Happy Monday, errahbody! It's been a
pretty good week. We preached the gospel. It rained a smidge. And I also
learned the important difference between a "barita magia" (magic
wand) and a "batida magia" (magic milkshake). If that's not success,
I don't know what is.
I love my area. I really do. It's
reminded me a bit of home. It's full of nice people. It's also confirmed to me
just how well the gospel of Harry Potter has been preached throughout the
world. We were teaching a less-active guy out in the boonies of the boonies
where there aren't even roads, just trails. Nor are there cows. Just pigs that look like
cows.
And somehow, we got on the subject of childhood disappointments and I
mentioned that perhaps the saddest moment of my life was my 11th birthday, when I ran to the mailbox to find I hadn't gotten a letter from Hogwarts. My
muggleness was confirmed when Dumbledore didn't reply to the letter I sent to
him (although in hindsight, that kind of makes sense. I turned 11 in 2006 and
since Harry started school in the late 90s, he would've been a sixth year in
2004 or 2005 at the latest, which means that chronologically speaking,
Dumbledore would've been too dead to respond..... Holy hippogriffs!!!!) Before
long, we were deeply engaged in a conversation about whether it's possible to
Apparate to safety if you fall off your broom and if so, why don't people do that from the ground? Why isn't high-altitude
Apparition sky-diving a thing?
And then the ridiculosity of the situation hit
me.
We were sitting under a guava tree in front of a corrugated tin shack in a
rural suburb of a rural suburb that would have to at least triple its average
daily income to be classified as "poor". Talking about the
feasibility of Aparition skydiving and lamenting in turn, "I never liked
Malfoy," and "Severus didn't have to die like that." Haha so
that's Consuelo for you.
Oh, it's also the area where my mission
dad died. (went home) Yup.
So I was pretty tired last Thursday.
We'd been out in the pouring rain all day and I was cold and ready for bed. I
flew through the calls with the sisters and zone leaders and peaced out of
consciousness a half hour early. Well, I'd been frolicking through raspberry
fields in Dallin Happy Dreamland for only an hour or two when when all of a
sudden, I was jerked awake by a noise in the kitchen. First it was just a quiet
tapping. A gentle noise. Like little celestial teardrops. And then I could hear
the sound of ripping. And then something that sounded like a sort of choked
screaming. Welp. I wasn't sure what the Freddy Krueger was out there, but I was
sure that I was gonna stay right the heck under my sheet and calmly figure out
what to do about my urine-drenched trousers.
Well, I'd only been there for a couple of minutes, right about the time when the pleasant part of having wet yourself wears off and you're just cold, when I heard the voice of Capt. Henry Pearson Crowe
echoing in my ears, "You'll never get the purple heart hiding in a foxhole!
Follow me!" Goshdangit inspirational World War Two quotes. Fine. FINE! I
didn't know what was interrupting my field frolicking with the sounds of the
folks in Tartarus, but I was gonna find out. Or it was gonna kill me. Whatever.
I threw the sheet off and dragged my sleep-drunk derreire into the entryway of
the kitchen. I stared intently into the darkness for a second. The ripping and
yowling stopped. And then a sleek black shape shot out of the shadows and
darted toward me.
Okay. So. I have to clarify. I wasn't
exactly sure what to do in such a situation. My constitution when it comes to
dark spirits and hellhounds and other ethereal thingies that want to kill me
isn't really. Um. Bulletproof. So I contemplated my options. I could cry for
help. Maybe try to beat the snot out of the thing. I briefly considered
vomiting. Finally, I made a split-second judgment call and decided on
staggering backward and inhaling sharply, sucking what felt like a liter of
spit into my windpipe and nearly choking to death. If this sounds like a stupid
reaction to you, well, stuff it. It was unconventional, but darn if it
didn't work. That sucker ran right past me and jumped out the window. And that
was when I realized, heart pumping and red-faced, that it was a cat. . . A FREAKING CAT!!!!! It had come in through the window and choked on a chicken bone it scrounged out of
our trash. GAAAAHHH!!!!!
Apart from that, it was sort of a good
week. It was a good lesson on perspective. It rained and rained and rained and
was a very large pain in the buttocks. I got sick and we spent one day in the
house where I spent all of my free time in bed and the other half in the
bathroom. There were a couple of fights with people. One guy who looked like
the goldenest of golden contacts stopped us in the middle of our first lesson
and was like, "Would you doubt that I'm one of the gods of the
Apocalypse?" And I was like, "Uh, yes?" and he kicked us out of
his house into the aforementioned rain. We got rained into the branch president's
house with a chorus of children who were either impersonating drunk walruses or
singing Christmas carols FOR FOUR HOURS!!!!! This week very
well could have sucked.
 |
| Elder Walters kissing a "fanny" |
But then, we were able to share the
gospel with many wet and muddy people who needed a pick-me-up, we learned an
important lesson about how to let down people who think they're deities, I got
yet another dose of appreciation for good health, and we got some quality
bonding time with the friends of our branch president's family. Oh, and we had
two investigators pass baptismal interviews which means that I'm baptizing for
the first time in four months and more importantly, two children of God are
going to make the first covenants with their Heavenly Father. Huzzah!!!!!
Yeah, it was a good week.
Hoping y'all have one of your own,
Dallin
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