Week 55!

Hello!

I think I felt that earthquake. It didn’t seem like a 6.2 though! All of the earthquakes have been around us but none right on top of us yet. We had another typhoon this week! The wind wasn't very strong we just got tons and tons of rain. Every single day we had rain.

Nothing with Hideki yet. We have had about 2-3 hours every day of finding time. I feel like I have learned how to manage my time wiser though or at least how to talk to everybody better. I only have about 2 hours a day to dendo and I feel like I've been able to talk to more people than in my previous areas. But then again there are like a million people in Kichijoji. 

I'm glad you got to can with Brei! What does plum jam taste like?

I'll see Elder Bednar no matter what. We will combine with the north mission as well because Elder Bednar's schedule is so busy. President Warnick and Sister Warnick will have dinner with him but I don't think it is in kichijoji. But I think I will be here anyways! At least for another half a transfer. Nothing decided yet! 

I'm already preparing for the new missionaries' iPads. There are 23 this time! I streamlined the way I set them up so it hasn't been taking very much time as it did in the past. I also am learning a lot of excel and have organized keeping track of all the iPad Serial numbers and automated the way I do transfer emails. So it's good! I'm hoping to save the future tech staff a lot of time. 

Yes I got the recipes! Thank you so much! Now I will see how many things I can burn in the process. By the way I can buy spaghetti in Japan. But thank you for sending some! There is no Cream of Chicken Soup though. I am hoping to replace it with some Tsukemen sauce and try it in rice for a Hawaiian haystack. 

This week was mainly spent in the office. I had my first official companionship exchange as a district leader! I went with Elder Riggs in the Kichijoji house. It was awesome! We actually only had a couple of hours to find but we found 7 people! When I say find, I mean they were awesome, way prepared people. Not all accepted to meet with us again and learn. But two of them did! 

So this week 2 missionaries went home. 3 iPads were broken. One elder tore his acl at sports night and will go home next week sometime. Another Elder has to get surgery. A sister wrecked her bike and had to go to the hospital and another is sick and went to the hospital. A crazy week for sure! I'm safe though. Everyone is really just a couple scrapes here and there. 

We don't really meet with anybody right now but we are looking hard to find some investigators! Keep praying for us to find them, we are being led to those who are more prepared everyday I know! 

I love you guys so much!

Elder Draper

ドレーパー長老

Fun Fact: Apples in Japan are like $5!

Hello there mother of mine which I love so much! 

Ya I felt that earthquake. They are all too far away to really be a problem for us yet. 

Hideki came back but hasn't been able to meet yet. 

Last week we had choir after church and nobody could play the song. So having not played the piano in quite a while was kind of nervous, especially because i didn’t know the song before hand, but I played it with hardly any mistakes! So I don’t play very much but I do if the opportunity arises. 

Ya we basically have had rain every day this week except for like 2 or 3 days maybe. It's way weird though because sometimes the rain is just a really fine mist that if you stay in it too long you get wet but you don’t notice it really until you are soaked. 

We finally got apples??? Sweet! Apples are about 5 dollars a piece here so cherish those things! (I told him we finally after years have apples on the trees) I feel like my eating is going downhill. I just don't know what to cook! Rice is killing me! (he has a convection oven I think, he describes it as a microwave that can cook like an oven. I don’t have any experience with them, but if any of you do please send me some recipes so I can get them to him. Rice and fish is starting to get to him.)

This week Elder Yamashita from the 70 came. He took all of the office staff up stairs in the Warnick's home and had a meeting with us. Then the next day we had a big conference where he gave us instruction on how to find more people and baptize more people. Where there is no vision, the people perish. Our purpose is to take what the lord has given us, do our best to improve on it and learn to rely on God. If we have no vision or purpose in mind then we cannot improve. It isn't enough to just go outside and walk around for hours on end trying to talk to everybody you see. You have to look past that. Street contacting is a means, not an end. Baptism is a means, not an end. If we get people to baptism and then they fall off the face of the earth, our job is not finished. The ultimate goal is Exaltation but the only way to do that is to be baptized by the proper authority.  I have learned that it is easy to share the gospel. The more we learn about it and exercise faith in Christ, the more we will want to share it. It is not easy to get Japanese people to stop and talk to you, but it is easy to open up your heart and bear witness of Christ once they do stop. And we found out that Elder Bednar will visit on October 18th! I hope I’m still here but I’m sure I will be. I will find out soon if I stay in the office longer.

