2007 February 25--Toby's Turn

Hey,

It's wonderful to hear from all of you. You guys always seem to have a ton of things going on, which is great. I don't know where to start with this week. Thank you for your prayers. We definitely need them.

Anyway, yeah, it's been a pretty rough week. The good news is, I haven't blown up at my companion yet. I've been taking notes from Ensign articles and what not, about how missionaries get along with a difficult companion. One I liked was about a companion who made his sleeping-in-companion breakfast, (in the article, sleeping-in was not the only problem, there were lots of parallels to my situation.) Anyway, I did the same thing, but it didn't turn out as nice as in the article. He got up to eat, but he had some things to say about how he hates the milk here, and wasn't a fan of the laughing cow cheese I used in the eggs. He also didn't like it when I asked if we could use some of the Parmesan cheese he had gotten from one of his packages. Sigh. He amazed me further still by going back to sleep after the breakfast. I've had to wake him up a couple of times this week, so we could make our first appointment. We missed 3 appointments on Saturday morning because of what I will term a "drama queen performance" from my companion ( however, I feel that "drama queen" is cutting the description a bit short). I had to call one of the senior missionaries to clear up whatever his problem was so that we could go out and work.

I've kept my cool pretty well though, which I think is something just short of a miracle. I think I could contribute this to my last companionship being so mellow - and we just really had a good time. True we had some obnoxious things happen to us that transfer, but we were able to laugh at ourselves and ease the tension of some intense situations through humor and optimism. I really feel like I've gotten along great will every single one of my companions, even some that I had very little in common with. So now I've been thrown a curve ball, and I've think it nailed me in the head. I'm still trying to work out what I need to do. I'm positive that my companion's got some great personality traits somewhere, he's just seems to have suppressed or replaced them with something else. He may have just gotten in the bad habit of looking on the dark side of things. I think this bothered all of the rest of his companions, but all they did was tell him that he was really an unpleasant person to work with ( in probably more colorful language than that, but I think you get the point). Anyway, I'm convinced that he wasn't helped by that. I think he needs someone to help him out of the pit, not throw a shovel at his head.

I've had a lot of help dealing with this through prayer, and I've started to meditate about it as well, both of which, I think, have helped. I made him lunch the other day, it was kind of like a hamburger-helper macaroni sort of thing, and he didn't say anything bad about it, which is almost like the equivalent of Elder S saying "thank you", so I think there has been some improvement. I guess I've just got to keep going little by little ( tsikelikely as they say). I need your prayers, because I'm not perfect, not even anywhere close, and I've got things I have to work on even without all of the problems that exist in this companionship. I'm hoping that next week you will get a happy letter about missionary work, and maybe some of our investigators, or at least something about Madagascar. Until then, I still haven't unleashed the tension on my companion, and I've been figuring out some positive outlets for the frustration. Guitar is good ( a drum set might work better for tension-release, but you work with what you've got I guess). Meditation is good too. I've taught Elder S some guitar lessons which I think he likes, so we'll see how that goes.

In the mean time, I love you all, I pray for you everyday, and I look forward to hearing from you every week. I plan to start writing some letters to people this week. I wonder how many people I may have inadvertently offended because I'm so terrible at keeping correspondence in writing. Oh well, there's always something to improve. Well, until next week, Veloma!

Elder Draper

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.

07 January 30--Progress

Hello, hi and how are ya?,

This week was a long one. It's all down in the journal, so I'll have to tell all about it after the mission. But to give you an illustration, on Saturday, our first 7 set appointments didn't go through (but we did have a nice last appointment at least). But that's kind of how this whole week has been. We also got to see Jaqguy get baptized this week, which was nice ( if you remember last week's E-mail, Jaqguy is one of my first guitar students in this country). I got stuck with, er.. was privileged to give a talk on the Holy Ghost after the baptism. It actually went ok, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't nervous out of my mind. All of the notes and scriptures I had written were useless to me because when I got up to the pulpit, I was so nervous I couldn't read English anymore. So I just talked about the Holy Ghost and read some scriptures as they came to me. After the talk, all of the Malagasys told me how much they liked the talk. This was good because Malagasys have a way of telling you just how terrible at something they think you are. Like when I first got in the country, and bore my testimony in Malagasy for the first time, afterwards I had two different ladies give me a piece of paper showing me all the mistakes I had made to "Help" me get better, and the rest of the branch said stuff like, " tena tsy mahay tenin' i Gasy ianao!" (you're really not good at Malagasy at all are you!). It was pretty funny. Anyway, after my talk at the baptism, the positive comments were hopefully true. I also got to bless the sacrament in Malagasy for the first time yesterday, which I actually enjoyed. If you had showed me the words " Andriamanitra, Rainay Mandrakizay O" (Oh God, the Eternal Father) before my mission, I would have asked you " what kind of crazy language is that?", and now, it is the most familiar to me besides English and doesn't sound weird to me at all, funny how that works.

