Norwich Christmas! + Temple Visit

Hey Mom!

Wow!  That’s a lot of packages!  (we sent him 5 for christmas). We got them and I haven’t opened them yet, they are underneath our non-existent Christmas tree, but I already KNOW that one of them is a jar of Jelly Beans!  You. Are. The. Best.

Also, thank you so much for the diligent research you did on Norwich!  You probably know more about it than I do, and I live here!  Haha!  Plus I just want to thank you for sharing your missionary experiences with me.  Being out here you really see that lots of people who are members don’t share the gospel, but I am so unbelievably proud of my family out there sharing the gospel like bosses!  Thank you so much!  You guys are so cool!  

Mom!  I got to go to the temple on Wednesday!!  After over a year of it being off limits due to it being in lamanite (London south) territory, President Stevens finally got approval for the mission to go down!  It was incredible!  I really know that Temples are the House of the Lord.  I know that Preparation before going also invites revelation and learning!  It was just the coolest experience!  Being in the celestial room with the Stevens was just such a sweet experience.  I love them so much!  They were there just waiting for us in the Celestial room and it was amazing!  I’ll never forget this great week!

Also, Rizel got baptised yesterday!  (I was teaching her in Hyde Park)  So that is another amazing thing!

Man, it’s going to be fun to skype you guys on Christmas Day!  

Elder Leone and decided on 7:00 n Christmas Day.  (12:00 your time). That’s on Monday (Christmas day). I think I still have your skype. (Just checked and I do!)  

Come prepared to make the most out of it!  45 minutes is going to go by quick!  

I can’t wait to see all of your beautiful faces!  I love you so much Mom!  I know that this is God’s work and I am so happy to be doing it!  I know that the Book of Mormon is a God Given Testament if Jesus Christ and is absolutely the truth!  

You are the best!  Have a great week!

Hey Dad!  

I know!  I can’t believe how fast time goes.  In honestly makes my sort of anxious sometimes.  I love being a missionary so much.  I can’t waste a single second!  It’ll be over before I know it.  Time is such a crazy concept.  

I love the new Area! Norwich is beautiful and the Ward is fantastic!  The wards in London are great, but people there are busy and they move in and out of the ward constantly, so it’s hard to develop really good relationships with people.  Here in Norwich, they love missionaries.  We got loads of gifts from members on Sunday and we even sing in the choir!  Haha!  It’s awesome!  

My companion is amazing as well!  His name is Elder Leone from SLC.  He is an amazing missionary.  He’s been out for a transfer longer than me and we trained new missionaries and became ZL's at the same time, so we had a love and respect for each other before we became companions, which is awesome!  I don’t know if I have ever worked better alongside any of my other companions.  We get along really well and we work really hard.  It’s the best!  

The Zone is good,  but there are challenges that are so different to Hyde Park!  The Zone is spread so far from each other, that it can be fairly difficult to build unity in the Zone.  The Districts are far more unified.  It’s an interesting dynamic.  Also, the work is different up here.  People are well established and often times closed minded.  It’s interesting finding creative ways to find people to teach!  Here are 10 companionships in the Zone (20 Missionaries). Our area is pretty huge.  We do have a car not just for our big area, but because our Zone is MASSIVE!  Going to District Meetings is quite the road trip!  It’s just me and Elder Leone in this flat.  It’s a quaint little home out in the Sprowston village!  Pretty cool!  We went to the temple this week!  It was amazing!  I thought I told you we were going!  Anyways, I’ll tell you more about it on Christmas!  

We can skype Monday (Christmas Day) at 7:00pm England time... I think that’s 12:00 mountain time.  

Something amazing happened yesterday!  Rizel (who I wrote about a few times in previous emails and was teaching in Hyde Park) got baptised yesterday!!  Woooo!  I messaged her and wished her good luck and she told me how sad she was I couldn’t be there to see her baptism.  Right before I left she asked me to Baptise her, but I got moved, so it was a bit hard for her but in the long run a good thing.  If people get too attached to missionaries, it’s not a good thing.  Missionaries tend to leave...  haha!  But I’m just so happy!  She is so amazing.  Seriously kingdom builder quality!  

This truly is the Lords work!  I know that.  I know that the temple is the house of the Lord.  When we went this last week I had just a really sweet experience. We even got to stay a night in the temple accommodations because the Norwich Zone is so far away and it takes like 5 hours to travel there! Feeling the spirit that is in the temple and being in the celestial room with past companions and President and Sister Stevens was just the best thing ever.  It brought back memories from road tripping around Utah with you, and going to all those temples!  Those are some of my most cherished memories.

It’s going to be great to see you on Christmas!  Are you guys going to prepare some questions?  Or are we just going to gaze into each others eyes for 45 minutes?  Haha!  It’s going to be great!  I sure love you!  Have a great week!

Love ya!

Elder Draper

1.  We decorated this Members tree!  (Pretty good right?

2.  Elder Leone and I with the Stevens at the London Temple Visitors Center

3.  I love to see the temple

4.  Sort of a long story... but the Elders got locked out of their flat, so we came to the rescue!  Haha!

5-rest temple!

