Week 15

This week was kinda slow but some really cool things happened too.

I guess to follow up on how i left we went and talked to the guy. We found out he has a drinking problem and he is 37 with a 19 year old special needs girlfriend.... so that makes things very confusing. One day we started wakling to his house and we saw him walk out and go hide behind a building. we asked his gf and she said that he was in espargus. so we called him and he is a rather loud man. whenever elder zuniga asked a question on the phone i heard the response over a wall. the guy even asked if his door was open. it wasnt a very sneaky way to say he wasnt interested to say the least. Not sure where things are headed for him.

I dont remember if i already told you about another guy that we are teaching but he lives with a ton of his family members. We have been teaching him the commandments and we finally were able to sit down with him and his gf and teach them about the law of chastity. It was actually a super awesome lesson that we really needed to teach especially because last time we tried to teach the gf she pretty much left half way through. Now she seems a lot more interested. 

We also talked to a 16 year old that is the little brother of someone already in the church and he also is already looking super promising especially because he has already been to church 2 times and the first time was mostly of his own free will and i think some encouragment from his brother. We have actually only taught him one lesson so far.

So yesterday was the dia das mulher here. whcih is day of the woman. Because of it there was quite a large amount of partying that was very annoying to work during. we actually couldnt find a single lesson to teach. Probably the slowest day on the mission so far. We are going to try to make up for last week this week because slow weeks are not fun for anyone. 

~Well thats about it for today due to the fact that i couldnt get into my lds mail forever so thats all the time i have to write. Love you all. Keep up the good work erryone.

Love

Elder McMullin

Their waterheater flooded while they were out. They came back to an inch of water throughout their apartment. They are cleaning it up here.

Week 14

So my birthday was this week and we went to a nice little restaurant for lunch on the beach. I was excited to get some octopus because its pretty expensive so i haven't had any yet. So i ordered it and elder zuniga and chevalier ordered some steak. then they came back and said they were out of octopus. So i was visibly sad in fact zuniga got a picture of it. I was feeling all sorts of down. then the guy came out again and said they actually had it. they didnt have steak though. Man. best present ever. The picture is the part where i was down. Another awesome present was that that day a sister came from america so i am not the youngest in the mission! also since she came from priaia they were able to get my package over. Then the elders that live with me so kindly said she will still get home before me. They are super kind like that. Oh yeah that same night we were going to get shwarma but it was closed. that was a crappy bday present! but we went back the next night and they didn't have scwharma but they had burgers. and most burgers here are pretty much sausage patties. this place had beef. It was one of the best food finds here so far. 

Speaking of the package thanks for the package. I got it today from them. It came at the perfect time because i was feeling super down today because we got a new rule this week. No more zone activities and only 1 district activity a month. that means no more soccer on p days. Thats got me all sorts of down. And i don't know how long the rule will last. But until its gone i have no idea what we will end up doing on p day. i guess ill keep you updated on that situation. I am going to eat away my pain with a burger and a scwharma tonight. Thank goodness for food!

So on my birthday i wanted a miracle with the work. I thought that would be an awesome birthday present. And i pretty much got it. Ill explain it. So we met this guy a week or two back who said he was a member and he usually went to church in espargos so we wanted t otalk to him but he was gone when we went over. so we just kind of forgot and didnt see him for awhile well we found him on my birthday. and we asked if he was baptized because he smelled faintly of grogue. He says hes a member but it turns out he has not been baptized. so we taught him and set a baptism date. So i was thinking man that's awesome. Well Sunday he wasn't at church but he said he went in Espargos again so we went to talk to him that night. He was quite smashed this time and smelled very much so like grogue. and there was a young girl there with him that we knew and i think has some sort of mental handicap. He informed us she was his namarada or girlfriend in English. we said isn't she too young? he said no! shes 19. and we asked his age. well hes 37. so we kindly asked him to not drink for Monday (today) and we will teach him today because the spirit cant be there when you are smashed. so that's where we are headed right after this. I'm quite excited. lets pray all goes well! he needs a bit of help!

Another downer happened this week. There is a couple here that we have been helping to prepare for marriage. i mentioned them awhile ago. anyways it was suppose to be this week but the mom didn't approve. so we asked if we could talk to them all together. well we get in there and start teaching and its obvious something is not right with the couple. so we ask if they still want to get married. and they say no. so we pretty much prayed and left after that. It was not a good feeling. We even felt a little betrayed because this is something we have been working at even before i arrived here. I hope that everything will get better with them. their goal just last week was temple sealing. 

I would say those are probably some the most interesting things from this week. thanks for that emails and other things. I hope all is going well at home! Love you all!

Love Elder McMullin

Have good birthdays mom and Bridger!

