A Bit About Our Teaching Format

Hello Everybody!

      

   This week was great! Campus has been very busy lately so that's very good. It's funny to see all of the little things that remind me of going to Lawrence last year - acapella groups practicing in little campus corners, four square tournaments on the plaza, guitar sing alongs on the plaza, etc. We are meeting with a girl who just read the entire Book of Mormon in about a week. She's really great and has a lot of amazing insights that help me learn! I'm learning more out here than the people that we're supposed to be teaching.

       

   So our lessons usually go as follows - I thought that I should give a little briefer on what the discussions that missionaries teach are like. I love teaching lessons, it's really fun and an amazing, spiritual experience. The hard part is finding people to teach, and that's what we do a lot here.

     When we teach, we open by praying to invite the Spirit - a lot of the time either I or Elder Day, my companion, will say the opening prayer and then ask the person we are meeting with to say the closing prayer. Then we follow up on their commitments - we always invite people to do something during a lesson, whether it be to pray on their own, come to church, read from the Book of Mormon, and many other commitments. These things help people to come closer to Christ and so it's really important for us to follow up on them to make sure that they are doing these things, or to check in to see if we can do anything to help them keep their commitments. 

    Then we teach them something that we feel will benefit them the most - we always focus on what they really need and do that by thinking a lot about what they are going through or what could bless their lives the most. We invite them to do something, related to what we taught or what they most need, then close with prayer.

     Most of the lessons that we teach are just 1 on 1 on campus - this means that Elder Day and I split up and walk around a little plaza finding people to teach. We are able to talk to more people and teach more lessons this way since there are so many people to talk to. We also have lessons in our church building, which is really nice because it's away from the distractions of campus and in a place where, hopefully, they will be able to come to for church on Sundays.

           Here are some pictures from this week...

Here we are at a huge antique car collection that we were able to visit today. It was really amazing! I've never really been into mechanics or cars or anything but it was really neat to hear about all of the history behind the cars. The man who runs the place has stories for almost all of the 200+ cars here. We went with all of the missionaries from Gainesville and Ocala, where the collection was.

Here is me looking awkward while playing viola in Zone Conference last thursday. Our zone is about 40 missionaries, coming from Gainesville, Ocala, and Chiefland.

Here is everybody in the performance - Sister Koener and Elder Faust sang along. We performed a hymn called "Be Still my Soul", which is one of my favorites. Sister Koener came into the mission at the same time that I did but Elder Faust is going home in three weeks.  They sing very well and it was amazing to be able to perform here!

So there it is! Everything is good here in Florida, and I hope that it's good everywhere else!

       Until next week,

             Elder McMullin

Visiting a Swamp with Alligators

Hi everybody,

     

   We were able to go to an amazing walk called Payne's Prairie today.  It

was a strange mix of swamp and prairie It's a place just outside of Gainesville.

It reminded me of some places in Wisconsin, just with alligators and some different

plants. 

     There weren't very many alligators though, apparently the water is too low right now for them to be really up and close. But, we got to watch an alligator sneak up on a heron, and that was exciting! The heron was just standing by the water and the alligator was swimming slowly towards it, and slowly moved its head under the water. It was pretty creepy! The bird moved away from the water so it didn't get eaten.

The Gainesville YSA Elders at a swamp place called Payne's Prairie. 

The swamp! It's really beautiful in its own special way.

Elder Pacella and I at the swamp

Just another picture of the prairie and swamp being amazing.

     And  now for some goofy pictures from this week, on campus at The University of Florida.

People ask to take pictures with us a lot for campus things... Here is one more interesting one.

Me, John, and Elder Foust. John is amazing and he is a recent convert who is super nice to us missionaries and brings us Gatorade daily while we are on campus. 

I'll write more next week!  

Gator Football Season..

