Dear family and friends!
I've been having a very successful and much more
enjoyable week. Last week was pretty rough, but this was one of the greatest
weeks of my whole mission! I won't break it down day by day because I don't remember
which days things happened, but we had a lot of things going on.
We got a text from Jim during dinner one night. He asked if we could come by as soon as
possible and talk to his cousin. His
cousin is a member but she hasn't been to church in like 20 years. Her name is Katie. We went over to Jim’s and he took us next
door to talk to Katie. She took about 5
minutes to answer the door. When she finally answered, she let us in and we all
sat down on the couch. She said, "Alright, I'll be honest. The reason it took me so long to answer the
door is because I was trying to hide all of my alcohol.” She was SO drunk! It
was impressive that she hadn't passed out by the time we got there. She was pretty dang loopy! She just sat and
ranted about CPS and how she's a good mom and the only thing she can't do is
provide for her kids because she just got laid off about a year ago and hasn't
had a job since then, so she doesn't have enough money for all of them. But
other than that I guess she's a pretty good mom. Haha!
Probably not because CPS doesn't usually take kids from good homes...
Anyway, it took us quite a while to get out of that house, because she started
to cry as soon as we told her we had to go, but oh well! She said she would
come to church on Sunday. (She didn't though...)
We also had a few awesome lessons with Jim. He
unfortunately didn't make it to church again, so he can't get baptized until
the 4th of April, but that's alright! He's not in nearly as bad of condition as
I was thinking he would be in by the time we got to this point. He is doing
really well! He said that he has cleared everything and won't plan a single
thing for next Sunday, so he will FOR SURE be there. Just pray for him that he will be able to
stay pretty healthy for the next month so that he can get to church and then
baptized. He really likes me and Elder Sweeten to come over. We kind of question his sincerity in joining
the church sometimes. He reads the Book of Mormon for an hour every single
night and when his grandson isn't with him he reads an hour in the morning on
top of that!
Floyd has been not doing super well as far as progression
goes. He will let us come over and teach him, but he hasn't been to church the
past couple of weeks, so hopefully he gets to coming. Floyd is seriously such
an awesome guy!
Friday was sister Talley’s funeral. That was one thing
that I think made last week so hard was her passing away. I was pretty close to
her. We talked quite a bit about all sorts of things from the gospel to just
things I used to enjoy doing back home, to struggles I've been having. It was
always a great time going over and talking with Sister Talley. The funeral
service was great! We had a missionary choir that sang since she loved the
missionaries so much. We sang a medley of two of her favorite songs, "O my
Father” and “Be Still my Soul." It was kind of scary in rehearsal, but
when we performed it was incredibly powerful! There were angels singing with
us, no doubt! Sister Talley was a super
sassy lady who knew how to live life for sure! She had several chronic diseases. She first got sick 27 years ago. She and
Brother Talley were married for 32 years. She died at the age of 64 which was
really sad. She was in a lot of pain though, so it was good to see that she was
out of pain, but it was sad that she died so young. Brother Talley is holding
up really well considering his circumstance. We go over every once in a while
because he gets lonely and he'll talk to us for EVER! Haha! One time we went
over and he took 2 hours to show us his knife collection. He's got a TON of
knives too! He has probably somewhere
upwards of 200 knives. That brings me to
our dinner appointment last night. Brother Teeples said he builds knives as a
hobby. Elder Sweeten was super interested because he loves knives. I was
pretty interested because I've always thought it would be kind of interesting
to know how to build a knife. Eventually, Brother Teeples offered to let us
come over on a Saturday and learn how to build one. We're going to go over during lunch and then
another hour after and use it as a reactivation activity since Brother Teeples
isn't active in the church. He actually is from Loa, Utah! And he has a bunch
of cousins in Koosharem! They didn't know Grandma and Grandpa, but it was neat
to see that they knew exactly where it was. They were talking about Fish Lake
and I told them my grandparents lived in Greenwich, so that was pretty
sweet! We're going to be making knives,
so that's super cool!
This morning we woke up at 5:00 to go hiking. We went up
a place called Peralta canyon. At the
top of the canyon you can see a rock formation called Weavers Needle. It's
basically a 350 foot tower that looks like a needle! It's awesome! Going up the
hike was pretty intense! Elder Sweeten was like, "Hey! See that giant
slide up there? Elder Bennett and I came down that way last time. Want to go up
it?" I said “sure”, so we and Elders Bennett and Dickerson went up it. It
was all good until we got to the slide. This thing is Devils Slide status in
Weber canyon! It's awesome except it is super steep! It was all rocks, but we climbed it. I lost my foot grip at one point and I started
to slide down on my feet. I kept my cool so I wouldn't fall because I knew
there was a shelf about 4 feet below me and I was sliding slowly enough I wasn't
worried about falling over backward when I hit the shelf. I was fine
fortunately! On my next attempt I put my life in Elder Sweeten’s hands and just
grabbed hold of his hand and climbed up it. We eventually got toward the top of
the hike and found the rest of our group since we came up with about 8
missionaries. We got up there and there were a bunch of little towers that were
probably only about 50 feet up. We went
over to those and checked to see if there was a way for us to climb up to the
tops of those. There was a way to get up about half way! So we put a foot on
either side of the little slot and shimmied up it until we got to the top. There was this jut that came out that we
grabbed onto and hung then swung our legs over to the other cliff and pushed off
so that we could get up there. That was pretty intense, let me tell you! Haha!
I wish I had a picture of it. We got a picture of everyone but me since I was
the last one to do it. You can see the needle right behind you when you do it
if you take a picture, but oh well! It was a really fun hike to do. Nobody got
hurt, hallelujah! Right when we came
down from the towers President Jenkins was just getting to the top of the hike!
Haha! I'm just glad he didn't see us. We would have been in trouble... Haha!
This week was a wonderful week! I had a great time! I
love and miss all of you. I love this gospel and I love the people in AJ! It's
an adventure for sure! Elder Sweeten and I are best buds. It's great to finally
have a normal companion that I get along with well!
Love,
Elder Mullins
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