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!