Lake City life, lots of pictures

Hello Everybody!

This week has been a blessed one. We spent a lot of time biking this week! You will see that highlighted in Elder Jenkins’ face and my face. Very red... It’s been really fun though to be able to bike in such beautiful Florida weather. It just builds my testimony that God is there, that he loves us, and that he cares! It will be hard going back to Wisconsin when two years is up. Florida has my heart.

But the people here are even more amazing. One person we are teaching right now is Jerry. He has had a pretty rough past and a crazy life. His wife is a member of the church and they have an ADORABLE one year old redhead son. He has come to church for the past few weeks and it makes my day to see his face light up when he’s at church. He, like many other people here in Lake City, is naturally just filled with charity. He spends hours helping his older neighbors and making sure they’re safe and ok. We stopped by one hot day, and he made us peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, gave us ice cream and bottled water, and sent us on our, now much merrier, way.

General Conference - a biannual church broadcast was this last weekend. The new prophet, President Nelson, gave an amazing talk about revelation. (Read it or watch it here) It’s something that I feel really strongly about! We are entitled to have God speak to us, usually through feelings like love, joy, and peace. What a blessing to be able to learn from Him, in times we need him most.

  Here are pictures from this week:

Trade-offs:  Elder Jenson and I! He’s amazing, has an incredible sense of humor, loves the Book of Mormon, and can connect with anybody.

There are a lot of goats here in Lake City. Some of them are even in yards or fences. 

Yes, we were being 100% safe taking this picture.

Here’s us + the sisters in our ward. In the sun at 7 at night. I’m not actually that sunburnt, the sun just makes it look like that. The Robinsons, a member family, fed on us Easter. They are really loving and hospitable! They’re really Christlike people.

Us and sister smith! A recent convert. Such a Christlike lady.

Zone preparation day! Lots of frisbee, lots of baseball, it was a fun day. I love our district - so good. Transfers are in a week, and I think that the district will get shaken up. I’m pretty sure I’ll finish my mission here... we will see. 

        What else this week - oh, karate! It was really good - we mostly did a strength and endurance workout that left us sore the next morning. We practiced basic punches, and will be doing lots more tomorrow morning. The Sisters were exhausted but said they’ll still come. It was so fun!!!

       We are going to try to work up to the certification test thing that you need to take before you get your first belt. Apparently it takes about an hour, so we will have to get up extra early that morning. The lady who does it, Sister Lindboe, is like a drill sergeant. We started out with jumping jacks, and she said, in her commanding voice, “Everybody count with me! 1...1...1...1...1...1...” Then we realized that she wasn’t moving on from one until every person in the room was counting with her. So we did! “2...3...3...4....5...5...5...” It was fun. I love Sister Lindboe - we are trying hard to get them back to church. 

Love you all! I hope you have an amazing week.

Easter Haikus

Hello everybody! 

        This week has been good. Very busy visiting people and lots of appointments. I am really excited for Easter this weekend! What a blessing to be able to focus a little more on Jesus Christ. Here are some short haikus about Easter, because I don’t have time to write much today. 

The Lord Jesus Christ,

He saves us from the darkness,

I love him dearly. 

This is Easter week,

A time to remember Him,

Let us serve our Lord. 

Love you all!

Here are a couple pictures from the week:

Elder Boehme and I! He’s from Canada and one of my favorite missionaries in the mission. He is so hardworking and funny. Also, sorry that his eyes are closed, but this is the only picture we have. 

A member’s kids got a hold of my iPad. This is one of my favorite families here in lake city. So fun, so lively, really funny. 

PS:   Addition from Asher's mom:  In my letter this week,  I asked him about the epic highs and tragic lows that missionaries experience.  He laughed, and responded with a good description of what his Sunday was like. I thought some of you might enjoy a glimpse of regular mission drama.

"Yes... I do feel like that many days. For example, Sunday morning!

