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NATCHEZ — Friends, family, fasting and prayer have kept Betty Mullins busy for a long, time.

“Fasting and prayer can change a person,” Mullins said, adding she has seen it happen time and time again.

When The Dart landed at Jeffersonian Apartments on Friday evening, Mullins was sitting outside talking to friends as she often does.

Any stranger she meets does not stay a stranger for very long.

Mullins takes down the names of the people she meets and prays for them, she said.

Mullins said she met people who have never been to church but after a while of praying and fasting for them they were asking to go, she said.

“I love everybody in the world. I don’t hate a soul. Any soul,” she said.

Mullins, who will be 81 years old in November, said she has lived at Jeffersonian for eight years with her son Irving. Until the COVID-19 pandemic, she loved visits from the rest of her family, including her daughter Tina Marie Brewer, her son-in-law Todd Brewer, and her two grandchildren, Josh and Tiffany.

“Now they tell me I don’t need to be around a whole lot of people,” Mullins said. “I feel fine. I feel like I could run a mile but they tell me don’t run. I feel like I could climb a tree but I can’t climb a tree because you would have to get a ladder to get me back down. At the hospital, they used bring me coloring books and everything but now they can still bring me stuff but they have to leave it at the door.”

Mullins said her family still came to see her on Mother’s Day.

“Josh and Tiffany came in with two big posters and stood right outside my window and we took a picture. They could see me too,” Mullins said. “My husband (Linus) died 15 years ago. People ask me how I can be alone for so long and I tell them I’m not alone. I’ve got my family.”