From Elder Zuniga, Elder McMullin's companion:

We had a ton of success this week, we have been struggling to get investigators to church for the past month, but we had 5 yesterday, which was a huge improvement from the 1 we had last week. I also gave a talk on missionary work along with Chevy and Sampson. All 4 of us also put together a fireside about temples and missionary work, it went pretty good.
It was also my son's birthday! We didn't celebrate it with anything big though, just shawarma! Sorry it was a really bad pic of it but it was darn good. Chevy and I wrestled him down and gave him his birthday spankings though, haha it was fun. I also somehow talked him into buying this shirt that says "we own the night" lol it fits him extremely small.

So here is the picture I tired to send last week of McMullin's broken bed. It happened in the middle of the night too, I heard a loud sound at like 4 in the morning, so I turned my head and saw his legs up int he air and he was all like "shut up" half asleep and it was HILAROUS. I lost 30 minutes of sleep due to nonstop laughing. So he basically just balanced it until 6:30 when it was time to wake up and rolled out of bed and the bed just fell apart again. 

Also, the senior missionaries went home!! The Demkes are awesome, I'm gonna miss them a lot. They took us out to eat one last time before they left, they were super nice. 

Oh and before I forget, McMullin's mom is super nice and she sent him a care package with a tie for me. It's like a pastel purple for Easter. Tell her I said thank you on my blog!

Week 13

So this week was transfers and everything in my district stayed the same! So me and elder zuniga will remain together for another transfer. Also that means i finished my first transfer! Wooo yay! Well this week had quite a few cool things happen.

For one our district finally beat the other district at soccer! we stomped them like 5 to 0. hahah one of the native missionaries wasnt happy to lose to americans. We also play a game called 3 hat whack. you juggle the ball three times with at least two people then you throw it at someone. If you get hit 3 times you are out. Our district wins that one. but we didnt have time to play that this week and we only got to play a little soccer because the old missionary couple for this island is headed home this week. So they had a party thing with them. We have one here in a little while with them. they are a really nice couple it will be sad when they are gone.

So i finally received something here. but it wasnt a package. it was a dear elder in fact one that was sent in the mtc so its about 6 weeks old.... oh well. i might see some more things next week because the president mathews should be here at some point and might bring something with him. Otherwise it wont be until the start of april that  i will receive anything. getting things is pretty exciting here due to all the waiting and what not.

Another really cool thing is the frequency at our sacrament meeting yesterday was 60. Thats the highest its ever been in this branch. The other dupla of missionaries here had a ton of investigators there and we had 2. but the two that made it there are getting along really well with the branch president and some of the members so there is a really good chance she will be a strong member in the future. The only problem as of right now is that her boyfriend is muslim. We have to be careful when people are muslim here because if they convert to lds it can potentially be dangerous for them. But also we cant baptize people that are living together and are not married. So that will be a tough situation. But it will all work out eventually.

Unfortunately some of our recent converts arent wanting to go to church. and its mostly because they feel like they dont know anyone there. and its difficult because they are teenagers and there arent that many teenagers in the branch. most everyone is about 20 or 30 or under like 12. but they could be the start of getting even more teenagers there. so we are trying really hard to get them to see the importance of going. we are also going to try to do some sort of activity some time in the future for teenager age group to get them to be closer. one issue though is two of our recent converts we found out used to date. so thats a tricky situation.

So just about every day here im insulted but insults here are less bullying and more of for fun ive realized. luckily ive never taken most insults seriously but the main things they like to do is to make fun of my belly or my language. its actually really funny. but this week i had my portuguese insulted like 4 times and complimented like 4 times. so it evened it self out! haha the language is coming along pretty well. The creole not so much. haha the worst part is there is multiple dialects of creole and the dialects are super different.

Oh yeah and guess what? we found a shwarma place! and i had my first shwarma! needless to say i will be returning on my birthday.I just wish i could get some sushi! i miss it a ton! We are still deciding exactly what we are doing for my birthday in the free time that we have because of course we will still be working because its a friday. also one of the members here that is a lot of fun has the same birthday as me. he will be turning 22 i believe. he just got back from his mission in mozambique. and he is the branch's 1st counselor. The branch is all around super awesome and friendly. I really want to know portuguese so i can not only teach people but also talk to the members. im super excited for that. Well thats it for the week. Thanks for all the emials. And yes i did get yours john. Thanks for the update its super cool hearing what people are up to. i love you all!

Love 

Elder McMullin

P.S. Happy late birthday jordyn! and early birthday mom and bridger! 

A little note copied from Elder Zuniga's blog. 

 1 funny picture of Elder McMullin praying early in the morning with his broken bed, like it was all tilted. He basically fell out of bed, it was hilarious at 6:30 in the morning. It fell apart again, but we fixed it again so now it's good.