   On our way to church at 8, we stopped by and knocked on the door of an investigator family (they fasted and prayed all day Saturday that they could come to church). They came outside and pointed to a trailer next to them, which we then noticed was charred inside and out, and the trees around it were covered in ash as well. Apparently, somebody had been smoking at 4 in the morning, with oxygen tanks in their home, and the trailer had exploded. So nobody got any sleep and they couldn’t come even though they’d promised to come the day before. That’s the 5th week in a row that something crazy like that was happening.

Then, we head over to the church and try to send a text to the ward council about investigators to expect at church. It won’t send. We ask our sisters to send it, and it sends, but is total gibberish. Finally, we send it to a member and he sends it to the ward council group text. Satan doesn’t want out investigators to come to church, apparently.

Get to church, and a family walks in, the Davis’, who were supposed to pick up our investigator Jerry and his member wife Cami. But it’s just the Davis’ walking in. They had stopped by and nobody was home.

 Then, we get a text from a member family, the Hansens, who we have been meeting with and working with to help them invite their friends. Sister Hansen tells us that Zoe, her 7 year old daughter, is bringing one of her friends to church, and tells us about the amazing natural missionary conversations that Zoe has had with her friend. So that lifts our spirits at least a little.

No investigators show up to sacrament meeting - we walk to the foyer and see Steven, a member referral from Raymond, also in our ward. That also lifts our spirits, and he stays all 3 hours and we met with him yesterday afternoon. He loves the Book of Mormon and especially when we shared 1 Nephi 13 - the prophesy of the colonization of America. 

So yes, I understand what you mean with the ups and downs :)"

Exhilarating Week

Hello Everybody!

      This week was exhilarating! Lots happened last week, but the big highlights have been from last Saturday through yesterday. Lynn G. Robbins, one of the church leaders, came here from Utah to speak here in Lake City Saturday night and Sunday Morning. He also spoke at a mission leadership conference Monday, then again on Tuesday.

Elder Jenkins and I at the conference.

Dozens of pizzas to feed everyone.

Good to see old companions there, like Elder Stuart.

Missionaries and Leader attending the Mission Leadership Conference

      Saturday night I was asked to play prelude music for the church session - so I was standing up at the front playing hymns with a pianist accompanying me. Quite a few people came that night - probably between two or three hundred. The church leadership had a meeting until five before, so most of the time I was playing, nobody was up on the stand. Then I see a few people walk in. First, the Stake Presidency, who are responsible for eight or nine congregations around Lake City. Then, our mission president and his wife walk in. Right behind them is the Temple President from Orlando and his wife, who are in charge of coordinating everything with the temple there. Right after them come Lynn G. Robbins and his wife. They make their way up to the front and sit on the chairs right behind me - you know, all of them between ten and fifteen feet away. At this point, I’m really grateful for my wonderful teachers and professors for teaching me how to play and not get nervous, because otherwise my bow would have been shaking like a deer in headlights. Anyway, it was fun to do and made me grateful for being able to play viola.

Playing prelude with Sister Cabral

      Lynn G. Robbins spoke then, and then in each consecutive meeting, about different things, but each time the Spirit was strong and his words were really touching. He spoke on the difference between “be” and “do”. It’s not enough to just do good things or have Christlike acts, we need to be good and have a Christlike nature.

Elder Robbins giving instruction.

       He taught a lot about parenting - that as soon as we try to control a child’s agency, we plant seeds of rebellion in their heart. He said that we should be parents like Heavenly Father is a parent - teaching us true doctrine, how to live, and then letting us choose to act based on our knowledge and guided by his Spirit. Fascinating - so many good things!! I love learning, that’s the big thing that I came away with from this week - power of learning, especially about the gospel and how it connects into every little part of our lives.

There is a family in our ward, the Hansens, who had us over for dinner and to share a message. Sister Hansen loves us, for some reason, and the way that we teach their kids. She said “Here, pose for a picture and I’ll post it on the church’s Facebook page so everybody can see that y’all can even teach crazy, wild kids!” I can attest that their kids are both crazy and wild, but there’s still always a Spirit of love in their home.

