Party Time& Chocolate Cake

Dear family and friends,

First of all, I'd just like to thank everyone for my happy birthday wishes yesterday! They were awesome! It was fun to go to church and feel popular because I had 5 emails waiting for me! Haha! This week was an awesome one! I celebrated my birthday four times. I had four cakes, and I even got a few birthday gifts from some members like gift cards to Walmart and IHOP! It was pretty awesome! I'd send you pictures of me with my cakes, but the only two I took pictures with probably aren't the most appropriate things that were put on them as far as missionaries go. They weren't bad, but they don't look much like missionary cakes! Haha! I'll just leave it at that. 

Tuesday we went over to Stan's to celebrate both mine and Elder Sweeten's birthdays. His is in a couple of weeks, on the 16th of June. Stan got a birthday cake for us!   He also gave us a couple of Walmart gift cards, so that was nice of him. We had a nice little party and played some Yahtzee with him. We played three games and we all won one of them, so that was good. Tuesday evening we went out with Brother Lorenz and had a lesson with Carl. It was a super powerful lesson! We started it off wanting to talk about the Atonement with him, but it morphed into a lesson on prayer and repentance. One thing that he asked was why doesn't someone create a church that teaches every single doctrine of every single church. Brother Lorenz tried to answer, and then Elder Sweeten tried. Both of them kind of missed the mark, but only because of the way they were phrasing it. I finally pointed out that would be impossible, because some teach baptism by sprinkling, others by immersion. Some believe in the trinity, others believe in three separate beings; some believe in modern revelation, others don't. A lot of them have varying views on what is good and what is bad. Some teach that Jesus is the Christ, others teach He isn't. So, really, it wouldn't work at all because the preacher would say about three or four differing views and say they were all true. It kind of dawned on Carl that his search for a church that taught everything anyone says is vain and that he needed to find the church that teaches every single correct doctrine. We told him that if he prayed about the Book of Mormon that he would receive an affirmative answer. He very quickly said, "Nope, I've already tried it.  It doesn't work." I read him Moroni's promise that told him if he prayed with an open heart and with real intent that he would find the answer. He also has told us a few things that he does that are contrary to Gods laws, so I read him D&C 82:10 which reads, "I the Lord am bound when he do what I say, but when ye do not what I say, ye have no promise." I testified to him that if he began to live by the words of the Lord and his servants, the prophets, that he would receive an answer, because the Lord is obligated. We will follow up with him tomorrow and see if he prayed about the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon. 

Wednesday was a pretty great day too. In the morning after studies we went into Mesa for physical therapy for Elder Sweeten's hand and then to grab a book for Sue, our member who is confined to a care center.  We went to Sue’s for lunch. We gave her the book, which she really appreciated. Lunch was pretty good there too. It was WAY better that some of the care center’s food that I've had in my time as a missionary! Trust me... That's saying something. It still wasn't phenomenal, but it was good. Sue’s granddaughters also came by to drop something off for her. Her granddaughter, Madison, is awesome! She is just finishing up her junior year, but she has 12 schools that are trying to recruit her to swim for them. She must be absolutely incredible to have schools fighting over her already! She also is into sailing and will be sailing across the Atlantic this summer, so that's pretty sweet too! After Sue's we went back home to eat some actual food so we would be full. Those places give you such pathetic portions.  It's hard to believe people live off of that! Haha! We also went to Alisha's that day to see what we could do to help her out. She's still kind of freaking out with a few things going on in her life. I have heard about more horrible things that have been happening to her recently than I think I've heard a single person go through in a year. The things we try to help her out with are kind of nuts.  It's WAY over my head anyway. Fortunately the Spirit knows what he's talking about, because I certainly don't! If it weren't for him, I'd be nothing. I don't even know what to say about half the things she tells us and asks for help with. 

Thursday... Oh Thursday... We went over to Daymian’s on Thursday and found out he broke the law and was brought home in a cop car in the middle of the night before. He took his 9 year old brother with him to go do this illegal activity and got caught. His dad doesn't know what to do with him. He puts him to work, has him pull all the weeds in their yard, and his grandmas, clean the house, do whatever he can think of to make him remember not to do that again. His dad even told us to employ him as needed. We'll be using him to help the Hodges’ move next week for sure! And maybe the Ayala's too. We had a good chat with him and since Elder Sweeten has dealt with the situation before with one of his jobs back home, he kind of put it into perspective for Daymian to realize that he never would have been able to pull his crime off, especially not in the middle of the night with his 9 year old brother. Also on Thursday we went to the Ayala’s for dinner. It was super good! Sister Ayala is a super good cook! She's from Mexico, so her Mexican food is always amazing. We had a good time visiting with them and having fun with them. Jose, their 12 year old son, showed me his mad skills on Guitar Hero. He beat through the fire and flames on expert! It was crazy! Then his older sister, Gisselle 17, showed him up by doing the same song but with a higher score. It was pretty funny to see Jose’s reaction! I guess Gisselle has never beat that song, so he was kind of upset. We were laughing pretty hard when we got home. 

Friday we went to Alisha's again to offer service. We helped out by taking all the junk she doesn't need and throwing it away and putting the junk that she thinks she needs in the shed we put there last week. We did that for about an hour and a half. When we left she mentioned having bed bugs and that was why the furniture we threw away was outside. We kind of smiled at her and then got in the car to drive home. When we got home we tore off our clothes, put them in the drier and then after changing went out to the car and doused it in permethrin, which supposedly keeps the bed bugs away. No bites yet, so hopefully we don't have them. Haha! We also met with a recent move in. He's awesome! His name is John. He has been in three major motorcycle accidents and as a result only has about 20% hearing and he lacks some comprehension skills. He has super long curly hair. He can read lips pretty well, so talking to him isn’t bad if you are looking at him. He has two dogs, an Australian Shepherd and a miniature husky, which is still about the size of an average lab. He was recently deactivated when he was living in Magna, Utah, but is in love with the gospel now. His wife is still in Utah, but as soon as circumstances allow she'll be moving down here with him. They're excited for that to happen!

