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.