I had a tradeoff with Elder Kesler this week - he is from Idaho and is a 100% born and raised farm boy. He grew up on a cattle farm and he knows how to work hard. 

Elder Jenkins and I, then the sisters in our ward - Sister Prue (left) and Sister Spangler (right). Sister Prue is from Idaho and is a great artist, and loves working hard and being out all day every day. Sister Spangler is from Missouri (three cheers for the one other missionary I know who’s not from Utah, Idaho, or California!) and she loves family history. 

I love you all, and hope that you have a great week. Spring is here in Florida, but it’s actually colder than all winter has been... 60 degrees and windy. Freezing!    -Elder McMullin

Lake City, Florida

Hello everybody!

WOW I’m sorry for the radio silence over the past few weeks - I don’t have any good excuses. I’m serving in Lake City right now with Elder Jenkins and it is an amazing place to be!

Who is Elder Jenkins? Hmmn. Try to imagine brownies with vanilla ice cream, with a cup of hot chocolate to the side. With whip cream on top. And chocolate drizzled over the whip cream. That’s Elder Jenkins. He is from Utah, has 15 siblings (no, that’s not a typo), he loves reading, and is a man of few words. He serves more diligently than a server at a 5 star restaurant - he’s always doing something to serve, whether it’s washing dishes, asking me if he can help with anything, asking members if he can help, etc. 

Elder Jenkins and I! 

Right outside our house. That’s a Hispanic evangelical church, in case you’re wondering. They sing loud gospel Spanish songs every Friday night and I love it. 

Florida greenery outside our house!

Lake City is smaller than Stoughton and probably half the total population.  Lots of southern white people. Everybody has an accent. This is the real south - Gainesville was the fake south :) 

       Most of the people here are cattle farmers or work at correctional facilities of prisons outside of town. Hard workers with hands so calloused that it feels like I’m shaking hands with a rock. I love it! Having hands so calloused that they feel like rocks is now one of my life goals, but I’m not going to get there playing viola. Sudden career change coming in the near future...?  Maybe yes. 

     The members in the church ward are great. They’re all super solid, southern families who love the gospel and have pretty deep roots in it. It’s cool to hear their stories about how their families have been here since the 1800’s. 

    (The following section is an excerpt from a letter to me, Asher's mom, about a major festival the town held two weeks ago, the "Olustee Festival".  The small town is invaded by thousands of visitors for one weekend each February. They host a parade, an art and crafts fair, and open stages with live music and food booths.  The town runs shuttles out to the nearby historic civil war battlefield, where hundreds of Civil War re-enactors,including horses for cavalry, come together to relive the only major battle fought in Florida during the Civil War.  I asked him how the weekend went.)

Parade during the Festival

     "The festival was honestly really neat!  It was very very very busy!  

      Lots of booths and shops set up in the streets. Lots of good smelling and good tasting food. If it had been lunch time, we definitely would have gotten some, but it was just as good being able to smell all of it. They had a lot of really neat things that I hadn’t seen other places - super finely crafted fancy leather belts and shoes, lots of huge meat smokers out, it felt very southern. Haha! Some people were super intense and dressed up in their southern civil war garb.

         Unfortunately, not many people were super prone to talking about their family history with us. Most of them were just going from place to place and didn’t want to talk. We were able to talk with a few older folks who were sitting down and shared neat experiences of how their ancestors had fought in the war - some of them accepted family history cards with the family search website on it,  (https://www.familysearch.org/)   but nobody wanted to come to the family history center or let us come and help them with family history.   Alas.     It was a really good experience though!

         I wanted to play viola on the street and see if anybody would let us, so we went to the festival management booth and asked a lady. She looked behind her and yelled for her dad - he came up, and it turns out he’s the mayor of Lake City. I ask if I can play on the street just for fun, not for money or anything, and with his cowboy boots and hat and thick white mustache says “Well dadgum I reckon there ain’t a problem with that. Y’all go right ahead, fellas!”

