2007 February 19--If You Chance to Meet a Frown...

This week marked the end of a great transfer with Elder Edgley from Maryland, and the beginning of a new transfer with Elder S from California. I remain in 67 HA.

I'm happy for Elder Edgley because he has stayed in this area (67HA) for the first 6 months of his mission, which would be rough, as this is probably the dirtiest area in the mission, among other things, and he's finally moved out. So far for companions I've had a Silver, a Stone, and now I've got S, so sometime in the future, I should get another companion whose last name begins with "S" and is found on the Periodic Table of Elements, maybe " Elder Silicone" or something.

Anyway, so far, Elder S seems to be kind of angry or dissatisfied with everything. As a result, I kind of have to be a little overly optimistic about things than I'm used to, just to combat the negativity. So far so good, I'm trying be as non confrontational as possible, because I've learned that criticism usually has a negative effect. For example; S has this way of noticing everything that's wrong with something or someone, or situation, and pointing it out to you. " Ew, what is that smell? that smells so bad, haven't these people heard of indoor plumbing?" or " This taxi's way too small, my knees hurt, this is ridiculous" or " Why does it have to rain so much? I hate the rain" etc..... I'll be honest, it's a little rough, and the first thoughts that usually come into my mind are usually something like ," You're absolutely right Elder S, it smells terrible, the rain sucks, and this taxi's too small for me too, You should write a letter to the president, and he came make Madagascar stop being a 3rd world country, relocate it out of the middle of the Indian Ocean with it's rainy seasons, get them all indoor plumbing and give them all cars designed for people much taller than them, and then this place would be almost up to par. How's that sound?" That might be the first thought that comes to my mind and I admit that it's a little harsh, but I'm trying to be honest. The good thing is, I never say the first thing that comes to mind, and decide not to say anything at all , and smile. I know that if I came anywhere close to saying that, it would probably not end up so great. It's made me very self conscious of the negative things I think and say, and I'm trying to eliminate them where ever they show up. According to all of S's last companions, this isn't new, and it bothered all of them. But I don't think any of them did anything more than just tell him that he complains about everything and criticized him for it. I don't think that helped him. So I try to bring up all of the things that I think are great, and all the things that Elder S likes to do, just to change the subject sometimes. And I do what I can to ignore the negative comments, I can't even laugh at small absurd things anymore because he'll take it as an opportunity to complain about it.But if he does talk about something he likes, I do everything I can to make him keep talking about it. It's been a little rough, because I've just been trying to be an example of something that I've never been terribly good at. But it's good practice. I've made some progress.

I've found that he's had piano lessons since he was 5 and can play Debussy, and Bach, which I think is really cool, so I make sure to bring up conversations about music and I'm trying to encourage him to teach piano lessons, because I think it would help him learn the language better and get to like the people here a little bit more. I might also get him to teach me how to read music a little bit, or something. Anyway, little by little (tsikelikely), I think he'll start to enjoy his mission ( at least more so than he seems to be currently.)

I might have to get blunt eventually, as the spirit directs, but I'm trying to be optimistic, so we'll see I guess.

I guess it was inevitable, I haven't had any problems with any of my companions so far. But I will reaffirm, I see no reason why this companionship has to be a bad experience, so I just have to do what I can to be pleasant. I think this place is changing me, I think for the better. Sometimes I think I think too much. oh well. Maybe I'll overcome that as well.

I've been reading the Teaching of Spencer W Kimball in these past two weeks. It's been really amazing. I love what he has to say on everything. For this week, something he said has really stuck out to me. In answering the questions people have about why life is so hard sometimes, and if God is so good and powerful, why does all this terrible stuff happen? He said ( sorry this won't be exact) " Had I limitless power and yet a limited understanding, I might have saved Abinidi from the flames, and in doing so would have done him irreparable damage in denying him a martyr's reward, exaltation" Something like that. Anyway, he went on to talk about relieving Paul the "thorn in his side" which represented the things that made Paul humble. He said he probably would have saved Joseph Smith and denied him his reward, and ultimately, he would have saved Christ from the agonies and death he suffered. But how terrible would that have been? It made me think of all of the difficult things I've had to deal with in my life, and I thought, " what if everything came easy to me? what if I could speak this language after only a little bit of trying, what if I was a good writer, or good looking. What if everybody liked me?" Wouldn't that be nice? But it doesn't take more than a second to realize how pointless life would be if we didn't have any problems.

I don't know how well I'm describing this, but suffice it to say, these thoughts have sustained me through a lot of hard times. I try to keep them in mind when things get tough. And things do get tough sometimes.

Well, I love you all, It's always great to hear from you guys. I pray for you always, and I know you're doing the same. Thank you.

Until next week, Veloma!

Elder Draper

2007 February 12--Gidro is a Lemur

Hey, how are ya?

This week was another rough week, but we pulled through pretty well. I'd say about 60% of our appointments didn't go through. Some cool stuff happened too. We're teaching a guy who looks a lot like Bob Marley. His name is Erik, he lives in a small room without furniture at the top of a seven-story apartment building. He has huge dreadlocks, a goatee and we suspect a Word of Wisdom problem. But thus far he seems to be sincerely interested in what we have to say. It was the weirdest first discussion ever. Usually, we can make connections straight off, because most people are Christian. I've taught a few Muslims and a couple of tribal religionists ( who believe in one god called the Zanahary, but mix that and Christianity together sometimes). Anyway, with Erik the discussion went a different direction when he said he didn't trust organized religion, but that he prayed to Jesus, God, Budah, the Zanahary, Allah( same as God I know) and named about 3 other deities I had never heard of (I guess he felt he needed to cover all the bases as it were.) I decided to take the discussion in the direction as to why he didn't trust organized religion, and basically he said he couldn't follow an organized religion because of all the evil things people have done in the name of God, and religion, and all of the hypocrisy he saw. I agreed with him, and the lesson moved nicely into who God really is, and how he does things, and the apostasy that occurs when people reject Him. It's always a good sign when people's eyes go wide as you are teaching. When we introduced Joseph Smith and his story, he listened very well. At the end of the discussion he told us that he felt a lot like Joseph Smith, in that he has been searching for the truth. The lesson ended, and he agreed to have us back later. He accepted the Book of Mormon very well in the next lesson as well. Anyway, so far so good. I'm not sure if anything will come of it, but it taught me a couple of things.

