Dear family and friends!
This has seriously been one of the quickest and best
weeks of my mission! It's been incredible! There was lots of success and tons
of new and interesting things happening left and right! On Tuesday we went to
the mission office to drop off the baptismal record for Randy who got baptized
about two weeks ago. When we got to the mission office we met all of the new
missionaries that came in. They had just gotten there. There were 4 Sisters and
1 Elder, so.... our mission is shrinking. The group I came out with had 21 of
us. It was funny meeting the new Elder,
Elder Riddle. The first missionary he met outside of the Assistants was Elder
Sweeten, who keep in mind, had 12 staples in his head. I can only imagine what
he thought of missionaries. I think he was sitting there like, "What the
heck!?Missionaries are insane! I don't want that kind of stuff happening to
me!" He's kind of a quirky and
weird kid, but that's okay. His trainer is pretty outgoing, so hopefully he'll
grow out of it on his mission. I'm sure
he will.
Sister Jenkins saw Elder Sweeten’s head and she got mad
at him. She says, "Elder Sweeten, you lied to me! You said it was
little!" Her eyes were about popping out of her head. Haha! He couldn’t see it on top of his head. We told him it was little, so that’s what he
told her when he called. He told her that
it wasn't that bad. After a few staples
everything would be alright. President thought that the thing was pretty sweet!
He told us this story about how when he was younger he was painting a house once. He had been hammering up some plastic on a
ladder so that he could paint and not get it on the window. He hung the hammer
by the teeth on the top wrung. He forgot about the hammer and climbed down. The
bottom of the ladder was in some bushes so when he got to the bottom he had to swing
around the ladder and land on the underside of it. When he did that the hammer
came off and hit him right in the head with the teeth. He remembers being all
dazed and confused, trying to collect himself when he looked down and he saw
the hammer on the ground and put it all together. He was super mad because he'd
already had stitches like four or five times that year and didn't want to have
them again, so he didn't go to the hospital. He just put a rag on it and waited
for it to clot, then he was up and running. He said he was feeling a little
loopy for the next few days. We were
talking to Brother Lorenz a few days later and he said that when he had his
concussion from a gun blowing up in his face he felt like he was walking 5 or 6
inches off the ground.
Tuesday night we went with a lady named Sue to Banner
Baywood hospital to talk to her friend Terry.
Terry just had his second foot amputated and is now experiencing a kind of shock. I don't remember what it's
called, but basically he can't decide if he's dead or if he's alive. He's like,
"If I'm dead, I haven't seen God or Satan, so I don't know if I'm in
Heaven or Hell." It was kind of
funny to see how out of it he was. As we talked to him he started to realize that
he was probably alive. It was kind of
interesting.
Wednesday was kind of weird. I don't know if I was experiencing
some sort of stress after having helped Elder Sweeten out and seeing everything,
or what, but I just woke up in the middle of the night feeling like something
was horribly wrong and then couldn't fall asleep again. I only got about 3
hours of sleep that night and then couldn't sleep at all during the day. I had
a hard time enjoying such a great day just because I felt like something was
wrong… I don't know. It was weird. We met with Terry and Laura which was awesome!
We were over there for about 3 hours answering question after question after
question. I have never taught someone so inquisitive. It is tons of fun to teach them though
because, seriously, I love questions so much.
It's super easy to address their needs and see which aspects of the
gospel they need to hear about more. It drives me nuts when someone lets you
into their home and you just sit and talk at them for half an hour or so and
then you leave having received no response to the things they want to learn.
Thursday was pretty fun! We went to AZBrainFood, which is
basically a food bank or a bishop’s store house for children. The kids take these
sack lunches we prepare home, because they can't afford food over the
weekend. It's pretty awesome. Elder Green and I were in charge of making
sure the grapefruit totes stayed full. A tote of grapefruit is kind of
cumbersome to carry, and it doesn't help that they weigh around 45-50 pounds
when they're full. You know those huge
boxes that they sell watermelon in? We had three of those full of grapefruit,
and we used every last bit of it. It was crazy! After we did that we all went
out to In-N-Out Burger, which was super good! When we were sitting there all of
a sudden this employee that was flamboyantly gay called out a couple of orders,
"66 and 67!" It was just super,
super funny to all of us, so now we have an inside joke about 66 and 67. It's
awesome too because they drive car 66 and we drive car 67, so it's perfect!
