"Merry Christmas!"

 Hello all!

     Merry Christmas! I hope that you all had an amazing weekend and are enjoying time off from work/school/whatever and the extra freedom you have.

Florida in the winter - 80 degrees, sunny, and humid. And alligators :)

    These past few weeks have been a little dead in the YSA, since nobody is really here, but that's ok! Christmas Eve was fun - we walked around campus for 2 hours and then around downtown Gainesville for about 4 hours in the afternoon. Wait, did I mention that it was a chilly 80 degrees? Welcome to Florida! It was really fun to be out though and share a Christmas video (on our ipads) with people who looked down or needed something to brighten their day. :)

      We went caroling this past Friday and Saturday night. On Friday, we went outside a local mall to a Christmas lights display and caroled which was just really fun! We provided music for about 2 hours and there was always an audience of about 50 people listening the whole time. I was able to play my viola the whole time which was a blessing and just fun. Some days are hard as a missionary, but little things like going caroling make life good.

We went to Catholic mass Saturday afternoon in St. Augustine,  just because we could and it was very good. I was actually surprised that they sang all of the same hymns that we sing for Christmas.

Christmas Eve with the other elders

When you realize that this is what you'll be eating for the next month...

When it's your first time cutting up a turkey. And neither of us have ANY idea what we're doing.

Christmas morning on a mission! Kind of weird? Yes. Kind of fun? Yes.

      Christmas we woke up, opened presents under a picture of a Christmas tree. Is that a little sad? Maybe.

      We studied then went to church where we had a fun program singing for an hour. There were 8 missionaries there, the branch president, his wife and 2 kids, and 3 other people. The struggles of being in a college congregation during Christmas...

      Then I got to skype my family! It was really great to see them and talk. I really love them and wish that I'd spent more time with them back home. So spend time with your family! Do it! 

      We went to a member's house and had dinner, which was great, then acted out the nativity. We were at the home of the seminary and institute director (brilliant man, he's read every gospel related book ever) so it was a very accurate nativity - starting with the angel Gabriel speaking to Mary, them going and finding lodging in a cave (fun fact - around Bethlehem, most of the places that animals were kept and people slept in "inns" were caves. What do ya know? Jesus was almost certainly born among animals in a cave space.) Then the wise men coming (4 of them, not 3, because nowhere in the scriptures does it talk about 3 wise men) and so on. It was fun and I loved it.  Their son, Joseph, got home from his mission a few months ago and he's one of my best friends here in the branch. 

           

       Anyway, there it is!  Have a great New Year. 

Love you all!

          Elder McMullin

One more picture from today: Our zone playing "Capture the Flag" on campus.. because it is so empty!

                                                         Good Fun!

Mission Christmas Party

Hello everybody!

 People are starting to leave for Christmas break (by now most of them have left) and so campus is pretty slow. We're going to try to find new, exciting things to do with our time now that nobody is on campus...There are lots of international students here and we're meeting with them and trying to get them excited for break. We're planning on going with some Chinese students to fun restaurants and such.

We had a mission Christmas party on Thursday and that was really fun! Every missionary in the whole mission was there and it was great to see all of the missionaries that I know. We had a bunch of skits that each zone put together, lunch, and then a music devotional. There were lots of amazing musical numbers and I was lucky enough to play viola in a few. 

Our zones skit: "The Night Before Transfers"

Waiting during the Mission Christmas Party. I think we were getting staged to take a picture... Or something...

All the Jacksonville Missionaries in one place!

There were several rooms like this, with Christmas packages lined to be handed out.This is the Gainsville corner, where my package sat.

Eating after the mission Christmas party!

We had our branch Christmas party that same night! The life of a missionary, just going from party to party. Yeah, not really. We had a really good time! We had our investigators Maurya, Chenzhi (we gave him the American name Brad...), Tony, and Raven. They loved it! 

Love you all!  Enjoy the snow! Save some for me.

Preparing for Christmas

Hello everybody!

      Transfers were this week.  (They are every 6 weeks.)  My new companion is Elder Mahoney and he's really great.  He's a lot like Elder Day - basketball and football player in high school and will be doing sports in college.

Here's all of the Elders in the YSA now! Elder Mahoney is in the back left, next to me. Elder Aiken (driving) has a new companion, Elder Kautai (front right) who was in our district before and I've been on a few trade offs with him.

  
      We teach a really nice girl, a freshman in college, who we've been trying to get to come to church, but she can't bring herself to come. Anyway, we invited her to an activity in Ocala last night - a bunch of nativity sets were all arranged in pretty lighting with beautiful Christmas music playing, as well as a church Christmas devotional.

 They had an area set up for kids and families to act out the nativity. Here a a bunch of  other missionaries filling in the parts of the Christmas story.

