Elder Ben Mullins: Monkeys and America

Hey everyone!

Before I start, I just realized I forgot my camera... Sooooooo double pictures next week!

This week was super awesome! So many things happened! I'll start with last Monday! After emailing, we went and found a bunch of monkeys and played with them! We got a bunch of peanuts to feed them so they'd come to us. They were really excited when they saw we had peanuts. Elder Clark told me I should try to give one a Book of Mormon for a picture. I thought that was an awesome idea, so I whipped out my Book of Mormon and started trying to get them to take it! I walked under a tree and tried giving a little monkey the book, then the entire tree started shaking, and 4 monkeys were all swinging and jumping at me, then a branch dropped right in front of my face, and this HUGE (compared to the rest) monkey was hissing at me; about 3 feet in front of me. Eye level. So I learned that monkeys can be TERRIFYING. I jumped a mile and ran out from under the tree. It was hilarious. Then later, I put a peanut on the Book of Mormon, and got a picture. That's the only picture I have today. One of the members that came with us took it and emailed it to me. So at least you get that! After feeding the monkeys, we walked up to an awesome looking Hindu Temple. At the bottom of the stairs that lead up to the temple, there was a sign that said there were 513 steps. When I read it, I thought, "Oh, that's not too many. Each step takes like half a second to climb." Just so you know, 513 steps is a TON. It's killer. But it was awesome looking up there! I wish I had my camera to send pictures! I had so many awesome pictures to send this week... Oh well. After that, we just chilled at home until 6:30, then contacted and taught a lesson; then went home. Elder Clark was singing as loud as he could because he was leaving the next morning.

Tuesday! Elder Clark left, so Elder Ng and I worked really hard! And we got lots done! We called every single number in our phone, 20 former investigators, and about 20 potential investigators. I hate talking on the phone. So that was awful. But I've gotten a lot better at it. And now we have quite a few appointments set up. Tuesday was a day of finding.

Wednesday was a bunch more finding. We were having a really hard time finding people, so we said a prayer, and decided we'd walk along the ocean side sidewalk (the only sidewalk in Penang that you can actually walk/bike on) and contact everyone we passed. Normally we contact in malls, but we just felt like we should do this instead. So we did, and we met probably the most prepared person any missionary could ever meet in their life. His name is Elliot, he's 19 years old, and after looking at all the religions, decided Christianity is the best one. We talked with him and set up an appointment for Friday. So I'll talk more about him on Friday!

Thursday was rough. We taught 0 lessons, 0 people answered their phone, 2 lessons canceled, 0 potential investigators, 0 referrals, 0 EVERYTHING. And that was the hardest we have ever worked. So that was pretty discouraging. But Friday made up for all of it!Thursday night, Elder Allred and Marsh walked in and said "GUESS WHAT WE JUST BOUGHT" super excitedly. So Elder Ng and I walk to the front door to see what they got. It was an American Flag toilet seat cover. So we slapped it right on our toilet! It's AWESOME. Elder Clark gave me his American flag tie, so we each put it on and took a picture with the toilet and hose! So it's the American bathroom. I'll send a picture next week! Elder Ng doesn't like that bathroom much. Some reason everyone else in the world thinks Americans are really cocky and stuff, and it's totally true. All the Asians still wanna go to America! I swear everyone in our branch is planning on moving to the US someday--To Utah--Provo. It’s really funny to hear them all talk about Provo. It's the only place in the US they know of besides California.

