October 27th

Howdy Fam, 

It's been a good week. It's always a good week. I don't think there are many bad weeks on a mission. And bad days only last until you can sit down and talk to someone about the gospel, so most days don't stay bad for too long. 

Betsey Williams is getting baptized this week. On Halloween. Which is Friday. Which is cool. We're excited. We tried to teach Christian, the seven year old, the Restoration on Tuesday. We even got those red and green cardboard bricks and built a great church and Christian knocked it down and built his own church. That didn't enthuse him too much though. He did have fun with the blocks, but there was a lot of "mhm"-ing going on. People that are young and shy are hard to teach the gospel to. Especially when they're not used to going to church and stuff. The good news is Mom is going to be baptized and it'll all end up great like a story book or something. Eventually. We'll be sure to send some good baptism pictures. 

It's Halloween this week. Weird. 

On Wednesday we had exchanges with the Zone Leaders. I was with Elder White With Gauges. He was baptized about three years ago, thus the large holes in his ears where gauges were previously present. Elder White with Gauges was a little more quiet than I had anticipated him to be in lessons, but that was probably because I had to fly by the seat of my pants a lot. People are flaky here. 

Oh that reminds me. 

On Wednesday we had district meeting. On the way there, I reached up to get my Tiwi card to log into our Big Brother driving monitoring thing. As of late I've been keeping it in the sun visor, in the little slidey mirror part, for convenience. Well it decided it wanted to stick to the little plastic piece that slides. And got stuck. Then after trying to fanangle it out, it fell into the visor. Tweezers were unable to retrieve it, and I need the card....So the sun visor is no longer. I had to make an embarrassing call to the Vehicle Coordinator and then open the sun visor. And when I say open, I mean Elder Smuin took it from me and literally broke it in half. 

That was pure wild animal craziness. 

 Luckily I found a replacement for cheap. The dealer wanted seventy bucks! No way Jose. 

The good news is they had an FR-S on the lot which I asked to sit in and I fit. 

Sort of. 

Some other highlights of the week:

Dinner at the Shaos which means really yummy Chinese food and other interesting dishes. The interesting dish of the week was "Fruit Salad Soup" which was essentially hot fruit salad from a can. It was surprisingly good. That actually was a recipe from our ward's recipe club, I think. I can't see that being a common Chinese dish. They also made me this ginkgo tea stuff because my allergies have mad e my nose stuffy. It tasted way good, but was probably around 170 degrees and I had to drink it to be polite. My tongue was burnt for a few days. 

Oh the woodcutting project! 

On Saturday some youth and Elders went to Roni's and cut wood. A lot of it. Roni had back surgery and is basically crippled and needs the help so we got the ward to help. 

The leaders here are not very organized sometimes, which is amusing. We get there, and there are a two different places he needs to work. The first station is splitting a pile of wood with his hydraulic splitter. The second station is down the road about half a mile to where there's a big fallen tree that needs to be sectioned, split, and hauled. There were....something like 6 adults there and 6 or seven adults. Four of the adults say, "We'll stay here with the splitter." Oh and those four adults were also the biggest. So Elder Harding, about 3/4 of the youth, the two tiny adults, and I all go down to cut up this big tree with chainsaws and split by hand. Then the deacons got their hands on chainsaws and nobody says anything. That was a little stressful. 

The good news is nobody got hurt. 

That was the week folks. Chainsaws, Chinese Food, and Church. Plenty of shenanigans. 

The YSA group is going well. Still not many people out, but we have a new investigator who is YSA age and we're going to try to convince him to come next week to try it out. He came to family ward this week which was super duper. 

Okay. 

That's all. 

Keep it Up.

Elder Christopher Drake

October 20th

Dear Family

Also Friends. 

And Acquaintances who happen to read this as well. 

Or strangers. You too, I guess. 

It's been a swell week. And when I say swell, I mean swell. There were all sorts of shenanigans. In a good way. Monday the Salem elders came up, as usual, because Rolla is awesome. We couldn't think of anything to do though. We drove around. I got a Big Mac. Mostly for the Monopoly pieces though. Then we went to a thrift store. I did not purchase anything. I found some neat shoes that don't fit though. Oh, and now that I think about it there were some that did but I didn't have the money nor a need for shoes at that time. Following our adventures with the Salem elders, we met up with the bishop who paid for our dinner because he and his wife were ill. 

"Here Elders," **hands us some money** "...and you don't have to stick to Wendy's" 

Then we went into Wendy's and waited for the Bishop to leave the parking lot so we could leave Wendy's without feeling awkward about not actually wanting Wendy's. I ended up getting a Frosty and then the lady gave me this little frosty tag that entitles me to a free junior frosty with every purchase at Wendy's until March. At participating locations in Missouri. 