      We felt prompted to call her and ask if she wanted to go (we weren't going to go unless we had somebody coming with us) and she said that she would love to! She really enjoyed it and loved all of it. That segways into what I wanted to talk about a little bit.

      Jesus describes himself as the light of the world - a "light that shineth in darkness." Every time I think about special spiritual experiences, the main thing that stands out is how beautiful and light everything is. I think of the temple - a special building where we learn about Heavenly Father and Christ and make promises with them. I haven't been to the temple in about 5 months now, but when I think back on it, I just remember how pretty and bright it was!

The Chicago LDS Temple

The Orlando LDS Temple

     On Friday night, John Bytheway, a big motivational speaker for the church, spoke in Jacksonville and we went to sing in a big missionary choir (I played viola in a small orchestra.) It was great - he spoke on how we can press forward in hard times. He spoke really well and everybody who went really enjoyed it!

Elder Mahoney, John Bytheway, and I. Sorry for the blurry picture...

       I hope that everybody is having a good time coming up to Christmas!      Keep looking for chances to help people. :)   Wait! One last picture....

Um, no explanation, but just a really cinematic picture of after I woke up from a 5 minute nap in our church building. I was able to sleep on couches in the music building at Lawrence, on the floor in practice rooms, and thankfully that talent has carried on here in Florida, where I can fall asleep within 2 minutes basically anywhere... Random facts about Elder McMullin that nobody wanted to know.

Ok bye! Love you all!

First Thanksgiving in Florida

Hello everybody!

     I have to keep this short but there are pictures so everything will be fine... This week was great! It was really slow because there were no college students on campus/in apartments/in Gainesville/basically on earth for what it seemed like, so we spent a lot of time organizing lists, calling people, and doing paperwork-ish things.

      We spent Thanksgiving with all of the missionaries from our branch - Elder and Sister Booker, the senior couple here, had us over for thanksgiving dinner. It was really great to be in their company on such a great day. We really enjoyed it.

THANKSGIVING!!! I think that being in the YSA (young single adult congregation) and not eating as much has decreased my appetite, because I could barely eat a plate of food. It was so good... wow... Yeah, props to my mom for cooking for like this for us basically every week because, let me just say, I can sure appreciate a meal like this more after being in the YSA. 

Thangsgiving Dinner and my whole district

Eating food because what on earth else would I have pictures of?

 Also, notice my great bow hold on this glass of water. Professor Michelic would be proud :)

me and Elder Bangeter

Here is our wonderful district! From left to right, front to back...

Sister Koener, Sister Eberting, Sister Randle, Sister Hansen, Elder Martin, Elder Bangerter, Elder England, Elder Aiken, me, Elder Day. 

Yep here we are...

      Transfers are this Wednesday! Lots of exciting things happening... Elder Bangerter is leaving and Elder Kautai is coming back to finish training Elder Aiken! I went on several tradeoffs with Elder Kautai - maybe you remember him from previous letters. He was serving in High Springs, just outside of Gainesville, but is now here in the YSA! My companion is also leaving! Ahhh! he's going to be a Zone Leader in Ocala, and I'm excited for him. My new companion will be Elder Mahoney, who came out at the same time that I did.

      I hope that you all had a great thanksgiving and are getting excited for the Christmas season! Stay warm (not a problem here), stay happy, stay serving!

              Love you all,

                      Elder McMullin

Princesses, and "Light the World"

Hello everybody!

     Sorry that it's been a while since I wrote.... Life is good here!
  
 Here's a picture to make everybody smile. This is on Turlington Plaza from this past Wednesday.  

Turlington Plaza with members of Project Princess

 Sometimes exciting people come and we have to take advantage of it, so Elder Aiken and I can now officially say that we've had our pictures taken with princesses. (I could already say that before my mission because I've been in pictures with my little sister. Tacky? Do I get brownie points?)

(Mom note:  Project Princess is "a theatrical community service organization in which princess performers provide magical experiences to children who suffer from life threatening illnesses." I checked out some of the work they do with sick kids, and it is really sweet.)

     There's a great Christmas initiative that's coming out from the church called "Light the World".  It's based off of two scriptures from the New Testament - one is Christ speaking and he says "I am the light of the world" and the other is him speaking to us, and he says "Ye are the light of the world."  Christ also said "I am the light that you should hold up."

        SOOO the point is, let's talk about service and making other people happy!

     Christ served others his whole life, telling everybody that He came not to to be served, but to serve, and so we should have the same attitude. I've seen the blessings that service can bring into the lives of others as well as our lives, and so I'd really encourage all of you to look at the "Light the Word" video that the church has put
out, as well as the advent calendar that they put out with specific service ideas.

Tell me what you think of them!



      

Mission Tour and other activities

Hi all!

    This week was really great! The Mission Tour was very good. There were
many inspiring talks given and lots of good training. Our performance
went well. (I played viola in a group with other musicians.)