So we did! I got my viola and played some hymns and “You are my Sunshine” and some folk songs I could remember. I wish that I knew more!!!    Agh!!!!    You were so right mom, I should have learned folk songs was at home. Yes, mom always knows best. Point it, when I get home, I’ll learn some old school folk music so that I can bring a smile to old people's faces."

   We were spending some of our allotted 2 hours/week to do family history, and I was trying to learn more about how our ancestors converted and such. I was looking at James H Walker, and reading about his mission stories.

Above:  My great great grandpa James Walker with a majestic middle part while he was serving as a missionary in Holland in the early 1900’s. I’ve been learning more about him the last few weeks and look up to him a lot! I’m afraid that I will never be able to look as regal as he does. 

 I’ll leave with a short, barely below average haiku and then let y’all get on with your lives :)

Lake City Haiku

Lake City my home,

Few words, many lakes, stray cats,

I love Florida.

If I could describe the hardest part of my life in one word? Trains.
 If standstill traffic is frustrating at 4:57 when you have a 5:00 appointment, what about watching a train cut through the entire town for 15 minutes? It gives us great time to read scriptures and make phone calls though, so it’s fine by me!

When a member says that they’ll bring you something for dinner. 

  I spend 7 days every month and a half with other missionaries from the other small towns in the area to learn from them and teach things that our mission president wants everybody to know.  This is Elder Jenson, from California, whom I worked with this week.  He is brilliant and knows the scriptures like the back of his hand!

    Last month, there  was a mission leadership council this last week and accountability was discussed a lot. Since, then, I’ve been really excited about the principle of accountability and the blessings that it brings.  At the end of the day, my companion and I will talk about how we did with our goals for a few minutes, then one of us will pray and tell God about the day. It really opens the windows for constant revelation and shows God that we care about the people he’s entrusted us with and that we want to improve. I have started doing it individually and I love it! I think I will continue doing it when I get home - if I have a personal goal to be kinder to others in college, or to compliment people more, or whatever, then I will pray and tell God about specific times I feel I did well and when I could improve. I love love love it - accountability is powerful, and I feel can help us be better disciples of Christ.

President Lee teaching about accountability

President Lee, Elder McMullin, and Elder Masino

Good food afterwards!

Love you all!

Elder McMullin

     

Goodbye Gainesville

Hello Everybody!

        This was a great week! We talked to a lot of great people about the Gospel, learned a lot, served God’s children, the usual. I’m coming to realize that most of our weeks as missionaries are basically the same - because everything we do is focused on serving others by strengthening their faith in Christ and inviting them to come closer to God through change. There are lots of specifics, but that really sums up our days, weeks, months, and the whole two years. So, we did that again this week! 

         But... one of the neatest experiences, inside of that, was on Tuesday. We went to visit one of the people we are teaching, Curtis. He is an older man and has come to church twice. He lives by himself in a very humble neighborhood with lots of violence. His trailer is small, very little furniture, and always smells heavily of smoke. His heater won’t turn off, and he doesn’t have money to fix it, so it’s always super hot in there. Most of the lights have broken and he doesn’t have money to change them. But his trailer is one of my favorite places, if not my favorite place, in Gainesville because of our love for him and the time we’ve spent there teaching him the gospel. It’s a special place to me. 

         He invited us inside and he offered us dinner. Elder Birch and I had chosen to skip dinner before so we would have more time to talk to people, so we hadn’t eaten. We said we would love to, if he had enough. He made us boiled neck-bones and pinto beans. It was so kind of him! And it was delicious. We ate with him and had a lesson on the Book of Mormon a spirit of peace, unity, and love was there. Love brings the Spirit! I know that it does. 

  Later this week, I’m being transferred to Price Creek, a country area by Lake City, to train a new missionary. I am excited for it! So, my address is changing and I will send it next week. 

This is one of the district in our zone. I love them! A lot of the missionaries are leaving Gainesville  on Wednesday to go to other areas, and I will miss them a lot.

