Good Church Members in Florida

Hello everybody!

This week has been just a really good one. It's shown me the power that church members have in being a "light to the world" as Jesus Christ so well puts it. There are just so many amazing members here in Fort Caroline! They're incredible at sharing the gospel with their friends by example. 

It's amazing to see the many walks of life that the members here come from. One of them is in underwater construction and electrical work (scuba diving and working on bridges and such.) Another works developing prosthetic limbs and travels across the world to different countries for marketing every week. One amazing lady works as a cafeteria worker and house cleaner at her son's school. I love hearing about their lives and hearing how the gospel of Christ has blessed their lives. 

     The relief society president here is one of the most Christlike people I've ever met . You can just see Christlike love all over her face. She's always talking with members of the relief society. Whether it's a young mother who needs help with her kids or she's sitting down and holding the hand of a 95 year old lady, she's always ministering to the one. 

       

     This is us at the Garfield's home! They're an amazing family here and Brother Garfield loves coming out with us to lessons. They're really great people and their kids are adorable. And it was just super fun to have a bonfire!

 I missed s'mores. They were really good...

     This area is very different from my last, as far as meals provided by members go.  We get fed so much! Every single night this week and six nights next week. This week is amazing. We do eat some seafood here! I've had oyster, clam, lots of crab, and some squid. It's good! I don't really like oysters but everything else is good. Cold seafood is gross though. Not good leftovers 

Our investigators are doing really well! It's hard to watch them make decisions against what what we're teaching them, especially when they know that what we've taught them is true. But it's so amazing when investigators are living the Gospel of Christ, and studying the scriptures and praying, and just tell us that they feel such a difference in their lives.

I might start closing all of my emails with the words of Elder Holland because they mean so much to me. "Keep loving. Keep trying. Keep trusting. Keep believing. Keep growing. Heaven is cheering you on today, tomorrow, and forever." 

Love you all! 

Elder McMullin

Obstacles We Encounter, Meet My Awesome Companion...and a Lizard

Hello everybody!

        This week has been great! We've definitely learned a lot  - it's been a really good week to build my testimony that the gospel that we're sharing is true and there are so many things trying to stop us from sharing it. There are just so many things that just get in the way of us sharing our message with people and helping them to build their faith. Some of them are tiny little things - extra traffic on our way to an appointment, our investigator gets an important phone call in the middle of a lesson, etc. Some of them are big! The wife of one of our most progressing investigators passed away from brain cancer last week. So many things try to stop us from talking to people, and stop people from talking to us, which just builds my testimony of how true the work is.

I thought I'd also write a short bio on Elder Willets, my companion, because I feel like I haven't shared enough about him. He's from Utah and has a brother and sister in high school, 8 year old sister, and younger twin brothers with cerebral palsy. He is really loving and great with kids. He is a REALLY good snowboarder and skater. He is also an amazing mountain biker. He talks about the trails they biked and it just makes my legs hurt thinking about it. He also loves Disney and can basically quote every line from every Disney movie because of watching them with his youngest sister. 

I love how unique every single person is, but how the gospel of Jesus Christ still applies to all of us. It's been a real blessing to be able to talk with so many people, who are all SO different, and still know that the gospel of Christ can bless them, no matter their situation. Whether they own a Lamborghini and 3 houses here in Jacksonville or they're homeless, whether they have lived great, moral lives and are very healthy or they've run their life into the ground with bad choices and are terminally ill. It can help all of us grow and progress, and that just makes me glad.

Love you all! Here are some fun pictures from the last week...

Here's an apartment complex and Elder Willets yawning. Spanish moss is hanging off of all the trees. It's kinda ugly but I think it looks nice now.

This is a lizard we found while visiting a member last night. Lots of lizards here. They're nice.

And a basic missionary selfie while knocking doors because stereotypes and whatnot.

Opportunities to Serve Others

This week we did a ton of service, so I'll tell you about that.

