New area, new companion, and no table.

Hello there my favorite mother in the whole wide world!

My companion is Elder Jones from Utah! He is amazing! We connect really well I feel like. Its helping me look at everything a bit differently than I have for the rest of my mission. I feel really motivated coming out of the honbu too. Haha I don’t even have a video of that song. (Elder Rigg’s mom came across a video of Haydon playing the piano in a video and we want a copy)  It’s on the honbu laptop I saved it on. haha in her email that you sent to me she said please sent the birthday video haha. Sorry! I could get it but it will be next week! OR you Elder Riggs can go to the mission office and ask Elder Bateman to get it off the laptop. Yes please meet Elder Belnap! (His companion that trained him in the office. He will be home soon and we were invited to his Homecoming in Utah) He is amazing! I’m still bummed he was my companion for only 3 weeks. But I am so blessed for even those 3 weeks!

I can't see the ocean. I live in a two man apartment with 4 elders in it. We didn't have enough beds the first night but we made it! Then we got new ones and used the empty boxes as our dinner table since we didn't have one of those either! Ya they usually leave one in the area. But it's not too rare to "white wash" which is when two elders go to a new area. Yes this transfer is 4 weeks and the next is 8 weeks! It's way weird! SO I’ll be a transfer 11 in like 3 weeks already!  I’m really taking seriously this responsibility to train Elder Jones.  I'm also the district leader over Kouhoku and Kanagawa areas. It’s really fun! We just walk for hours and hours all day long and try to find people to teach! We have one referral from a member and we found a potential investigator! So it's slow but its sure!

 We had one of those priesthood previews here too in kichijoji! I got to play the piano for it! 

Ok I will keep in mind the Japanese wooden dolls! I don't know if I will get to it. It may be something I do just before I leave. But I will try! 

Me and Elder Jones have just been finding and finding and finding! It’s so fun! We are trying to work with the ward as much as we can. We visited a recently married family yesterday and they fed us banana bread (which gave me cankers) (HE’S ALLERGIC TO BANANA’S) and rose tea! It was good! Elder Jones is improving on the Japanese and dendo and everything. It’s so much fun ! I have learned the importance of patience and diligence. Without either you can’t improve. I realized that where I am right now only came about because of diligence and patience. 

We went way out to a far station and found this gorgeous row of fall color trees. IT was amazing. We met a guy who went to church twice and a guy who lived in Utah and knows Mormons! I can see a lot of potential in this area! 

Also I have the stocking but not the tree. I have no room in the bags for a tree haha. (I guess I’d better send a new Christmas Tree).

I love you mom!!!

Elder Draper

HE WOULD LOVE CHRISTMAS CARDS!!!!

Elder Haydon Draper

Japan Tokyo South Mission

1-7-7 Kichijoji Higashi-cho

Musashino-shi

Tokyo

180-002

He bought a coat from a Japanese thrift store!

Hello mom!  

  

港北に行きます！！！！I will go to Kuhoku which is Yokahama! My companion will be a new missionary! So I will be going to an area that I've never been to and so will my companion! It should be a hoot I think. I transfer this next Thursday. 

  

Ya all I hear from the Japanese people is about the US election. 

  

Unlike America, Japan is very cold. And rainy at the same time.  It's freezing cold but I love it! (I told him how nice it’s been here) 

  

Me and Elder Bateman went thrift shopping last week and found some sweet coats! It's the coat I am wearing in my new profile picture on Facebook. It was 7,000 yen but I think it was even more expensive than that just judging off of the nice quality, no cat smell, and no rips. (I thought that was an interesting comment…no cat smell) So I bought it! It is super warm and I think it was worth the 7,000 yen.  

  

Honestly the only things I could think of that I would really want for Christmas are like cards from the family, some browning mix, cake mix, a couple book of Mormon copies with your guys' testimonies in them, English or Japanese, maybe some more nutella, and like teeth whitener haha. Since coming to Japan I have grown to not really like candy or American food hahaha. It sounds kind of weird. Except for cake mix. I will always love cake. Oh and a cook book made for Japan would be cool. It doesn't have to be Japanese cuisine but just things that use ingredients I can find over here. Honestly if you just wrote me cards I would be plenty happy! Cards and pictures. :) 

  

Haha Krue is so cute! Everything he does is just so cute! Whenever I talk to American kids now I am always so hesitant because I don't think they can understand me. I feel like they would understand Japanese more than english haha.  

