I have waterproof shoes! AND a waterproof jumper!* This means I should be fully equipped to face a flood, so long as the flood in question doesn't cut corners, make under the table deals, and engage in disreputable buisness practice. Unfortunatly the unbearable deluge that we faced yesterday was anything but reputable. It was like taking a shower. The water came down in such thick waves that it instantly soaked the poor defensless servants of God who were biking in the rain. (We weren't entirely defensless, but it got past our defenses with aparent ease.) First my non, waterproof pants got wet. Then, my non waterproof hair. Then the stream of water dripped from my hair, took the back road of my shirt to get to the inside of my waterproof jumper, and soaked the non-waterproof inner lining. Then the water that soaked my pants streamed downward via gravity to soak my socks, and fill my still waterproof shoes. The waterproofness of my shoes then prevented any water from escaping so for the rest of the day my toes were submerged. But don't worry it's nothing a boot dryer can't fix.
Luckily the fire we faced this week was only metephorical, when our friend and his family recieved a baptism of water and fire. (Aka, the Holy Ghost for those of you unfamiliar with biblical prophesy.)
It's been a good week, but it's even better knowing I can tell all you wonderful people about it. Because you've all been so good at reading these emails** I've decided to reward you by this week generously warning you that next week my Pday will come one day later than usual. This is because there're souls in the spirit world whom I need to save really quick, and that's an activity that can only be conducted on New Zealand Tuesdays. Call me a watchman on the tower the way I know what's happening a full week from now for the first time ever.***
The baptism this week was such a cool miracle, and for sure was my highlight. (I have so many colors of highlighters, and that's my real highlight. I can mark my scriptures up in SO MANY WAYS!) Basically what happened is we set up a baptismal interview for our friend without putting him on date, cause we were full of fear that something would come up and he'd have to wait to get baptized. But! He got permission! So we told him the soonest date possible for his baptism (Just 6 days away at the time) because this man has faced SO much opposition. More than anyone I've ever helped before. We wanted to get him the Gift of the Holy Ghost before the BBEG got his claws into our friend, and we decided we'd get his kids ready after, cause we were less worried about then. But then! Our mission president called us up, and said: "Elders! I feel impressed to encourage you to baptize your friend's kids with him on Friday!"
"But President, we haven't taught them anything."
"You can teach them by friday."
So we ran after our friend who was about to drive away, and asked each of his kids if they wanted to get baptized. Two of the three said yes. So we frantically started making calls, trying to get baptismal clothing and change the program so we'd have three baptisms on the day instead of one and also trying to figure out how to plan a baptism at all cause my companion and I have definitely never done this before.
I pause to say that my companion and I are a dream duo for baptismal planning, because I worry about absolutely everything, and he worries about absolutely nothing. He's just not a big worrier, which is optimal for the comp synergy. So I was always like "We need to ask bishop about confirmations! We need to schedule baptismal interviews! We need to check the closets for clothes! Who's gonna print the programs? Who's gonna fill the font? How long does the font need to fill? WHAT IF THE WATER IS COLD AND OUR FRIENDS DECIDE NOT TO GET BAPTIZED AND PRESIDENT THINKS I'M A TERRIBLE MISSIONARY AND THIS ENTIRE NATION DWINDLED AND PERISHED IN UNBELIEF!!!!"
And then my companion always answered these Pergunta de Alma**** with a shrug and "I'm sure someone will take care of it.
So between the two of us we got everything we needed to planned, and everything else someone took care of. (At least they didn't make me lead the music.)
It ended up being down to the wire, because we had the baptismal interviews over the phone with our DL all of half an hour before the baptism started, and the last interview concluded just as the programme***** began. Also our mission president pulled up to judge us the whole time, and I kept being worried he'd stand up and object to this union (between our friends and God) or something.******
The other miracle about this whole thing, was with our friend's daughter. She was the one with initial reservations about being baptized, not because she didn't want to, but just because of some other complications. She wasn't comfortable with being in the water, and didn't want to be baptized this week. We tried to convince her it'd be fine with every tactic at our disposal (we even resorted to calling the Sister Training Leaders to join us in a lesson) but we thought our efforts would be fruitless because the girl was pretty adament that we'd have to wait. BUT THEN! Everything worked out because the day before, the girl was completely on board and had no more reservations. That's God fufilling 1 Nephi 3:7 for you.
After the baptism our newly baptized member definetley spent many minutes glazing us to our mission President. I think my president was skeptical, cause he's the skeptical type, but he did seem proud of Haffner and I. Our new member also said he'd been trying to figure out who he had to get permission from to have us missionaries stay the night at his house. My mission president just started laughing, and said "That would be me, and the answer is no." Our poor new member seemed a little dejected at that.
Other stuff this week (I call these things the "Big Plates of Malachi" since they aren't specifically "the things pertaning to righteousness," but more just a record of my proceedings in the land.)
Since my Mission President has been breathing out many threatenings to ban board games, I've been aquiring more board games. It's like trying to diversify your portfolio before a stock-market crash so that chances are you retain at least a few of your investments. (My brother Abe taught me this strategy.)