It's amazing to me how many Christian people here love to argue with us. I have no idea why. Most of their arguments are so baseless and illogical that it's more of an annoyance than anything else. They don't seem to understand that we study the scriptures every single day, further more, for some reason we have come to this country from literally the opposite side of the world to teach what we know. We don't get paid to do this, in fact, we're paying to do this, and we could be in America right now , going to school, earning money, going on dates, etc....now why in the world would any sane person do this, unless he was absolutely sure he was doing was important. "Your church worships on Sunday, when everybody knows Saturday is the real sabbath, therefore your church can't be true!" "What do they want me to say? "Oh yeah, you're right, how stupid of me, thanks a lot, I should go home now and stop wasting my time here" WRONG. The problem is, I've known from the beginning of the mission how absolutely pointless arguing is. So I never get on the defensive, I just smile, and as politely as possible share our position on the subject and give them the biblical sources to back it up, which generally speaking, completely destroys the feeble argument. But even then, so many people just want to be contradictory, and say something like, " well, you've just interpreted those scriptures wrong" or, " well, that's just one (or two or three) scripture(s)" and you are so tempted to just say, " well, it was nice talking to you, but we've got better things to do, Veloma!" But you must go on. I don't know if it's because we're white, or young or whether they just want to be smarter than us, or a combination of all three. I don't know, and frankly I don't care.But I will say that it's wonderful to meet somebody who is sincerely looking for the truth, that thinks about what we have to say, despite our age, race or anything else, and wants to know more. That's what it was like with Erik. I would rather teach an atheist, if he was sincere, than a bigoted Christian.

OK that's enough of that. Anyway, some other cool stuff happened this last week. After living in this country for 8 months, I have finally seen a gidro, at the top of an apartment building of all places. I just realized that I've forgotten the English word for gidro. sorry. But it was cool, I shook hands with it and it licked my hand.

It's continued to rain a ridiculous amount, so on Friday when all of our appointments didn't go through, it was kind of miserable. But we called our last appointment just to make sure somebody'd be there before we walked all the way there in the rain. One of the kids answered the phone, and said his parents would be home pretty soon, so we said we'd be right over. But then he kind of protested saying " Misy rano be mihitsy" ( there's really a lot of water) we thought he was referring to the rain so we said," oh it's no problem" so he said " ok, then come on over". Then we got there and realized what he was talking about it. In their house was about a foot of standing water, and it was like walking through a pond inside the house. Some of the furniture was floating, and they looked pretty miserable. The mom got there probably 5 minutes before we did and she looked a little distressed. She kept saying "Mahakivy izany" ( The closest definition I can think of is, this is really discouraging, or this really sucks. *somewhere in between) Needless to say, we did not do a lesson but we discussed what they needed to do and said a quick prayer and came back the next day to help. Luckily, their landlord had an empty house/room on the 2nd floor nearby. So the next day, we helped them move their heavy furniture to the room upstairs. The water had risen a bit more and I don't ever want to know what was in it, but we helped them out a lot, which was great. The water shoes worked perfectly for the occasion, thanks. There was huge cockroaches all over the furniture, which made it a lot of fun to carry. We also got some good pictures out of the whole experience.

A gidro is a lemur in English, I just remembered :)

In other news, the transfer is coming to a close, and I will get a new companion on Thursday. It's been a lot of fun. I'm definitely gonna miss Elder Edgley. But I've liked all of my companions thus far, so I see no reason why this next one shouldn't be cool too.

Well, I love you guys, I'm praying for all of you individually, which makes my prayers longer, but I think it's better that way. Until next week, Veloma!
Elder Draper

07 February 5--Bonjour Vahaza (just smile and wave elder)

Hello,
Wow, it's really good to hear from you guys. I don't have much time to write today because my day has been kind of used up by this mandatory basketball tournament that we had today (there's P-day and that Mandatory word together in the same sentence again, oh well) Anyway, if any of you remember, me and basketball just aren't the best of friends( in fact, it's embarrassing how bad I am) so I did what could and somehow my district won anyway. Maybe we'll get snickers again.

To be perfectly honest, it's been a rough couple weeks for me. All of the elements seem to have combined to try and make us miserable, but we're still doing good I think, it's just that the "Vazahas!" and all of the other obnoxious things that are shouted at us are just a little bit more .... I don't know how to describe it....just like *breath*,or * sigh* than they have been before. I guess my struggle of late has been trying to cultivate more patience and charity for people, myself included. Sometimes I feel like a kid just trying to be an adult, but I'm not sure I always succeed. I will say that I am grateful for my companion, and there's somebody who deals with alot of the same things.

But don't worry, things are starting to pick up. These last few weeks have been difficult because of mostly circumstantial things. I have no idea where this is from but somebody intelligent and optimistic said something like, " life is 10% of what happens to you, and 90% of what you do about it" something like that. Anyway, I'd like to think that maybe these past few weeks, we experienced a lot more of the 10% and while we're still not perfect, we dealt with it pretty well, because we're still smiling, making jokes, and moving on.

Well, I'm out of time, and I gotta go, but good news, there's no mandatory p-day activity next week, so that will give me more time to write.

I love you all, Veloma!
Elder Draper.