   So we do something called "Habitat for Humanity" - you should look it up! Basically we can all just volunteer and we help to build houses! There are also people there who are doing sweat-equity labor.  Theywork for 300 hours and then they get a home! It's a really great program. Elder Willets and I have helped to paint, caulk, put in doorknobs, put in mirrors, towel bars, and do lots of other fun stuff. It's actually super good experience and it makes me feel like I'm actually a useful human being who knows how to do handyman stuff instead of just a music and writing person. Hahahah. It's good experience for when I have a family.   I'm actually really grateful for it. We usually go for 4 hours every Wednesday morning.
 
      We also helped at "farmshare" which I've been to three times now.  They have a huge warehouse in Arlington, right next to Fort Caroline. They bring a truck to a location, we help them unload it, and help give food to people.
 
     It's really great!  I love doing service so much now.  It's funny, before the mission I couldn't stand service. I was like "Helping an old lady rake her lawn? I could be wasting my time on facebook and YouTube!"  But now I love it to death. There really is a spirit that comes into our lives as we serve others. I don't know the mechanism behind how God works and how the spirit comes, but we definitely build charity and feel the spirit more when we serve.

     Also, I want a pet snake. We were weeding as a district (us, the other Fort Caroline elders, and the Jacksonville beach elders and sisters) and one of the sisters said. "Wow, this is a really big worm." 3...2...1... "Ahhhhhhhh!" Wow she screamed the loudest scream of all time. So I grabbed it with the professional snake-grabbing hold by it's head and it was like the cutest thing on earth! When I put it down a ways away it tried to bite me though. Whoops. Ungrateful little thing. We could have just cut it in half with a shovel, so we were helping it out.

  I'm glad that it's warm there! I remember those days where you walk outside, expecting arctic chill, and it's a pretty spring day! None of that here - I've been enjoying the 70 and 80 degree weather before we get back to summer…

 Love you! I hope the weather stays warm :)

A Wednesday Night Miracle

Hello Everybody!

    This week was amazing - we saw so many miracles this week as we tried to find people to teach. It really helped me build my faith. I'll share just one miracle that we had on Wednesday night...

We had received a referral for somebody who had visited mormon.org and asked for a bible to be delivered to them (we, as missionaries, go and deliver the Bible to them). Elder Willets thought that he knew which apartment this person was in, so we drive into this apartment complex and then realize that we're on the wrong side of town. The lady we were supposed to give the Bible to lives about 3 miles northeast. Whoops.

But we both felt like there was a reason why we were there, so we prayed and asked for help finding the person we were supposed to talk with. There was a light on in one of the apartment buildings, and we both felt like we should go see who was there. We knock on the door and an amazing older man opens the door and invites us inside. He tells us that he's served as a pastor for 20 years - in Georgia and in Florida, and was looking for something that he felt was missing from the Bible. So when we shared our message about the restoration of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and the Book of Mormon, he was super excited! He's now on track for being baptized at the beginning of April. It was just a really neat miracle to see that God uses us and that, everywhere we are, there's a purpose for us being there.

We got home from dinner last night around 7:00 and were just getting ready to bike out to the appointment we had that night when we hear lots of police sirens in our complex. We step outside and there's a helicopter flying over our complex with a searchlight shining around. Both of us got a super bad feeling and basically just booked it back inside and waited for half an hour while cops ran around our complex and the helicopter stayed searching around. Kind of creepy? Yeah maybe a little bit.

Love you all! Stay warm :)

Elder McMullin

Reaching out to help people with rough lives...

Hello Everybody!

     This week was pretty crazy, honestly... Lots of things happening! I took a night and wrote in my journal a list of all of the different activities that we did that day, then compared it to a list of the things that I did generally in a busy day at Lawrence. We do so much every day... It was crazy to compare, actually. No wonder we're drop dead exhausted every single night when we get in!

This week was hard in some ways - we had a few really great investigators who we met with often and just LOVED teaching, and all 4 of them were on track for being baptized this month or next month, but we had to refer them to missionaries in other areas. Church buildings and congregations are geographic, so there are area boundaries for the people that we meet with, and if they move out of our area, then they go to a different church building and meet with different missionaries.