December 11, 2017

Hello Family!

Woooooo!  Disney Land!  (We just returned from Disneyland for Maddie's 18th birthday)

That looks so much fun!  

I’m so happy to see all of these great pictures and to see all of your happy faces! 

I seriously cannot believe Maddie is turning 18!  She’s a full blown adult now???  What the... and what is this "lit sauce" you guys keep talking about?  

Well, you guys just made my week!  Thank you for sending those awesome pictures!  

Well, I had a pretty great week!  I LOVE NORWICH!!  It is quite the change of pace from central London!  I seriously love it.  You could really help me out if you google some facts about Norwich and fun things to do on PDay and also look up some facts about the University of East Anglia.  (That’s where we spend a lot of time looking for Uni students to teach!)

My companion is Elder Leone!  He is such an amazing guy!  He is from SLC and went to Highland High School.  He loves baseball and American Football, is going to the UofU, and is just an incredible guy!  We get on really well!  We have had so much fun and worked so hard this week!  When I got here we weren’t really teaching anyone, and the area was a bit slow, but we put our shoulder to the wheel and saw some amazing miracles!  By the end of the week we had 7 people in our teaching pool who are preparing for baptism!  It was really amazing!  5 are UEA students from China, Philippines, and Thailand, (Chen, Sun, Chrystal, Amyson, and Jolene)and the other two are an older English pair.  (Stanley and Sylvia) (Sylvia's Mother by Dr. Hook has been referenced a lot this week, thank you Dad!)  plus it snowed really hard all during Sunday and English people can’t handle the snow, so lots of wards in the Zone and the Mission got cancelled because of the snow.  Unfortunately here in Norwich it snowed, but nothing stuck.  Its just too wet and rainy for snow to stick.  

I love this time of year!  I love the coats and the cold weather, and how people’s hearts seem to soften to the gospel light as we turn our focus to the reason for the season.  I know that Jesus Christ is our older brother and our friend.  He loves us and he died for us.  I’ve come to know him a lot more than I did before here in England, and I’ll be grateful for that forever.  I know that we wouldn’t have Christmas without Easter and without the amazing victory over death and sin.  I know that our sweet family will be together forever.  

I love you all so much!

Till next week, 

Elder Draper

Goodbye London, Hello Norwich

Hiya!

Well, after spending the last 3 transfers in the blessed Hyde Park 1 Ward, and being in central London, the time has come for me to migrate North for the winter.  If you don’t know where Norwich is, don’t worry, not many do.  It’s about as far North as you can get in our mission!  I’m so excited!  I’ve never been this far away from London before, so it should be great fun!

I am really going to miss the amazing missionaries and members here in Hyde Park.  I have grown to love them a lot.  I don’t know what I’ll do without the busyness of London and taking the tubes and London Buses!  Haha!  I’m going to miss the amazing people I’ve been able to teach here as well!  Plus, I will miss my amazing Austrian companion Elder Egger loads!  He’s such a great lad!  

We are teaching a woman called Rizel from the Philippines, and she is doing amazing!  The members are just fellowshipping her like there is no tomorrow!  After church yesterday, we watched "the Restoration" with her and she just testified that Joseph Smith was a prophet and how everything was becoming clear to her!  She is just amazing!  She is getting baptised on the 17th.  

I am so grateful for the time I have been on my mission.  I love testifying of our Saviour.  It’s helped me come to know Him better.  I know that He lived a perfect life and made the way possible for us to live with our Father in Heaven again.  I love this Christmas season when the weather gets colder and the people’s hearts get warmer!  

Let’s show the world the light of Christ that we are so blessed to have!

#LightTheWorld

Have an amazing week!

Elder Draper 

Selections from his letter to Mom:

Hey Mom!  

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!  

Yesterday I saw that it was the third and remembered your birthday!  (Which is good because I forgot my own birthday last June!)

I hope you had the most wonderful day! Sounds like you guys are just having an absolute blast!  

I’m getting transferred!  After being here in the blessed Hyde Park Zone for so long I am leaving to literally as far away from London as you can go in our mission to the Norwich Zone!  My new companion is Elder Leone and he is from Utah too!  Haha.

I don’t know much about Norwich, so I’m excited to go and just love the people!

The one thing I do happen to know is it gets pretty darn cold there... so, I’m just bracing for impact!  Haha.

There are so many wonderful things going on in this area and I’m sad to go, but I am also excited that there are people I can help and serve in Norwich!  

I love you so much Mom!  Don’t worry about me working hard!  I have really come to live hard work on my mission!  Diligence is such an important attribute to have, and I realise that I didn’t have very much if it before serving.  #bestchoiceever

Sure love you Mom!

November 27, 2017

Wow!  Thanksgiving sounds like it was amazing this year!  