(The picture wouldn't download from the computer there. Maybe next week we will be able to see it. His bed frame broke last week when the elders were all wrestling. So they always try to put it back together.)

Week 12- Fruit Lady duped Elder McMullin

So i have now been on my mission for 3 months!. That's 1/8 done. That's pretty dang crazy. Elder chevalier only has 3 months left. So he enjoys to give me tude about that but luckily i love him so his tude isnt too bad. So this week there weren't any baptisms but things are still going great here. we had a lot of great lessons and something that is super cool is we have an investigator that is working on getting married so she can be baptized! it should happen here in a few couple of weeks. And what makes it even cooler is they have a picture of a temple so we asked them about that and they have a goal to make it to the temple and to be sealed together! So awesome. She is 16 and her soon to be husband is 22. Relationships here are super different. Dad asked about fathers here and that is a super confusing concept that i will have to explain when i get the chance to call you here in a few months. Short version is most households that i have been in here have only 1 parent. Not all but quite a lot. Its sad but i have still seen some really good parents here. 

I did have an oppurtinity to give a talk this last sunday. it was on family home evening. Talks don't really stress me out here. Especially because the ward is only like 50 people (which is a pretty good number) and i know almost all of them at least by name. And they all know i dont speak the language very well so they were very nice and said i did a good job after wards. I remembered how much i hate giving talks off of pieces of papers... I much prefer just talking. but i cant really do that yet with portuguese but i will work on it.

So funny story for the week. I figure if i dont tell you you will just see it on elder zunigas blog. but elder zuniga uses the public restroom sometimes. and the only one we know of is in this market building. and everytime he does he tells me to get a contact. so this last time i was like im gonna do well this time. so i go looking and try to start a conversation with the fruit the lady was selling. i asked how much for a papiya and then said i wanted one pear. so she put a papiya and like 6 pears in the bag. i was like i only want one pear thats it. and she was like pay for one pear today and pay for the rest tomorrow. since it was portuguese i was trying to say no but it didnt really work.... anyways i thought it was 500 escudos all together and i only had 400 so i was slike okay fine she wins. so i paid it and took it all. we go back the next day and turns out it was 500 more. it was 900 all together. the old lady duped me. the worst part was she was already a member.... soooooooooooooooooooooooo all that happened was i was humilated. The other elders enjoyed it quite thoroughly. All i wanted was one dang pear!

Elder Zuniga's post on his blog of the event:

So nothing really interesting happened this week, just same old work. But hey! funny story about my son. So I was having stomach problems one day and I needed to make a mad dash for the bathroom. Luckily, there is ONE public bathroom in this city (and the only one I have seen in this country) and it was closer than our house, so I went there. It's also a fish, fruit, and vegetable market so that's where everyone buys those things. Before going into the restroom, I gave McMullin a pass along card and told him "Here, contact someone by yourself. Get the name and number and where they live, good luck!" and I went into the restroom. I swear I only took like 5 minutes and when I came out, I saw McMullin with a huge bag of fruit and he's like "Don't even ask about it!". It turns out he tried contacting a fruit lady and told her he wanted one pear. He ended up getting haggled by the lady and she sold him like 7 pears and a huge papaya haha. He spent almost 10 bucks on it, that's enough for like 4 lunches for us. Yeah... we need to work on his Portuguese ;p

So this week is the end of the transfer. unless someone gets transfered here from praia and the package is already in praia i probably wont see it until april. but thats okay. it just makes them that much cooler. i just need to remember to make requests months in advance. Or of course i get transferred. That could happen too. i guess we will know in a week.

P is getting so big! everytime i see a tiny girl aging from 0-2 i think of p and how i wont see her until she is 2. but thats okay. she will still love me the most!

Well i think that is most of the things that i had to tell you. I love you all. Thanks for the letters and i hope everything is going well for everyone out there. I love hearing about the things you are all doing even if you think its boring or nothing unusual.

Love Elder McMullin

Week 11- Week of Firsts

As you read, for those of you who don't know who Dalton and Savannah are- Dalton (he is Chandler's age) is our neighbor across the street and Savannah is a friend of Hayden's he went to school with. They were already dating before he left, but he told them they couldn't get married without him. hahaha!  And sorry about Elder McMullin's writing... he likes to mainly use lowercase letters for everything... except when he wanted to express his surprise to Dalton and Savannah... haha!

~Jolene

---

Well to start things off... WHAT THE HECK DALTON AND YOU TOO SAVANNAH! I know i said specifically to both of you that you had to wait til i get home. And i'm not gonna be home then! I expect a heartfelt letter from both of you expressing the sincerest of apologies. Its like you have forgotten all the wonderful nights at betos over the years....