Saturday was basically a service day. We went to the Apache Junction food bank to volunteer. One of the biggest jobs they gave me and the other five elders was to fold bags;  2,500 of them... It was pretty fun! The guy instructing us was a guy named Phil. To fold a bag, you fold it in half, fold it in half again, and THAT is a folded bag. Phil was an interesting guy. After we were done we went outside and he started talking to us about his religion. He claims to never have sinned once since his baptism 25 years ago. I thought about quoting a few scriptures like "If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we say that we have not sinned we make [Christ] a liar and his word is not in us." Or, "For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God." But I didn't... It wouldn't have changed anything at all, but yah! So I guess Phil thinks he's at the same level as Christ, so that's a little bit blasphemous... For about three or four hours after that we went over to the Ayala's new house to help with cleaning it before they move in. They are moving but it's still within our ward boundaries. It was super funny, because Sister Ayala hates her current calling.  When they were house shopping she was looking for something within the stake but outside the ward. She found this house and fell in love with it, so they signed on it. She thought it was outside the ward boundary until about a week ago when they were over determining what they wanted to do to it before they moved in. When they came out of the house Sister Frier was out in her yard working across the street.  It took a second but Sister Ayala figured out that it was, indeed, still within the ward boundary. Hahaha!  We helped them scrub the grout and wash/paint the walls. The grout was black when we initially got there, but after scrubbing it, it turned out to be a very light grey color. It was kind of the nastiest thing ever. We also had a lesson with Matt. We went over there and followed up with his reading assignment which was Alma 34. He asked us what we thought when he showed us he took five or six major principles taught in Alma 34, put the verses down on a notepad, then put five or six scriptures from the bible and from things in previous reading assignments from the Book of Mormon. It was pretty cool to see that after only reading about six or seven chapters of the Book of Mormon he can already cross reference them. Super well too! It's so much fun to teach him because we can go more into depth.  Quoting scripture to him actually makes sense to him since he's very into the bible.  We can quote scripture back, which is super fun. He just gets it! We shared with him Tad R. Callister's talk, "the blueprint of Christ's church." His jaw was on the ground by the end of the lesson. He's going to be baptized as soon as he takes care of a few things with the law. It's awesome to be teaching him!

Sunday, was yesterday! Happy birthday to me!!! I got three cakes yesterday, then Stan also gave me a cake on Tuesday, so I got 4 cakes! It was funny because we were at one family’s house and Elder Sweeten asked just being kind of funny, "Is this cake triple fudge with chocolate frosting and extra chocolate sauce on top?" They said, “Nope! But it is a double fudge chocolate cake!” Oh boy... I don't like chocolate... I didn't tell them though, because I knew how bad they would have felt if I told them I didn't want to eat my own birthday cake.  Of course since I'm the birthday boy I get the biggest slice of cake, right?  I manned up and ate it. I did my best not to gag, and fortunately, I had juice and some strawberries I could use to cover up the flavor. It was pretty bad. I did it though! To be honest, I prefer Brussel Sprouts to chocolate, so that's impressive. Man oh man, did I feel sick to my stomach. We left and drove down the road a ways and I had Elder Sweeten pull over. I got out of the car and threw it all up and felt much better! We went on our way to the Hodges’ for my next birthday party. They fed us dinner and had a cake for me too! Fortunately they remembered that I don't like chocolate, so I got a yellow cake there. We had dinner, a lesson, and then played a super fun card game called Killer Bunnies. We were over there for two and a half hours, which was AWESOME! I love the Hodges family! I'm sad that they're moving, but oh well... At least I got to see them be baptized! Oh yah! Also, sacrament meeting today was incredible! There were so many people there that I wouldn't have imagined being there in a million years! Shana, Carol’s sister who is an addict, came! Carol also came! Brother Kunz, who hasn't been in YEARS came. He only has one arm, but he made it to all three hours which was seriously so inspiring. He just got a hip replacement about a month and a half ago, so it was pretty impressive that he was there.  Stan also came! That was pretty awesome! He loved it! The Ayala's came, Daymian came, Alisha and her boys came, Matt came, so many people! It was seriously the best birthday ever!

This week was incredible! I'm learning and growing a TON every single week! I've never felt personal growth like this before. I've experienced it slightly with music and being able to see myself getting better, but never before have in improved so rapidly and in such a complicated manner. My testimony is stronger than ever before and I'm absolutely head over heels in love with the gospel and my mission! Elder Sweeten and I get along super well and I would definitely say with all confidence that he's my favorite companion so far. I feel like he's going to be one of my favorites the rest of my mission. The church is, indeed, the only church with the fullness of the gospel. I heard a question that I thought was very inspired and very thoughtful in Elder Callister's talk we shared with Matt. "How did Joseph Smith, even if he was one of the greatest theological geniuses to ever live, know to restore the doctrines of baptism for the dead, the gospel being preached to the dead, the premortal existence, and the true nature of God, when no other church at that time was teaching such doctrines?" Joseph Smith was called of God, I know it. He did restore His church to the earth today. I love and miss all of you! Talk to you next week!

Love, 

Elder Mullins

I think this could be considered hot

Me with John's dog

Elder Sweeten and Stan churchin' it up!

Reuben hanging out in his new house