It's 2016!

Dear family and friends,

This week was fairly decent. The first half was great! On Tuesday I went with Brother Clark to make a few visits in the evening.  Bro.Clark is pretty old and wow... What a scary driver! Let me explain a few laws to you that I don’t think he exactly understands.  First of all, when you make a left turn it has to be on a green light.  Second of all, when you do make a legal left turn, you should probably try to end up in one of the THREE lanes of traffic going the same way as you.  Yah... We were going the wrong way down Broadway... I about had to make an emergency trip to change my pants!  It's also probably a fairly good idea to check blind spots.  Especially immediately following sunset when only about half of the people on the road have their headlights on.  We almost side swiped like three people. The next law you should always strive to obey is do NOT advance your vehicle in the turn lane! If you do, you'll end up getting in a head on with someone! No wonder they call it the suicide lane! He was so confused as to why someone was stopped, facing the wrong way, in the middle of a main road.  Also, when the stoplight is a flashing red light, please treat it as a four way. Don't make everyone mad and confused by sitting at the red for a good four to five minutes while your passenger tries to convince you to treat it as a four way stop.  Anyway, that's my discourse on traffic laws. Fortunately, the Lord protects us as missionaries, otherwise I might not be typing this email right now.

When we finally did make it to one of our destinations without any accidents, (which was one of the biggest miracles of my mission) we met he Nichols family! They're a less active family, but are really cool! They have three kids and all three of them have kind of drifted away from the church. One of them is doing pretty bad things, the other two are just out of the church. The parents enjoyed us coming over and visiting and invited me to bring Elder Murray over on Saturday. The Nichols are going through some rough times right now, but they'll make it through them. We'll be helping them move soon. What's cool is even though they're moving to the other corner of the stake, it's still our area! We have our area, then an island outside our area that we cover. It's super weird, but it works.

There were a few days that I just slept all day long. These headaches are weird. They used to keep me up all night, but now I fall right to sleep. The only problem is I'm totally exhausted all day, every day, no matter how much sleep I get.  Sunday's and Monday's are a struggle for sure because on Sunday's we have church from 7-5, so no hope for a nap there. Then on Mondays we are so busy with P-day stuff that you don't want to take a nap. Thursday was one of those days that I slept from 10:30 at night all the way until 4:45 the next day until Elder Murray woke me up to go to dinner. It's pretty lame... I feel bad for Elder Murray, because it's his last transfer and all he does is sit in the apartment studying all day. Fortunately, he's probably the most patient companion I could ever ask for.

On New Year's Day we had a mission party! It was a ton of fun. I got to see a whole bunch of people I haven't seen in a while. Wanna know something totally crazy!?  There is a sister in this mission that just barely got here who I knew back home; not super well, but we had classes together in high school and junior high. It throws me off so bad every single time I see her. It's weird. But the party was packed with games, skits, socialization, and they even gave us steak for lunch! It was great! We played this game called "Do You Love Your Neighbor?" at the party that I'm really surprised they let missionaries play.  Everyone sits in chairs in a circle and someone is in the middle who asks someone in the circle if they love their neighbor. If they say yes, then they say, but I don't like people who... and then they say something like, have an outie belly button. Then everyone with outies has to stand up and change seats and whoever doesn't get a seat asks someone else if they love their neighbor. Well, obviously this game is going to get competitive with a bunch of Elders. The surprising thing about it though is when you have Sisters added to the mix for some reason it gets even more competitive because they want to prove they can hold their own against the Elders.  Well, of course awkward will happen and awkward did happen on this occasion. One of the Sister in my district ended up in my lap...Suuuuuuuuuper awkward... It was a pretty fun game though! It was hilarious to see how hard some of the Elders would play. Fortunately, I'm not a very intense guy, so I didn't do anything crazy. But there were times where chairs were thrown, people were tackled, etc... One of the funniest ones in there was someone said they didn't like anyone who had been Dear Johned. I was literally the only person to stand!  Out of three zones!!! Hahaha! It was pretty funny. I was kind of shocked too.

Well, I hope you all have a great week! New semesters are starting and school is starting to be back in session. Good luck for everyone in school. Have a great 2016 everyone. Make it the best year yet! I'm loving my mission even though I'm sick. Talk to you next week!

Love,

Elder Mullins