FRIDAY! It was AWESOME. We taught Elliot at 10:30. We had to cut our study time and do half before and half after. So we met him at the end of the ocean sidewalk, on a little dock just over the ocean. It was a nice, quiet place. As we sat there we got to know Elliot. We asked him why he wanted to meet with us. What did he want to get out of meeting with us? He said before we even taught him anything, "I know your church is the only true church, and I want to join it." I was on an exchange with Elder Marsh, and both of our jaws just dropped. So just a little background on Asia in general. NOBODY knows anything about Mormons or what we believe, and very few people here are even Christian. Elder Marsh and I are super pumped, thinking this is going to be the fastest baptism ever. 3 weeks and he'll be baptized. Elliot has some pretty unique circumstances. His parents are Buddhist. Elliot is going to college, and his parents are paying for it. He's going to study in the states in August of 2018. His parents told him that if he goes to a church other than a Buddhist worship service (do those even exist? I dunno.) they'll stop funding his education, then he won't be able to go to the states. So if he gets baptized, he can't go to college. And he's SO READY. He has an LDS penpal that goes to BYU-I, and she just told him that he should meet with the missionaries sometime. On Wednesday, he had prayed to find the correct church, and we found him! It was awesome! And he had kind of studied up on Mormonism and what we believe. He's super knowledgeable about the bible, and really enjoys the deep doctrine. When we told him about the Book of Mormon, he asked about our other books of scripture. We told him about the Pearl of Great Price and the Doctrine and Covenants and where they came from. He was super interested in the Pearl of Great Price. He's reading that AND the Book of Mormon. He's going have a million questions for us. The PoGP has a lot of deep doctrine in it... Haha! That'll be interesting to talk about. He's seriously so prepared. He'll go to the states right when I get back from my mission! Maybe I'll be able to baptize him! Or maybe his parents will be ok with it! I'm praying that his parents will be ok with it. He's such an awesome guy. I'm excited to teach him more! After teaching him Friday, Elder Marsh and I just finished study and went contacting at the mall all day. We didn't have much success, but I got lots better at contacting. So that was nice.

Saturday was good! We had a lesson or two, found a lot of people really fast, and that night, the Lims, a less active family, took us out to dinner. The only reason they're less active is because they work on Sundays. They're awesome people though, and live the gospel! They just can't make it to church. ANYWAY. Brother Po drove the elders, and the Lims drove the sisters. We had sweet and sour chicken, and it was actually really good. I loved it. And then there was a bunch of side stuff. That was all kinda gross. I ate so many weird things, I decided to just put all the weird stuff at the end of my letter. So that's in the last paragraph. Oh! And in the afternoon, we had a branch bowling party! Elder Allred and Ng were talking a lot of trash about how they were gonna destroy everyone, and I just did my usual, "Yeah, you'll probably kill me. I'm terrible at bowling." So they were expecting me to be terrible. First game, guess what I scored? ONE HUNDRED SEVENTY ONE POINTS. The highest in the entire branch for the day! I took a picture of the score. Too bad I forgot the camera. I completely blew everyone out of the water. The next closest was 143 by Brother Jonathan. Then the third place was my second game at 142. Haha!

Sunday was great! Second best day of the week, right next to Monday! The branch here is awesome. So many great people! Brother Diong came to church! He doesn't have any teeth, and I can't understand a word he says because it's all so slurred. He's awesome! He's always laughing and smiling. It's so much fun to see him smiling without his teeth! He’s such a great guy. All the primary kids talk to me now! It was really fun to go to primary while Elder Ng played piano for them! After church, we went contacting, and got 3 people in about 15 minutes. So that was insane, but then we didn't find anyone else in the next two or three hours. It was late, so we went home and planned. Oh! On Monday, we bought these peppers that Elder Ng said were REALLY hot. We ate them Sunday! They were pretty hot, but not even close to the habanero I had before I left home. It was called a chilli padi or something. It was half as hot as a habanero! It was awesome. It tasted way better than a habanero. Oh, and cooking dinner yesterday was really funny. Elder Ng is District Leader, so Elder Allred and Marsh were reporting, and Elder Ng told me to go "put the noodles in the boiling water" (direct quote) so we could eat after they reported. I walked into the kitchen, and the burner for the meat was off, so I just figure Elder Ng turned it off. I open the bag of noodles, and poured them all in. Ten minutes, later Elder Ng comes out and checks everything to make sure it's cooking, and yells "ELDER MULLINS!". I ran in to see why he's yelling. He got mad at me for turning the stove off all the way, and even though I turned it off, gas was still coming out because I didn't turn it all the way off. He wouldn't believe me that I didn't turn it off. Haha! So he still thinks it was me, but I think it was him. Five minutes later, he yells my name again. I ran in again, and he says to me, "Did you put in ALL the noodles?!??!!?" So I said something like "Yeah, didn't you tell me to put in the noodles?" Apparently I was supposed to know I should only put half of them in. Hahaha! So it was a night of disappointment for Elder Ng. And lots of noodles. But we ate about 3/4 of them! So it was ok.