My free frosty count is up to two. 

Then we carved pumpkins at the Boehme's. I wanted to carve a Pac-Man Ghost. Then I remembered that when you make an outline all the way around the pumpkin, the inside doesn't magically stay in. 

Luckily I remembered this just seconds after I made the final incision. 

Also luckily the Boehme's had an extra pumpkin. 

*****

Tuesday

We saw people. Namely, the Williams. They are doing fine. They don't come to church regularly though, which is very frustrating. Just come to church. Really. Carly, the daughter, also refuses to read the Book of Mormon. Not in a "I refuse to read the Book of Mormon." sort of way, but in a "I didn't have time to read those few verses that would have taken me five minutes to read." sort of way, which really is a , "I'm actually not very interested." sort of way. That is always frustrating. So this week we gave her a story to read. We'll see what happens. Fingers crossed. 

Betsy is ready for baptisms. Except she doesn't come to church when her husband doesn't, which is unfortunately rather frequently. They've come three times I think. to be fair, it would be exceedingly difficult to come back to church after an extended period of not coming to church, but still. Come on. It's good for you. 

It seems you can either become really cynical as a missionary or just constantly be hopeful and then disappointed. It's probably better to always be hopeful, and you can't help but try to be, but it is difficult to fight off the cynicism when stuff like that happens. 

*****

Wednesday

The Esslingers are that cool couple we met at CVS that wants to be Mormon. Now we just need to get them out to church too. You could say that was the most frustrating thing about being a missionary this week. Forgive me for departing from the Wendnesday story here, but really people. There is not much of an excuse for not coming to Sacrament Meeting at least. What we need is some good awesome friends here in the ward for these people. 

Anyway. 

Esslingers. 

We saw Wes this Wednesday. It went well. Marie had a Doctor's appointment or something to that effect. We taught Wes a brief restoration, and he is trying to live the word of wisdom, which is basically the bane of missionary existence. Alcohol and tobacco, man. Rough stuff. 

*****

Thursday

Thursday night we contacted a former and her parents. Yuan. I think I've mentioned her. She is Chinese and her parents don't speak English, but for some reason thought we spoke Chinese. That was crazy. But it all worked out. We left dinner, then went over to Yuans, and they gave us a million dumplings to eat, and of course, it's offensive not to eat them, so there you go. I'm banking that I'll be blessed for being polite instead of skinny. Being fat has nothing to do with free frosties. I'm sure of it. At any rate, Sister Potter, who served a mission in Taiwan, helped us out there and it was swell. I may have almost thrown up, but the good news is they want to learn more. Again. Good stuff. 

****

Friday

Friday we went to the temple! Good stuff. Kansas City is about 3 1/2 hours away. We drove up, barely made it on time, then took some pictures and left. It was a long day. I felt pretty gross and tired when we got some 12 hours after we left. 

It was very much worth it though. I got to see a few people from Bentonville, and was able to go to the temple for the first time since I got to Oklahoma. Craziness. It was a great time. Super grateful. Plus, there was a non-member driving with us and he asked a bunch of question so that was way cool. 

Double Prizes. 

*****

The Rest of the Week. 

Pretty typical. We went to Cuba and there was a festival thing going on. Contacted a few people referred to us who weren't interested. The appointment we had set fell through, which was why we went to Cuba in the first place. 

Oh, had dinner at Christine's (a recent convert) for the first time. That was fun. She has this great little house that reminds me of Rachel's in Provo except it's a little smaller and doesn't have a second floor or a finished basement. It's old and wonderful though. Complete with aquamarine oven. 

Sunday was church and more church. Joryn Boehme came out to YSA group, which was great because ever person who comes out is much appreciated. She's a little too "cool" for motley little crew, but she was a good sport about it. 

YSA is a great reminder that we're all different. But there's something kind of fantastic about that, isn't there?

It was a swell week. 

Elder Christopher Drake

October 13th

Dearest family, 

We got our car back! Hooray! It's just the cutest little Red Toyota Corolla that you ever did see. It came just in time too because it's raining. A lot. Again. 