England did not celebrate, and I sort of forgot, BUT I this was a wonderful time to be grateful.  There Lord is blessing us so much!  Both in our area and in the Zone!   We had a lesson with a referral who is from the Philippines, and WOW the Spirit was so present.  She accepted a baptismal invitation and is getting baptized on Dec 17!  We were also able to have a Brazilian woman and a man from Bangladesh accept baptismal invitations yesterday!  Such an amazing time to be a missionary!  People are more open to it during the Christmas season.

That’s so cool to hear about JD Becoming a priest and the adventures up at the Cabin!  Sounds like that is going to be the place to be pretty soon!  Haha!   

Thank you so much for your words of encouragement Mom. You rock.  I’m so grateful for you in my life!

I think I’m good!  I’m healthy, I’m happy, and I’m on the Lords Errand!  I couldn’t ask for more!

Have an amazing week! Love you!

Thank You High School Spanish!

Wow... never thought I would say that one!  

So, here is a pretty cool miracle from this week.  

We were out in Acton (West, West London) teaching a guy called Mike (super interesting guy) with a member called Brother Clark from Scotland.  The lesson went really well and all, but what happened afterward was even better!  We stopped by one other appointment we had set up for that night in the same street (Shakespeare Road...pretty cool right) but it was sad because some random guy answered the door and handed us our Book of Mormon back and said “she isn’t interested” that was the sad part.

Then Brother Clark stepped in and saved the day.  He told us about a less active family who we could stop by, so we went all the way down to the very end of the street we were on (still Shakespeare Road) and he pointed and said "That could be the one.”  (He is really Scottish)  So we did, and turns out that no one lived there that was a member of our church, but her aunt was looking for a church to go to as they had recently moved house from Ecuador.  She came to the door, but she only spoke Spanish so I muttered out that we were missionaries, and said 'inglesias' which I’m pretty sure means church (thank you Mr. Redford) the niece who spoke a little more English helped out quite a bit as well.  Then the aunt's face just lit up!  I have never seen anyone so excited to go to church before!  We got everything set up and the member was so excited about it that he arranged for a Spanish speaking family in the ward to pick them up Sunday morning.  It was incredible!  

I am absolutely loving being a missionary in London!  I know this is the Lords work!  I’m so grateful that the Lord qualifies us and magnifies us if we just allow him to.  I know that families can be together forever, not a moment less, and I am so grateful for that!

Hope you all have an amazing week!

Elder Draper

I’m doing amazing!  I love serving a mission with all of my heart Mom.  I really do.  It scares me how fast the time is flying by and I just want to make every single second count!  I want to give my all to my Saviour while I can and while I am a full time set apart Missionary! 

The stress of leadership is very real.  I know that I’ve learned so much these past few months of having these kind of responsibilities.  Probably the most cool thing is how to love and serve people more fully.  Especially when people need it, or if it is hard to do so.  I have loved having to just rely on the Lord as well.  So much of it is just beyond me, but thanks to Him, even I can be an instrument to help people come closer to God.  

Not going to lie.  I’m pretty familiar with London.  I’ve lived here for well over 6 months, and just traveling all over the place all the time sort of forces you to know it.  I’m sure I can show you all a good time when we visit!  

My new companion is Elder Egger.  He is from Austria and he is one of my favourite companions of all time.  We get along great and we both love working hard.  (We both served with Elder Botta how we have that diligent Italian spirit in us). He is the youngest of 7 kids!  That’s big for Austria.  His town is called Innsbruck and I am definitely going to visit him after my mission.  It looks beautiful!  He is a transfer older than me on the mission but I am training him as a Zone Leader, so there is an interesting dynamic there!  I just love him to death.

No... I don’t eat peas with a knife..l and I’ve never seen anyone do that!  Haha, BUT!  I do hold my fork in my left hand and my knife in my right hand and use both utensils all the time... (the proper way) Haha!

I love you SO much!  Whenever I think or teach  about the doctrine of eternal families, I just think of our amazing family and how wonderful you are.  You are the best Mom ever.

Sure love you!

MLC

October 30, 2017

Mom! 

I have to repent right now before I start.  I have 0 time to email.  I’m so sorry.  You deserve way better.  Your email to me this week was so kind and amazing!  I love hearing about your adventures!  

Just know that I am learning lots, working hard, and loving every opportunity I get to bear witness of the Saviour!  

Plus I love my companion Elder Egger a whole lot.  We get along great and both love working hard!  

Also tell Dad I loved his email and he does not preach to ungrateful ears!  

Love you so much Mom!

October 23, 2017

Hey Mom!

Transfer news is I am staying in Hyde Park!  I don’t know what I did to be so lucky to serve in London for so long, but I love it so much!  Elder Egger is my new companion and he is from Austria!  Should be awesome! 

Well.  Don’t have too much time to write this week.  We helped a lot of missionaries that are dying (going home).  It was great memories.  But it took a lot of time.  So tell the kids individually how much I love them.  (A ridiculous amount) Tell Maddie I’m glad her nose isnt broken!  Tell JD he is an absolute boss, and that Sydney is awesome too!  You are the best!

I know that families are forever!  Not a minute less!  I’m so grateful for that!

This is the truth!  Jesus is the Christ!

Love you so much!

Elder Draper