons you can poke with the flyer hahaha. It is way fun and it passes the time fast! There is always an Indian guy passing out fliers too. I talked to him. He didn’t speak English or Japanese very well. But he is awesome! And just saying random things in English like "Hey you sir! I will teach you English. FOR FREE!!!" Haha then says it in Japanese so they understand. But Just being way cheesy gets people to stop at least in passing out fliers.  Its way fun. We got like 23 SOS!!! In 2 nights!! 

We also (Driscoll and I) Visited a man named Cool-J. He is a Nigerian man who has a Gangster style shop in Tachikawa. He is way way nice. He Hugged me and gave me a dum dum. He is being taught by the Kunitachi elders right now but actually lives in Fussa so he might become our investigator!

I think that is all for this week.

I love you so much and I pray for you everyday multiple times a day!!

Elder Draper 

Sweet Potato Kit Kats ARE NOT GOOD! Trust us.... they aren't.

Hello there mother! 

How are you? How is planning for the wedding? I bet it is way fun! Right now I am in a kunitachi ward member’s ramen shop. It is amazing. I'm getting tsukemen. It's like a bowl of noodles and. A separate bowl of hot soup and you take the noodles with the chop sticks( ohashi) and dip it in the soup. It is delicious. I'm pretty much a pro with chopsticks now haha. Not really but I am pretty dang good if I do say so myself. I kind of can't even imagine eating some foods with a fork or a spoon like I used to. Like rice is way better with chopsticks. We have spaghetti every once in a while and we usually use forks and I seriously feel so awkward using a fork with noodles. Chop sticks are the way to go. Also I don't know if I mentioned his before, but the convenient store food here is way way better than Americas. 

Yah 4 months! That sounds so crazy!  The stake dance sounds way fun!!! I think it is hilarious how I didn’t used to be able to know the difference in Chinese and Japanese, spoken or written. It is SO obvious!  I’m learning to read pretty well. I read the scriptures in Japanese everyday and I started the book of Mormon over in Japanese. I am in chapter 8 now. I just look up words I don’t know and eventually I usually see them enough that I can remember them! I love it! 

I am proud of you mom!! I can’t believe you actually snowmobiled into the cabin! (I have always protested snow, cold or snowmobiles) Also I saw Allie and Nate’s apartment on face book! It looks so cute!

 I love the sweet potato kit kats!  (he sent us some candy and the kit kats taste like yams!) They sell some with rum in it too. Actually they sell a lot of rum candy. But I love the sweet potato kit kats. I sent Audrey some squid tentacles like jerky stuff hahaha. I don't think she ate it. I don't like squid or octopus very much. The suction cups just are too chewy for my liking. But black thunder candy bars are definitely my favorite. They make this way good ice cream that has a rice cover called mochi and an ice-cream inside. You need to sell it in the truck. People would go crazy for it!

The Christmas party for the mission was awesome! (I asked him if he got to see his companion from the MTC)  Ya I saw him! I’ve seen him a couple times! It is way weird but he’s doing really good! He has had 3 baptisms I think!  We heard from President Wada and his wife and a couple other good speakers. Then we had a gift exchange. I got 400 yen in 1 yen pieces. We also got really cool lapel pins with our mission logo and motto on it! I don't have a picture but I’ll take one soon! I’m not home right now and I can’t take another picture of the wedding stuff right now to send in time. Sorry I will have to take one next week. 

Did I ever tell you that you have to buy each individual grocery bag here? Well you do.

For New Years we didn't do anything. It is called Shogatsu here. Everybody leaves for shogatsu. We found several drunk people. In nishikunitachi train station we saw this guy who was WASTED. He fell over like 5 times in the street, in the road... and then he busted through the train station gate and passed out against the wall after falling into it. We and a conductor tried helping him but there wasn't anything to do. 

This and last week have been way hard. We only have a couple investigators. One really. President Wada has this thing called S.O.S. invitations. (Salvation of souls) where we get to know someone, teach them a gospel principle and then make a direct invitation to meet with us again or come to church. We are expected to get at least 10 a day so 70 a week. We got 8 last week and 7 this week. I got really down but today I am determined! President Wada told me that it takes detailed planning and following the plan. So I have been fasting and praying and studying on how to get more.  I made an extremely detailed plan on how, where, when, and how many sos i will get. We have found 1 person right now through it! First of all it is way hard because no one likes to talk here. But there is something I like to call the "Natural Japanese Person" compared to the Natural man in Mosiah 3:19. Japanese people refuse to talk to people on the train. Since my companion is Japanese, that makes it way hard because we are literally expected to talk to people on the train.

Today is feels like summer! IT is warm! The weather comes from Sibera up north, and then gets a ton of moisture from the Japan sea, and then the mountain range cuts off the moisture before it ever gets to Tokyo so I probably won’t ever get any snow. That is just fine though because it still is plenty cold! The air is doing this way weird thing to my hands. They look like they have leprosy whenever they get wet. It’s like wrinkly to the max and the outer most layer of skin is pealing way bad.

Back in like the 80s when this mission was first opened, (this mission was opened, then closed and more recently reopened) there was something called Tokyo Rush. Well that is what it has been named. Infamously. There was a mission president, now excommunicated, well he was, he may have brought back by now, but he basically told the missionaries to do ANYTHING to get people to be baptized. They LITERALLY had signs up that said Pool Party... So needless to say there were tons and tons of people baptized, none of which have stayed in the church. We have met 2 right now and neither of them remembers anything about the church at all. SO it’s pretty crazy! 

I really want to try the squid jerky; of course I have had squid but never the jerky kind! By the way, it is illegal to send jerky from America to Japan. Just a heads up.

After I’m done writing we are going to tachikawa eki to get a light bulb and to do a little thrift shopping. Then I have 1 hour with the piano!! Then tonight we are going to go house in Tachikawa for about 3 hours after dinner. By the way I lost one of those really nice gloves. Not the winter ones but the lighter wind breaker ones. I was sad. But luckily right before Elder Laird left he gave me an old pair!  (I asked him what I should send in the next package) They don’t have captain crunch, but that may be too difficult to send. Send some mac and cheese! Also I don’t have an oven so if you could figure out how to make German pancakes on a stove top that would be cool! Last month my mission money was very limited. I don’t even know what happened. But I remembered all of the wisdom dad bestowed on me about being smart with money and I bought a notebook and I made my own transaction register and I’m doing really good at knowing exactly how much I have!  But unfortunately I can’t check how much I have on my personal cards for some reason. So can you tell me how much I have and then I will try my best to keep track of that really well.

 Thanks! I have to go now.

I love you so much!!!

Draper Choro