Dirt Roads and Hot spicy peppers!

Dear Family and Friends

        This has been a good week for us here in good ol' Nebraska! We are enjoying the changing of the seasons, at least those of us who like good fall weather others of much hotter climates can remain silent and learn why God called them here, (because they wimped out on winter camps) Ha ha ha, but it is quite beautiful weather I love it.

           Monday after the P-day craziness we had a fun drive home along a dirt road, which was great. I drove and Elder Paddock and McBride told me drive really fast over this next hill, and I drove a little fast and the car had the nice zero gravity effect then we started to swerve because of the sand but it only lasted a second. It was fun, though they thought they were going to die. I wasn't scared because I was driving and knew what I was doing, so we had fun. We then went full on into our exchanges, and that was great. We split, I went and did some knocking with Elder McBride without too much luck and Elder Paddock and Elder Phillips went and visited some appointments.

              Tuesday we made pancakes and that was good and fun. We then all went and did service at New Beginnings, doing double duty. We made lots of headway with the books but we still have a lot to do. I am not excited for working with the novels. We came back and went and tried to visit some people while doing knocking and that was good. We had some success with that. We found some potentials then we knocked into a guy we found while talking on the street right before the last Nebraska game. We stumbled into his trailer and we were invited in and we taught about the coming forth of The Book of Mormon, and, man, he had a lot of questions, boom boom boom one right after the other. He was super happy when we gave him his very own copy. We then went and walked over to the Alarcon's and we reviewed with Miguel and Luis the Plan of Salvation. We came home and had some tacos I had made. I slow-potted some pork with these green chilies and it was super good super tender and everyone was happy, lots of meat and lots of rice! We then went and tried some potential investigators and nothing came of it, other than one former who dropped off the map saying "Don't come back at all." So, yep, moving on.

                Wednesday we went to the bakery and did service, then we went off to district meeting and had some very good trainings on improving nightly and weekly planning sessions. I was super excited because it was stuff I know I can work on and it was super helpful. We tried some people when we got back to Crete. We went to Lenard's house, he is the guy we talked to the day before. He went online and looked up about the Mormon Trail and he was appalled at the cruelty of the mobs who forced the saints out of their homes and he led us back around into The Restoration, which we gladly taught. We gave him the pamphlet to read and he was so nice about all of it, and I think he will read. That was the excitement of our day, other than going to the Hollist's family home for dinner out in the middle of nowhere. They have a cool house lots of animals( i.e. horses, dogs, chickens etc.... )

                   Thursday we taught quite a few lessons, though not as many as planned. It was an amazingly successful day. We taught a man named Jessi The Restoration which, despite how often I saw him with Elder Kummerman, it seems as if he had never been taught it. So that was good to teach because he had no idea about the Apostasy and he will never progress if he doesn't understand there is or was a Restoration. We also found a less active who just moved into Crete Manor. So that was good to add another person to our to visit list there. She actually is less active, so we will be working with her to build her testimony and faith so that when she can leave Crete Manor she can return to church. We were able to teach the Alarcon Boys The Ten Commandments with their dad,  which was good. He was able to participate, which was very needed. We then were able to teach Abel the Plan of Salvation, which was super good because he had lots of questions about that though we will need to teach The Restoration next time, since that is what he really needs to come to understand but it was a good lesson anyways.

                   Friday we had absolutely nothing except our temple trip and a ward party in Lincoln. So we went to the temple in Omaha, which is very beautiful and then we rushed back to Lincoln and we got there in time to go straight to our ward party. That was good. We had a pepper eating contest, since it was themed Hispanic for our Spanish Sunday. So Elder Phillips, Elder McBride and myself were roped into it and the contest was eat a Serrano pepper, a Jalapeno pepper. and a habanero pepper in the shortest amount of time possible. I got all of them down in about a minute forty seconds which was pretty good. Elder Phillips got it down in a minute fifteen seconds and Elder McBride got it down in two minutes. The winner got them down in fifty eight seconds, though Elder Phillips was bragging to Elder McBride and I that our faces were a little red. Well not two minutes latter his stomach cramped, mine was completely fine so ya.

                 Saturday I felt great, Phillips not so great but he got better. We did service at Foodnet and we had a very small group that day, which was weird. We then went to Hog Roast at President Kearl's house and we visited with the members and played touch football with the kids, which was great. Missionary guarded missionary, so it was fair. I was a great receiver but we went home and did some weekly planning.

                 Sunday went to church had a linger longer, came home and did weekly planning. So that was great and that is my week. I hope you are all doing well.

 Love your son brother and friend,

                Elder Logan J. Draper