Drake makes a map

Querida Familia,

Estoy agradecido por las cartas de la semana pasada. Siempre me gustan las cartas. Especialmente que Mamá pudo enviar todas las cartas de las últimas tres semanas. Las guardo en una carpeta con los dibujos que recibo de los niños de Villa Amelia y Rivadavia, mi barrio y el en que vivo. Muchas gracias.

Ok Dad, I didn´t really say much more than thank you for all the letters. I save them all with the drawings I receive from all of the kids. And my Castellano is improving...I think. I believe I can understand better a bit every day, and it adds up. I have the occassional conversation with people while Elder Nieres is chatting away with someone else. I can´t wait until it becomes a bit more natural. I am still lost a lot and let my mind wander a lot while my companion zips on with the members. But, I receive compliments from the members that I can speak really well. And in reality, I can usually say about exactly what I want to say without taking an insane amount of time. Especially when we are talking about my ability to talk. “Puedo decir lo que quiero decir.” But, I still have a long road ahead of me before I can speak like I want to. If it is possible to speak like I want to. I´ve realized I have a hard enough time speaking English in my life that I don´t think I learn to speak Castellano better.

Today Elder Nieres and I had a good time. We went to the Air Force base in Merlo. He is a motor mechanic who wants to, after his mission, go and study at that Air Force Base to be an Air Mechanic. There was a room full of engines that he was just enthralled with. He has a really good understanding of the piston engines and helped explain to me how they work. I learned a lot (from what I could understand). It felt good to go to a museum. As a family, we would go to a museum about every 3 months and on trips every year we would visit another 5 or 6, so I´ve had my share of experience with museums. It felt more natural than what I do on a daily basis here on a mission.

I found it really cool that Dad sent me the 17 points of the true church in the letter right as I asked for it. I haven´t yet gone out to buy the cups and make them yet, but I still found it cool that we were thinking on the same page.

I´ve been trying to spend the little free time I have working on a map of Villa Amelia. Elder Nieres made this beautiful large map and I´ve been going through writing all of the street names and numbers. I have grand plans for the map. I want to put the name and address of every member, investigator, and contact we have on it. We probably won´t be able to see the street names very well afterwards, but we´ll have smaller maps to do that with. I have come up with a system to mark the tags to easily see the progress in the Gospel they´ve made with the scripture marking crayons I have. A contact is just white (each tag is a rectangle of loose leaf paper of 1.5x1cm). If we have taught them the first lesson or others, I add a blue line. If they attend church once and we´ve taught them, they are a progressing investigator, and I add an orange line. If they are baptized, meaning recent convert, I add a green line. After a year of membership, I add a purple dot. If they are active, that dot becomes a purple line (so, a purple dot means they are inactive, which includes a high percentage of the members of the area). And if they are a leader in the church, I add a yellow line. So, if they are an active leader (like the bishop or the ward mission leader), their tag is full with a blue, orange, green, purple, and yellow lines. And we put these flags where they live on the map. I am hoping this will greatly improve the efficiency of our future daily planning sessions (especially because I don´t know the people or the area well enough to plan on my own). This way we can pick the investigators and members that we need to stop by that day, pick a route, and we know every contact, investigator, and member who lives in between and around. This way we can spend more of our time planning what we are going to teach and talk about with them, instead of looking for names to stop by.

Since I´ve been out here, I´ve started to see some of the organization patterns of Dad in my habits. My mission president in the interview last thursday asked me to write down a list of all of the things I want to read on my mission. So, one day, I wrote a list of a full page of the things I wanted to read. On the back of the page, I made a plan of what to read in preach my gospel each week during a transfer to accomplish the goals I was thinking about. Then I made a rough sketch of a weekly plan. I´ve also written down the things I need to do every morning between 6:30 and 8 to get ready for the day. And this month I´m keeping a record of all of the things that I buy so that I can get a budget started. I also have a place for pretty much everything, so that the room doesn´t become a mess. Yeah, I think I am in reality a fairly orderly and plan oriented person. I have to be because otherwise I can´t remember anything.

A quick request. Jessica, do you think you could get ahold of the apartment number of Zephne for me? I have the address, she just didn´t know the apartment number before we broke off contact two months ago. I sent a letter two weeks ago without the number, which I hope she´ll receive in the coming week. Before I write again, I´d like to know exactly where to send it.

I´m glad it sounds like all is going well with the things at home. How´s school going for you Jonathan? High school is much tougher than Middle School isn´t it? But there is also a lot more freedom. You feel more like your own person. Gained many good friends? Alot of my high school friends were those that I already knew from middle school, from Meyzeek, but I met a grew close to a lot of other people. Just be nice to everyone and everyone will accept you. You don´t have to fit in with any group. If you are a good person, everyone will be fine with having you around. I wish you good luck. It isn´t easy, but that is one thing about life that you´ll learn more and more, the harder something is, the more rewarding it is afterwards.

I know that this work is true. Everytime I´m given an opportunity to testify about it, I feel so much better. Walking around all day can be a bit of a drag, but after the miracle of entering the gate of a random stranger and testifying that Joseph Smith saw God our Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ, that he truely was called to be a prophet and receive the authority of God, I feel the Spirit stronger. Especially when I see that the words that are coming out of my mouth are edifying them. I love that edification. And I know that when we work to receive it, we´ll find it, through prayer, scripture study, and partaking of the Sacrament. I hope you all always feel edified.

Love,

Elder Drake Ranquist