Asher gets into the arts: Graffiti and Viola

     Hello everybody! Just a quick note this week because there are some
pictures that better sum up the exciting things!

       This week was great! I've been so happy lately, it's great!
Waking up is a struggle sometimes... I literally roll out of bed,
kneel down at my bedside and "pray" AKA fall asleep for another 10
minutes. It's a little rough. Ok, so after the first 10 minutes of the
day I'm happy and everything is great.

        Abraham is doing so well! I love him! We've really come to be
just great friends with him and our other investigators, they're all
so nice. I really love the south - people are just kind here. We ran
into a few very anti-Mormon people while we were knocking apartments
and it was pretty interesting.

         I'm so excited for University of Florida to start next
Monday! Without people here for us to find and teach, we've just been
focusing on teaching Abraham and then doing service as well as talking
to the members. We don't have a lot that we can do since nobody is
here, but when school starts next week we'll be really busy!

When you're caught a mile away from the apartment and there's a Florida thunderstorm.

We got to paint a graffiti wall as a district and it was amazing!

The 34th Street Wall is a 1,120-foot-long retaining wall along SW 34th Street.  The wall is most famous for being covered with layers of graffiti - up to as many as 250 layers of paint thick in some areas.   The wall has been accepted as a Gainesville landmark and is considered a "community bulletin board".

We sketched out a simple "plan of salvation" picture, which sums up our course and purpose as sons and daughters of God.

MY VIOLA IS HERE!!! I get to be part of a mission orchestra and play on Sundays and it's so amazing! I feel so blessed to have a mission president, and his wife, who let me bring my viola. SO lucky, it's a miracle. Very, very few missionaries are able to bring their instruments.

Love you all! Enjoy the rest of the summer!

"Trade offs, and Lots of Biking"

Hi everyone!
       
     Just a quick email about how this week was. My companion is
the "district leader" which means that we go on "trade off's" twice a
week. A trade off is where my companion and I swap companions for a
day and go with a different companionship from around our area. So for
example, what happened this Wednesday was that I went with Elder
Kautai to High Springs and then my companion stayed with Elder
Kautai's companion in Gainesville where I usually am.

Here is some country land from when we were biking around on Wednesday. For a second I felt like I was in Montana or something!

      Neither Elder Kautai or I can drive so we biked all day long. We had a lot of places to go so we ended up biking 30 miles between noon and 9PM.  It was a good time! It's really helpful to see how missionary work is done in other places. We had some great lessons!

That face when you just spent ten hours biking 30 miles and teaching. (Elder Kautai in background.)  We slept well that night.

        

    We've been teaching a man named Abraham this week - he's
really amazing!  He's going to be baptized on the 21st of this month.
It's amazing to see how people's hearts can be prepared for our
message before we meet them. Very few people we've taught are as
excited about the gospel as he is.

                                   

Here is what we spend a lot of time doing - knocking in apartments like this. We try to spend more time on campus and on the street because we can talk to more people that way.

          These next few weeks are rough because the University of
Florida is out until fall, and everybody has left their apartments, so
we are really going to have trouble finding people to teach. That's ok
though! I know that something good will come up as long as we have
faith and work our hardest.

Here we are at Campus Plaza where we spend most of our time.   We get to teach a lot of lessons here. It's amazing to get to talk to other people my age and see how the gospel can bless their lives.

          Well that's  about all this week. Not too much. Some
little storms the past few days have bee fun but that's been about it.

Here is my current address, I can receive snail mail or packages at it for the next couple months (until I transfer).

Elder Asher McMullin
2330 S.W.  Williston Rd
Apt 1116
Gainesville FL 32608

First Post From Florida

Hi everybody!

     Wow! It's been a crazy week! I flew out last Tuesday at 7 in the
morning and got into Jacksonville at 3 in the afternoon. My mission
president (the guy who is in charge over all the missionaries and
everything in our whole mission) and his wife are amazing! His wife,
Sister Lee, used to be a professional singer and she's going to start
a mission orchestra and choir. She asked me to play for it so that's
really exciting. Not many missionaries get to bring instruments to
their mission, especially in this mission, so I feel really blessed!
There are maybe 120-ish missionaries here, I'm not totally sure.

Sister Lee, Elder McMullin, Presient Lee: first day in Florida

My companion is Elder Day, and he'll be training me for the next three
months. He's really great! He's been on a mission for almost a year
now.

Elder Day and Elder McMullin: typing letters home

 We're in the Gainesville Young Single Adult Branch, which is only
people who are age 18-31. Almost all of them are converts and go to the
University of Florida. We spend a lot of time on campus because we can
talk to a lot of people. There are 8 missionaries here, total, in this
one branch, which is crazy! It's the fastest growing part of the
mission.




Our daily schedule is as follows...

6 AM Wake up and exercise. There are tennis and basketball courts
right by our apartments so we usually do that. We've also driven to a
nearby field and played ultimate frisbee with nearby elders.

7 AM Shower and breakfast.

8 AM Personal study of what we'll be teaching, scripture reading, and
just in general what I think I need to learn and think about.

9AM Companion study. Elder Day and I talk about things for the day
and I get trained on some things.

11 AM Lunch.

12 PM   Finding people! We spend almost all day finding people, a lot
of the time just walking around campus. We also bike around and talk
to people we see as well as knocking on apartment complexes. It's
really hot and humid, but it hasn't rained a single time yet. Saturday
night we were out knocking doors and taught a half hour lesson. Just
standing there in the heat, without moving, I was soaked I sweat by
the end of the lesson. It's good, hard work. I really love it.

I've learned to hate golf carts. We spend a lot of time in apartment
complexes and I guess that the apartment ranger people don't like it
when we tell interested people about Jesus Christ's love for them. Oh
well. We fear God, not man. But we still duck and dodge every time we
see a ranger driving a golf cart come around the corner.

5 PM Dinner

6 PM Finding people.

9 PM Back home to plan for the next day and study.

10:30 PM Sleep

My bed in our apartment.

     Sometimes we have little half hour lessons, but it's just so hard
to set up return appointments with college students, especially with
college finals this week and moving out, so we can usually just get in
one lesson on the street, campus, or a doorstep, then try to set up
another time with them. By the end of the day I'm always totally
exhausted. It's very satisfying though. Really fulfilling.

    The town is great! I haven't seen much of it. About 50 percent of the
population is black, and they're so awesome to talk to. The culture
down here really loves Jesus, and that makes starting conversation
easier. Just this afternoon, a man walked up to us as we were about to
pay for our groceries and paid for us because we had Jesus Christ's
name on our name tags and were spreading his message. He'd never heard
of missionaries before, just respected us.

     We work closely with two other elders because we're in a car share,
which means that else day and I get the car every other week. We give
each other rides a lot, though, so we end up working on campus
together a lot. Their names are Elder Batalla and Elder Pacella.
They're both Italian and really awesome, I love them so much. Elder
Pacella is on the left and Elder Batalla on the right. Here they are
playing pool on our preparation day (today)

Elder Batalla and Elder Pacella, playing pool on P-day