WEEK 19- New Companion, same area

Well i guess ill get the transfer stuff out of the way first because i figure thats what most of you are interested in first. I am staying in santa maria and elder zuniga is leaving. My new comp will be elder crooks. and elder chevy is staying and elder sampson is leaving. chevys new comp will be elder elsmore. So the thing about this is chevy elsmore and crooks are all really good friends and have been together in the mission before. So it sounds like its going to be a blast. The down side is all of them are in their 15 or 16th transfers.... which means they are all about to go home in a few months. And im not quite to my 6 month mark yet... haha. But i think it will be a super fun transfer. I havent met them yet but we have to take like 4 different taxis to the airport because all the planes leave at different times and also the other two get in at different times. a lot of our day will be there. Ill tell you more about all that next week after i actually meet the people.

As for this week it was a super good one. We made a ton of orchata and i now have a recipe and the experience to make it when i get home. That is a priceless skill. Ill probably just sell orchata when i get back. or better yet. I need dalton. That chimi churro idea? imagine it with orchata too? we will be rich. make dalton see that. anyways we also made the brownies but we kinda burned them... haha that was pretty sad.

As for the work here its still going along similiar to the last few weeks. We have been talking with the big family and they are super awesome. They are all going to like every single activity and having a blast and want to talk with us like every single day. they have a date set for the 16th of may and they are excited. Zuniga actually went and said goodbye to them yesterday so we have a picture with all of them that he will probably put up this week. I havent found batteries yet but i will today.

Ill try to get more next week but internet today was super wierd because of transfers and everything. love you all!~

love~

elder McMullin

WEEK 18

This week was a fun one. It was week 11 of the training program which means i pretty much took the lead in everything. It was tough but it was also really fun. it gave me an opportunity and made me speak more than i usually do. And that means this week is week 12 the last week of training. and possibly the last week with elder zuniga we will find out on sunday. but Just in case today we are celebrating with those brownies i got in the package awhile ago and also elder zuniga got the recipe for orchata. Sooooooooooooooooo im super excited. we started it this morning and it should be ready close to when we get home tonight. i need to get batteries for my camera so i can get some pictures of that. that's one of the reasons why i am not sending pictures. i need to find the right size of batteries. im sure i can but i might have to search a little. But it will be a fitting last p day if it is our last one together. 

This we got to talk a lot with a big family. there is the mom and she has 7 children with lots of different ages. but they are a super awesome family. they even like do family time at night and family prayer and scripture study and we have only been teaching them for a week. That is like ridiculously big. i don't know if anyone else here even the strong members do it for sure. So we are super excited for them. they have already been to church twice so there is a really good chance they might be baptized in the next month. they also have really good integration already. The family they hang out most with is part lds and the other part is investigators that are really strong just need to get married first. So that's the first really awesome family we have taught a bit this week.

The other one is a couple that have been together for like 9 years and have a daugher together but they need to get married first. but the woman is a sister of a member so they are also looking super aweosme.

Well i think thats about it for this week. thanks for all the updates on whats going on. Best of luck to gunner and bri. Love you all!

Love

Elder McMullin

From Elder Zuniga's post: Also, we visited a zone a 20 minute car ride away called "Palha Verde" and we took some members with us. We have an inactive family there that nobody visited for a while, they were happy to talk to us. 

 Their April Fool's Day prank of Saran wrapping the toilet seat!

And I'm not sure if I ever told you, but our Branch President is in a wheelchair. He had an accident a few years ago and can't walk, but he always stands up for a couple of hours a day because he's been able to take a few steps and believes he can walk again someday. 

Week 17

I am on week 11 of training now! just one more week after this one! but that also means i have a ton of stuff to do. its gonna be an interesting one. anyways last week!

the good news. well in church on sunday we had 61 which is a new all time high for the branch! woo! and we had like 5 new investigators show up that we will be able to work with this week. That was super exciting especially because the last few weeks church attendance has been very low. It was also pretty nice because the mission president was in our branch this week and he was able to talk to a ton of people. It was a good sunday church block.

Another awesome thing was that we had an investigator that needed to get married before he can be baptized and him and his wife started to be really opening up and even talking about marriage. but yesterday he didnt come to church and seemed super upset at us but we dont know for sure. we have a meeting with them tonight and we hope to clear everything up because for the past few weeks they have been our most progressing and interested investigators.

Another thing that happened this week was super sad. One of our recent converts mom died. and hes only 14. their funerals last for days with people grieving and doing things like that and we have gone over a couple of times. but its so depressing. we tried to teach them a lesson but there were far to many poeple and they all were yelling and doing things like that. one lady literally opened the bible while we were sharing a verse , handed it to us and just said start reading. So we thanked them for their time and siad we would come by another time. but the recent convert is a super strong kid. he was like the only one in the house i saw smile at all.

We also found a lady that works at one of the burger places that we have been trying to talk with since like my second week here and we were finally able to sit down and talk with her and her husband but its difficult because she works night shifts at that place. 

We have had a couple lessons with super old people that just speak straight creole and i cant understand 9 out of 10 words so those lessons are super interesting haha. then they usually don't understand me either but sometimes we have members that make it a lot easier. Well i think that's about it for this week. Thanks for everything. I love all of you.

Love Elder McMullin

Week 16

First conference on the mission! It was super awesome but due to a lot of things we didnt get to see every single talk and seeing as it was in portuguese i didnt understand a ton of it. But it was aweomse seeing all the leaders of the church again. Its wierd seeing the church here and there. its easy to forget that the church is a world wide thing if we didnt have general conferences every 6 months. One thing i did understand though is that they talked a ton about marriage. Looking at you brothers! You guys all need a date set by the time i get back! We wont be able to bachelor it up as much anymore but thats okay. i believe in you guys!

Another thing that happened is that a few times in our apartment i have been woken up by people yelling at like 3 in the morning. and some problems with water and some other things too. Anyways because we dont socialize much with the people in our building and we havent found the landlord the complain it turns out the whole complex has blamed the misisonaries for everything. We are quite awestruck because we are always asleep around 10 30 and dont wake up til 6 30. but the people arent believing us so they complained to the mission presidnet. not sure how that is going to go but we didnt do it so i guess there isnt much to be angry or worried about.

The work this week was quite well. We got a good amount of lessons in especially with members. We are teaching a couple that i think might get married soonish so they can join the church and that is super exciting. They are looking to be the most promising at the moment. There is another man that we are teaching that is my first person that seems to like to bible bash. well he is willing to talk to us but it seems like he is reaching for reasons to prove it wrong even after we support it with both the bible and the book of mormon. and the worst part of it is that he is not willing to pray for an answer or do much of the invites. And if you dont do those things then you will never really know for yourself that the church is true. its a church of action. But we have only met with him a few times and i hope his heart will be softened. If he does decide to pray and when he gets his answer i bet he will be a super strong member and a really good help to any ward. This ward right now could really use two things in my opinion. A good whole family that can help all ages of people. and also more worthy priesthood holders. When the ward gets those things it will start making some really big steps. And that is what we are trying to help happen.

We have another investigator that is the younger brother of one of the members of the ward and we had a couple of really good lessons with him but during one of them his mom walked in and said dont tell them you are getting baptized because you do not have my permission. And we need it because he is only 16. We have tried to sit down with the mom a few times but so far she has not agreed but we will keep trying.

Well those are a few of the interesting things going on in my life right now. I love you guys and thanks for all the support you give me.

Love 

Elder McMullin

What Elder Zuniga said about April Fools: April Fools was fun! McMullin and I seran-wrapped the toilet for the other Elders lol. Like 95% of all pranks happened in the bathroom or while someone was showering