Basketball and Baby Deer

Dear family and friends,

This week has seriously been the greatest ever! Elder Jencks and I had a ton of fun! We did all sorts of things this week. Unfortunately, the work is slow in our area, so we do a lot of driving around with a list of names to go visit, but that's alright. The majority of the investigators we do have are totally prepared! It's great!

This week we set up a lesson with a kid named Trevor. We play basketball every Friday night and he's been coming every week. We finally asked him if we could come over and have a lesson with him. He told us we definitely could. When we went over we sat down and taught him about the Restoration of the gospel. He accepted it super well. The lesson was so powerful! I've had very few lessons as powerful as this one. He's 17, but he is so in tune with the Spirit.  It's unbelievable. His dad is LDS but he hasn't been active in 20 years, because he has a few issues with some of the doctrines. Trevor has never really heard much about the Church other than the fact that his dad is a member. He had heard the name Joseph Smith, but didn't know who he was. He said he would read the Book of Mormon that night before he went to bed. We haven't followed up on that yet, but I'm sure he did it. He's a super sincere kid and is really cool to teach!

Basketball on Friday was pretty intense. I randomly got good at basketball that day. I don't know what happened, but I was suddenly making every basket, I was able to actually dribble the ball without a problem.  It was great! I totally was on fire that night! Haha! I don't think that'll happen again, but it was fun while it lasted. Something pretty bad happened in the last four or five minutes to one of the kids playing with us, Geron, fell and hurt his knee. We got him up onto the stage in a sitting position. We pulled off his knee brace on his other knee and it was pretty obvious that the one he hurt was dislocated. We told his friends to take him to the hospital to have them check it out. We texted Trevor this morning to see how Geron was doing. He's doing well now, but he got surgery on Saturday, because it broke the bottom of his knee and he needed to have something fixed in there. It's a 4-6 month recovery, so I don't think he'll be playing with us for a while. Fortunately his parents aren't mad, so that was good! But yah, we'll be a little more careful when playing now!

Earlier this week we found a dirt road that had a sign next to it that said "Doak, 3 miles." We knew Doak had to be pretty much the smallest place on the planet, but we didn't have time to go down the road to discover Doak.  It’s a good thing there's a thing called weekly planning! As we weekly planned, we started on our quest to find Doak, Arizona. We got to the sign, started heading down the road and began to plan out our week.  After three miles, we got to another sign that said, "Doak, 8 miles." So, we decided, "Well, weekly planning takes about three hours, so we have plenty of time to get there." We went 8 miles and got to ANOTHER sign that said, "Doak, 1/2 mile." We proceeded a half mile, and when we got to that point there was nothing. No turn off, no town, no abandoned houses even.  There was just a dry river bed to our right and mountains to our left. It was super lame. So yah, we never discovered Doak, but we'll go find it one of these days! When we were driving around we saw a little, tiny baby deer lying down in the middle of the road. It was so still that we thought it was either dead or close to dead. As I got out of the car and approached it I found that it was well, it just was lying there. I think it must have been scared out of its mind. I got right up next to it and was able to pet it. After doing that and making sure it was fine, I picked it up and sat it on the side of the road. As I turned around to get back into the car it stood up and started running away. It was a really cool experience that I don't think I'll ever have again. The deer was probably about a week old, so that was pretty neat!

Saturday was awesome! We went over to the A's home to have a lesson with them. They're a returning member family, so we go over there once a week and have a lesson with them. They were having a pretty rough time and there were some crazy things going on, so it was short lesson, but that's okay. We had to make it a short lesson anyway because we were going to head into the valley to attend Carl's baptism from my last area! After the lesson we started driving to Apache Junction, a little over an hour away. Carl wanted me to be a witness, so that was great! We got there a little bit early, so it was great to be able to talk to him, his kids, and wife again. I also got to say hi to a lot of the members there, so that was great! The service was amazing! President Jenkins even came to it, so that was fun to have him there. After that we had a few errands to run while we were in the valley, and then we headed back home. We got home at about 9:00 that night.  It was a super great day. I love attending baptisms!

Anyway, that's my week! We did a lot of things that were really fun and very productive. The work out here is different than anywhere else I've served, because the culture out here is very different. It's definitely a small town atmosphere, which I love. It's just a random little civilization out in the middle of nothing. There's seriously nothing within a half hour drive before or after Globe. I really am enjoying my mission and love this area! Have a great week everyone!

Love,

Elder Mullins  

Elder Jencks and Me-This is the woods we found

Elder Jencks' model pose

My model pose in the woods

My Captain America pose