Also i totally spaced that i wont be back in time for cyrus's baptism either. dang. you guys need to all find proxy haydens to take my place while i'm out here serving the lord. Make sure he is as fun as me.

Another good week of work here. We had the opportunity to do our first divisions or splits or whatever you want to call it. I went out with elder chevalier. He is from pocatello and he reminds me a lot of alex. So i had a real good time with that and it was interesting teaching with someone else but we had quite a few good lessons that day and so did elder sampson and elder zuniga. i think it was all of our busiest day this week but like i said it was a lot of fun. Going along with it this week was a week of a lot of firsts.

I actually gave the first blessing i have ever given and it was to elder chevalier a few days later because he got pretty sick. That was a really cool opportunity especially because i got to do it in english. He is doing mostly better now so that is another plus side.

Also we had a baptism planned but then it was canceled due to some things not falling through but then it got re scheduled the night before at like 9. so the next morning we had a lot of things to do. so we found him and took care of that and then we asked who he wanted to baptize him and he picked me. so that was the first time i have ever baptized someone. we did it in the ocean like usual and it was a really good time. His name is alecio

 and he is actually the little brother of keven who is the guy that we baptized the first week i was here. We are also working with their older brother who shows a lot of interest if everything can work out and then we have talked to their mom who is one of the coolest ladies i have met here yet but unfortunately due to her schedule she never makes it to church which makes it pretty much impossible for her to progress but we will keep working at it. I know their family would be a huge help with the ward as well as with each other. Going along with dads question i think there is two branches on sal but im not totally positive but i think there is one in espargus only. and i know there is one here. so i think there is 2. its too hard to explain where its located but when i get home i could probably find it. 

Its good to hear the boys are all doing good. And tell them i say to go to all of your church meetings not just the sunday ones. being out here its soooo much easier to see the difference that those can make in peoples lives. So keep up the work in scouts and young women (for jordyn) because they help a lot with church even if you dont see it now.

Also last week was my first fast sunday being in cabo verde. and good thing too because otherwise my first talk in sacrament meeting would have been yesterday. instead that is this coming sunday. so that's something to look forward to.

Dad also asked about food. Well the only thing that i eat or drink that is the same from something i've had in america is guarana which is a drink from brazil but they have it imported here and it is delicious. And that is like the only thing that is exactly the same as i had in america. You eat a lot of bread from bakerys here. especially for breakfast.

Its hard to believe i have already been here for a month. but at the same time sometimes i feel like i cant believe i have only been here for a  month. haha. but that's how it goes. I'm almost done with my first transfer in cabo verde and then i will only have 15 so my time is quite limited. i'm sure ill feel even more like that later on. But i'm trying to enjoy all of my time here. I've been told that each transfer goes by quicker than the last. so pretty much before i know it i will be back in america. 

Oh yeah the other elders had a baptism that the lady couldn't make it due to health problems but they were able to schedule for sunday morning and because elder chevalier was sick i got to be a witness so i got to get in the freezing cold water along with them. But she is a super awesome lady that we actually taught the day i was on divisions with him so it was cool seeing her be baptized and she is already getting in with the members very well so she seems like she will be a super strong member.

Well i think that's it for this week. if i can remember anything else ill try to include it in next weeks letter. Oh yeah i had physical letters with me in the mtc for everyone but i forgot they were in my pocket when i boarded the bus super early in the morning. so i still have them. so you all probably wont see them for a very long time..... but its the thought that counts right? sorry.... Well i love you all. have a great week!

Love Elder McMullin

His companion, Elder Zuniga, is great at taking pictures. Most of the pictures posted on this blog come from him. Here are two that he took this last week. And this is what he said about them.

I do make sure something happens every day to Elder McMullin, just to keep him happy and his mission interesting. I don't pick on him, I just make his life interesting. He seems like he's a lot more at home now, and the more stuff that happens, the less he things of home. That's something I SUCKED at when I was a greenie. I would think of home ever spare second I had. 

Two days ago we were wrestling in the house with Chevy (Elder Chevalier) and we broke his bed haha. The frame fell apart but we put it back together, we didn't take a picture of it but it looked hilarious. I also volunteered him to give a talk next Sunday, he's excited (not really) but it'll be good practice for him. 

And we bought a huge tub of ice cream! It's totally worth eating just beans and rice at the end of the month for this, haha. It's "Ceu" flavored, which means heaven. The name fits cuz it really tastes heavenly. The white stuff are bits of white chocolate

Also, have I mentioned that people here just pee and poop everywhere in the middle of the day, especially kids. McMullin isn't a fan of that, so he made a goal to not see any naked people during the day. Naturally, I now always point out when a kid is peeing or something. So far, he hasn't made it past lunchtime without  breaking his goal, haha it's hilarious.