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| Turkey Bowl |
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| Naked Juice is the Best! |
Dear
family and friends!!! This week was a wonderful week! Lots of exciting things
happened and I had an absolutely fabulous time!
Last
Monday was pretty good. After sending emails we went to the Payne family's
house. A couple of weeks ago they told us we HAD to try their 'flop overs.'
They basically were quesadillas with beans and tons of butter on them. But the
twist was they put grape jelly on top. It was pretty good. You'd be surprised! If you ever get the chance, I would highly
recommend it! It's just tortilla, beans, cheese, tortilla, load it with butter,
fry it on a griddle, grape jelly over the top. It sounds weird, but the sweet
compliments the salty SO perfectly! It's pretty dang good! After we tried
those, Sister Payne cut our hair. She did a pretty good job I think. I don't
know the difference between a good haircut and a bad one though, so I couldn't
tell you. It wasn't a bad one, that's all I know. The Payne's are one of my favorite
families! Their sarcasm is impeccable, their jokes are hilarious, and they just
are fun people to be around. They have 4 little girls that are adorable too.
It's always a good time over at their house!
I've
been reading Jesus the Christ recently and I've been learning a ton about the
life of Jesus. Something I learned in it this week totally blew my mind! So
Barabbas, the prisoner that the people chose to release rather than Jesus, has
so much more significance and meaning than you would ever suspect. Bar means ‘son
of’, so Simon Barjonah, Simon son of Jonah. Abba means father. So Barabbas
means son of the father, Christ means son of the Divine Father. When the people
chose Barabbas, they chose the world. They had not only a choice between a
murderer or a Holy Man, they had the choice between the earth and the heavens.
When they chose the ways of the world, they fell into apostasy. Just something
that I had no clue about and I thought I would share. Something else I learned
is both of them very likely shared the first name of Jesus. So there was only a
one word difference between the two.
On
Tuesday we had a great time! We went over to Marie's apartment and made some
Christmas presents. I'd tell you what we made, but since they are going out to
some of the people seeing this I can't. I'll tell you after Christmas. We also
went and visited a guy we street contacted a couple of days before named Eddie.
He had a stroke 5 years ago and is paralyzed on half of his body. Only half of
his face, tongue and throat work, so he has a really hard time talking. We can
barely understand him most of the time. We thought he was super drunk when we
first talked to him since it was dark, and we couldn't see his face that well.
As soon as we realized he was paralyzed partially, we figured things out! He's
a great guy with an awesome family. Most of his family isn't interested, but he
loves the church and goes to the visitor’s center almost every day! He is a
pretty cool guy. I just wish we could understand half of the
things he says...
Wednesday
was pretty good. Not a lot really happened, just a lot of rejection all day,
but fortunately for us, we have family night at Silvercrest, the old folks home
for elderly singles. That is always super fun! I love going there every week.
It's usually one of my favorite parts of the week. The Shirley family came to
give the lesson. Their kids are awesome! They have one little girl that is just
adorable! She seems like such a shy girl the way she acts and holds herself,
but I have never seen someone so outgoing and loud. All of their kids sang the
closing song which was “I am a Child of God”. The kids all sang the first
verse, but Chloe wanted to sing the second verse. The other kids didn't want to
so she said she would do it solo. Sure enough, she did it solo! She is so
awesome! Haha!
Thanksgiving
Day. .. man, I don't even know how to begin. I guess the beginning would be
good. We started off the day with a weigh in to see who would gain the most
weight that day. I started off with 141.0 pounds. I'll let you know my final
weight at the end of this day. We had a combined zone turkey bowl first. We were
there from 7-9 doing that. It was kind of cool. We were in the middle of a play
when someone that looked fairly familiar popped out of nowhere. I went over to
see if it really was who I thought it was, and sure enough, there was Justin
McKeen. He went to high school with me and just got back from his mission due
to medical issues and is going back out in about three weeks. He was one of the
drum majors my junior year. It was pretty neat to see someone I knew!
The
second turkey bowl was a ward turkey bowl. Unfortunately, the only ones that
showed up were our young men’s president and his son, so we just played three on
three since Elders Foulger and Anderson came with. We did that from about 9:15
to 10:30. We came home, showered, and headed over to our first dinner
appointment at 11. It was hosted by Silvercrest, but it was catered by the
Cheese Cake Factory! It was way good! It was a standard Thanksgiving meal with
dessert being pumpkin pie flavored cheese cake. It was some of the best pumpkin
pie I had this year. From there we went straight to our second dinner with the
Tieman's parents’ house which is in the Centennial ward right next to ours, the
Cornerstone ward. They had a ton of food over there! They had a turkey that was
deep fried, one that was smoked, and one that was just baked. This deep fried
turkey was seriously the best one I have ever had. It was super moist all the
way through and its flavor was outrageous! It was simply, the best... We went
to the Huber's house at 2. The food was pretty good there too. I ate a bunch
and then while everyone else was playing games I took a nap on their couch.