Hello everybody!
        It's been a pretty normal week! It's really strange being in a
branch full of college kids because I feel like I'm still in college
sometimes, being on campus with all the events going on and bringing
our investigators to church potlucks and whatnot. I love it a lot, but
it's just strange because this branch is so much like the one that I
was in while I was in school at Lawrence.
      
   I got to play viola on campus while we were looking for new
people to teach, and it was one of the most amazing experiences I've
had yet! We had all 8 of the missionaries from the branch teaching
people on the plaza while I played church hymns for about an hour and
a half. It was one of the most spiritual, peaceful atmospheres I had
ever seen and just amazing to be a part of. I'm so glad that I was
able to bring my viola on my mission!
     
   It's a miracle that I can still play. I started our just
playing the melody for most of the hymns, which went well, but then I
decided to add in double stops (playing two notes at once) for
harmony. Many of you will know that double stops are, and have always
been, my worst nightmare when it comes to music, and that I can't
really get them in tune because I haven't practiced them enough. Lo
and behold, I started in on a hymn and decided to just play all of the
double stops. Somehow, every single one was in tune. I don't know how.
I can't play chords, but somehow I was able to. Crazy things happen on
a mission, and I don't think that my playing would have turned out
well were it not for God's help.
      
    There are huge football games here almost every Saturday for
the University of Florida and we've been able to be on campus, trying
to teach during 2 games and their tailgates so far. It's been pretty
interesting! This past Saturday somebody gave us a ticket for the
game, and wouldn't let us say no, so here it is. We didn't go to the
game because that would just be a waste of time, but it's still a good
souvenir...

First Hurricane, and Potato Chip Sandwiches

Hello everybody!

      

    Sorry that it's been a few weeks, I've been super busy on Mondays lately. We had a "Zone Preparation Day" last Monday, which is where a bunch of missionaries from around here got together and we played Frisbee and soccer and had a good time. Hence, I didn't really have time for emailing, so I'm sorry about that!

      

   These past few weeks have been great! We've been spending a lot of time on campus and have found a lot of new people who want to meet with us, which is great! There was a football game this past Saturday night and we were out trying to teach people but it was pretty hard to teach people who can't put together a straight sentence because of drinking all day. Oh well!

    

    I was playing Frisbee two weeks ago and sprained my ankle, which was awkward. Apparently spraining an ankle on a mission doesn't work too well, because I've was walking on it all day for the last two weeks and it's getting better really slowly. Whoops. No rest for the weary!

     We had a hurricane here this past weekend!I It was pretty exciting. The storm hit late on Saturday night and was basically done on Friday morning, in Gainesville at least. We weren't hit as hard as up north a little bit, like in Tallahassee. Still, our mission president asked us to be in our apartments at 6 and stay there until Friday afternoon. We had a lot of wind that ended up knocking out a power line during the night.

      Elder Day and I woke up to an 85 degree apartment. Not very comfortable... Our power was out until we got back at night, but a member who lives close was kind enough to refrigerate our food so nothing really went wrong. We went for a walk in the morning and it was just weird... It was a little windy but there was just no sound. No animal noise, which was really weird... Altogether, pretty neat! We didn't hear anything about it really, just an alert that there was going to be a hurricane coming through, some emergency procedures, and nothing more. That was weird, not knowing everything about the storm. 

First thing we saw outside our apartment. Usually this is a 25 foot deep hole for water drainage so it was weird to just have a new pond at our doorstep just from the night's rain. 

This is Abraham left, and Ade. Abraham was baptized two weeks ago. He's so great, I love him!

Besides young missionaries like me, couples can go on missions after they're married. Sister and Elder Booker are so great! They don't have the same schedule as missionaries like me do - instead, they teach classes here, make dinner for church events, and other great things. 

I had to include this picture of my dinner a few nights back. Sometimes you have to be creative when it's the end of the month and most of your food is gone. Don't question the nutritional value of this meal. Trust me, there was none. 

      

   Have a great week everyone! Good luck to my Lawrence friends who will be starting school next week!

                             Elder McMullin