I'm having a lot of fun with my companion. I think Micaela and Phil would really get along with this guy, he kind of reminds me of all of their good friends. And he lives in Maryland. I've been really lucky to get along with all of my companions, and none of them are anything alike. So that's been a nice thing for me on my mission.

One of the reasons this mission is so cool is because it's so small, in that there is only 50 missionaries, so we all get to know each other pretty well. I'm excited to hang out with some of these guys after the mission. It will be like a little subculture of white Malagasy speakers, and nobody will have even a clue of what we're talking about.

In other news, we have found an Indian restaurant comparable to Bombay House. Yeah, I'm happy about that. And as long as we're talking about food, my companion and I made an incredible roast yesterday, it was so good, it helped us feel a lot better about the slow week we'd just experienced. We also finally got our guitars this week, and they are really nice. Unfortunately, for how long we've been waiting for these guitars, unless they turned out to be like a Les Paul, I was setting myself up for an anticlimax. The experience of actually picking up the guitars was a little trying on my patience. When I got there, some lady said that we should give them a tip for how nice the guitars were, when we were thinking that, considering they should have been done in a week, and we had waited 2 and a half months for them, we should have gotten a discount ( we payed top dollar, and these guys weren't exactly poverty stricken anyway), so I kind of had to hold my tongue when she mentioned the tip (because there was also the implication that because we're white, of course we have the money). Also, I had to spend the next hour playing all of the guitars and pointing out all of the flaws that needed to be fixed ( there was alot) before we took them home. But we have the guitars now, and they are nice, so everything's good now.

There is hope for the upcoming week. We're hoping that we'll get more of our appointments to go through this week, and we just barely got an investigator that looks like a "golden" one. We'll see. But for now, I'm out of time, so until next week, Veloma!
Elder Draper

07 January 22--Guitar Lessons

Amazing. It's always nice to hear from you guys. It sounds like you guys are keeping yourselves busy, which is great. I got the package! Thank you! My companion and I are enjoying it thoroughly. I still haven't gotten the guitar *sigh*. However, it is very close to being done, and the color is good too.

As far as the work here is concerned, things are going good. From the many "contact lessons" my companion and I have taught, we are starting to see the "first fruits" as it were. Statistically, the number of lessons being taught in a week is getting higher. We had 5 new investigators this last week alone, many of whom are due to the help of the members, which is exactly what we're trying to do. We're hoping that we can just keep this up.

In other news, an investigator that I started teaching in my last area is getting baptized this weekend. His name is Jacguy, he is about 23 years old and one of those really nice and calm guys that everybody likes. I first met him walking down the street with his friends and carrying a guitar. So of course, I stopped them and asked them if I could play his guitar. He said yes, and I played and then they asked if I taught guitar lessons, then I thought about it, and said, yes. And they became my first guitar students in Madagascar. They came every single week. The funny thing was, we never brought up religion, and they really weren't interested in learning religious music either. But Jacguy was always there, and he starting going to English class too, and then he started realizing that he had a lot of friends that were members of the Church. Then one day, while me and Elder Stone (my last companion) were waiting for a member to show up to help us with a lesson, Jacguy came up to us. The conversation kind of went like this, me: " Oh hey, Jacguy, how's it goin?," Jacguy:" It's going good" me" How's the guitar treating you these days?" Jacguy: " OH it's great, I'm really making progress, and it's a lot of fun, but I have a question" me: " oh yeah? that's great, what's your question?" Jacguy:" Well, basically, I really like learning the guitar, and English, but what I really want to know is; what do I need to do to learn more about the scriptures?" (Understand, we had never brought up religion, and that was the last question I expected from him.) I had to ask him to repeat the question just to be sure. And it was true, he wanted to learn the missionary lessons. Anyway, long story short, we started teaching him that week, he started coming to church (of his own accord) and to ward activities and then I had to leave the area. But the lessons went great, and he asked very good and sincere questions and accepted the answers we gave enthusiastically. He was everything a missionary ever wanted, and now he's getting baptized. He only started learning 2 months ago. And now he wants me to give the talk on the Fanahy Masina (Holy Ghost) at his baptism. Anyway, that was a nice experience for me to see ( and I'll be honest, it's a nice example for me to show those few missionaries that "questioned my motives" about teaching guitar lessons. "Elder Draper, do you really think that teaching guitar lessons is an 'appropriate' missionary activity?" my answer: YES!)