Sister Huber even told me to take a nap, so I accepted! Haha! It was one of the
best naps I have EVER taken. From there we had a 5 o'clock dinner at the
Randall's who live in the Park Center ward next door to us. Elders Foulger and
Anderson cover that one. Dinner there was fabulous and I got fuller than I ever
have been in my entire life. It was pretty painful, but it was for the win. I
had to gain all that weight or I would lose and be the underdog of the
apartment, especially since Elder Parker always makes fun of me for not being
able to eat a lot. At dinner I usually just have a plate or maybe two just
because I eat until I'm full rather than until I hate myself. I don't plan on
gaining weight, so if I do that, I think I'll be good.
We
got home for the day and immediately stripped down and weighed ourselves. Elder
Parker came out on top at 16.0 pounds. He's bigger guy though, so that's
why, plus he just has a really big stomach. Elder Foulger and I tied at 10.4
pounds. I weighed 152.4 pounds at the end of the day. It was insane how much I
had eaten! Haha! I only plan on doing that one more time in my entire life, and
that's on Thanksgiving next year, and even then, it's debatable. It was a lot
of fun, but it definitely wasn't worth it! It screwed up my stomach for a
couple of days and I’m still feeling the effects since now I'm not full when I
usually would be. I'm working on
shrinking my stomach back down to the size it usually is.
I
don't really remember a lot about Friday since I don't have my journal with me,
but I remember we helped do some home improvement for the Estopellan's. They
asked us to come back the next morning to do some flooring since Elder Parker
did flooring for a job back home.
Saturday
was a beautiful thing. It was packed full of service and it was seriously one
of my favorite days of my mission! We went to the Estopellan's from 7-8:30 to
help with flooring. That went fairly well.
I didn't contribute a whole lot since I didn't know how to do flooring,
but Elder Parker had a lot of fun helping out. From there we did some service
with Elders Foulger and Anderson at one of the widows in their ward. We helped her put up her Christmas tree and
decorated it. That was a TON of fun! From there they went to their baptism they
had and we went to the food bank with Elders Long, Speth, Fellows, and Weber.
It was a ton of fun there! We were there from 11-5 that day! It was way fun to
be able to help put together food boxes and give them to people. It really
opened my eyes to how many people there are out there who don't have any food
in their pantries. I had a great time volunteering there. I met a guy that was also volunteering who is
a studio musician! It was fun to talk to him.
He told me he had a stable job. Since
he is pretty good people are always happy to hire him. He thought it was really
cool that I wanted to go into trumpet performance. After cleaning up, the lady in charge,
Sandra, told us to grab a couple of boxes and fill them up for ourselves. It
was like early Christmas combined with Thanksgiving. If you have never released
4 Elders into a store with unlimited money, you don't know the looks on our
faces as we gathered up all of this food. It was the greatest day of my life! I
grabbed a couple pies, some steaks, some donut holes, some hamburgers and
hotdogs, some cherry turnovers, cereal, some juice, and a loaf of French bread.
There was so much there to grab! Sure, all of it is expired, for the most part
anyway, but that's fine! It doesn’t go bad for a while after the expiration
date. It was seriously the best thing
ever! We weren't expecting anything in return, but I guess Karma is real!
Fortunately
for us, Elders Long and Speth have a car.
We loaded all the food into their car and biked home while they drove to
our apartment to drop it off. We got it all into the apartment and man… you
should have seen the looks on Elders Foulger and Anderson's faces! It was
seriously the best! They asked, “where in the world did you get all of this
food?!” They got pretty upset at us
though because we brought all of this excess food when transfer news was coming
that night. They didn't want to have to carry all of this food to their new
apartments.
Transfer
news came, and guess what? Elder Parker and I are staying together and as for
Elders Anderson and Foulger, they are staying together too. Our whole apartment
is staying together for Christmas! I'm so glad that we are able to stay together
like this! We are all pretty close friends at this point and love being around
each other! I don't think I'll miss my family as much as I would if I didn't
have them all. It's going to be a great transfer!
Sunday
was Sunday. Studies, Church, stayed out until 9 trying to get a hold of people.
No one answered their doors and we tried calling a few people to set up
appointments. Those didn't really go through, but we'll keep trying! Our area
is kind of slow, so that's why I don't talk a lot about the people we teach
because we don't really have any investigators that are progressing... We have
a few that just like to talk about religion, but none that are really all that
interested. It gets frustrating at times, but we'll just keep on keeping on.
It's been good so far and I'm excited to see what will happen this transfer!
Today
so far has been pretty good. We woke up
at 5:30 to go play dodgeball in Apache Junction which is about a 20 minute
drive. That was pretty fun and I met a few new missionaries.
Right
now I'm actually at a barbecue and I’m having a great time! I made homemade
fries, so that was pretty fun! It reminded me of working at McDonalds. I deep
fried them in a pot with canola oil. I chopped the potatoes up into fries, I
put the potatoes into the boiling oil, took them out, and salted them. The zone
loved them, so that's good!
Well,
there's my week for you! I had a great week filled with all sorts of fun
things! Have a great week everyone! I love you all and hope you're all doing well!
If you ever at any point have a desire to write me or send me a package you can
send it straight to my apartment until about mid- January when I might be
getting a new address.
Elder
Jayden Mullins
1233
N. Mesa Dr. #1197
Mesa,
AZ 85201
Have
a wonderful week everyone! Keep the faith!
Love,
Elder
Mullins!
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