Today I kind of had P-day. I had a face book training meeting in the middle  and then a couple of people had questions about iPads and email and stuff. So after all of that I am finally going to take Pday and wash clothes and what not. 

Understanding Japanese has increased so much. I look back to the beginning of my mission and I realize that I really couldn't say anything! I couldn't understand anything! I still don't know everything and there are plenty of times and specifically old men who i can understand at all! But I am so aware of the Hand of God in my life. It is hard to learn a language. Especially one that is literally opposite of English in almost every aspect. But language is powerful. God needs me to learn it so I can find his Children who are lost and looking for truth. I have seen it in my life and in the lives of hundreds of other missionaries. The power of God is real and God blesses us because He loves us. I know He exists. I know that He is our Father in Heaven who loves us more than we could fathom. So he has again reached out to us and shown us the way back to him.

I love you all so very much! 

Look around you see what you can do. There are always broken hearts that we could heal by a kind word. Remember that in the mind of the world when you gain something and give it away, it is gone. To God when you gain something and give it away for the sake of others, you get more.

Elder Draper

ドレーパー長老

I don't know what to title this blog post...

こんにちは！

We did have one more earthquake this week. Nothing real big. Hideki did come back but it seems like his work schedule got changed a little bit so it's been hard to meet with him. Last Sunday Bishop Stevenson had all the missionaries over for dinner. We had Navajo Tacos. The sisters brought over a lady they had found in Seiyu the day before and we had brought our friends, some members of the ward. There were a ton of people there! Right before that though we got there before he did and there were no brothers in the house so we couldn't go in so we decided to go knock on some doors. I went with Elder Uemura and we got talking about families. He said we could come back next Sunday! So we will go see him tomorrow at 5:30 pm. 

Haha poor Japan day. (we went to Japan Day’s in Boise, it was terrible.) We'll just have to come back to Japan again one day so your crushed ideas of Japan can be built back up again. I sent you the videos of the matsuri (festival) in Sunroad. It was pretty cool! There was a super creepy lady with a terrifying mask on doing like voodoo with her hands. Other than that it was way cool! 

The cow sweep pen looks way cool! I hope one day I can help build the long awaited barn! That sounds so fun with brother Laing and Matthew and D.O.. How are they all doing? How old is Ray now? He's not close to mission is he???

This week was a quick one. I continued on my adventure to make emergency maps for every apartment. I have increased my map making speed from two maps a day to about 7! In Japanese, so there are the three different ways of writing. ひらがな（hiragana) カタカナ（katakana) and 漢字( kanji). Then writhing the kanji you have the On readings and the Kun readings. When a word consists of more than one kanji it usually uses the on readings and if it is one kanji as a word it usually uses the Kun reading. For example...

食べる means to eat and is pronounced Taberu. Then I add this 事 which means thing and it becomes 食事which means meal and is pronounced Shokuji. But then a lot of the kanji completely change if they are used in the names of people or places. 海老名市 usually would be read  kairounashi but it is ebinashi. So I'm getting good at reading the name versions of kanji from making so many maps! 

Elder Loftus is a master at excel. He has been helping me simplify and automate a lot of the things I have to do with excel. I've learned so much!

Just yesterday we had about 2 hours to proselyting so we headed over towards mitaka. We found a guy just sitting there so we started talking to him. We taught him about families and eternity. He said no to our invite to meet with us and learn but then I teached briefly about the Book of Mormon and testified about it and told him that if he would read it and pray to god he would know it is true. I gave him it and felt the spirit really strongly that what we did was good. 

I love the scriptures. They truly do tell us the things we ought to do to gain eternal life. I

When there are times where I am sad or disappointed or whatever it may be, I can open Up the scriptures and hear gods voice teaching me and howling me the way to be happy. It's amazing. 

Well that's about it for my week I think. Just lots of rain, map making, finding, and scripture study!

Love you so much!

Elder Draper

ドレーパー長老

I asked him what the difference between American fast food and Japanese American fast food.

Hmm. At Denny's they serve you salad for breakfast haha. That's weird. 

McDonald's they have a chicken shake thing called the shakashakachiki that isn't in America. Everything is in English though so it is a makodonarudo and bigu makku and makuguridoru if you want to try to figure out what those represent haha. (I asked if that was a chicken milkshake!) Oh no haha. You put some flower in a bag and shake it and eat it!

