I know you're thinking "surely the title refers to metaphorical mud!"
It does not.
Mud: 1
Malachi: 0
Anyway how was all of yous' weeks? (This question is not rhetorical and I expect yous to answer via email. And yes, "yous" is the commonly used plural version of "you" here. Waaaay better than y'all. Maybe if you're good I'll give you a slang overview next week. ♡
A friend of ours came to church for the first time and it was so fun!! He talked to me for a long time after, telling me all sorts of cool things about the Bible, and I love listening to people who speak confidently about interesting things, but its also kind of hard as a missionary because sometimes I don't know if they're telling me cool stuff I didn't know or if they're actually waffling up false doctrine. And then if they are waffling up false doctrine I have to decide if its my place to gently correct them, or if I should wait until I clearly understand thier beliefs. Our friend kept telling me how his friend (that's right, we all have friends) was building a technology that would video Jesus' return to the earth after WW3 when He came on a white horse like Gandalf (his words, not mine) and killed the armies of the evil one. Then! With his friend's technology, everyone could watch it from home without having to like... exhert effort or disrupt thier busy schedules or anything to witness Christ's return. If there's one thing I know about Jesus it's that he'd never ask you to do something that would be inconvenient for you.
The important thing is that he's excited for Jesus' return. So am I!
There was a lady who called us over this week and had us read a bunch of Bible verses that proved her sect of Christianity was true, so now I'm convinced of that. Basically the church she belongs to is the only one that observes all the proper feasts at the proper times, and so that makes thier church zion. I'd recite her foolproof logic to you except I didn't really follow it and it involved a lot of reading random Bible verses that I don't understand the context of. (She just knew I'm so easy to bribe that all you have to do is offer me a feast, and I'll join your church. It's like all the random "information meetings" in colledge all over again.)
The philipino ward did a father's day party on Saturday which we were invited to for some reason, and it was lots of fun because of all the good food. The kids in the ward also sang a song to thier dads which was cute, except somebody had the idea to give the 4 microphones to all the smallest children present. (Maybe thinking they'd be the hardest to hear? I understand the logic, except it leighbors under the assumption that everything said by a 4 year old is something we'll be excited to listen to.) Best I can tell thier song was good, but mostly I heard the sound of little girls trying to lick and eat the microphones, little boys repeatedly banging on the top of it and laughing, and one kid trying to have a lengthy conversation with her mom who was sitting in the audience.
HAPPY FATHERS DAY TO ALL OF YOU IN NORTH AND SOUTH AMERICA!!! Unhappy regular day to those of you in New Zealand or Australia.
(Update, turns out its only father's day in New Zealand. So unhappy regular day to all of you. You'd think after all these years my twisted mind would have figured out when father's day usualy is, or that alarm bells would have gone off in my head when father's day rolled around for the second time... but that would have required me to pay attention at least once in my life which I forgot to do. I didnt know I'd be tested on it though.)
Grumpy guy update:
He's so grumpy. Last week we went to his house after setting up an appointment, but to get there we had to walk through the pouring rain. Which was bad enough already, but to make matters worse, when we got to his house he looked us up and down and noted that we looked pretty wet. We agreed, and speculated that the pouring rain might be the culprit. Our friend then told us (with a swell of pride) that his house was dry. And if we were to come inside, the rain's wetness (that had been passed on to us) would come inside as well. When the wetness was outside, and the dryness inside, all was right with the world. My companion and I threatened to disrupt the status quo.
One of the reasons I love him so much, is that he's more adept at brevity then I, and he communicated all that information with five simple words, that even a child could understand.
"Come back when you're dry."
Then he came to church the next day! He wasn't happy about it though, cause his foot had gout. Honestly fair reason to not be happy, I'm really impressed he made it to church at all. We did end up teaching him a few times this week, but might stop because he's sometimes mean to the members we bring with us. I'll keep you lovely people updated!
Lesson of the week: (very wise)
I never got the plauge that my companion had, and I'm so annoyed. Now I have to take back all the hateful things I said when they forced me to get the vaccine at the MTC. To be clear thier methods were still deplorable, and thier lack of efficiency unexcusable. Combine that with thier lack of comunication and hour and a half of useless video training, all on a Pday... It was hard to be greatful at the time. I thought surely I was wasting in the time. But now that I'm 4 weeks into the mission and the destroying angel has already passed me by, and I think God's tryina teach me a lesson. (Classic God.) So now I'm reluctantly greatful for the MTC flu vaccine. I'm slowly learning an important lesson, which is that that God's way is better than Abe's way. (That was also my #1 takeaway from the In Field Mentor podcast they made me listen to this week.)
My Green Notebook!!!
