Pretty Much the Best Week Ever!

Dear family and friends!

This week has been fantastic! I think it every week and I say it often, but this week for realsies was the best one of my entire mission yet! We didn't necessarily have a ton of success with people, but it was just a super good week. We had quite a bit of fun together! One day we were looking at ghost towns in Arizona and we clicked Gila County. It was pretty sweet, because there was a ghost town in our area! It's called Copper Hills. We headed over to check it out and see what it was.  There wasn't a lot left anymore... There was a mostly intact mill that was pretty cool. It was just concrete walls and foundation, no roof. We also found the post office that used to be there which had three and a half walls, which was pretty cool.  Then we went to this giant ruin that was up there. There was a tunnel that we could have followed back into it, but we decided against it. We found out later that it was probably a good thing we didn't go inside.  Apparently that place is known as the temple to a lot of Satan worshippers, and they do devil worship things in there at night. That was pretty scary to find out... Haha! It's all good though! We made it through it all without being possessed. I'm never going back there again though, because seriously, that stuff is pretty much the only thing that scares me.

We also had a super good lesson with Trevor. We went in planning to teach the Plan of Salvation, but he told us that he was struggling with understanding the Book of Mormon. We read 1 Nephi 1 with him instead of the original lesson which was awesome! I love reading the scriptures with people. In the beginning he was kind of struggling, but after talking about it he started to understand. Toward the end of the hour we were to the last few verses and he finally was able to tell us exactly what was going on.  He's going to be the most amazing member! He'll serve a mission and baptize nations! It'll be so sweet!

We had car inspections this week and since everyone in our zone is so far away from the valley they just come and do inspections here. They usually inspect them at Zone Conference, but they do it for us here so that we can carpool since we only have so many miles per month.  After the inspections we went to a zone lunch at Los Robertos. That place is the bomb! I had a lengua burro which is basically a cow tongue burro... It was super good though! If you haven't tried it, you should. Once you get past the idea that it's licking you back, it's delicious! I always enjoy going to lunch with the zone. It's always a good time.

We also had a temple trip this week. We had to be to the 7:30 session and in the chapel by 7:15, so basically that means we would have had to wake up at  4:00 to get ready, drive down, get in the temple, get changed, and get into the chapel on time. So! Here's the solution to that problem. The night before we drove down to the valley and the entire zone stayed at the Assistants apartment! It was super fun! We had 14 missionaries chilling there. After the temple the Assistants had us come back to have a meeting with them. In the meeting they told us that the reason we are in the Apache Zone way out away from everyone else is because we're trusted.  It used to be super common for missionaries to be sent out here and then all of a sudden they would go from minor disobedience to watching movies every night and staying out late…and even worse things that are best left unsaid. So, now President makes sure that the missionaries out here are super obedient and puts a lot of trust in us to stay obedient. It was just a reminder to us all that we needed to keep it that way. I feel like we do a pretty good job. I seriously love this zone! It was a little weird initially when I got here and there were no sisters around, but it's nice to just be able to act however you want and not worry about them! Haha!  Sisters can get pretty intense sometimes.

A couple of days ago I went on an exchange to the San Carlos Indian Reservation. It's a super sad place to see. There's a ton of unemployment and all sorts of crazy living situations. A lot of times they'll live in a super tiny trailer and then they'll take a mattress and just sleep outside. Their washers and driers are often hooked up to an extension cord that just sits outside as well because there's no room inside. I'll send a picture of one of the trailers I saw. It's seriously pretty bad over there. At night everyone is super drunk too. That's all they do is get drunk and sleep. There were these two Apache little kids that were super thug. One was 6 the other 9. All of a sudden we see the 6 year old come out of the store where we were eating our lunch and he had a bag of sunflower seeds. He slapped them on the table next to his friend and said "Hey man, I just jacked me a bag of seeds!" The store owner caught them and just let them have them because he would have had to throw the bag away anyway since they'd opened it. The kids started talking to us and told us about how they sometimes jack chips and Monster drinks. The 9 year old was telling us all about how the 6 year old smokes weed and the 6 year old said, "You do too! You do too! We do it together!" They called me white man and since Elder Martin is Navajo they didn't really say much about him. I can't even imagine the lives that these kids have. The fact that a 6 year old even knows what weed is and knows how to steal from a store is unheard of to me.  It must be rough for them.

I was also super sad because I saw a dog that was super skinny. It was a Pit Bull. Elder Martin felt really bad for it, so he wondered if it liked vegetables. We gave it a bit of broccoli and it chowed it right down! We gave it an entire bag of microwavable steamed vegetables and it ate those quick. I've never seen a dog eat veggies before, so it must have been pretty dang hungry. The exchange went super well though! We got 4 new investigators, which was crazy! I've never gotten that many new investigators in a single day before! About 8 months ago or so I got 10 in a week, but 4 in a day was really cool to see!

Well, that was a bit of my week! I hope you all had great weeks! I love it out here and I’m really enjoying life! The work is awesome and I'm learning so much every single day. I can hardly believe the growth I've seen in myself. I love you all!

Love,

Elder Mullins

Graffiti wall at the Ghost Town ruins

Ghost town post office

Skinny pit bull on the reservation

Two people live in this trailer at the reservation in San Jose

Super sketchy Satan worshipper tunnel