Elder Draper has been out a year! Happy 1 year bud!

Hello there mother!

Wow I have officially been away from home for 366 days! That's so weird. It's been the best experience for my life already and I can't wait to see how God will continue to change my life. I love it! 

This week was full of evacuation map creating! We have dendo quite a bit this week. So my companions right now are Elder Hattanda from Hokkaido Japan, and Elder Uemura from Shiga Japan. We have made it our goal to dendo from after dinner till 9. Sometimes we have a lot of office work but we decided to show our faith a little more, work a bit harder, and get everything finished between lunch and dinner. We haven't found any investigators yet but it feels so nice to be out talking to people more. If I can master balancing office work with dendo I think it will help me balance my family and work. But family is the most important so I want to spend as much time as possible with my family. 

So ya the typhoon was coming in HOT. I was taking daily pictures of the weather maps and watching the progress of it. I was sure it would slam us hard. Then at like the last minute it went right past us and hit Hokkaido instead. I was kind of bummed because it was seriously supposed to be so big. The whole storm in itself was about the size of Honshu (the main island) where I am. 

Ya it's been getting so much cooler here to! I love it! Elder Hattanda told me this is exactly what if feels like in Hokkaido. I really want to go to Hokkaido someday. Cold winters and just mildly warm summers and tons of nature. I want to see Sapporo temple so bad! 

That's good for Tripp to have friends. I can totally see how it is so so important to make sure your child's friends are good examples. I hope Krue doesn't feel left out. I kind of liked it better knowing they just had each other haha! They are so precious to me. Jared sent me a video of him  playing the ukulele and all in a sudden Krue jumped in front of the camera and was dancing all cute. I loved it. 

Oh wow I was actually thinking Willow was already in Korea! Haha. I'm so excited for them all to have this awesome experience I have right now. They will all be so great. I'm so glad to have such awesome friends! 

That's so crazy about Drew! I just got a letter yesterday and I opened it and I saw Drew and Deonna. I am so happy for them! I knew they had dated before the mission but I didn't know they were engaged let alone already married! That's so awesome! There is that video I watched before my mission with Drew in it on his first day in the MTC that I could only watch once. I've been trying to play it again for like a year now and I just found it in Elder Rose's account! I was able to show him how young Drew used to look and how much more grown up he looks now! I think that's about 6 or 7 of my friends who have now gotten married since I've been gone! Who's next?

So this week has been a pretty normal week. There was all the anticipation for the typhoon and then it just never came so that was kind of a bummer but the mission was on lock down again! 

I have found I can memorize Japanese scriptures much easier than I can in English. It was so weird! I read one verse in English, then I read the same verse In Japanese and I memorized it almost instantly! 

Last Sunday we were all just sitting there in sacrament meeting and everything and the stake president was there but nobody thought anything of it. Alls of a suddenly ;) they released the bishop and called president Wada's old first counselor to be bishop! His name is Bishop Stevenson. He served in Sendai and married a Japanese woman and has lived in Japan for like 30 years or so. He is amazing. I can't wait t see how this ward will change. I haven't had a single dinner appointment since I've come to Kichijoji and he came up to me after sacrament meeting and said "eveyr first Sunday from here on out, all missionaries are invited to my house for a shokuji ( meal) ” I was so excitedly! There will be big changes I can feel. 

God is our father and he loves us so much. He knows everything that there is to know! How awesome it is that we can communicate with such a being through prayer. I would hope that we all as individuals take time to consider the beauties of life and earth and the night sky and wonder why it exists. Ponder the greatness of God. Everything is because He loves us. That's why we are here, to go through trials and to prove ourselves worthy of the greater glory being restored for us by God himself. And on top of that I know he loves us because he has given us with guides to guide us back to him. He sent his only son, he created this church and we have the bible and the Book of Mormon and living prophets to show us the way. It's incredible if you really ponder it. 

I have really come to love the scriptures. I couldn't go a day without knowing I am missing out on something if I hadn't read the scriptures for that day. Please study them personally and rediscover the mysteries of God. Study them together and I promise that your relationship will improve more than you thought it could. 

I love you all very much! Thank you for supporting me in this wonderful journey. 

"Improve the shining moments, don't let them pass you by. 

Work while the sun is radiant, work for the night draws nigh. 

We can not bid the sun beams to lengthen out their stay,

Nor can we ask the shadows to ever stay away. "

Elder Draper

ドレーパー長老