     Elder Gavarret talked with me afterward and told me about how he played
violin on his mission. He's a really great, spiritual man.  At the end
of his hour long training/talk, he just bore a simple, 20 second,
broken English testimony of the Savior and it was so brilliantly clear
that he meant every single word that he said. It was really powerful.

    (mom note: Elder Gavarret is a respected church leader from South America, who spent this week touring the Florida missions and working with the missionaries.)

Gainesville Zone missionaries at the conference with Elder Gavarret (seated front middle, red tie.)
Elder McMullin: back row, 5th from the left.

     We had Turkey Games on Friday night. An person who got baptized this fall brought his brother, who is very cool and out going.  Hopefully, we'll get to teach them together.  The turkey games were thanksgiving themed games and then good food. They loved it! 

   We did what's called a "Farm Share" this past week.  It's where we go and help pass out bags of food to the less fortunate. We got to bring home a lot of food as well, therefore, we are pretty set for food. On top of that, members from other wards have taken compassion on the YSA missionaries and are now feeding us. It's pretty nice.

     We've had a great week, some good experiences on campus.  Here we are in front of a LDS Student Association table at Turlington Plaza on the UF campus. (The plaza is "our second home".)

Elder Bangeter -an awesome singer.  I'm on viola.

     In the picture, forget that my tie is way too far right and just take it for what it's worth. We are meeting with some great people and having a lot of success. I'm starting to wish that there was more time in the days so that we had more time to teach...

Love you all!

"Sinners go to Hell" and Alligators

Hello everybody!

     This week was really great! We had a lot of crazy things happen that just really made me love being a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. I'll give just one of them that happened this last Tuesday.    

 Here's a picture of Turlington Plaza on campus. Examine closely..

(The sign being held up is a bunch of flames and the caption: "Sinners go to hell")

     This week we were on campus and there were a bunch of street preachers.  They were on campus from 11AM-7PM, arguing with every single group on campus and calling them out. As soon as we stepped on campus, and they saw us missionaries, they started preaching about how bad Mormons are. It was really sad to see people watching this, getting that kind of an impression of Christianity. 

     We were able to talk to many people, who told us that we are a great example of our faith. I'm glad to be a member of a church where we teach in the same kind and peaceful way that Jesus Christ taught!

      I loved it when people would come up to us while they were preaching and ask us what we thought, and we could just share our message. It was a blessing in disguise to have people there who were open minded to hearing our message. 

    Have a great Halloween! It's 85 degrees here, which just feels wrong for Halloween, but oh well!

   Love you all!

(We also went out to Paynes Prairie earlier today to show the new Elders some alligators.)

Elder Bangeter, Elder Aiken, Elder Day, and me

 (The new companionship is great - Elder Aiken is in training, just came from the MTC, and Elder Bangerter just came from being a zone leader. He's been out for 16 months. He's really into the arts - he did lots of musicals and theater in high school. Elder Aiken is a quarterback and will be going to Weber State with a football scholarship. He's super athletic and a fast runner, fun to play frisbee with! )

hmmmm.....

Fried Alligator, and Exhaustion

Hello everybody!

       These last few weeks have been great! We have a few amazing people that we're talking to who are progressing and learning really well - I love watching people grow as they change their lives and just look happier and happier as they follow up on their commitments. It's fulfilling to see that the work that we're doing is actually helping people.

Being on a mission is really hard sometimes! As a church member, all that you see from the missionaries is them being really happy and bearing their strong testimonies of the gospel while they teach and baptize. What you don't see are the late nights worrying about investigators and the hours upon hours thinking about struggling members and how we can help them. 

As fulfilling and incredible as being a missionary is, it's exhausting! I fell asleep at a member's house for the first time yesterday afternoon... It's not as bad as it sounds. We were at his apartment, and he and Elder Day were cooking fried alligator (tastes like a really good combination of fish and chicken, 10/10 would recommend). Elder Faust, Elder Pacella and I were all sitting on this really comfortable brown couch and within one minute of us sitting down, all three of us were OUT. 

I know that the gospel that I have the opportunity to preach is true because I don't know how on earth I'd be able to keep going without God's help. We have dozens of disappointments every week, we're doing something that the world sees as really peculiar (leaving family and friends for two years to bike in 100 degree weather and tell people about Jesus), we face a lot of rejection, and we spend all of our time thinking about other people. At the end of the day, I just look back at the day and thank God for help keeping me going with how hard I'm working, because, without God's help, there's no way that I could keep going.

I love you all! Have an amazing week!

Here is a photo of me, Elder Pacella, and Elder Foust. Transfers were this week - Elder day and I are staying, Elder Pacella is going to Jacksonville, and Elder Faust is going home. Ade is front and center - he was baptized 9 months ago. 