In more other news, My companion, 2 other missionaries and I, went and helped paint a school way outside the city. The school was named Richard G. Scott. and the "principal"( or near equivalent) is a member. It was near my first area here in the mission, near Talatamaty, in the beautiful countryside of Madagascar. I was amazed how nostalgic I could get for any place other than home. My first area was full of trees, rice paddies, hills and green. This area has no trees, rice paddies, hills or green. After the 4 of us painted the school with milk..er uh.. paint, the principle fed us rice, and ... well... more rice. It was fun. This place is really beautiful, I'm excited to come back here and see the countryside, because I'm really missing it right now.

Anyway, I'm out of time. I love you all, I pray for you always. And I'm really excited to see you and talk to you after all this. Until next week's letter Veloma!
Elder Draper

07 January 15--Raindrops

It is actually really hot here. Except when it rains. And it's been doing that for the last two weeks. When we try to sleep at night, with the combination of all the tin roofs nearby, ( we've got a tin roof too I guess, but there's stuff between us and it, which muffles the sound mostly) and the RAIN, it's sounds as though there is a relentless applause going on. Sometimes I like to pretend that there's millions of people cheering for me to go to sleep, they just don't know that the cheering is not helping, but I give them points for trying anyway. The rain is also fun at appointments when the investigators have tin roofs, then it's like being in a crowded football stadium; us: " THE HOLY GHOST SPEAKS TO US WITH A STILL SMALL VOICE!!!!" investigator: " WHAT?!!!" us: " THE HOLY GHOST SPEAKS T- ........NEVERMIND!! WE'LL TALK ABOUT IT LATER!!!!" investigator: " WHAT?!!!"....... yeah it gets pretty fun sometimes. I can see how the rain can really bother some missionaries. But the way I see it, if you simply decide to enjoy it, you will be saved a lot of misery and woe. For instance, it is my natural inclination to NOT like being cold and wet, however, it can be fun to make game about how many times in a day you get hit in the face by all of the short people carrying umbrellas, or sing songs walking down the street like, " Good day, sunshine" or " Jesus wants me for a suuuunnn BEAM!" (jump) (- in a puddle), or as we were coming home and trying to open the metal gate to our house, and struggling, we pretended we were in one those movies about a submarine where the people are trying to open the door before all the water gets in and they drown, "THIS IS U571, THE HATCH IS SEALED AND THE WATER'S COMIN' IN!!" yeah, it's fun.

Anyway, life's good. We've been having fun. It was Elder Edgley's birthday yesterday, he turned 20. I turned 20 almost 2 months exactly before him and came on the mission 2 months before him, so he's basically in the same point in his life ( chronologically speaking) as I was 2 months ago. interesting. We went and had a Barbecue with some other elders to celebrate, I think he had a good time. I still haven't gotten my guitar. I've been waiting for about a month and a half, the guy who makes them says it's because of the rain. But he says they'll ( I've become "the missionary to go to" if you want to buy a guitar, so consequently there is more than 1 guitar being made) be done on Wednesday. I guess we'll see. But there's the story about the guitar, (minus the middle part about him finishing my guitar 3 weeks ago, and it was great, except for the COLOR, which was hideous, and my refusing to take it and ordering another one, which is another reason the guitar has taken so long, Tsy maintsy vita tsara! " it must be done well":)

I still haven't received the package. I don't know why. We just received word today from church headquarters about people sending money to missionaries in Madagascar via the pouch, which is illegal, so now all of the letters we get are being opened. So the word is, Don't send money. I don't think that you guys have any problem with that, but that's what we were told to tell you, just in case.

I'm out of time again. But it is always great to hear from you. I love you all. I pray for you always. Until next week. Veloma!

Elder Draper.

