Penang Malaysia!!

Dearest everyone,

Hopefully this letter gets to my mom and dad this week... I guess I didn't send the last one to them. ANYWAY. Friday, Saturday, and Sunday were kind of a drag in the MTC just because I was so excited to come to Singapore. So they weren't super eventful. We set up our scavenger hunt, so we'll see if we get an email. Monday, we left to Singapore at 1:50 PM (I think). We went to LAX super fast, and I got to call home from Utah and LA, so that was fun. I traveled with a group of Chinese missionaries, so I learned a bit of Chinese on the flight over. From LA we went to Hong Kong, and that took FOREVER, and I only slept like an hour of it. From Hong Kong, we went to Singapore. Everywhere had 4 hour layovers, so at least we got to relax and stretch before we got on the next plane. There were some interesting people in the Hong Kong airport... and chocolate was 180 dollars for 2 boxes. Even in Hong Kong dollars, that's insanely expensive. They must really like it there. I have a picture, but it's on Elder Child's camera, so I might have to send it next week.

We got to Singapore and met President Simmons. That was cool. He's so young, it's insane. I was thinking he'd look older than he did in his picture, but he didn't.  Oh, and I met Elder Avery. and he's related to a lot of Mullins's in Virginia, so if someone could maybe stalk his family and figure out how we're related, that'd be awesome. He's an AP if that helps you find him. We went to the church in Singapore (There are two chapels in one building, and there are like 4 floors, two of them have chapels and classrooms, one has a gym and classrooms, and one is classrooms and a lobby). On the way, we were given a Book of Mormon and some pass along cards to hand out.  I gave out 5 cards and my Book of Mormon pretty quick, so I just had to stand on the train and talk with other missionaries for half the ride. The train is called the MRT. No idea what that stands for, but it transports all across the country of Singapore. Which is super small. When we got there, we just had interviews with President Simmons and his wife.  They did a really quick welcome to Singapore meeting, and I got to email my mom and say I made it (I hope they got that email. If you didn't let me know.). ((*FROM MOM—We didn’t get it.  He put the wrong email address in for me since he sent it on his mission president’s iPad! It’s a good thing we have Alexis.  She was at girls camp and didn’t get hers until 3 days later.  She said she got that email and she forwarded it to us.  I forgive him.  He didn’t memorize my email address, because it was in his cache. ))*  Then we went to our apartment at 8ish and we were all in bed by 9.  I tried figuring out the showers, but I didn't have it quite figured out yet. Everything is so different. You have to turn on the lights and water heater outside of the bathroom, then to get hot water you twist the handle the other way. Anyway, I took a cold shower. Then slept.  We woke up to go to a training meeting back at the church, but it turned out that I had an early flight, so President Simmons pulled me to the side right before I walked in and told me who my new companion was and where I was going, and told me I'd get the training everyone else was getting later.

My new companion is Elder Ng! Literally no vowels in his name. It's insane. Some might wonder how that's even a word. I asked how I say it, and it literally is just Ng. But with a little uh before. So uhng. He's Chinese, lived in Singapore all his life, he speaks English, Chinese, and a little bit of Malay (if you ask him if he speaks Malay he just says "sikit sikit" which is a little bit in Malay. So now I say that a bit. Oh, the T is silent). Elder Ng is awesome! He's such a great guy. And he's hilarous. Sooo nerdy. It's awesome. He's the best. So he's my trainer. We flew out to my new area PENANG. Penang is a little island just off the mainland. It's so pretty here. It's awesome. And the people here are generally really polite. Ohhhh when we got to Malaysia, when we were going through customs, the line was backed up all the way to the escalator, so when people started coming down, they couldn't get out of the way of the escalator.  People started falling and jumping off and stepping on each other and stuff. It was super intense. So finally after hearing all this screaming and stuff, someone turned off the escalator at the top, but lots of people got hurt. It's happened a lot apparently. So that's Malaysia for you! It's awesome! Our apartment is on the 22nd floor, and overlooks the entire city of Penang on one side of the apartment, and then on our balcony, you can look across the ocean to the mainland. The city on the mainland you can see is Butterworth. I'll talk a little more about it later. Oh, and here, it feels like you're in the shower.  It's so humid. It's awesome. I think it feels really nice. Even when we're biking. Everywhere we go, it's air conditioned. Oh, and everyone here is terrified of the rain. It's hilarious. We actually had 3 appointments canceled in one day because it rained like an inch of water in the afternoon. So that kinda stunk, but it was really funny that it was just because of rain.