Elder Ng and I are getting along really well! He's so much fun, and really nice. He thinks I'm kinda dumb when it comes to cultural differences here and in the US. Since he's never lived outside of Singapore, he doesn't really understand why I think the way I do. It's really funny when I have to explain how we do it in the USA, and then he always asks Elder Allred or Marsh to make sure I'm not making stuff up. That's super funny. Elder Allred and I are bros. I hope I'm companions with him sometime--maybe next transfer. Elder Marsh is super funny. He's really sarcastic, but always has a straight face. It's awesome.

Foods I ate this week! The most exciting paragraph! Guava. Guava is amazing. It's like an apple-banana taste. I think it's super good; like top 3 favorite fruit ever. We had a less active take us to a place to get us oyster noodles. That was DISGUSTING. Oysters taste disgusting. The noodles were bad too. In that same meal, they put pig bones that they cooked until they were crumbly, so I had to eat that--bone, marrow, and all. I bit it, and it crumbled everywhere in my mouth, and it tasted GROOOOSSSSS. I had to spit it out. And then there were tons of bone pieces everywhere in my mouth. I tried getting all of those out too, but they stayed. So. Bone and marrow aren't good. When the Lim's took all the missionaries out, they got us "carrot cake." Elder Ng told me it was more like yam cake. ANYWAY. Carrot cake in Asia is NOT normal carrot cake. It's this gray paste they put onions and stuff on. So I had one little piece, and it was disgusting, but I choked it down. Brother Po had to finish the cake since nobody else liked it. Then after that, they gave us a 100 year old egg. That's what it's called at least. I don't know if it really is a century old. It's this black egg. It kind of looks like a slug; a really big, jiggly, slimy, black slug, and it's an egg. I took a picture of it. I ate it. Guess what. It tasted better than the bone AND the "carrot cake". But I would not eat it again. So try to avoid it if you ever come here. Oh, and I had pork wrapped in pigskin last week. I forgot about that. That was kinda gross.

That was my week! I found out that McDonaldss has good ketchup, so I don't need anyone to send me ketchup anymore! Being a missionary is a lot of work, but it's as fun as you make it! If you go on a mission, make sure you follow the rules and enjoy it! If you need to call potential investigators, there's no rule that says you can't call them in massage chairs. If you want to eat food, you can find the most interesting food you can think of, and then order a bit of it. If you're having a hard time focusing while studying, you can draw pictures of the part of the scriptures you're reading, or draw a picture of whatever lesson you're going teach to your investigator. There are so many things that can help you enjoy your mission while still learning and growing! So you can be obedient while still having lots of fun! If being obedient is a chore, you're not doing it right! I can't believe it's already Monday again. All the missionaries are going on a visa run to Singapore tomorrow and staying overnight, so we only have a few days this week instead of a full week! We're going to eat some good chicken rice (maybe) and go to an awesome tie shop right next to where Elder Ng's mom works (hopefully we don't see her) if we have time! I'm super excited to go! I'm going so that my visa days are synced up with all the other missionaries, so that's why if anyone was wondering! Have an awesome week! Make sure you always pray for missionaries and their safety! Every missionary on a bike needs the prayers! They really do help! I'll talk more about our investigators in my next letter!

Love you all!

Elder Ben Mullins