From AJ to Globe

Dear family and friends!

This week has been great! Globe is amazing! I was shocked at how many hills there are here. It's built in the middle of the mountains, which is kind of cool. I've never seen steeper hills than I have here. Our apartment is on top of a giant hill. Elder Jencks and I haven't done a ton of teaching yet, but we've done a little bit. For the most part we've just been trying to get to know the area better since he's only been here for six weeks. Plus it was the fourth of July, so no one wants to meet with us then. We definitely had some fun with exploring our area.

Monday and Tuesday were kind of a blur. I said bye to a few people in Apache Junction and then packed up. Wednesday we went to transfer meeting and I got my new companion, Elder Jencks! He's awesome! I most likely will be killing him. (He goes home in three transfers.) He has been out for about 20 months, but tells everyone he's been out for about a year. I'll be sure to include a picture of him. After transfer meeting was over we had to take care of some things and then we headed to Globe. It's about an hour and a half drive from Mesa to get there, so that was fun! We got to know each other pretty well on the car ride. He's from Littleton, Colorado. He actually just killed my mission dad, Elder Parker. That's kind of fun that I'm replacing my trainer out here. We got to Globe around 4:00, shopped for a bit, then went to dinner at Los Robertos. It's seriously the greatest Mexican food I've had my entire mission! That's impressive too, because the Mexican food here is super crazy good! From there we went to visit the G. family. Brother G. is really sick right now with cancer, and he's not going to live much longer. When we went into their home I was shocked at how sweet the Spirit was. I felt like I was on hallowed ground. The only other place I've ever felt that sort of tranquility and peace is in the temple. We went outside and did some service for him. We removed a form from when they poured some concrete about a month ago. When we pulled it out a giant tarantula came crawling out. It scared Elder Jencks pretty bad.  Haha!  He's got a slight case of arachnophobia. Don't worry…I got a picture of it! After that we explored for a bit.  They live at the mouth of a canyon so we went up the road to see where it lead. We thought we found a new place, but it turned out it just spat us out next to our apartment in Miami, so that was lame...

I honestly don't even remember Thursday, so... sorry about that! But on Friday we did tons of service! All one service project... 9... long... smelly... sneezy... hours.... There is a lady in our ward named Sister D. She has a cat. Sister D. went out of town for about a month with her cat home alone and had someone that would come over and put cat food in the bowl next to the back door. When Sister D. got back, there was cat feces and urine all over the carpet. It also doesn't help that she's a bit of a hoarder. So, in the morning we went over, and she had rented a carpet cleaner.  Elder Jencks and I got started on packing all of her junk into boxes. She wouldn't let us throw a single thing away. It was bad…so yah.  We loaded it all into boxes and then pulled the furniture out and vacuumed. I vacuumed that floor probably five or six times and was still getting stuff off of the floor. It was so nasty! Then we began to remove the stains with stain remover. After that we started the shampooing process. We went over it 5 times and it was still coming out as mud. It was seriously so gross! We looked at our watches and saw that it was 4:00, so we told her we had places to be and left. We went out and visited a few people after that.  We went over the H.'s house. Their daughter Hailey was going to get her tonsils out the next day, so we went over to give her a blessing. It was good! The H. family is awesome! Brother H. is a ward missionary and loves to go out to do missionary work. Hopefully we can get him out with us this week. He works in the mines, so his schedule is kind of crazy. 

Saturday was the 4th of July! We did our studies and then went and knocked on a bunch inactive’s doors. Nobody answered or was not interested in listening, so they just politely told us no. It's super weird to me when people are polite at the door. In my last area when you knocked on a door and they didn't want to talk to you they would yell and cuss and then slam the door. It was kind of annoying. We went and explored another dirt road.  That was pretty intense! Our poor Jeep Compass who we named Sheela could barely handle it because of how rocky it was. It was pretty fun though! We went home for fireworks because we had a perfect view from our apartment. When people started to launch them we got on top of the roof of our apartment. We stacked a few benches on top of each other, had someone hold them, and then climbed them like a ladder to get up there. It was pretty sketchy, but it worked! It was a lot of fun to be up there to watch.  We had a perfect view! Our apartment is on top of a giant hill, so we can see pretty much the entire valley from the apartment roof. It was fun! 

Sunday we went to church. We cover two wards, so it was a long Sunday. We started at 8:00 with ward council until 2:00 when it all finally ended. We came home for lunch.  Since it was fast Sunday we just took an hour long nap and then we headed back out. We knocked on a less-active member named Brother D.'s door. He's a pretty interesting guy. He's looking for a job right now.  It's pretty tough for him, because he doesn't have a phone.  It doesn't matter how many jobs he applies for, the employers don't know how to get a hold of him.  That puts him in a bit of a pickle. We had dinner with the B.'s. They're pretty awesome! Their daughter, Elizabeth, is super shy, but she was pretty talkative at dinner. Her mom said she had never seen her talk as much as she did when they had company over.  She also had her friend over, so that probably helped a little bit too. 

Well, that was basically my week! It was a super great one! I loved every second of it. It was sad to leave my last area, but that's alright. This area is just as great! I'll meet lots of people out here for sure! Have a wonderful week everyone!

Love

Elder Mullins

Yep...that's my companion, Elder Jenks

Sunset while we were exploring

Sunset on my first day in Globe

Globe

Giant tarantula we found under a concrete form while doing service

Yep...that's my companion too..Ha Ha!

Apache Zone Swag

Selfie with tepee

Cows at the top of Six Shooter Canyon

Elder Jenks and I at the end of Six Shooter Canyon