"And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat upon him was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword and with hunger, and with death, and with all the beasts of the earth." -Revelations 6:8
Well, it's been a week. I don't know weather to call it a good week or a bad week, but it was without a doubt 7 days of time that will never ever return so in that regard it's been a week. You might wonder what's up with the title of this week's email. Or the quote. Or anything I say these days. While I can't answer the third query I can handle the first two, because that's the entire point of my email this week. Bottom line is, there are four unspeakable evils that rule the land of Kekaha (pronounced by saying the word 'cake' and then 'aha') and logically, because they are unspeakable, were going to spend this whole day talking about them just because we can. This is called irony, and it's what we make jokes out of when it's 3 in the morning and we're writing our weekly email instead of sleeping because we can't sleep. Joy to the world. That's as much of an intro as I am going to give you this week, so buckle up boys and girls and get ready to go on a trip in your favorite rocket ship: the rocket ship of knowledge that leads to the magical land of Kekaha, ruled by the Iron fists of these four 'horsemen'. None of which ride actual horses.
#1. The Fugly Ducklings
OK, so ever since I got here, there have been these two weird goose-looking things waddling around here hissing at us, and they're the most disturbing looking creatures I've ever seen in my life. I think they're supposed to live across from us in the house next door, but for the past two weeks they've instead decided to make a home for themselves on our driveway, which we never use because we don't have a car. (fingers crossed on us getting one soon) I can't say they are really that bothersome because they don't honk or quack at us or anything, all they do is wag their tail feathers and hiss and chase us around at full speed. OK so maybe they bother me, and maybe they keep us hostage in our own house sometimes, and we may or may not pay tribute to them so that they will let us live, but that's beside the point. Yesterday night Dullahan and I attempted to chase them away, but we shall see if that works permanently or not by the end of the day I presume. We call these two creatures the Fugly Ducklings because of their physical appearance, which is extremely ugly and deformed according to the appearance of most other birds of their nature. They aren't nay nays, I know that, because I feel like I've seen them before somewhere, so if any of you know what these misshapen monster geese are, then you know where to find me. If you don't know who Dullahan is, I'll explain later, just have patience for now. Anyway, that's the Fugly Ducklings.
#2. The Hallelujah Boys
In case you didn't know this yet, we live in a small cinder block cube that is stationed about 50 feet from the church building. Right across the street from our meeting house, is a regular house. But oh boy, the people living inside are anything but. They've set up their own church in their backyard, and all they do is play amature-hour chirstian rock and sing the same lyrics over and over. They only really have three songs. One just goes "glory glory, HAAAAAAALELUJAH!" over and over (which is the most common song, and also the most annoying, hence why we call them the Hallelujah Boys). Another is just "open up heaven, make it RAAAAAAIN ON MEEEEEEE" over and over. I believe this one is a crowd favorite or a new release or something because they have begun to play this one a lot more often and I hadn't heard them play it ever up until a few days ago. The third is the most offensive one. Not really because of lyrics, those are just "praise the Jesus God, he is our king" on endless repeat, but it bothers me because of the timing when they play it. The only way you can tell which song is which is by listening to the lyrics, because the beat is always exactly the same. Now before anything else, let me just say that I have absolutely no problem with other churches. You're welcome to believe what you want to believe, and if that involves singing all day, more power to you. Heck, we sing hymns every week. Here's what I have a problem with. These guys used to have an actual schedule of Sundays and Thursdays at set times, but over the course of the past few weeks, they've made what they call an adjustment. They found out what time we have sacrament meeting at, and they play their music as loud as they can at the same time as sacrament on purpose because they dislike us. Yeah, really. Anytime that we have cars in our parking lot, they decide that's a new time for a concert. And because they hold their church service under a pavilion in their backyard, you can hear them from anywhere in the entire neighborhood. Including inside the church building. They do this purely because they want to disrupt our church service because they think our religion is incorrect, and that is my problem with them. That, and they're extremely loud and extremely repetitive, which gets old....really, really quick. If they had some sort of building to worship in I wouldn't even care because at least then I wouldn't be hearing loud disruptive music while trying to take the sacrament. Anyway, that's them, and they don't like us very much.
#3: The Chickens
I actually love the chickens, and when I said there weren't that many of them, I was unprepared for the onslaught to come. Every morning at exactly the crack of dawn comes the roosters. They come from everywhere around us. All over the whole island in fact. And all of them crow. At the same time. Every day. Which means we're up. Every morning. At exactly the crack of dawn. It's wonderful. Sometimes we're tired enough to sleep through it. Today was not one of those days. Other than the times when they wake me up early, I don't really mind having to deal with chickens. They're fine by me.
#4: The Great Unknown
There's gotta be a fourth thing out here to whine about, but I'm not sure what it is. Maybe it's the boiling sun that makes me feel like the physical embodiment of those banana chip things that are sun dried in California. Maybe it's the lack of wifi. I dunno. But that's all for that so I'm moving on to a new subject now.
Thanksgiving was amazing. We were fed by the Morley family, and it was almost better than eating at home. They are the coolest members. Our rules for Thanksgiving were that we were to do regular missionary work until 6:00pm, at which point we were free to eat with members if they invited us. Here's what the Morley family did to get around that. They said, "what if we have an important service project for you to do before dinner, and that just so happens to start at 11:00am?" For those of you who don't get it, the service project was basically help entertain the kids while dinner gets cooked, but because we are calling it service, show up in service clothes, also known as P Day clothes. We played games like Harry Potter Gnome Toss and Monopoly, and then we had dinner at 3:00pm, but because the Morleys also made homemade pie, we stayed until 6:00pm and after that we went home and finally finished a 1000 piece puzzle of Oahu's north shore we found in the closet three weeks ago. I didn't wear church clothes that whole entire day, and it was glorious. That puzzle took us three weeks to finish, and we keep saying we're going to destroy it, but thus far, we have not. Instead we kind of use it as a table cloth. We'll destroy it someday. Promise. Probably. Jeremy the Gecko is still around, and I've surpassed my 500 day mark, plus my next trip to Japan is already planned and flight tickets have been bought, so I have a great deal to be grateful for this year. We visited with Walt again this week, and it went incredibly well, and we're teaching Rikki the Heropon about the plan of salvation on Tuesday, and he really seems interested, so I'm grateful for those things too. There are quite a few pictures this week, so brace for impact.
Until next week friends!
-ELDER ROGERS
Pictures: The Puzzle. Which we finally finished on Thanksgiving. We found this cool tortoise while talking to a potential investigator. Me at Walt's house. He has the master sword. It's actually metal and custom made for Breath of the Wild and he let me take a picture with it. Finally, I continue working with those pens as much as I can. I drew Captain Falcon from Super Smash Bros. (technically F-Zero) for Elder York and it turned out cool. Now I'm working on Shulk.
This was a special occasion when Elder York hit his four month mark. Thanks to funding from an outside source (thanks parents!!) we were able to treat ourselves to dinner in a less dry area of Kauai. It was great and Elder York was very, very grateful.
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