When we got to our apartment, I met Elder Clark, my other companion. We're in a trio right now, because Elder Clark is leaving in SEVEN DAYS to UTAHHHH. So that's cool. Exciting for him. He's pretty trunky right now, but since I want to work, he's willing to work hard, so it's been awesome with him. He doesn't really do anything while we're inside the apartment, but outside, he's awesome. I forgot to mention that I'm in a Chinese area, so like 80% of our lessons are in Mandarin. So I'm learning tons of mandarin, a little bit of Malay, and learning how to interpret the accents. More on that later.

Elder Ng has been out for 6 months, and he's 21. Elder Clark is 21 too. Our room mates are Elder Marsh and Elder Allred. They've both only been out for 1 transfer, but they're training themselves,so they still haven't finished their training, and they're companions. They're doing awesome though. Elder Marsh is 20 and spent a year at BYU I before coming out, and is from California. Elder Allred is from Roosevelt, and is 18. He reminds me so much of my cousin Deven.  It's insane. They look and talk the same way. I guess I remind him of one of his cousins too. So that was funny. Those two eat so much food, it's insane. First day out, I saw them 4 times.  They were eating every time, and were heading to another place to eat too. They're short on PI's, so they were contacting on the way to their food, and it really worked out well for them. They got tons of PI's (potential investigators) and really good food.

That reminds me! The food here is super good! My first meal in Penang was Roti. It's Indian, and it's basically flatbread dipped in this yummy stuff called Dal. It's a vegetarian curry. Anyway, I like Roti Susu, which is roti with super good stuff called susu on it. You can google what susu is, because I really don't know what it is. Some sort of milk product. There are other Roti's, but I like the susu the most. Others things I've eaten... mixed rice, some non-spicy food (we might eat spicy food soon. hopefully.), rice, tiger biscuits, Spades Burgers, Burger King, Mcdonalds icecream (their machines always work, unlike in the US), and a bunch of other stuff. Some members, the Soon's, fed us. The Soon's make lots of weird food.  We got there, and it was noodles with some mystery meat, plus some curry in the bottom. It was ok, but there was something that I was super surprised about. Before they brought out the food, they brought out a vodka bottle with some dark liquid in it. AND THEY'RE MEMBERS. So I was trying to ask Elder Clark what the heck it was (because at the time, I could hardly understand Elder Ng (because of his accent), and Elder Clark can't take a hint or read lips or even try to guess what you're asking. So I'm left clueless of what this liquid in the vodka bottle is. She pours it for each of us, and in the Chinese culture you drink whatever you're given and eat whatever you're given. So Elder Clark takes a small sip and screws up his face, Elder Ng doesn't even touch it, and Sister Soon is staring at me waiting for me to try it. She can't speak English. So I pick it up, and take a little sip. It was DISGUSTING! Water chestnut JUICE. Like if you took a can of water chestnut back in the US and drained it into a bottle and just drank it. It was so gross, it made me feel sick. But then she kept telling me to drink more, so I drank half the glass. Yuck!  Luckily, the food came out. But there were these super weird veggies in it. They were gross too, but I had stuff to kinda keep the flavor out. The sauce covered it up mostly. Other than that experience, I've loved the food. It's super good.

The bathrooms are super weird here. The water heater for the shower has to be turned on outside the bathroom.  If your companion is mean, he can turn it off mid-shower. The lights are also outside the bathroom. My only guess as to why that is, is so they don't get wet. Why would they get wet? Because instead of toilet paper, they use a HOSE. A rubber hose. So sometimes I guess it goes everywhere, so every bathroom has a drain, and the door to the bathroom always has a step up so that you don't get the floor outside the bathroom wet. Our apartment is super nice, so we have a bidet in one bathroom. I  actually prefer the bidet to toilet paper. It's awesome. Not the hose though. In the airport, they had squatting toilets, and they do in public bathrooms a lot too. So. Bathrooms = weird. And the water flushes the same way, but we're also 1 degree north of the equator in Singapore, which is as far south as we can go. So I dunno about that myth.

I'm in a biking area, and biking here is INTENSE. Everyone has been hit by either a motorcycle or a car so many times, it's insane. Even I almost got hit a few times. It's not bad unless you fall off your bike, because everything is moving about 20 miles an hour. They measure in kilometers here and drive on the left side of the road, so it's a little different. There aren't really any lanes. Well, there are, but they don't matter. Needless to say, the missionaries here all have super bad scabs and stuff from crashing their bikes. Hopefully I'm one of the lucky ones and don't get hit. It's pretty safe as long as you aren't stupid! Every now and then, the motos are pretty stupid, but it's so much fun to bike here. Elder Clark bartered 160 ringgit off my bike, so that was awesome. I only spent 740 ringgit on it, and it's super nice. If I can ship it home at the end of my mission for cheap, I totally will. I need to sprayp aint that bike still... Anyway, biking is awesome.