  

Lets see. We had an amazing lesson with a less active member yesterday. I went on splits with Elder Riggs! It was amazing! He is an amazing missionary and has made so much progress with everything. We walked for a long time in the rain. This person had become less active some years ago because when he moved to Colorado nobody at church talked to him. He didn't feel loved. We met with him and started talking about his art, he's really good. From that he told us that he decide to pursue art. He told us that he prayed and received an answer from God. He prayed and when he laid down to sleep he felt very warm and love and peace and he knew that God had answered his prayers. It was an amazing experience to see how the gospel of Christ opened his eyes so much.  

  

I know that God knows best. He is our Heavenly Father. He wants us to be happy. I truly believe that He cares about our lives and wants them to be good. If we are willing to let him, He can guide us in the way that will make us the happiest. Much happier than we could ever be on our own. Sometimes that guidance comes in the form of a call to repent, a prompting to do something you are hesitant about, to reach out to someone who needs help. No matter what way it comes, it will always be for our best and we can know that it is from God by the spirit. Its not really a feeling you can describe in words but it's unmistakable and undeniable. It’s both reassuring and calming. You never really know exactly what will come next but you know it is a good thing. That kind of guidance is in the reach of every single person on earth. I know it is true. I know that if you call out, reach out, search for God that you will find Him, and when you do, He will guide you and it will be amazing.  

  

I love you all so much! 

  

Elder Draper 

 ドレーパー長老

Week 61!

Hello! 

  

We haven't done a ton of training yet but the stuff we have done he catches on really quick!  Yes he will be my new companion for the next week and a half or so. He is from St. George Utah! 

  

Man it always feels like I just emailed you Guys!  

  

Oh ya. Japan doesn't have day light savings or anything. It gets dark around like 5:00 and then it gets really bright outside around 4 am. Kind of weird! The new missionaries, when they come, they always wake up at like 4:30 because of the time difference and they always think that we let them sleep in until 10 because it's so bright outside!  

  

I started training Elder Bateman this week! He has a lot of experience with computer programming so he catches on really easily.  

  

So Elder Loftus and I have been working  on this stats excel spreadsheet for a couple weeks now. We sat down for like two hours today and went through every single stat in the mission and checked our formulas and compared them with the numbers in the church website. We found that our numbers were right when we got solved the duplicate rows problem. But in the church website the totals for each key indicator were displaying wrong numbers. So our numbers are right and the church numbers are right but the church's way of displaying it is wrong. But then the problem was finding a way to be able to do it all automatically with formulas. Elder Loftus took a couple hours searching the internet but finally was able to figure it out! So now an hour long process only takes about as much time as it takes to download a spread sheet from the website and paste it in our spreadsheet. It was way cool! 

  

Now in our apartment is Elder Battaglia, Elder Matsumoto, Me, Elder Bateman, Elder Hattanda, Elder Mori, and Elder Uemura. It's kind of crammed.  

  

Elder Uemura, Elder Battaglia and I drove to Machida to pick up Elder Bateman's bike. There was this huge hill that we had to drive up. It was for sure steeper than San Francisco. But it was the only way up. We're in like a little minivan too. We're doing good and then BOOM! Just kidding there was no BOOM. But we got to the steepest part at the top and for some reason Elder Uemura slammed on his brakes. If he let go of the brake to push on the gas then we rolled backwards. Finally he just let go of the brake and slammed on the gas and we pealed out for a solid 5 seconds before gaining traction and shooting us up the hill and around the corner. It was terrifying.  

  

I went on companionship exchanges with Elder Sumsion! He is a transfer one missionary and amazing! We had many good talks on missionary work and baptism and how to be who the lord wants us to be. Even though he is only a transfer one missionary we spoke Japanese probably more than half of the time! It was way fun! We mainly just did finding. We had one lesson appointment but it fell through. It was very fun to learn so much from him! I haven't really focused on finding families like in the streets but he was so bold and just started talking to them! It made me feel so much joy to tell this young family that they can be together for eternity. I want to focus on families! 

  

A member took all of the missionaries to a local restaurant that they have been going to for like 30 years and it was just so special and fun! I love kichijoji Ward so much! I never want to leave here but I know I will have to. I'm also pretty excited to find out where I will go!  

  

I love you all so much! 

  

ドレーパー長老

He got to celebrate Halloween in Japan!

They celebrate Halloween! Probably more so the members than Japan in general

The kids in the ward all had a costume contest and they were all so darn cute! There is one little kid named Ichigo who is just the cutest little Japanese baby I've ever seen. I took a picture of him. I'll send later. 

I can't believe that Katylen McKenzie is already almost home! I was thinking about it. I've been in the honbu (office) for 4.5 transfers. When I transfer out of here I will be a transfer ten. 4.5 transfers flew by and by the time I reach another 4.5 transfers I will be almost coming home! Before coming here two years always seemed like such a long time. It isn't!