We painted the graffiti wall again! It was really fun. This time, we painted the Book of Mormon and the Bible and where they take place (the Bible in the Middle East area and the Book of Mormon in the Americas.

For more history about the background of the Gainsville "Graffiti Wall" go to :  "Asher gets into the arts in August"

Post Hurricane Mathew

Hello everybody!

         This week was really exciting! It's been pretty slow and we didn't have that many lessons but that's alright. The hurricane didn't really help...

  For those that didn't know, there was a category 3 hurricane that came up the east coast of Florida this past weekend. Where I live, in Gainesville, just got some rain and wind. The east coast, on the other hand, had a lot of storm damage... It was crazy. The hurricane moved pretty slowly, so it stuck around in the Jacksonville area for about half a day solid. 

Our branch missionaries, and some others, had the opportunity to go and clean up some mess from the storm in a city called St. Augustine. They live by the ocean and this house was just off the coast. There was a 9 foot storm surge that came up and flooded their entire yard, and the waves ended up going inside of their house and flooding everything. After the water finally left, pieces of their neighbor's dock were in this house's front yard, their dock was smashed into pieces, several trees had been knocked over, and all of their plants were flattened and scattered everywhere.

You see pictures of hurricane destruction on the news and the internet but it's just not the same as in real life... Before this weekend, I'd always thought, looking at hurricane aftermath, "That's a mess! How on earth do you clean up after that?" Well, I can tell you that it's just a lot of work. It's a muddy mess, and we were wading in water and mud up to our ankles all day (this was this past Saturday). We moved pieces of their dock, picked up branches and shrubbery, and took the boarding off of their windows that had been placed there to protect the glass. 

There are a lot more critters here than there are in Wisconsin... As I was grabbing some of the mashed up plants, I looked under what I'd just picked up and there was a snake. Not the little garden snakes that you chase after and try to catch, but a solid 4 foot long, thick as your arm snake. I don't know what kind it was because it quickly slithered off into the mess. (The only analogy I have for what it was like wading in it was the garbage compactor scene in Star Wars Episode 4... Think that, but with alligators and snakes and muddy plants.)

Despite the mess, I was really glad to be able to help. When we first talked to the owner, his eyes were completely devoid of hope. He was talking and looking like there was no way that this could ever be cleaned up - like there was no way that his life could possibly be the same. After 7 hours of solid, hard work from more than a dozen people, his attitude had changed. There was hope in his eyes and a smile on his face. 

I learned a lesson about service that day - whenever an opportunity to serve comes along, just drop everything and go do it. It doesn't matter if there are a number of legitimate reasons not so serve, just go do it. We can really bless people's lives and bring them hope as we do so.

Love y'all! Here are some pictures of the hurricane...

Part of their neighbor's dock...

Looking good!  Never mind, just muddy.

Part of their dock. There were banana spiders and cockroaches all over them so we had to be careful while we moved these. (There were six or seven pieces like this."

A branch thing. Entire trees had fallen down and the owner cut them up with a chain saw and then we moved them.

Action shot of lifting things. I'm not in pain... definitely not... yeah.

The whole group. It was such a great experience and I really hope that we can go back and help again sometime this week.

A bit of this and that..

Hello all!

            This week has been great! Let's see... So much happens every week but then I look back and can't remember anything! Elder Pacella and Elder Foust had a baptism! He's a man named Nick who's really amazing - he finished the whole Book of Mormon in about 3 weeks and has an amazing testimony of the church! It was great to be there and feel the amazing feeling there. 

Another funny thing - my companion Elder Day has a girlfriend who is serving a mission in Peru right now. Her mom apparently loves hiking and kayaking, wears Birkenstocks, tie die shirts, and bandannas, and loves granola. I was just thinking, "Yep, that's my family. And almost everybody I know back in Wisconsin..." But anyway, she sent us a five pound bag of granola, so we've been enjoying that...

We're teaching a few amazing people right now really regularly! One of them just went up and visited a friend at UW Madison and then drove back down to Florida, driving through Stoughton. That was pretty cool - he said that Stoughton is a "nice little town". That's accurate.

This weekend was General Conference for our church, and it was amazing! The Prophet and the Twelve Apostles, along with some other church leaders, spoke in several sessions of a broadcast to everybody in the church, talking about things that can really help us spiritually in these times. It was really amazing and I learned a lot about the importance of sincere prayer.

Anyway, I hope you all have a great week! Stay happy!

(Here are some pictures from this week.)

Granola! I has coconut and is really good. In case anybody was wondering, I had some for breakfast this morning, mixed with yogurt and a banana. It was good.

This is John! He's a new member and loves missionaries, which we love. Sometimes, he'll just randomly bring us gatorade while we're on campus. We appreciate it.

Here we are driving... I love these Elders so much, they're all amazing. Elder Foust is the one in sunglasses - he's going home in 2 weeks. It's pretty weird.