Understanding the accent here has been difficult, but I'm getting better. A lot of the people here are really uneducated, so they speak really terribly, but the educated people I can finally understand. The accent is going away luckily. Elder Ng has a pretty killer Singapore accent, and he talks so fast, I have to tell him to slow down sometimes because I can't understand what he's saying. He's so funny. The missionaries here really dumb down their language and speak really clearly, so when I Skype home in December, I'll show you how they talk. It's hilarious. Since I'm white, everyone is interested when I start talking to them, so it's super easy for us to contact people. When I walk down the mall, everyone looks at me. So it's pretty awkward when we make eye contact, but then we can talk to them. So it works out! I miss seeing white people every now and then though. Haha!  I'll get over it pretty fast though. Oh, and 5 times a day, the Muslims blast their prayers over loudspeakers, and it's super crazy. It sounds so weird. Very different from anything else.

Saturday, we went to Butterworth (across the ocean from Penang), and we took a ferry. Everyone here makes fun of Butterworth, and says it's super trashy and stuff.  We went on exchanges to Butterworth so Elder Ng could interview a baptismal candidate (he's the district leader). Elder Allred and I went with him, and they were just telling me about how bad it is there. When we got there, the first thing I saw was a building with a bunch of windows smashed out. It was a huge building, with lots of windows, all smashed out. So it was a little sketchy. Then we went out to the church, and right before we got there, a factory started on fire nearby. So that was pretty funny. Everything is kinda old. There were half constructed buildings that looked abandoned. I dunno. Pretty trashy. It was awesome though.

On Sunday, a guy got up to bear his testimony, and the first thing he said was "As most of you know, most of my human interaction is through Facebook", dead serious. He wasn't even joking. He was a crazy guy. And he kept talking about his meditative yoga class he's in and other stuff. He was weiiiiird. Anyway, every branch has at least one person that's super weird, and he's our branch's. Another weird person is brother Henry. I can't understand a word he says, because everything is slurred, and he says "ya" between every two or three words, so you have to decide when he's saying ya and when he's actually talking. We have some characters for sure though. It's awesome. I got to be in the primary since Elder Ng is super good at piano and their primary program is coming up! So that was super fun! There are quite a few little kids! Oh, and I met some people that know Marrisa Badham (no idea how to spell her name), so I took a picture with them.  Then they sent it to her, and she sent it to Alexis, and Alexis sent it to my parents. So they got a picture of me. So that was cool!

Oh, I can't believe I forgot! Today, we came to Ipoh (3 hour bus ride) for a zone conference! And in two weeks, we're going on a visa run to Singapore. So I'm just chillin’ in Ipoh right now. We're gonna play badminton soon, so that'll be cool. Next P day, we're gonna go to the jungle side of Penang and feed some monkeys. So that'll be super awesome. The monkeys here look suuuper weird. Well, I guess they don't. But not what you think of when you think monkey. They're a little feisty too. I watched some videos on Elder Clark's camera of them, and I'm super excited to go to the monkeys.

The internet here is suuuuuper slow, and the computers are running Windows XP, so photos take about 20 minutes each to upload, so I can't send pictures this week, but next week for sure I'll send lots! I have some pictures with friends from the MTC that I can send, but other than that, I can't send any yet! I promise I'll have lots of pictures by tomorrow! Oh, and if anyone wants to contribute to the semi-annual (I don't know if it'll really be semi-annual) package to Elder Ben Mullins, we really like Koolaid packets, Jolly Ranchers, and American candy; maybe some popcorn.  Tons more happened this week, but those were just some of the highlights! I love you all.  Thanks for all your letters and packages! They're awesome!

I'm emailing in some sketchy internet cafe with a bunch of Malaysians that are playing CSGO. So that's exciting. They're pretty loud and it smells like smoke. It's an interesting atmosphere; especially when there are 10 missionaries.

Love,

Elder Ben Mullins

Elder Ng and Elder Mullins with Darby Kendrick (the girl in the Penang branch)

*FROM MOM  Let me tell you how we got this picture.  I got a text from Alexis telling us that her friend went to Peru on a humanitarian mission where she met a girl from Malaysia.  She told her about Elder Mullins and to watch for him.  (Yeah...like that's gonna happen.)  She got to her branch in Penang last Sunday and Elder Mullins bore his testimony in sacrament meeting.  She got this picture taken with him and his companion and sent it to her friend, who sent it to Alexis, who sent it to us.  We got it at about midnight Saturday night which was 2:00 in the afternoon on Sunday in Malaysia.  We were so excited!  I can't believe that he just happened to be teaching in his first area where this girl was attending church in her own branch in Penang.  Crazy!