HEY!!! HEY, I JUST REALIZED HOW FAR THIS EMAIL HAS TO GO TO GET TO YOU IN THE UNITED STATES, AND YOU PROBABLY COULDN'T HEAR MY LAST EMAIL, SO I'M MAKING THIS EMAIL REALLY REALLY LOUD SO YOU CAN GET IT ALL UNDERSTOOD GOOD! HEY I LOVE YOU ALL!
So this week it seems I'm a little short on stories, so I'm writing you a poem to add to the email (it's in altered haiku prose, 6-10-6 syllables):
If you're eating chicken,
That means you're not killing anybody.
That means you're a good guy.
So vegetarians,
Don't get mad when you see chickens eaten,
Or else you're a bad guy.
-By Elder Prosemaster Reneer
The truth of this poem is based on the assumption that the chicken is already dead before getting eaten, or else the good guy is actually bad, and the vegetarian would definitely be justified in getting mad in that case.
This week has been a bit crazy, between baptismal services, traveling, conferences and the missionary work in general. I'm loving it, and time is flying by out here. With the mission conference we had with the President this last week, Elder Marques and I went to Aracaju to spend the night in a missionary apartment there (and I got to see a buddy from the MTC there!). The missionaries there are good guys, which generally means that the house there is protetced from...supernatural visits.I learned from some missionaries, that out here in the mission field that if you're not living the commandments, and you're serving a mission, then you lose the protection of guardian angels, LITERALLY. It's something you have to be worthy of. So, as is the unfortunate way with some misisonaries that fail to live up to church standards, they unwittingly invite malicious spirits into the house. Nuts, huh? Thing is, they can't do much, except scare you. Elder Marques said that the reason they come around (and Elder Marques's word is good as gold, to be honest), is because they despise the work of the Lord we're doing out here. Actually kinda cool, eh? Not that I WANT to see any of that. But anyways, with that background in mind, I've got a funny story...well, it's funny now, but I was kinda spooked, because I had heard some stories of things happening in many a missionary's house.
So during that night we spent in Aracaju, in ending the day, everybody got together, cooked dinner and ate, showered, went to bed, etc...And it was all good, it had been a good day. So, as I was TOTALLY knocked out on the mattress, happily asleep, when at about 2am I woke up fast when....WHAM! I head a door somewhere in the house SLAM shut, and I woke up instantly, eyes wide open (thing is, I didn't know that it was acutally the neighbor's door). So I was just lying in bed, wide awake now, thinking..."Awww man, this is what they were talking about...spirits doing stuff in the house...aww man..." And so I started analyzing how a spirit might have made it into the house, if one of the misisonaries wasn't keeping the commandments, or whatever. After a little while I relaxed, started falling asleep maybe after 20-30 minutes, started to fall asleep when I heard one of the elder's radio turn itself on and start making a steady clicking sound, pretty loud, and BAM, wide awake again. So I didn't want to move, or do anything, so I waited, and watched as Elder Marques got up and took the battery out (ALSO turns out the radio had a hidden backup battery, and the radio does this all the time, I later learned), and went back to bed. After about another 20 minutes of trying to get myself relaxed enough for sleep, I started dozing off, and then...click click click click from the radio AGAIN (and you can imagine, without my knowledge of the self-starting radio with a backup battery...I was a bit wide-eyed). At THIS point, in my mind, I was without a doubt now that there was a spirit in the house, trying to mess with us. Elder Marques thought it was pretty weird too, but he went back to sleep just a couple minutes later, snoozing while I spent the next 40ish minutes trying to sleep.
SO. Moral of the story? Well, first of all, always sleep with like, a sword, nunchucks, or like a sweet trained spirit wolf that devours spirits from the unseen world, any one of those will generally keep evil away. I recently invested in a book filled with really bad jokes, so that if a spirit comes into the house, I'll just start reading some to him, to make him be like, "Oh Jimmeny Cricket, why am I wasting my time here, this elder stinks, he's already hopeless, can't even crack a half-decent joke. I'm outta here, no way I'm gonna waste my time with this depressing wannabe." I'm personally pretty convinced this is the best method, because it's only limited by the range of the sound of my voice, so I could probably get at least 200-300 spirits to leave at a time, probably more if they start booing me or something like that.
Other than that, the last week has just flown by, and been awesome. We've ALSO baptized a couple more this week! So, in the last week, out of the 8 baptisms Elder Marques and I have gotten together, 5 have been in the last 2 1/2 weeks. It's awesome! And this week We baptized a 20 something year-old girl that's been dating a member of the church (they're gonna get married!), and he had been trying to get her ready to be baptized for a long time, because her family is full of opposed catholics. It was probably the happiest this I've seen on the mission, she was crying half the time, eerybody was smiling, it was SO COOL!
And I thought it appropriate to send you a photo of me getting ready to get the baptismal font clean, where I'll hopefully be every week of the mission (I hope!), and photo of Elder Marques and I after the baptism.
LOVE YOU ALL SO VERY MUCH!
BYE!
Elder Daniel Filledwithloveforyourightnow Reneer
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