07 January 7--Balance

OK,

This week was good. I'm hoping to finally get my guitar today (there's a long and tedious story about that, so I'll spare you the details). It's great to hear from you. I'm really struggling today for what I want to write. Nothing terribly exciting happened this week. Most of our investigators are out of town for the holidays, even though all of them neglected to tell us that before we had already set up appointments. So our work suffered statistically this week. I'm not too worried about numbers though, because I know we kept ourselves busy this week. It's a difficult balance that we have to keep as missionaries, in terms of the how we keep track of the work we're doing. Some missionaries only look at the statistics ( IE, how many appointments, how many investigators attended sacrament meeting, how many contacts how many...... etc.... ( we call in our statistics every week)) and I don't think that's the right way to do it. However, some missionaries, don't look at the statistics at all, and I don't think that's good either. I think that it's important to keep the right balance. The missionaries that are only concerned with the numbers ( # of appointments, # of baptisms etc...) neglect some other important aspects of missionary work that cannot be measured in numbers. They are also more often victims of what could be termed " a bad week", in that all of their scheduled appointments, no matter how much they had prepared that week, for some reason or another, fall through. (They also become way more uptight and bureaucratic than I have patience for). However, the opposite is also something to avoid. Those missionaries that don't worry at all about the numbers run the risk of selling themselves short, in terms of the work they could be doing. It is harder to set meaningful and reasonable goals when you disregard the actual number of appointments or what-have-you that your putting out right now. It's like throwing a dart in the dark - you might hit the target. But more likely you'll break something( or end up hitting your companion). Happily, my present companion sits somewhere in the middle, as do I. But I've been both places, and I'm still trying to BE in the right balance. It's definitely a work in progress because I'd say my temperament leans toward the latter.

Anyway, this week was full of tracting and visiting members and doing what we've come to call "the contact lesson". This lesson was developed by my companion and I because it is the mission goal to get more baptisms this year than last ( obviously). And it has already been determined that the most effective finding tool is not tracting, but using the members for contacts. Also, having a friend at church is the first of three things that all new members need for retention, according to President Hinckley. So basically my companion and I decided that if we simply remember to bother every single one of our appointments about bringing a friend to church and asking for a contact, eventually they will submit, if only to get us to stop bothering them. This logic was taken from the "Parable of the unjust judge" in the New Testament, so hopefully it will work. I think it will, it just needs time is all. So that's what we did this week. We are also going to start a fireside for all the new members and investigators one Sunday of every month. We're hoping that the missionaries will only have to be in charge for the first couple of times and then the member missionaries will catch on. There will be a lesson at the beginning, but the focus will be on the games and snacks at the end , with the idea that the food and games will be what they'll remember and therefore come back for.

Well it looks like I'm out of time so, I'll just say I love you and I'll write you next week. Veloma!

Elder Draper

07 January 2--tratra ny toana vaovoa! which, being interpreted is, Happy New Year!

Alright, where do I begin?,

This week was great. In case you were wondering, I didn't write you yesterday because every time we have a major Holiday on Monday ( which has happened a few times this(last) year) we switch our P-day to Tuesday.

Anyway, yesterday was great, we went to the office and had a really good breakfast for all the missionaries, courtesy of the senior couples here in Madagascar. The senior couples are, Elder and Sister Armour, who lived in California and knew Jack Stringham while he served a mission there speaking Cambodian ( they said he was their favorite missionary and still keep in contact with him,) Elder and Sister Wilson, who arrived here from England about 2 months after I got here. Yesterday, as all the missionaries were watching a film for New Years, Sister Wilson came in before, and announced that since we sang "We Wish You a Merry Christmas" to the orphans earlier that week, and some of us asked " what is a figgy pudding anyway?" she had actually made some figgy pudding for us to try, and asked if anyone wanted to try some, to which I replied " we won't go until we get some!" ( happily most people got it :). So we ate figgy pudding and watched a movie for new years ( I don't know if anyone wants figgy pudding ever again.) Sister Gaya (president's wife), who is an excellent French cook, also contributed greatly to the wonderful New Year's breakfast.

