Vivian's personal history -age 9

My mom asked everyone to write a one page personal history for her as a birthday gift. I loved Vivian's so much, especially her picture in the middle:)

Viv has enjoyed exploring on family search lately, so now she has her own bit of family history and it made my mom's birthday.

Abe in Africa

Still amazed that Abe is doing this. 

So grateful for God's help and direction.

 From: David Tullis <david.tullis@missionary.org>

Date: Mon, Apr 11, 2022 at 1:07 AM
Subject: Email
To: <sadieatullis@gmail.com>

Hi

This week was kinda all over the place. The front half went really well and the last few days were full of lots of canceled lessons and a bit of discouragement! But overall, it was pretty good. We had a little ward party Saturday which was really fun. And we've met a couple cool new people this week. 

We got one guy named Tigana who we met last week and taught the first lesson to. At church on Sunday he bore his testimony despite it being his first time and him having a speech impediment. It was cool. 

We also met a kid named Michel who really resonated with our first lesson. Our second lesson with him we started with a little review so we asked him if he remembered the story of Joseph Smith, to which he responded "yeah he had the same experience as me", and he told us about how he was praying to know which church was true and we showed up the next day. Its pretty cool to be there to help people's prayers get answered.  

We had a friend, Sœur Vanessa, drop off the face of the earth 2 weeks ago, so we figured she just moved or something, but we ran into her family this week who told us that she was in a pretty serious car accident 2 weeks ago and that she was staying at the hospital recovering from a surgery for a broken femur. So we made some time to go see her and give her a blessing. However, when we got there it was not visiting hours in the surgery wing, so we had to walk through the employee entrance to get to her room... we ended up accidentally walking in on an on-going surgery. And let me tell you, african surgery looks like a painful experience. It consists of a lot of screaming and being constrained to the hospital bed. But eventually we made it to her room and it was such a cool experience. She was shocked that we found her there and was so grateful. She said her family didn't have money for food because of the surgery, so she was just kinda going hungry stuck in the hospital. We got her a little food, but we'll be headed back this week to help her some more (Hopefully during visiting hours this time).

I finished doctrine and covenants the other day. It was pretty decent. 4/5 stars would be my goodreads review. 

Love yall. Have a good week 

From: David Tullis <david.tullis@missionary.org>
Date: Mon, Mar 28, 2022 at 3:27 AM
Subject: Email
To: Sadie Tullis <sadieatullis@gmail.com>

Buenos dias ma Familia 

The last few weeks have taught me a lot! A lot has happened so I guess I'll give a brief recap. I got a new comp, elder willbur from Kentucky. I can not express how amazing it is to have somebody to talk to haha. I think I told you guys about my last comp a little, but he basically refused to speak to me or look at me unless it was to tell me to clean something! So elder willbur has been a great help to my mental state. Also we received 2 other missionaries in our apartment which has also been really fun. We got elder nkulu and kabunda from the DRC. We are doing an English course with them right now, so every night we do that and we all have a good time. Unfortunately, getting these missionaries means that our area got cut in half, and their half contains most of our progressing friends. So me and elder willbur have been back in contacting mode the last week. But we are super grateful to have them, it's been making our workload much more manageable. 

We are prepping 3 friends for baptism this week. I wanted to share a little experience about our guy Van. With my last comp we met van in the street and he seemed super cool. We took his contact info, but when I told me comp we should do a lesson with him he said it was a waste of time and called him a warthog... but when my comp got transferred he took his book of contacts with him so I lost his contact and kinda forgot about it. But about a month ago, elder willbur and I were teaching a lesson and van happened to run up to us and told us he'd been waiting for us to call for the past 3 weeks. He pulled out our brochure that we gave him which looked like it had been read non-stop since we gave it to him, so we started meeting with him and he hasn't missed church or an activity since. We've been going on splits with him and he's introduced us to lots of his friends and neighbors. It was really a miracle to run into him again and im excited for his baptism this week. 

