Mission Update -- 1/21/09 A Week of Ups and Downs!

Here's the latest from Elder McMullin. Sounds like some of the best days of his mission and one of the worst days! Here it is:


Hey family!
This week has been crazy!
Last week started off REALLY WELL. We were on pace to break 20 lessons, which is kind of the coveted / almost unattainable goal of lessons for any area. The best two days were Monday and Tuesday.
Wednesday was good too. I can't remember what we did for p day... Nothing really exciting, but we met with a less active that evening, and had a really good lesson. That was pretty much it.
Thursday was great. We had Zone Conference throughout the day. It was probably the best Zone Conference I've ever been to. Super spiritual, and really pumped us up. It was also the coldest day ever... Having a high below zero, and wind galore. It was nuts. We had a lesson afterwards with a media referral, and that went really well. The woman didn't have heat in her home, except for her bedroom, so we all just froze hardcore. There was a ton of mist after every word we said. It went well though, and at the end she sang hallelujah! We had just been promised in Zone Conference that if we worked hard, and did well, we'd have an investigator do that! It was pretty funny it happened so soon. After that we went back home, and ended up having to park on the end of the street. We also swapped with Cicero, and Elder Atwood came to the Stockyards with me. It was -13 degrees (before wind chill) when we went to bed.
Friday was by far the worst day of my entire mission. We woke up freezing, got ready, and went to the car for an appointment. Our entire street gets blocked off by people saving spots with buckets and chairs, so it was hard to find spots to politely park last night. I ended up parking on the edge of the road, leaving enough room for the person who saved the spot almost at the edge to park. We had a ticket for "parking in the crosswalk" on the car, and a note that said, "Hey ____, if you ever park in this spot again, your car is going to be in a frozen block of ice. See you in the spring!" It was weird, lame, and pretty infuriating for all of us. We had been polite by giving them enough space to park, which gave us a ticket, and then they get mad. Anyways, we got over that, then left for our appointments. We had set up an epic day.... But 6 appointments crapped out on us, and the one we had was awful. William, for the second or third time, wasn't ready to sign the smoke free declaration of independence. And our tire popped, which completely shot Saturday. And it was cold. Anyways, there it was... The worst day ever. Now I can look forward with faith, knowing that all the days coming will be relatively good! :-)
Saturday was alright, we waited for the tire to get fixed until 5 PM. We then picked up a member, and went to 2 appointments with him. They went alright. It's always good to have a member with you. The local drug dealers on that block know us pretty well now too. They're always driving up and down the street in their ghetto banging van, but they said hi and talked to us. They're actually pretty nice!
Sunday went well. We had church. That was pretty much it. The most dynamic week ever finally ended.
Then a great week began! Monday was great! We had a few lessons, including an awesome one with William. He was excited and ready to sign the declaration of independance! He did, and has been smoke free since! It was awesome. We also had a couple other lessons, and all of them wanted us back. The last one was a dinner appointment with the Tupayachi's, and it was great. We also had William give us the usual cookies and juice, and another person we visited gave us a box of 12 packages of wafer cookies!!! It was a pretty productive day for both spiritual, and sugary food. The day ended with Elder Sorensen, from Soldier Field, coming down to be with me for Tuesday. It was another cold night...
But Tuesday was beautiful! It got to the 40's!!!! It was amazing, seriously. We had a really good day too. We taught some great lessons, and had a dinner appointment with the Mahon's in Soldier Field's area. We only got stuffed once too! The guy that we couldn't meet with works nights, and we figured he just slept through his alarm and our phone calls. It's alright, he loves meeting with us so we'll see him soon.
Today should be great. We're about to leave to play some snow football, which will be awesome! Then we're having a potluck and all sorts of fun things at the Hyde Park church, which is as close to Obama's house as our house is to the Bennetts. Maybe even closer, but either way it's right there, and there's going to be cops and roadblocks, and all sorts of fun stuff. And yes, people were pretty excited. The day of inauguration was right after MLK day, so everyone was pretty excited about both of those. We saw some people marching around with Obama signs, but not many.
Well, I love you.
Love,
Elder Bradley Edward McMullin