Happy Memorial Day

Aloha nui loa ohana!  Malama Pono:)

So it sounds like you guys have had yet another eventful week on the home front, we had a Memorial Day BBQ yesterday with a really nice family yesterday and they pulled out all the stops.  HUGE burgers, sliced up prepared baked potatoes, fruit out the wazoo, and (this made my day) root beer floats!!!  YES.  So we basically ate ourselves sick yesterday haha.

I'm not going to lie I'm pretty jealous of the seasons right about now, perpetual summer is not all it's choked up to be... it's getting VERY hot and humid now, and our apartment (more like a teeny studio...) doesn't have AC.  I guess I might've been spoiled up to this point, but the past few nights of sleep have been MISERABLE.  You know me, I like to sleep cold, I'll keep my fan in till November if I can...  so this kind of heat that just stays and never goes has been pretty hard to endure, but I'm sure I'm getting no sympathy from Mom on this one since her mission was probably hotter than mine haha.

We had some interesting tracting experiences this week.  We ran into some very angry Born Again Christians who really didn't like us and said some pretty mean things about us.  I always laugh when that happens because I'm like "wow congratulations sir you just spent a couple moments of your life cussing out some twenty year old kids... do you feel good about yourself?"  Whatever makes him sleep at night I guess.

THEN as we were walking back to our car an interesting thing happened.  So a little background - on the way up the hill we stopped by a house and the man was on the phone.  So we asked if we could stop back on the way back down the hill and he said sure. 

I have with me a knife that some members gave me on Molokai... just a substantial pocket knife (maybe 3.5 inches) but I just keep it in my pocket.  

So we're walking back down the hill and we're talking about some funny Polynesian missionary stories and we talked about some Tongans that we knew that got dogs sent after them by some disgruntled locals.  So we're talking about these stories and discussing what we would do in that situation.

Then we start to approach the same house as earlier and then we noticed something that wasn't there the first time around... the man had sent out his big blue nosed pit bull to keep us away. And it wasn't tied up.  So it growls really throaty like, it's hackles go up and it's tail is not wagging, and it slowly walks up to us.  We stop moving and the first thing I do is flick my knife open thinking oh my gosh is this really about to happen???  

Then I get this feeling and a scripture pops into my head and one phrase stuck out to me... Alma 31:5 And now, as the preaching of the word had a great tendency to lead the people to do that which was just—yea, it had had more powerful effect upon the minds of the people than the sword, or anything else, which had happened unto them—therefore Alma thought it was expedient that they should try the virtue of the word of God. 

So I put my knife away, folded my arms, closed my eyes and said a prayer.  Then when I finished I looked down and the pit bull was just sniffing, sniffing, sniffing away at me, then we went and did the same to my companion, then came back to sniffing me then peed right by my foot, went back, peed right by my companion's foot, then trotted away.  

We slowly walk to the car and the whole way the dogs is just string at us growling then we get in and drive away.  But not before we shouted an aloha out the window to the uncle who sent out his dog.

So yeah.  That pretty much sums up this week. Well I gotta go mis amigos.

I love you all so much, thanks for all your support!

Ofa lahi atu:), Elder Brooksby