06 November 6--Birthday Present

It always amazes me how fast the weeks go by, and yet, last week seems so long ago. I got the package you sent, and it's wonderful. Thank you.

My companion is crazy, but so am I, so we get along great. It's funny to walk down the street and be the center of so much attention every day (even if it is only to shout " vazaha!" at us). Sometimes I wonder if I'm going to suffer a withdrawal when I get home because nobody's looking at me,( or shouting "vazaha!" at me). My patience is constantly being cultivated on many different levels, but mostly with myself. I also think it's funny, that while I am on the opposite side of the world, speaking a language that I had never even heard of a year ago, that I can recognize several random people walking down street, stop them, and say " How ya doin' , Clark! How's your daughter?" or " How's the job search going?" (If people were staring at us before, they get really curious when we start speaking Malagasy to a random person on the street that we apparently know.) It's even funnier when we're walking down the street and somebody we don't know shouts, " Elder Jappear! ( my name as pronounced by Malagasys)" then they walk up to us, and ask when guitar lessons are.

Both me and my companion admittedly do NOT like tracting. However, when all of our set-appointments fell through one day last week, we were forced to. We saw in the distance behind a maze of close-knit houses, a large Peptobizmo-pink house, and decided to knock on it's doors. After every door in the house rejected us, we decided to make a game of it: whoever gets the most rejections wins. Bonus points for the particularly obnoxious rejections, and subtract points for every appointment scheduled. The point would go to whoever initially contacted the person, regardless of who did the most talking. I beat Elder Rock (or Elder " Vato") 15 rejections, to 1. I won because I got 2 obnoxious rejections, and he had to subtract a few points. This made tracting a lot more fun though, and we knocked on a lot more doors that way. We also kind of had a race with some Protestant Malagasy Missionaries during the tracting. We made sure that we'd get to the house before them, because if we got rejected, it would be a guaranteed rejection for them and they wouldn't even try. It was fun.

This week should be good. I will baptize somebody for the first time on my mission this next Sunday, which is coincidently, my birthday. My companion says we will celebrate with the package of food he got last week, with cereal in the morning and German chocolate cake in the evening. Life is good.

Well this computer is about to crash, so I've gotta go, but it's been nice talking to ya, I hope I get to hear from you next week.

Veloma!
Elder Draper