Rap Battle

Hello. Mother!

My week has been packed full and it has gone way fast! It sure looked fun digging that hole! ( Mark had to dig a big hole! Haydon and Tanner loved to dig when they were little) Haha going through the cow pies was mine and Tanner's favorite part of the go carts!  (Tripp went through a cow pie on the go cart and was not happy)  I'm glad they enjoyed it though. I can't believe they have never ridden it before!

So ya temple p day is on a Tuesday every time but today we have a lesson with a new investigator we found while streeting at kotesashi train station. His name is Ishii. We were walking around trying to talk to everyone when we noticed we were walking down a street where nobody was so I said we should turn back. Right then I saw a guy reading a sign and just said to him "Konnichiwa! Did you do anything fun today?" In Japanese of course. But we ended up talking with him for about 20 minutes and set up an appointment for Tuesday at 6! We also have a lesson with Brother Pepe. He is Peruvian member and I am teaching him Kanji. (Haydon must be doing well with the language, because Kanji is the symbols they use, and he’s teaching it!) But we have no time to actually have a Pday today so we are actually just doing a normal day today and then we will take 3 hours out of tomorrow and have our pday. But I should email everything I need to today. I just probably can't chat at all. 

Man everybody is going to Disneyland since I left! Haha just kidding its fine, everyday is like Disneyland here! Kind of. Haha. 

If you could send Nutella and maybe like some other American small snacks that would be cool! But don't feel obligated to send very much at all!

Brei hasn't sent me a picture yet but I'll do my best to try to find the doll thing! To be honest I think I'm staying here, really I don't know, but I feel like I'll stay. If so I'll send it next transfer because I don't have like anytime between now and next transfer. 

I'm on the train right now heading to the temple. The Tokyo temple and the property it is on is the most expensive land the church owns in the world!  But they are closing it down for a while in like a month or something for renovations so this may be my last temple trip for a long time. Also I had my last interview with president Wada this week! He will be ending his mission before we have interviews again. I think he leaves in July. That's crazy! 

But ya Azuma doesn't seem to really have interest. He said he was going to come to general conference but he never came. But we did have Yamamoto San and Yamane San come! 

It was way fun to go back to kunitachi! It's funny because that really wasn't my area but that feels like home to me. Elder Kaesler is the oldest missionary in the mission right now. He went home once because he wrecked his bike and got hurt way bad. So he had to go home for two transfers. So from start to finish he is the longest missionary out right now here. He has one more transfer after this one before he dies (missionary lingo for going home). Elder Molen is one transfer ahead of me. He was in the MTC with me but I didn't know him there. Elder Uemura is a transfer 10 I think. But I love them all! Me and Elder Molen think we're going to be companions next transfer that would be so fun!

So here is a quick overview of my week!

Monday night we were walking around kotesashi station talking to people when we saw a crowd of guys. And some music. We got a bit closer and saw that they all looked like hip hop/ thug looking guys. We got a bit closer and it was a rap battle! It was like the coolest thing. Ever!i asked if I could take a video so I did. They had like two guys rap at eachother and the rest would just kind of stand around them in a circle. One guy over watched it and decided who won. Then they stood in a circle and took turns rapping, building off of what the previous person had said. One of the guys looked at me, I was standing in the circle, and said "are you Mormon?" He had come to our English class before! We talked to him and invited him back to it! They were all so nice! After one of the guys gave me like the realest bro hug ever hahahaha. I never thought I would be hugged by a random Japanese man! 

On Tuesday I had a bad cold so I took a nap. Then we met with Evan at that one Italian restaurant, as he always calls it. He is like this 6'9" black man who is a professional basketball player. He is playing on the saiyama Broncos. It's him Ed and Seth are the only professionals. The rest are just average Japanese people. He said their team has no money so they could only hire three professionals. They have lost 42 games and won 4 but he is still like the happiest man alive! He just can't wait to go home soon. But we ate lunch and talked about general conference and prophets. It was way fun! 

On Wednesday we had presidents interviews! It was so great! The people before us were about an hour behind schedule so we just waited up stairs with sister Wada in the mission home. She asked about the family and everything. She made us delicious brownie cookies and we just talked for about an hour and then we went down into the office for interviews. I love interviews so much. We just go and ask any questions we may have and talk about anything we may be struggling with. I asked him how I could work with the ward better and he told me to just look at page 167 of Preach my Gospel. 

On Thursday we did weekly planning.  When talking about how we can find more people to teach I remembered that thing we did forever ago where we wrote down 20 names and prayed about them. I told him about the idea and said if we would have every family write down 10 people, pray for each by name every day, and seek for and or make opportunities to invite them to activities where the missionaries are there or where the gospel can be taught and the spirit felt, we would find more investigators. We wrote out a big official letter to send to the ward council. Because we're in Japan, and everything is professionally done or it isn't accepted, we are making sure we say everything right and how they like it. It was really cool because the whole time we could feel the spirit so strong helping us find better ways to find those who are prepared to hear the gospel. Please, if you feel like it you should contact the sisters in your ward, invite them and feed them and give them referrals! The members should be finding the people for the most part and the missionaries teach. Try it work with the missionaries as much as possible! It helps more than you know. We also had a dinner with the wikuramaarachichige (ya…try to pronounce that! )family. He is from Sri Lanka and she is Japanese. They met at BYU Hawaii. She is actually a translator for general conference. She did several this time. But they are so so so nice! Their two kids speak Japanese and English fluently, well for their ages. One is 2 and the other like 7. Their names are Rayden and Allie! Weird right?! Haha they are way cute. We had delicious food and I ate the Sri Lankan way that he taught me! With my hands!

On Friday we went to the church and randomly a guy talked to us through the fence and asked us if we wanted to go look at the Sakura! Me and Elder Kaesler had kids English class shortly after the time he wanted to go so we were a bit hesitant but we ended up going. A completely random man took us in his car to this beautiful place! Thats where my profile picture was taken from. That is saiyama lake. It was the most beautiful place I've seen in Japan! I haven't realized how much I missed nature. I love it!

Saturday we found Ishii San. And conference!

Sunday was mainly conference! I love it so much! I received so many answers to my questions it was fantastic. I love that we have a living prophet on this earth!

I have to go now but I love you all! If I can email more I will later!

Love you all!

Elder draper