Becoming familiar with Milton-Freewater

My flight was awesome. I didn’t get a window seat, but I got to look outside the plane and we were above the clouds.

About first thing I was asked in the field off of the airplane was “do you know the Mullen’s that live in Walla Walla?” and “Are you related to Spencer Mullen?” So everyone but me knew about Spencer Mullen and they also knew (some did at least) that we were cousins. [In case you don’t know, Spencer is Wayne’s son, Wayne and Harley are brothers. (Harley is Lance’s dad)]

Area where I’ll be until October 30ish is farm-land (mostly wheat & wineries). Story of Milton-Freewater; There were two towns (settlements) one was Milton & the other was Freewater. They were bordering each other and water was free in Freewater, but in Milton they’d have to pay for water from Freewater. So they combined the cities (At least that’s what I’ve been told.) Not a lot of trees. A few (baby) mountains (compared to Utah mountains.) Like I said their mountains are hills. There are rocks. I only see them when the road goes through a hill. There are like five waterfalls in the mission, just none here. People here are nice (I was hoping for some door slams, and drunk people yelling at us, but it hasn’t happened yet.) No BK’s, only one McD’s & one Safeway.

I've eaten all of these foods and haven't thrown up or disliked them yet: Ravioli, Rice (cooked), strawberries, cantaloupe, pineapple, blueberries, blackberries, burrito with peppers and sauce, casserole, watermelon with black seeds, and there might be a bit more. I've met some cool elders but I've only really gotten to know Elder Fowlke. He's from Gillette, Wyoming and he thinks that country towns are where you find the best members (I disagree with him on this point). He's a good guy. Before his mission he was in his words a pc gamer nerd. He likes to cook. He's not an overbearing guy. He seems nice. Likes to have fun, but likes to work too.

[Answer to ‘How is the work going?’] We just need to get the investigators to church and we can get people baptized. We need to meet with one investigator and his mom so she can approve of the baptism and so we can set a date.

Oh, and a 6 yr. old girl, Rachel, drew a picture of me & Jesus.

[Advice to Tiffany] Try getting some sleep every now and then, don’t tell anybody but 8 hrs of sleep actually is good amount of sleep so you aren’t tired the next day. (I think it’s a church secret for missionaries. Shhh!)

Tell everyone I love them. (again, please)

….One Week Later….

August 16, 2011

I'm really enjoying my mission and it's almost easier to wake up and study for 3 hours than I thought it was going to be. I live in a nice area and everyone (even those not interested) are nice to us. Me and my companion are assigned to a ward (the Milton-Freewater Ward), other missionaries may be assigned to more than one ward or branch, but we only have one ward so we only have one 3 hour block on Sunday. I'm doing great and I'm going to be listening to Elder L. Tom Perry on the 17th so I'm being spiritually fed while I am here.

We do have a car in our mission with 600 miles per month. I won't be driving as long as I'm still getting trained (so 12 weeks from July 27th). The ward is nice (at least 75% inactive/less-active) and we get fed dinner almost every night, there are times when we have to cook it ourselves though. We go to the grocery store every P-day and we get food that we think we'll need. There's a walmart in Walla Walla (about a 5 minute drive away) and a Safeway a few blocks down from our house. At the start of each month each missionary receives $130 (sister missionaries receive $135).

Our purpose is to "invite others to come unto Christ" and to follow direction of the ward and stake leaders. So, along with investigators the bishop has asked us to also focus on the less-active members by teaching them the discussions and try to rekindle that flame of the Spirit back into their lives. I don't think that we will be able to do everything ourselves. We need the support of the members with us.

On Sundays we drive in our car and when we need to track we get out of the car and start door knocking, afterwards we get back in the car and drive. We also get rides from members on exchanges which happen every day. These exchanges are when a member goes with us to appointments and helps us fellowship someone we're teaching so they can have someone to rely on besides us.

When we started it looked like we'd have 3 baptisms within the next few weeks and now none of them are going to get baptized in our area any time soon. One moved to Walla Walla and is on date for Sept. 3, one is moving to either Boise or Tri-Cities and will get baptized there and the last is having problems getting permission from his parents. So, I need to accept the Lord's hand in this work and not expect things to happen my way.

Oh yeah that reminds me, I'm serving in a town that worships frogs. At least every block there is one wooden frog statue next to a building. These frogs aren't little. They're human-sized, and it's weird seeing them everywhere. There's a reaper, a gas station employee, a weight loss frog, lumberjack, a frog on a ladder. They are everywhere. I just haven't seen any actual frogs yet, but next week is the annual "Muddy Frogwater" days that are advertised all year on the sign entering the town. (Compare Muddy Frogwater to Milton-Freewater, do you see a resemblance? Do you see how much they worship frogs?

Lots of Love,

Elder Lance Mullen

First Letter from Oregon

First, My first area is Milton-Freewater OR (and guess what they don't have sales tax in Oregon). It's a nice place, it's a country town (in my opinion), there are wineries and wheat fields. Oh, and our area covers MF, Athena, and Umapine, so it's a big area. Thank goodness we have a car. It's a nice ward, and we do get fed (almost) every night at a member's house. It's a small group that came to sacrament meeting 20-30 but there are a lot of inactive members (total there's about 200-400 members in our area).

There are a bunch of really cool and nice people here. Most people are either Catholic or Seventh-Day Adventist. No one has really been mean to us but there's a lot of apathy and "You're doing a good work telling people about Christ!" and I think that the key is we need people to know what is unique about our message and that it's not just about Christ, like we have a living prophet.

Oh, my companion. Elder Fowlke, he's not as big as I thought (only about 1 inch taller than me), but I think that they were meaning the other way of being big. He's a great guy and he's really loves the gospel and the members that help us.

Elder L. Tom Perry is coming to speak to our mission (or the east half of the mission) on August 17, that will be three weeks into my 12 week training period.

Thank you for reading and if you want to send me letters I would appreciate it plus I promise to write you back.

There are so many windmills on the hills to create power. That and that I'm not used to the sun being out in the sky at 6:30 AM since there's no mountains there's nothing blocking the sun (and the "mountains" they have here are lightweights) (I'm just saying that as a fact not like I'm biased towards the Wasatch Front or anything *Cough* *Cough*)

I love you. Gospel is true. Cutting off arms is okay, (as long as there's sheep involved). and never confuse a Korean for a Japanese.

Love,

Elder Lance Mullen