This week was way long! We did so much I literally can't even remember it! Hopefully I'll remember next week! Talk to you then!

Love,

Elder Draper

This is where he thinks he’s so funny! I almost emailed him and said that’s it. There better be more of a letter than that! But then this came. Funny kid!!!

Just kidding, but for real though it's gonna take some time to remember what went down this week...

In no particular order, we went to Kofu again, we made cookies for the ward, we decorated for the Halloween party, we had the Halloween party, I carved pumpkins, we talked about family history with hideki san, I interpreted for like 8 hours, I still can't figure out the stats excel sheet, I found out that I’m transferring and who will replace me. I think there was more but I'll just write it as it comes!

So we went to kofu for the last time! We had to meet the landlord of the old gross apartment to inspect if everything is ok or if it's broken. That's basically the only thing we had to do. It was sprinkling the whole time. The fog was pretty intense as you can kind of see in the picture I sent you of us driving. After that we walked to a restaurant to get some food. There was a castle along the way so we decided to walk through the castle. It was pretty awesome! Castles don’t have anything to do with Buddhism but they were made hundreds and hundreds of years ago and samurais and the famous people of that day and age used to live there. The place we went to was pretty awesome. It was in a back room on a tatami mat. Anytime there is a tatami mat or you sit on the floor in Japan you need to take off your shoes and place them either facing outward in the genkan (the little sunken in area in front of the door) or out it in the cubbies if they have them. They will almost always serve you Ocha which is tea that we don't drink. So then they bring us water. Tempura is deep fried vegetables or fish. I got some stuff. I have no idea what it was but it was sure good! So you have to pay to drive on the highways here which means that their rest stops are basically outlet malls but maybe a bit bigger. We stopped at one along the way. 

The relationship between our ward and the missionaries isn't the best. That's just how it has been for years. So I decided to have us as a district make cookies for everybody. Sounds easy right? Elder Battaglia was feeling sick on Thursday so I didn't go to sports night but instead made cookies. On our mission portal is a recipe for cookies. The recipe should not exist. But unfortunately it does. Well first of all it was in grams and we only have things that can measure cups. So I just guessed based on the fact that our box of butter came in 200g bricks. So right off the bat the amount of flour was off. Then just everything else didn't work at all. We went through like 5 different batches of cookies until we finally found the nestle toll house recipe and made one good batch haha. But we passed them out at church and they all loved it!

For the Halloween party we made the worlds most intense cardboard maze. We went to a super market and asked for all of their cardboard which they 喜んで gave. We had a little bowling alley on the side and then a ball toss into some boxes that looked like witches and ghosts and robots. The kids like our booth the best!

After that, we went to the library with hideki san and looked up his family in these massive Japanese books that have where everybody's lines trace back to. I'm guessing that’s kind of what the brass plates were like. This book was like a solid 6 inches deep. We looked for his family symbol too but couldn't find it. Every family in Japan has its own symbol which is awesome. It's like a cattle brand but you don't put it on cattle. 

Sister Warnick invited me and Elder Uemura and Elder Hattanda to come carve pumpkins! I was so happy! I think last year was the first time I didn't carve a pumpkin in my whole life!  I carved the head of Jack Skelington (Skeleton?) from The Nightmare Before Christmas. It was so fun! 

We had some conference this week! Me and Sister To were asked to interpret. We both just switch off and on a whole bunch from 9 am to 5pm! It was so long! But it was really fun! 

After talking with Hideki san president Warnick met with me and told me that he was sad but that he felt that it was time for me to go back to the field! My replacement, Elder Bateman, will come in on Tuesday! I have a lot of mixed feelings. I'm finally going to the field but I've grown to love the office and being around the office couple and president and sister Warnick all the time that it will be bitter to leave. Plus it was way sweet to live 20 feet from the church and have wifi all the time. But I'm way excited! I'll find out where I go in two weeks!

There have been so many problems with this big excel sheet that counts the stats of the mission. There are problems between the sheet I pull off of IMOS and there are problems in IMOS itself so I just can't figure out what to do! But it's fun. I probably won't be able to figure it out before I leave though which is unfortunate. 

I also had my Facebook training meeting! There were about 50 or so missionaries there. I've been studying how the Savior taught and I tried to implement it in my training and it ran much smoother than the training meetings before this one! 

I know this work is the work of God and that only the gospel can bring eternal happiness to the individual and to families and nations. I invite all to come and see what glorious happiness never before felt to them awaits in the restored gospel of Jesus Christ. 

I love you so much!

Love,

Elder Draper