I got a green notebook and it's the prettiest thing ever I love it so much. It has gold mountains and stars on the front, and inside are pages, and I'll attach a picture of it cause I love it. I also got NEW PENS!! How I got them is by buying them at the store, but let me tell you it felt like Christmas Morning, bringing those home. Even with all the fathomless mud this week, my notebook and pens did fill my soul with joy, as exceeding as was my pain.
On that note, missions are hard, but not like, that hard. I think it's well explained in Alma 31:38, real fans will go read it. ("But Malachi, I don't have the book of mormon app! How can I go read it?" Worry not, querido un:
Like the scripture says, all my trials are swallowed up in the joy of christ. I really feel like I "Hunger not, neither do I thirst." I'm taken care of by the same people who took care of me back at home. (Not like the same same people, but just like there was a ward looking after me at home, and in Canada, there's a ward looking after me here. There's a bishop here.) Anywhere in the world God can "go before you" and take care of you and protect you, and he does that through his church. (And sometimes through the local gangs. People don't mess with us here, cause if they do the local gangs will mess with them if you know what I'm yapping about. I think its cause a lot of the gang members are returned missionaries or inactive/ex members.)
Speaking of not hungering or thirsting (except after righteousness) we had two dinners with kind families this week. With is all we'll and good usually. Problem is, we had them both on the same night. It started when, in usual fashion my companion told me we had dinner with a brother in our ward. I took his word for it, and so we went and ate some chiniese takeout with him, and it was good, but there was so much of it. Which was fine because I finished full and happy. But then my companion got an urgent call, and came back in looking a little pale. Apparently he'd switched the date, and we were supposed to eat with another family that night. They'd prepared the food, and had been patiently waiting for our arrival for about an hour. Luckily, patience is a christlike attribute, so I'm sure they were better off for it. We ran to their house as soon as we could for another dinner, this time taco salad bowl things, that were actually amazing. I didn't think I'd be able to eat another bite but then I remembered that this is what you have to do when you're married if your wife doesn't eat her food, and so it was good practice. They brought out desert too, but luckily it was a fruit ice cream dish that was amazing. They also had a bunny who was so cute, and whether or not he was delicious I know not.
I also had a family bring us Wendy's chili this week, and they also brought my companion a burger. They didn't bring me a burger cause they thought I was on a diet for some reason. I was severely offended at that misconception, cause the only diet I'd ever go on is the Atkin's diet, which is where you whatever and whenever Luke tells you to. Luckily the chili was really good, and it was raining outside at the time which made it even better.
End of official email, stop here if you're a hater.
FAQ (Note, this is not a simple Q&A, like you'd find in the emails of unamed Elders with lower pushup counts. [*Cough* Witchurch *cough*] I get too many questions for that. If your question is not answered, you can assume its because you didn't ask it frequently enough.)
Question: "If missionary tags were all one color other than black, what color would you want them to be?"
Answer: I honestly think silver would be tuff as. You don't want something that would blend in to a white shirt, but you also want a simple color that would look professional.
Question: "Why did you not reply to my eeeeemail!!"
Answer: Mini Donuts.
Question: "If all humans were, and had always been 3x smaller than our current size, but our brains had been identical, would life be any different now? Would it be better? Worse?"
Answer: Good Q, unnamed individual. My professional opinion is that it would be the same, or worse. If it was worse, it would just be because humans took longer to become technologically advanced on account of being more fragile and more likely to be eaten by tigers. Having more recources and less weight to transport would make a negligible difference. The only recource that's ever been scarce is food, which would have been arguably equally difficult to obtain in ancient times on account of all animals being larger and more dangerous. Maybe farming would have gotten us further though, with more land and less crops to feed a given individual. I dunno it gets a little muddy here, a bit difficult to fathom. (Turns out the title was talking about metaphorical mud the whole time.)
Y'all gotta start pulling your weight in the FAQ. Creative and interesting questions are more valuable than diamonds and rubies when you're on a mission and have nothing to talk about with your companion. (I guess we could talk about diamonds and rubies but that's a worst-case scenario.)
Stats:
Miles: 78 (+21 more since last week. W run week.)
Pushups: 7k something. I don't write these while I'm by my tracker so I don't know.
Steps taken since getting off the airplane: 2,101,291,856
Chess elo: 5,021
(Sorry I ran out of interesting stats)
Picutres:
Featuring...
☆ Picture of me, looking tuff. Treasure it.
☆ My companion stealing a free lamppost. (No, it wasn't taken on the same day as any previous pictures, even if you do notice similar attire.)
☆ Bun.
☆ Peculiar contribution to the "service" table. Generally people use this table to share deserts or fresh fruit with the ward, and I'm not quite sure what this is, but I figured I had to document it.
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