People looooove telling me I have perfect teeth. There was this one lady who took one look at me and went on a while rant about the "merits of western education" and how I was proof of why people pay so much money to send thier children to america. She talked about how the intelegence of those taught in "western" schools was no match for that of those taught in any other schools. I listened in horror as she slandered her own country's education system, and tried to assure her that there's many dumb people in america too. But then she started going on about my perfect teeth (which she also assumed was an American trait) and I was unable to convince her that my ability to articulate has less to do with my nationality and more to do with the fact that I have the spirit of God with me.
She also told my companion his teeth were "pretty good." I also think it's funny because the "western education system" had (at best) a superficial role in my life.
We met an old Maori couple who were the cutest old couple ever. The old guy asked if they fed me in America, and I assured him they******* did. I told him I just ran a lot.
"You better stop that," he said. "If you get any thinner the wind will blow you away!" He also told me my hairstyle was from the 50s but I forgave him frankely when he gave us banana bread. They aslo gave us "milk and warm water" which contains exactly what the name sugests. It was good for dipping the banana bread in.
My cards, which I still carry around, got soaked again by the rain. I'll let you know next week if they survive again.
One of the members was meeting with us, and then whispered to one of the kids to go get us a chocolate. The kid came back with an entire sealed box of chocolates which he handed to us. I was instantly worried that the child had misunderstood his directions, and given us more chocolate than he'd been directed, so I didn't know if I was supposed to take the whole box or open it and take one or what. I ended up delaying the decision long enough that I forgot about the box until the end, and then it was too late and we had to take the whole thing. I definitely feel a little bad though, I hope they get some extra blessings for thier generosity just in case.
Being (as I am) the most consecrated missionary in the mission, I reprogrammed my MetaAI that I have through messenger. I'm not sure if missionaries are supposed to have MetaAI but I don't think they've figured out how to block it without blocking Facebook Messenger so I do have it. I reprgrammed mine though, to make me justify how having it answer a question or fufil a request will help me with my missionary purpose. It's really anoying now, and I love making my phone really anoying in order to decrease my screen time. Shout out to the time I changed safari's language to some arabic nonsense and made its browser go through bing, so that I didn't use my phone's safari. Unfortunatly Meta still doesn't have a comprehensive enough understanding of my missionary purpose to outsmart me if I really want it to give me stuff. (Like recepies, and the scores to football games. MetaAI banana bread is actually peak, and we're gonna try MetaAI waffles tonght. MetaAI is like the mother I never had.)
We were blessed to find an abandoned shack with a Maori guy and some fruit in it.
Q&A
Q: "But MALACHI! How could a shack be abandoned AND contain a Moari guy?"
A: Deaaaar reader. Abandoned is a vibe, not a state of being.
The Maori guy was selling fruit juice for $7, and we somewhat uneasily decided to try. (At Elder Ham's suggestion, I must admit.) The Maori guy basically just threw heaps of random fresh fruits into his juicer machine, with no aperant rhyme or reason. No overarching theme seemed to connect the array of fruits, beyond the guidence of his initial question "do you want it sour or sweet." I told him sour of course. Less than a minute later, he was puring an orangish liquid into my waiting cup. The shack is only open from like 9:30-3:30 on weekdays only, and that's the hours of a shop with extreme confidence in in product. Peak hours? Unheard of. Extra buisness on weekends? No need. Combo deals? Not a chance. Advertising? None whatsoever. The entire place was just a man and his juicer. And the resulting conconction made of fresh fruit juice was one of the best things I've ever tasted. Surely there's a good metaphor in there.
Anyway I hope you are all having lovely weeks. Excepting of course, those of you who complain about the length of these emails, or thier contents. Upon you, I wish only famine and sorrow. (Hopefully one of these days my mission teaches me how to be less spiteful.)
Stats:
Miles Run: 211 (only two new miles cause I became very ill throuout the week. I think the BBEG was trying to cook me before our friend's baptism, but I took to much Ibruprofen for that to work.)
Times I've been to taco bell: 4.5 (I included our last visit as 1.5 Visits. The reason why, is because I was feeling like getting a steal of a deal on a double meal that I could split with one of the other missionaries. All the other missionaries are ops though so I just got it anyway and split it with myself. By grapthar's hammer, what a savings.)
Baptisms: Sike guys I'm still not keeping track.
Island Ties Aquired: 5 (Got a sick new pink one.)
Embark Level: 13
Footnotes:
*New Zealand Word for Jacket.
**those of you this doesn't apply to surely won't receive these words, much as those not of the house of Israel won't recognize the Book of Mormon
***There's this powerful scrying orb-esque invention called a "calander" that I've been using to tell the future.
****Questions of the soul
*****Perhaps the british way of spelling it? Or our ward clerk just wanted to add charachter(s) to the programs.
******I love my mission president, just for the record. He only speaks hard things against the wicked, accordng to the truth. The righteous he justifies, and testifies that they should be lifted up at the last day.
*******Is "they" society here? Because I don't know if society fed me at all. I demand a refund.
Pictures: (I made a special Goigle Photo album just for my 3 favorite people on this list, but for the rest of you, and for Elijah Horne, you can just have pictures at the end of my email.)
Featuring:
-We found weights in someone's yard. We knocked thier door 3 times but they didn't answer, so naturally we started working out. I don't think that's soooooo crazy. But then they DID answer the door and told us not to lift thier weights.
-The juice from the Maori guy
-Guess what happened.
-Devious tactics were used to kidnap this duckling.