Friday we went to Vanwambeck’s to organize more of their
junk for a yard sale. They told us to throw away anything that nobody would
really want to buy, and we felt like throwing away 90% of what they had. We
found these old water tattoo eyebrows, so Elder Green put them on his stomach,
all 16 of them. It was super funny! Haha!
He showed them off at morning workout the next day, it was pretty awesome! As we were going through things we also
found a pill bottle filled with marijuana. That was pretty cool! We just left
it where it was, so... I think we need to teach them the word of wisdom... That
evening we went over to Jim's. We got there and his son was there. We had never
met him. His son’s name is Braxton. He's a pretty nice kid and is probably
about 20 or so. His son, Dominic, is 5
now, so he's a very young father. We had an incredible visit with them. Braxton
is agnostic, but he was super open and we kind of opened his eyes up to the
fact that there is a God that loves him personally. You could tell that he was
enlightened a little. I don't know that he'll be baptized any time soon, but he
enjoyed our visit and was somewhat interested.
Saturday was a party of a day! We went over to the Green’s
to help with painting their extension and to clean up some of the left over
garbage in there like sheetrock and insulation. Sister Green is very pregnant
and is due in about three days or so. She
greatly appreciated the help. From there we went to the Teeples’ to work on our
knives. That was pretty fun. We're down to just sanding at this point. He
already shaped them and everything, so it's close! Later we went to the Ayala's
and they were setting up for Jade's birthday party when we got there. We helped
out with that and then Sister Ayala invited us to stay to the party. We happily
obliged. When the party started, I sat across from Jade and her friends. Most
of them are on color guard at Apache Junction High School. They were talking
about band camp mostly, so I got to actually talk to them! It was fun to be
able to talk about band stuff again. I haven't talked to anyone that's in high
school and in band that enjoys it. She had one friend that was even a trumpet
player, so that was lots of fun! Immediately after this party with all this
authentic Mexican food we went to dinner with the Shope’s where we had steak
and potatoes. I was pretty dang full by the end of the night. After dinner at
the Shope’s we went into the backyard and let their chickens out to feed them
and to chase them around. Elder Sweeten and I caught all 7 of their chickens! 4
of them had never been caught before, so Sister Shope was glad that we did it
because they all need to become a little more social. So I guess catching them
helps to tame them up a bit, so that was fun. After the Shope's we went over to
Brother Talley’s to see how he is doing. It's been quite a while since we went
over there, so it was a good visit. We just talked about his knives for a while
before we had to go home.
This Sunday was by far the best Sunday of my entire
life!!! We got to church and we saw that Jimmy Hodges, one of our
investigators, was assigned to speak! We were listening to his talk and he
started talking about General Conference which he had the opportunity to attend
the live sessions. He said in preparation for conference he had a few questions.
The most important one was, "Is this the true Church and is it where I and
my family belongs?" What a perfect question, right? As he spoke he said, "It was answered
almost instantly. In the first session,
L. Tom Perry answered it for me. He said something to the effect of, 'This is
the ONLY church that offers families eternal life together forever.' And it
made me realize, that this is the only church my family and I belong to." Elder Sweeten and I had tears in our eyes and
smiles from ear to ear! It was one of
the most incredible things of my entire life. Jimmy Hodges has been
investigating the church for 17 years. That's almost as long as I've been
alive! We are going over there this Thursday to talk about baptism. Pray and
fast for us this week that he'll be able to feel the Spirit and commit to a
baptism date. This is the closest he has EVER been to baptism. He has a
calling, an active member wife, he participates in Elders Quorum. He's basically
a member, he just hasn't been baptized. I think it's going to happen finally
though, so that's super exciting. I didn't know it was possible to experience
such a sense of happiness. I've never felt like running out of the building and
doing a double backflip off the roof before now. I can't even explain how
incredible it was to hear him speak in sacrament meeting. It was the most
incredible thing I have ever witnessed.
This week just went from looking like potentially
miserable and boring weeks of all time with Elder Sweeten’15s head, to being
one of the most incredible, miraculous, and spiritually uplifting weeks of my
entire mission. It's truly incredible what happens when you have 15 million
people praying for you. I love being a missionary and being able to be a tool
in the Lord’s hands. I know that this church is the only church with the
fullness of truth on the earth!
Love,
Elder Mullins
No comments:
Post a Comment