Ouch!

Dear family and friends,

This week was good. It had a rough ending, but other than that it was good. Unfortunately, we had one 20 minute lesson all week, so that was super lame. We did a lot of knocking on doors and looking for people.  Fortunately for us there's a new app out there called Pokémon Go! I'm sure the majority of you have heard of it, but here's a break down just in case. It's a virtual reality style game where you have to walk around outside looking for gyms and Pokemon. As you look around with your phone you run into different Pokemon. So what that means is, in an area where literally no one is ever walking around, lots of people are walking around! You know what that means? We can street contact people!!!!!!!!! It's been a couple of months since my last street contact! I'm excited to see how it goes this upcoming week. Plus, it'll be young people playing the game meaning they're willing to listen and to change, so that'll be amazing! Older people (30+) are a little more stuck in their ways, so I enjoy teaching the much younger crowd for sure.

Thursday morning started out like any other day. We did our studies, went out and proselyting until about noon, came home for lunch, ate really quick and then I took a half hour nap. When I woke up from that nap, I stretched and without trying to crack it, my neck popped really loud, and then I couldn't straighten it. It was stuck crooked to the right. I thought I knew what pain was. Holy cow! This seriously was less pleasant than a broken bone. Not only did my neck hurt severely, it also caused a VERY intense headache on the left side of my head.  After about five hours or so, my neck muscles got really tired and cramped up because they generally aren't used in the way I was using them to keep my head up. Even an inch of movement in any direction was so painful it caused my vision to leave for a brief moment. I called the mission nurse and she told me I'd probably just have to wait it out. I took some ibuprofen and put a lot of heat on it. We didn't do much that day or the next day. Saturday it still hurt like the dickens, but it was getting better. We left around 3:00 to go to a lesson which cancelled and then we went around knocking on doors until dinner. After dinner we went to a member’s house and just took it easy the rest of the night.  We visited with them so that I could lie down and relax my neck some place other than the apartment. Sunday I could hold my neck straight and by the end of the day could turn it about 20° or so. This morning I woke up and it was totally healed until I played dodgeball this morning and got domed which caused my neck to slip out a bit, so I'm back to only being about to turn it about 30° or so, but I'm sure within a week I won't even be able to tell it was ever out. Just to let you all know, don't throw your neck out of place. If you think throwing your back out is bad, this is even worse. It was quite intense! Haha!

Other than that, not much happened. It's really lame when you lose three days of proselyting time... Hopefully next week is better than this one was. We will be getting transfer news this week by the way! So I won't email until Tuesday. I'm hoping Elder Ojala and I stay together, but you never know. Especially with the new mission president. Some presidents like to keep missionaries in areas as long as possible and others don't like them there any longer than three transfers, so we'll see what happens. Have a wonderful week everyone!

Love,

Elder Mullins

I found a 64 oz. styrofoam cup!

The Cox's puppy at the beginning of the transfer

The Cox's puppy at the end of this transfer

Literally the biggest frog I have ever seen in my life!