Snow Covered Cactus!?

Dear family and friends,

This week I don't have a ton of time to write. We are taking Elder West to Mesa this morning so he can get on an airplane. He's finished his mission. He's our roommate, so we are going down to say bye to him and a few others. Transfer news has come and I will be going to the sky river zone! It's not quite Apache Junction, but it's basically AJ.  It's a mile away from it. My companion will be Elder Murray. I don't know much about him other he's a quieter missionary.  This is his last transfer, so I'll be 'killing' him! I'm living in the same apartment complex as I lived in when I was in Apache Junction too. My roommate is Elder Renel who is from France, so that's pretty cool! I'll be covering three wards as well, so that will be interesting. I've never done that before. I've heard the area I'm going into is a super solid one. I'm excited to go! I'm a little concerned about it but not too bad, because when I was serving in AJ there was a member who was offended by me and my companion and got a boundary exception into the area I'm going into, so that will make church interesting. Hopefully he can get over himself and forgive.  Enough about my transfer news!

Here's what my last week in Globe looked like. It was a good one for sure! Tuesday not much happened, unfortunately. We taught Jason, our investigator. We went over the word of wisdom with him which was great!  He only has one hold up right now. Chewing tobacco... He's given up so many other things recently however that he doesn't feel like he's quite ready to give up his tobacco addiction quite yet. He'll get there though! Don't worry! He's such an awesome guy. I'm not looking forward to having to say bye to him...

Later on in the week we went and visited Dawn. Her mom was in the hospital, so we went with her to visit her mom. She was about ready to pass away when she first got there. She didn't look very good to us when we saw her.  We shared a message with her and it made her cry because of how strong the Spirit was.  We left her with a prayer and in that prayer we asked for her health to be restored. Dawn called us the next day around noon super happy!  She said she went to visit her mom and she looked almost completely better. They took her off of oxygen and she was allowed to walk with a cane again. She'll be checking out of the hospital in the next few days most likely. Prayer works! It was such a miracle! Dawn showed us her picture and she didn't even look like the same lady!

Saturday something amazing happened. It snowed... In Arizona... About 8 inches in places... Elder Welch and I went up to the mountains to get some pictures in the snow and have a little bit of fun up there.

Yes, I'll admit it, it wasn't really the best use of our time, or was it? We took some pictures and then walked down a ways and ran into a family that was playing in the snow. We offered to take their picture for them and they did the same for us. We started talking to them and found out that they live in our area. We explained that we are missionaries from the church and that we love teaching people about the church and helping them come unto Christ. They asked us what the word for the day was, so we showed them a video on Elder Welch's iPad. It was a super cool experience to be up in the mountains covered in snow watching a video about Christ's birth. It was powerful and they definitely felt the Spirit. It turns out the father of this family of three, Boykay, just lost his father due to alcoholism about

5 months ago. He said he hasn't really been to church since but that he really wants to start getting back into church. We asked if we could come by and talk with them a little more and they said yes!

BOOM! 3 new investigators when wasting time! That was probably the most effective finding method I've had in the past couple of months.  It's been a really long time since I got three new investigators in a day. We actually got four of them! Dawns friend, Denice, is interested and we were able to pick her up as a new investigator! At the end of the day was feeling like a cow in tall grass! Udderly tickled!

Yesterday was a sad day to say bye to a lot of people at church... We went to the Haverland’s to say goodbye which was rough. I absolutely love that family. Their daughters are super cute and love the missionaries. They're ages 4 and 6. When they found out I was leaving they both drew me some pictures. They were some pretty good drawings! They were so sad about me leaving. They probably both gave me about 20 hugs each by the end of our visit. I didn't think they really liked me all that much. They're usually pretty impartial to me. The one wouldn't stop trying to sit on my lap all night and just wanted to hold my hand and hug me. It was pretty funny!

Also, yesterday Elder Welch and I spoke in sacrament meeting. We got a call Friday morning asking if we could each speak for 20 minutes. Yah... Two days notice... Fortunately, I've gotten pretty good at writing up a talk fairly quickly. I spoke on the Atonement. It went well. The ward seemed to enjoy it and I got lots of compliments.

That's pretty much my week. Not much else happened. I hope you all have a fantastic week and I'll talk to you next time! Things are going great and I'm looking forward to my next area. It will be fantastic! I'm excited to get to know Elder Murray and learn from him and his nearly two years of experience as a missionary. It's going to be great! One thing I do know about Elder Murray is that he forgets to shave all the time and gets a bit of a goatee going on. When he gets that bit of hair on his chin he morphs from Elder Murray into Furry Murray!!! Haha! Anyway, enough of my jokes and fun with words. See everyone later!

Love,

Elder Mullins

Giant Crispy Treat

The Haverlands

Me in the snow

Elder Welch and Elder Mullins

Yoda, the baby chihuahua