And also in other super news, we are now assigned to the YSA group! So our job is to get this thing going. We currently have 11 people that come. So now we play the role of Young Single Adult recruiters. "No really, please come. We need you. No really. We really really need you, we're not just saying that." As usual around these parts, the biggest issue is distance. I don't really blame people for not wanting to drive an hour and a half to go to church, let alone a teeny tiny group. The great thing though is how strong the Spirit is there. I don't know if I talked about this after the first week, but holy cow! When you're in a big ward, or even a small ward, it's really easy just to kind of get lost in the crowd and distracted by everything that's going on, but when there's a total of 15 people in the Chapel, and all of those 15 people want to be there, and some of those 15 people have made sacrifices to get there, it just brings a different spirit of love and camaraderie. 

In other news, I just learned that camaraderie is a really hard word to spell. 

Besty's baptism got moved back to the 25th of this month because of work schedule. We're sttiiiilll excited about that. 

Oh! I saw Elder Allred at transfer point, where we got our car. Transfer point is always fun. Well, it really sucks kind of a lot when you're a new missionary or when there's nobody there that you know, but when there are a bunch of missionaries you know, it's about the best thing ever. It's funny, because I seem to stick around this transfer point in Mt. Vernon. It's where I got picked up in the Uncle Rico van my very first day, where Panda didn't want to reveal personal information about himself like where he was from, and where I've said bye to pretty much all my buds. Maybe one day we'll have a mission reunion at Mt. Vernon, just like old times. 

Teachin and Preachin is just about the same old, except we're going to be totally changing things around because of the whole YSA thing. We really have no idea what we're doing, and that's kind of the fun behind it. "Here, um, do uh, what you think is good and stuff. Use your resources. Pray. Be good. Talk to the group leader. Go where you need to go and let's see if we can't get a branch." So that's what we're doing. It's going to be way fun and exciting. 

Welp. 

Love you guys! If it wasn't raining, we'd go take a funny picture by the car. Oh yeah, her name is Rochelle by the way. 

loveyoubyyeeee! 

Elder Christopher Drake

Conference Weekends are the Best Weekends

Hey Fam!

Okay good story number 1.

Elder Harding and I walked to the bike shop because my bike decided to break, as usual when I'm in a bike area. We got there on the other side of town where we never go anymore, and decided to get a drink. We had to choose between Kroger and CVS. We chose Kroger. After a few minutes of walking around, we realized that Kroger did not have a cooler for drinks that aren't beer. What grocery store doesn't have some water or soda in a cooler? So we left. We went over to CVS and I got some yummy drink and maybe candy too. When we checked out, the lady, Marie, says to us, "Are you guys Mormons?" 

"Yes, we are!" we responded

"My husband and I want to be Mormons!"

So that was cool. We taught them this Wednesday and things are looking good. Marie and Wes.

Oh also, transfer calls were this weekend and we're both staying.

Then my bike was fixed and it runs better than ever! So good news there.

General Conference was awesome, as always. I hope that all of you had a chance to watch/listen to it because it was awesome. It was a good reminder to me that I need to pray better, so I'm working on that.

It's been cold and rainy and otherwise generally depressing, but Elder Harding and I have managed to stay dry for the most part, though I had to wear my Jacket once. That was really sad.

Elder Harding was supposed to e-mail me a picture from the other week but I don't have it yet. It will probably come through later. I'll pop back in after we move somebody's tub and try to send it to you guys because I know that I'm terrible at sending pictures.

What else.

Oh. The Shoes. I have these sweet brown shoes I got at the thrift store in Bentonville about a year or so ago. I've worn them so much, they're effectively destroyed, which is awesome. My family will be able to relate them to those black and white Vans I have at home. I can wiggle my toes out the right shoe, and the soles are worn down to the socks on both of them. The left one's heel is worn at this really weird angle and I'm very much proud of how much use I've gotten out of them.

Three times this week I've had people pull me aside and ask me if I need help buying new shoes, haha. To which I have to explain to them that I actually have two other pairs at home that will be back in service come the snow. So there you go. My mother is probably horrified at the prospect of me wearing shoes that are so destroyed, but it's an Elder Drake thing. They'll be a monument to my missionary service, haha.

Love you guys, hope you had as good a we

Oh wait!

We got to see Meet the Mormons at a Zone Thingy this Friday. All you people not in Utah need to request that it come to your area, or as close as you can get it. It is such a good movie. I loved it. Super good message, funny, uplifting, and just awesome.

Okay have a good week!

Elder Christopher Drake

Okay here's the picture.

It's my district. 

So let's see, left to right, we've got Elder Harding, Elder Gordo, Elder Meyer, and Elder Hatch. 

Down in the front row is Sister Bastian and Sister Powell, Then The Colsons who are the awesomest. I imagine serving with them was like serving with Nana and Bobba in Germany. Except in America. 

Love you!

Elder Christopher Drake