This last week was really fun. There is a lot more drunk people in this new area ( as I may have mentioned before) and drunk people always make a point to talk to the white guys (usually in French or English, neither of which are they usually able to speak). Often, we are invited to sit down and drink with them. We always refuse, however some of our best members were former alcoholics contacted while they were drunk because it's really easy to get an address from drunk people. And if you can read their handwriting, they give you the actual address and really tell you were they live ( Sober people often give us a false address to get rid of us, I don't know why they don't just say " I'm not interested" there would be a lot less walking.) Anyway, this week we were invited to join some people drinking, even though they knew exactly who we are, so they bought us a large bottle of Coke and asked us to explain some questions they had about English. We said we had to go, but they gave us the coke anyway, ( I never drank coke before the mission, but I recommend it after eating "questionable" meals ( even though sometimes, there's no question, i.e. cow stomach) because it kills most things in your stomach.) They gave us the Coke and insisted that we answer a question about English that was really troubling them. So we asked what the question was. He said " what mean this? ' Fuzzywuzzy was a bear. Fuzzywuzzy had no hair, Fuzzywuzzy wasn't very fuzzy, was he?' I do not understand this! Who is this Fuzzywuzzy? What is Fuzzy? Why didn't he have her? and who was she anyway?" The person asking the question was so serious about this that my companion and I couldn't help but laughing hysterically. My companion kept laughing as I feebly tried to explain. I don't think he got it. But hey, we got a free Coke.

I seem to recall that all the kids in our family have at some point been caught sleep-talking, all of them except, correct me if I'm wrong, me. I might have sleep-talked before, but either nobody told me about it, or nobody's ever heard me. Anyway, I was always kind of proud of this distinction, because usually people say the most ridiculous things when they sleep-talk, and are later made fun of for it. Well, I am now with my 5th companion on the mission, and all of them say that they have heard me sleep-talk more than a couple of times. The funny thing is, none of them have heard me sleep-talk in English. Apparently, when I sleep-talk, it's always in Malagasy. So there, you have it, the only reason I didn't sleep-talk before was because I couldn't speak Malagasy back then. And now everything makes sense again:)

Well, it's always lovely to hear from you. No, I still haven't received your package, but I'm not worried. I'm sure it will turn up some time. Oh yeah, my companion and I won the "mission's mandatory p-day pizza contest" last week. This was great because I was visibly opposed to the words " mandatory" and "p-day" being in the same sentence, but then we won, and both received snickers bars. They were good, ( and the name of the candy was appropriate;). I just thought I'd throw that in there before I closed, which I must do shortly. Ok then, happy new year again. I love you all, and I hope you are all doing well. Veloma! (pronounced veh-loom, in case you were wondering)

Elder Draper.

06 December 26--Kirisimasy

Hello again,

It was great to talk to all of you yesterday. It sounds like you guys had a really good Christmas. I had a good Christmas too, it was different, but good. I think the highlight was being able to talk to all of you.

We started out our Christmas by visiting an orphanage. Earlier in the week we bought some toys and candy to give them. We sang them some songs, I played the guitar, and then we gave them the toys and candy. They were really happy. After that, we went out to lunch. A lot of the missionaries wanted to go to this "Mexican" restaurant that we had discovered earlier in the month, but it ended up being closed. So, as we were walking back, we walked past this sign that said " sakafo Iranien" (which, being interpreted, is Persian Food! ;). I was excited and insisted that we go in. When I walked in and saw the guy behind the counter, I spoke the only Persian I know ( courtesy of dad) and he gave me the weirdest look and responded in Persian, and then asked in English; " you speak Farsi?" I told him that dad could. This was funny because, I'm sure the last place he expected to hear Persian was from an American white guy, in a restaurant in Madagascar. And then we started speaking Malagasy to the workers, and I think they were even more weirded out. I asked for pomegranate chicken, but they did not have it. But I did get something good, and I had basamati rice, which was nice. It was good, but the service was terrible. Some of the missionaries loved it, and inevitably, some of them well... did not. Oh well, I hope they can forgive me eventually.

Anyway, after lunch we went to an Old-folks home and sang them songs too. We talked with them for a little bit, they were really happy to talk to us. Then we gave them to fruit, sang some more songs, and said good bye. After that my companion and I went to an investigators house, and the fed us. We had goose and rice, and more rice. I also had ranopango which is basically burnt-rice-water. It's good, it tastes like "Postum", sort of, and it's been thoroughly boiled, so it won't kill me, I like it. Then after that, we went to a party at one of the missionary houses, where I got to talk to you guys. So basically, that was my Christmas. Today we have a "mandatory" white Elephant gift exchange, and pizza contest for P-day. I get to pick up my 60 dollar custom-made guitar today as well. That will be cool.

Well, I'm out of time, because I've got a really busy schedule today so, I love you all and I will write you next week. Veloma!
Elder Draper