This week a creepy guy gave me pigeons to feed, which was definitely not the strangest thing that happened this week, but it was the only especially strange thing I have photographic evidence of. The creepy guy was clad in all black leather, and had long dark hair (somewhat gnarly, but in a "wise sage" type way), and when his hands were outstretched, pigeons would perch thereon. He commanded them with all the force of a Disney princess. My companion tried comparing him to Jesus in a desperate attempt to turn the conversation away from bird facts (cause Jesus is holding a lamb on the front of one of our pamphlets) but to no avail. Birds surrounded him in a circle, and sometimes they'd take flight all at once, and then circle back as if with one mind, not dissimilar to the way a gaggle of missionaries moves through a crowd when there are souls to save.
Welcome back to the weekly! This is the reminder that some of you need to catch up on the emails over past weeks that you may have skipped. That way you can make snooty remarks like "Malachi has really fallen off lately," and "His old stuff was way better." Even "I wish Malachi hadn't resorted to these new, flashy, crowd pleasing tactics."
My companion and I have discovered two fun loopholes to being in a ward that doesn't feed us food. (In our ward's defense it's very small, and we're not trying to make the same person feed us every day. Just know though, if the Bishop's mother had her way, we'd be fed much more frequently.)
The first fun Loophole is the local Costco. We can't get there by our own horsepower, but we've recruited nearby wheeled missionaries to help us fill our grocery needs. Last time we went to Cotco, among other things, we got all meat pizza (a kind they don't have in america) 24 costco muffins (which lasted our flat about 24 hours so we were averaging 1 muffin an hour) and some lunch meat for sandwitches. We also got some milk and kiwis and bananas and chicken. We would have gotten much more except we're poor and didn't want to spend all our money. Costco muffins are some of the best breakfast, after lunch snack, pre dinner snack, and dessert you can find. Being in costco is really weird though, it looks exactly the same as the ones in america, and so it feels like a portal back home. But the best part of costco by far, is that they have MAGIC SHOPPING CARTS! Basically they've got these big escalator ramp/moving sidewalks that talke you from the ground floor to the second floor of the parking garage. They use these moving ramps because everyone has shopping carts and you cant much take a shopping cart up a regular escalator. BUT THE CRAZIEST THING? When you push the shopping carts onto the conveyer ramp, they stick. They don't slide down the ramp and topple everyone over. That's because there's grooves in the wheels and grooves on the escalator ramp, and so the cart is ever so slightly lower when it's on the ramp, causing it to rest on rubber pads that are beside the wheels and usually just barely off the ground. It's for sure the most advanced piece of technology I've ever seen in my life. I hope you can all imagine my pure joy when my companion let go of our shopping cart and (as if by magic) it stuck to the moving escalator ramp.
(To those of you who are new, and questioning my use of space, or those of you wondering why I get so excited about things like shopping carts: I have bad news for you. I will forever be happier than you are. Take some joy in the little things.*)
The second of the aformeantioned loopholes, is the Tongan ward. Last week on Saturday there was a Tongan baptism that we went to, since the Tongan Elders couldn't go, and it was one of the most impressive events I've ever took part in. There were not one but TWO bounce castles in the church, and literal buckets of food. There were meats of all types (I cannot verify what types of meat exactly, but I hope Horse was among them) and Islanders were cutting in to a whole cooked pig RIGHT THERE IN FRONT OF US! They pulled off all the meat and just threw it right on our already overflowing plates. Another highlight was the fresh crushed fruit juice/smoothy stuff they fed us. They had tons of fishy stuff to eat too.
THIS week, on Wednesday there was some sort of Tongan choir thing, and as us missionaries just walked by the Tongan ward firmly orded us "Elders! Come. Eat. Is good." So we came. We ate. And it was AMAZING. They were having desert after something, and they had these ball cake things that my companion definitely knows the name of, but I can't ask him right now cause I don't want to give him editorial credit on another email. But that was not all. "Stay here," they told us. "In one hour, we have more food. We have whole dinner here. Don't leave." So post desert, we did our companion study, and didn't leave, and the whole ward had this huge dinner thing an hour later. There was SO much food there. And they made us missionaries go get our food first, which I was greatful for but was also a little akward. I guess none of them felt like they could comfortably eat until they knew the american missionaries were being fattened up a little. A highlight of that meal was for sure the fresh ribs they gave us.
A thousand thank yous to all the Tongan women (and men?) who likely spent all day preparing the food for that dinner.
A tongan lady in our ward bore her testimony today and also told us how useless Tongan men were when the women were trying to prepare a meal. Her biggest qibbles were:
a) When you ask them to peal potatoes they always say "how many?" Stop asking so many questions when your wife asks you to cook. Just cook!
b) When you ask a man to peel a kumera, you'll look away for one second, and when you look back he will have peeled ALL the kumeras! We're not feeding so many people! You don't need so many kumeras!