Still on the daily I have moments where I'm just blown away by Africa.. sometimes the culture or the people or the vastness of it. It's really cool, slightly overwhelming, but I'm really grateful to be here and I'm trying to help people, which is really fulfilling. One of these "Africa moments" so to speak, was when we had a chance to meet with one of the counselors in the elders quorum and his wife. We got to their house which was an empty cube made of cinderblocks. No furniture or chairs or anything. We each took a cinderblock to sit on but ended up having one of the happiest, coolest discussions I've had on the mission. We shared the story of Samuel the lamanite and specifically helaman 14:10 where it says "because these words are hard against you you have rejected them" (something like that). We talked about agency and how when we are told to change, that can be an experience that brings us closer to God, or elongated from him, but really it is our choice. Then in verses 30-31 it concludes by saying that we are each given the power to choose eternal life or death based on how we accept the invitation to change. 

The couple was just so humble and willing to accept that invitation to exercise their free agency to do good. I felt a real thick happiness in that room that I have rarely felt while being in the comfort of our apartment or back home in my fancy house. So I am grateful to know that even though Africans have a lot less access to temporal commodities, they still have equal, if not greater, access to the spiritual, eternal necessities. 

Anyway... mission life still sucks, don't let me fool you with my gushy spiritual email. 

Love yall 

FRENCH FRY FRIDAY

💙💙💙

 

MAX IS FIFTEEN!!

What the heck?

When did Max turn in to a big kid. 

I love MAX so much. I love watching him interact with people and his sincere kindness.

He has a good heart. He is capable and smart and works hard at the things he wants to do.

We invited our good friends over on Sunday night for cake and ice cream.

Early morning, before school, birthday table where he got all set up for his tennis season:)

his friends came over and hung out for a "birthday party" on Friday night.

no pics:(

And grandma sent him a generous card in the mail. Pleasantly surprised:)

Here's where he has spent a majority of his time lately.

Fun to watch him develop this new skill.

                                                                                                                              ^^^Max

 

general conference

(Julia and Max)

My mom has had the tradition of Conference Breakfast ever since I can remember. 

I remember being a little girl and getting so excited for conference breakfast. I recall when I was little, she would make menus and all the food with have code names so you wouldn't know what you were ordering and you could end up with 4 chocolate milks and no food:) She made it fun, and delicious, and it felt like a celebration where we all gathered and then we all listened to the prophet. 

My kids asked me multiple times is we were having conference breakfast at grandma's and yes, my mom came through again, only now she has added the "treat drawer" during conference.

My mom is a tradition master. 

I'm grateful this helped me develop a LOVE for listening to conference.

I was SO blessed to be with family and SO blessed to hear the word of GOD. 

I have been studying the talks from this last conference and trying to apply what the prophet said and one of those things was to watch for and expect miracles. 💕

 

Spring Break 2022- Florida

FLORIDA!!

Harry Potter World and Nasa Kennedy Space Center have both been on my and Vivian's bucket list for a while and we finally made it happen!

Vivian has been reading the Harry Potter books and is really into space and science so this was the year.

The boys were good to come along:)

Highlights:

~Watching my kids take care of each other. Always my highlight.

~Vivian got chosen in Olivander's wand shop. They have this little show where someone is chosen from the crowd and the lady (fully in character) found the chosen wand for her. Vivian was SO excited and said she used her interviewing skills she learned with Swiss Miss stuff. She stood up straight and confidently and looked the lady straight in the eyes. The lady asked Vivian her name and then said, "oh, YOU are Vivian. hmm." and then chose her to come up.  Super fun to be chosen:)

~The Space Center was pretty amazing. Loved learning more and being inspired.

~Viv took on some big boys in a water fight on the playground. 

She pretty much took them down. Proud moment.

~Max and Kai playing dodge the shoe at the beach. 

~Having some time with Dave.

~Seeing crocodiles in the small river along the side of the road. kinda creepy. kinda cool.

~Amazing birds, since Dave and Vivian are big into bird watching these days. 

And I think we saw a shark.

 And we can't forget Kai's famous belly flop!

Grateful to hang out. 

Love these people.