This is us and Rachel, who photobombed this photo. We did service for her mom and her family - they needed help moving things from the house of her recently passed grandpa. They are from Tennessee and all have super southern accents and lingo. It was funny to hear. 

Love you all!

Elder McMullin

"Spiritual band-aids and pain medication"

   Hi all,

     This week I learned that the gospel is true again, for the millionth time. It’s incredible to see how it helps people with everything in their lives. We have a man we are teaching, Curtis, who expressed to us that he has a lot of guilt and shame for previous mistakes. He feels like he is separated from God. 

          I feel to blessed to be able to testify from my heart that because of Jesus Christ, we don’t have to be separated from God.

      I was thinking about what life would be like without a Christ. For example, we would have been talking with Curtis the other day, and how sad if would have been if he had expressed his grief, and we could only say “Well sorry, but you will have to live that for the rest of your life! We can give you some little spiritual band-aids and pain medication, but it will be temporary.” 

     No! I’m grateful for Christ as the Healer of our souls. So even people who are torn up inside by sin, and hurt with grief and pain, can be healed. 

Love you all! Stay strong with any New Years goals and I hope you have a great week! 

Elder McMullin

Here are some pics from the week:

A wonderful snapshot of how a good deal of our time is spent - while going in reverse, one of our mission rules is for the other missionary to be outside of the car. So this is a view of what that looks like, since it happens about 10 times a day. :)

Florida being beautiful. 

Dinner! We decided that it took too much time to come home for dinner, so we enjoyed hot dogs with bread instead, and baked beans. It was honestly really good, filling, and we enjoyed every second of it. 

A New Year Begins...

Hello everyone!

        I’m sorry for not having written a post in a while - repentance is real, and I will be better now! Well, for the next few weeks at least. We’ll see after that. 

       What’s exciting about this week that y’all would care about?  Curtis - you should care about Curtis, and I’m excited about him! Curtis is an older fellow who lives in a beat up trailer. He lives with a few friends who don’t have anywhere else to stay, so he’s kind enough to let them in. He’s had a hard life and has gotten a little beat up. He smokes two packs of cigarettes a day and has been feeling pretty down lately.

         We have taught him for several weeks now but he hasn’t been keeping the commitments God has given him, through us, to pray, read, and come to church. But, breakthrough, Curtis came to church on Sunday! A member offered to give him a ride, and he came to all three hours of church. He felt loved and needed, expressed how much he learned and enjoyed it, and said “Yeah, y’all already know that I’m gonna be back here next week.” I love Curtis - he has such a good heart and a desire to serve. I’m excited to watch as he keeps repenting and growing closer to Christ.

         It’s a new year! New Year's resolutions I’m sure are forthcoming with many of you and your families. I was thinking about starting a new year this morning, and how grateful I am for repentance, or the ability to get up over and over and over again in the process of progression toward perfection. How many times have you set New Years resolutions and then failed something within a few weeks, days, or even hours? I thank God for the ability we have to change because of Christ, what a joyful thing!

This weeks poem, to start off the new year, is about repentance and growth.

The ache of broken hearts,

Waiting for a new day.

That pain the dearly smarts,

Won’t seem to go away.

A hole that can’t be filled,

A gap that can’t be crossed.

Why can’t we just rebuild?

Why must we feel so lost?

Well simply we must try,

To look up up in the dark.

Something will catch our eye,

Two hands with nail-scarred marks.

It’s Jesus Christ our King,

The one who beckons us.

Now to his hands we cling,

Our lives to him we trust.

We went with the Young Single Adult Branch missionaries to IHOP for pancake breakfast this morning. It was fun to share time with them, but more fun to eat pancakes. Just kidding, I love these wonderful missionaries more than pancakes. :)

My trainer, Braden Day, visited Gainesville and we were able to talk for about 5 minutes in-between appointments. It was fun to see him - I love him and I’m grateful for everything he taught me as a young missionary, and for the example he sets for me now!

Love you all - happy new year and have a good week!

Elder McMullin