      So that was sad because Elder Willets and I really love them and it was sad to see them go! But that means that we get to work super hard and find new people this week, which is one of my favorite things to do. I love talking to people at doorsteps and on the street because it's just really fun to see how to teach the message of Christ's restored gospel  effectively over busy street traffic, lawn mowers, them washing their car, or while they're raking. Fun times :)

This week was a big growing experience - one of our investigators, Darrell, has been going through a ton and has just had a crazy hard life. After a really intense meeting on Friday night, Elder Willets and I just got home and were thinking "What on earth are we trying to do helping these people who have had decades of struggles that we can't even totally imagine? How can we possibly fix their lives when so much needs fixing?"  But it's comforting to see that all we can do, and have to do, is point them to Christ and He'll do the fixing. And I really have faith that He will "fix" and build up every single person who turns to him.

Here's a picture of  me and our investigator Darrell...

Love you all lots! It was pretty chilly biking on Saturday so we had to put on sweaters - it was in the 60's. ;)

Thoughts from Mission Leadership Conference... and worn out shoes

Hello!

        This week was fun - it got a little chilly this week! It was in the 60's and I actually had to put on a long sleeve shirt. Just kidding - it was probably in the 40's and with humidity here, it actually feels cold. Don't laugh at me! It is pretty funny, though, to be out working, knocking door to door to find somebody to share our message with, and everybody keeps asking "How are you out in this cold?" when it's in the 60's. 

Missionary shoes. In a year and a half my dress shoes will look this this too. 

Edit: JUST KIDDING I have new shoes... It's fine...

         We had a lot of really great involvement from the members here in Fort Caroline this week - enough to where we actually had 9 member-present lessons, (where a church member is with us when we teach somebody who isn't).   It is hard to do sometimes because people are busy and aren't able to come out at nights a lot of the time. 

         

    There's a big emphasis to have missionaries really focusing on their purpose, which is "to invite others to come unto Christ by helping them receive the restored gospel through faith in Jesus Christ and His atonement, repentance, baptism, receiving the gift of the Holy Ghost, and enduring to the end."  

     We focused a lot on this topic at the Mission Leadership Conference I got to attend last week.   We were also trained on using our ipads to skype in members during our teaches. With technology today, we shouldn't ever have a teach without a member present (in person, or via skype).

Getting training at Mission Leadership Conference

All the missionaries at the conference... I'm in the third row back, seventh from the left.

      So Elder Willets and I have been re-evaluating our teaching and making sure that we are focused on building people's faith from the second we meet them, instead of just teaching a history lesson about prophets, Christ's life, the Book of Mormon, etc. We've seen a lot of miracles and people have been very receptive as we've done it.

           Best wishes from Florida! Stay warm! :)

Elder McMullin

Elder Day and I at the Mission Leadership Conference last week!
Good to see him again!

First week in new area: Jacksonville/ Fort Caroline District

Hello Everybody!

       

    I'm in Fort Caroline right now (a section of Jacksonville)  with Elder Willets. He's been out for about 3 months and is so happy! He's always excited to work and he is happy from the time he gets up to when he goes to bed. And I'm sure that he's happy when he sleeps. 

    It's fun being in a ward with lots of old, southern people! They're so crazy.   hahaha. It's funny. 

    It was honestly probably the hardest part of my mission to say goodbye to all of our members and investigators in Gainesville.  Did I cry?  100% yes.  I didn't realize how much I loved everybody there until I had to say goodbye, realizing that I probably won't see them again. 

    But, there are lots of amazing new people here in Fort Caroline to love!  Our investigator Darrell is getting baptized in a few weeks and he's just such a great guy - he loves the Book of Mormon and says that having Elder Willets and me stop by is the best part of his week. 

    My new address just so that everybody knows.  Elder McMullin,  355 Monument Road, apt 9A1, Jacksonville, FL, 32225. 

Here are some pictures of the Fort Caroline area.

My companion, Elder Willets, on the left, and Elder Wilson, one of the other missionaries here. This is our apartment. It's about twice as big as my old apartment back in  Gainesville. 

Our kitchen.

My bed. Really well made, huh?

As soon as you walk out of our apartment. Thanks Florida.

Florida, again! 

All of the Elders in the Fort Caroline district. This is right after 5 hours of service digging hundreds of pounds of trash out of a trailer infested with cockroaches. It was actually really fun! But... I was really tired. 

 Love you all! Have a great week!