The Great Chili Cook Off!

This week was great! I had a good time and we visited a lot of members! We just got our first new investigator, and taught her last Saturday! Her name is Tiffany. She has had a fairly rough few years.  We hope that the gospel can help her, and give her a little hope. It was kind of funny when we started talking about prayer though. She asked if we recited the Lord's Prayer and we told her that we don't recite it, but that doesn't mean that we don't recognize it. She was blown away when she found out we didn't recite prayers. That was kind of funny! She was also shocked when she found out that we do, indeed, celebrate Christmas. I had no clue that some people don't think that we celebrate Christmas.

On Monday we went on a hike to the wind caves. I think I already mentioned that hike, but I don't think I sent any pictures at all. So I'll send those this time! It was pretty fun up there!

Not much happened Tuesday, but on Wednesday we played basketball in the morning. Elders Bigler and Carlson played with us and some other elders. It was kind of cool because they asked me if I knew an Elder Jones serving in Phoenix.  Apparently, they ran into Kevin at the Phoenix temple open house!  That was pretty neat to know he's just a mission over and that someone I know saw him! We also got to watch "Meet the Mormons" that day  which was amazing! If you haven't seen it yet, I would highly recommend it. It's a really good movie and it's super inspiring. I won't ruin it for those who haven't seen it, but I loved the kick boxer mom and the candy bombers stories. It was really good to be able to see it because everyone we talk to who has seen it has asked us if we have seen it. Before we had seen it it was always kind of awkward because it would have been a super great opportunity for a conversation to be started, but we had to say,  "no, we haven't seen it". After we watched it it was nice to be able to talk to people about it.

That night we also had dinner with one of our recent converts. Her name is Marie. She's 77 years old, but you wouldn't ever guess she was a day over 60. She looks super young. I don't know how it's possible to look as young as she does when you are as old as her.  She's awesome!  She was baptized about 6 weeks ago, and she knows more about the gospel than some of our converts that have been baptized for 4 or 5 years.  She was talking to one of her friends and had some questions about how the trinity might work. She had questions like, "when Christ was on the earth, who was upstairs managing the store?"  Or,  "when Christ prayed on the cross and said, 'father forgive them for they know not what they do', who was he praying to, himself?"  Her friend directed her to the missionaries who taught her and 3 weeks later she was baptized! She is the definition of a golden investigator. She is super stellar! 

She's kind of like another grandma to us. Every time we go to visit with her she gives us a drink or a snack.  She always asks us to make her our last appointment because she sends us home with all sorts of goodies.  She's given us corn bread, cake, home made doughnuts, fruit and all sorts of treats.  It's awesome! She absolutely loves us coming over and talking with her because she is always finding new things in the Book of Mormon, and she loves to share them with us. Her favorite chapters are when Christ visits the Americas. She's probably read those chapters 10 times now and she's almost read all the way through the Book of Mormon!

Thursday and Friday were just normal old days. Studies, lunch, talk to less actives and members, talk with one or two of our investigators, dinner, more less actives and members, home. Not a lot of excitement. 

Saturday, however. was an awesome day! Elders Foulger and Anderson had some service in their ward that we helped out with, along with Elders Bigler and Carlson. I don't know this lady's name, but she literally has a mini zoo at her house!!! Let me give you a run down of everything she has. She has 18 turtles in a couple of ponds, 3 dogs, 2 bigger ones and a tiny, tiny little rat of a dog, a 150 pound tortoise that I rode! A couple of 40-50 pound tortoises, 10 rabbits or so, about 4 fish tanks plus the biggest tank I have ever seen in someone's house it my entire life.  It's about 4 feet tall, 3 feet wide, and at least 30 feet long! She has some enormous fish in there along with some smaller ones, and the rest of her tanks are clear full of all sorts of fish. She also has 2 bearded dragons, a 5 ft. ball python, a cockatoo, and probably a lot more that I didn't see. I have never seen someone with so many animals! It's shocking to see how clean their house actually is.  You would think it would be a pretty smelly house and the backyard would be covered in poop and stuff, but it's amazingly quite clean! 