I understood her frusteration; as a man I can confirm I never know how many potatoes/kumeras I'm supposed to peel.
I don't know if you guys noticed, but I'm writing this on a fast Sunday.
We also visited AUKLAND CITY yesterday. It was so cool. Walking around the city is such a fun vibe, and there's so many good places to eat there that I wanted to try, but couldn't due to the fact that I spent all my money on Costco muffins. Our Zone Leaders took all the new missionaries to the city to give us practice talking to people. (That's every companioship in our zone by the way, cause there's new missionaries everywhere.) There were so many of us, and it was funny to walk through a park or crowded square and see other missionaries talking to strangers out of the corner of your eye. It felt like we were spies infiltrating a fancy gathering or something, and we'd make eye contact across the square and wink. (Nobody actually winks, but you get the idea.) Though we were all sepaprate, we moved as one to bring people to Jesus Christ. Suffice it to say though, the Sisters were way better at it than the Elders. They would kept becoming best friends with everyone, and the best I could do was take pictures for them and thier new friends.
The ZLs did get us pizza after, but it was far from enough. Somebody should have put Tongans in charge of the event. Talking to city people is so fun, you meet so many weird, interesting people.
Craaaaaazzzzzzy people!!!!
The best section of the email. I keep thinking I'll have to remove it, but like mana in the wilderness, the Lord always provides.
This week we visited a guy in our area that had a little note of simple instructions from previous missionaries. "Rock up. Convince him that ancient aliens isn't real. Teach him the Gospel of Jesus Christ." Easy enough right? I honestly thought the previous missionaries were joking, but the FIRST thing this guy says to us when we sit down is "do you know who built the pyramids?" It took all my self restraint not to say "I bet it was aliens!" and beat him to it, but I decided that'd be a bad idea.
He proceeded to tell us SO MUCH STUFF, not the least of which being that WE HAVE NO FREE WILL AND EVERYTHING IS PREDETERMINED. It was so hard not to agree with everything he said. My tactic instead was asking things like "how do your beliefs bring peace and happiness into your life?" And he would say something to the effect of WHO CARES ABOUT MY HAPPINESS! I WANT THE TRUTH! But he also told us that if we achieved the seventh consciousness while meditating, we would know everything. Once again I had to stop myself from asking why he hadn't done that if it was so easy. He had so many questions about what God was made of (matter or energy?) Or who created God and I wanted to speculate with him, but I'm a missionary so I just said "I know that God loveth his children, but nevertheless I don't know the meaning of all things." But I DO know the meaning of all things, and he was so right about everything. He's just not happy. :( Still I loved him with all the charity of Christ, and as soon as we were done I turned excitedly to my companion and said THAT GUY IS LITERALLY ME IF I HADN'T BEEN RAISED IN THE GOSPEL. He was confused, but some of you will know what I'm talking about.
This guy got such a crazy look in his eyes when he started telling us things, about how aliens built the pyramids and modified our bodies and whatever else, and that's exactly the look I get in my eyes when I talk to my friend Bronson.
I hope we can have many more lessons with Ancient Aliens Guy. But unfortunately he told us to only come back if we wanted to know THE TRUTH! (About determinism, and the simulation theory, and quantum mechanics, and string theory, and a billion other things he wanted to tell us about.) Which... yeah that's not "truth" we're super interested in. Cause its not the kind that makes your life happy or peaceful. Hmu if any of you want truth that DOSS make your life happy and peaceful.
Stat ✨️Stories✨️:
Replacing our usual boring stat section, I have a few stories about the new stats I've achieved this week.
Spirit Island Games: 10!!
3 new games with the flat this week. I'm getting alllllll the missionaries in to this game, and I love it. Sometimes all that gets me through the day is knowing we can come back and destroy some invaders that are settling on my island. (It's kinda like being a grumpy old person, when neighborhood kids come and settle on your lawn.)
Total miles run: 128.5
Featuring 6.25 new miles on Saturday. Now I want to be clear I didn't set out intending to go 6 miles, but I got lost. I was on exchanges, so I was in an unfamiliar area, and I was with 3 other unfamiliar missionaries. They all came out running with me even though I told them it might be hard, and then they kept encouraging us to keep going further, until when we were about 2 miles out they all died. So as they were walking, I would run to the end of the street and come back, which accounted for at least 1 of the extra miles. Also, as we were heading back, I assumed they would tell me when the turn was to get to the street with thier flat. I was wrong. Herd mentality prevailed, and they assumed I was the leader and we all followed each other off a cliff. (Or at least down a steep hill we then had to walk/run back up.) Anyway three of us came back very sore. And the other diciple did outrun the ZLs and come first back to the flat.
Pictures:
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