The service that we did for her was we cleaning her turtle ponds. She has 9 turtles in each, so we pulled all of them from one pond and put all of them in the other while we cleaned one. They're above ground ponds like you would get from Home Depot. We dumped out the nasty water and scrubbed all of the nasty algae from the walls of each pond. That was kind of gross, but trust me, the kitchen at McDonald's is about 10 times worse to clean! Haha! 

On our way home from service we saw this lady in an electric wheel chair who decided it would be a great time cross this busy street, and just rode out into the middle of the road trusting that people were paying attention. Pretty dang crazy! 

When we almost got to the apartments Elder Anderson crashed his bike. I'll give you a bit of background on this one.  Elder Anderson just got a brand new bike with disk brakes on it. (They're super good brakes) his old bike, however, was a super cheap Walmart bike.  The brakes on it hardly worked.  It was really bad. I rode it once and nearly got hit by a car because I couldn't stop.  This new bike stops really well.  Elder Anderson was being stupid and signaled with the wrong hand so he was riding with just his left hand. As he pulled in to the parking lot of our apartments a car was pulling in ahead of him and didn't stop for him, so that was dumb. When that happened, instinct kicked in and he pulled his front brake. He went right over his handle bars, because he was not used to not having to pull his brakes all the way for them to slightly engage. He pulled it hard!  He went right over his handlebars and onto his back! Hahahaha! It was pretty dang funny to watch! 

That night we also had a neighborhood chili cook off that Elder Parker and I judged, along with the bishopric. It was a ton of fun and we had a great turn out! A few of our investigators showed up and a ton of less actives and non members showed up too! It was awesome! Cedric and Jonathan (the kids from the Congo that we're teaching) walked from their apartment to the cook off with us. Their parents speak very little English so they aren't really interested in coming to church.  They are kind of shy.  They said we could take their two boys to the cook off.  When we got there the Cedric and Jona were being really shy and just kind of hanging back. I asked if they wanted to play tag with me, so I ran around playing tag for a while with them. I got tired after a few minutes, so I told them to play alone for a bit and I'd get some kids to come play with them. I went over to three or four kids and asked if they wanted to play tag.  When they said yes I took them over to Cedric and Jona and introduced them to everyone. They started playing and I went to talk to some of the adults and our investigators. I decided I had better check on Jona and Cedric after about ten minutes to make sure they were participating and having a good time with the other kids. When I went over to the yard I had left them in to play, there were probably 15-20 kids in there playing.  Cedric and Jonathan were having a blast! I was so happy to see that the kids didn't even think anything of who they were playing with and whether or not they knew them.  They just wanted to have fun!

Later when we were talking to Cedric and Jonathan.  They thanked us about a hundred times each for bringing them to the cook off .  It was fall break and they had only eaten a little bit each day that week. Their family is very poor and their housing is a government funded housing. They hadn't eaten more than a couple of rolls each for the past 8 days. That cook off was great! They both had 4 bowls of chili each and more brownies than I thought that 2 little boys could possibly stuff down their throats! Haha! I'm very grateful their dad let them come with us to the cook off.

We got transfer news on Saturday too! I'm staying with Elder Parker in the same ward and in the same apartment.  It's the exact same as last transfer, so that's fun! 

I love you all! Have a great week!

Love,

Elder Jayden Mullins!

Arizona sunsets are amazing!  This was the best one this week.  The picture doesn't do it justice.  The real thing was way better!

Tatania Montegue is a gypsy and told us all about her time living in Israel and Saudi Arabia.  She's definitely one of the most interesting members I've met!

Elder Parker made us blueberry muffin loaves.  Muy Bueno!

Sister Evans got a photo with a monkey who was with someone walking down the street.

A selfie with Cedric and Francine

Elder Parker says "Thanks for the Wheat Thins!"  He already ate the whole box.

Elder Tui is terrified of snakes.  Sheiss put it around his neck without him knowing.  He took it fairly well though.

Bam, the tortoise chasing Toby, the smaller tortoise