Usually, when Colten sends his weekly emails, he leaves the subject heading blank, or sometimes he may include a date. This week, his email’s subject heading was, “A baptism, cookies, and very expensive goat.” Seeing that subject title made me laugh, even before opening the email. I remember thinking that this would be a good email. He had a baptism last week of a man named Robeson. He may have been baptized before, but if he was, all of the records were lost, so they decided to go back through the lessons and baptize him again to make sure everything was done appropriately. Like a lot of the people of Vanuatu, he is an extremely shy person, barely speaking above a whisper when he did speak. After his baptism was done, Robeson got up in front of the small congregation to speak about his feelings. Robeson emotionally and powerfully expressed the happiness he felt and how his life had changed as he had met with Colten and his companion. As far as the cookies, Colten decided to try his hand at making chocolate no-bake cookies. Those have always been one of Colten’s favorite cookies and he wanted to let his companion, from Tonga, and a group of local teen boys try them. The gang of boys love to hang around Colten and his companion every evening when the missionary work is done for the day. They often bring food to cook and share in the missionaries’ evening meal. Colten sometimes makes them food popular in the US, like spaghetti, which the boys went crazy for. When Colten gave them the no-bake cookies, they loved them, at first. After about 2 cookies they were on a sugar buzz that really un-nerved them. Colten said that they have never had chocolate or refined white sugar before and they were not used to jolt of sugar high they experienced. The only sweets they eat in the islands are wild honey and coconut. When Colten offered them another cookie, one of the young men held up his hands and said, “No, no, those are my worst enemy!” The goat story was my favorite. Transfers are this week, and because Colten and his companion have been together for 3 months, there is a very good chance that one of them will get transferred to another island. Because they are both such close friends with each other and are very sad at the prospect of being separated, they decided they wanted to have one big meal celebrating the time and the success that they have had together as missionary companions. As a break from their near continuous meals of rice, taro, or lap lap; they at first thought about buying a pig and keeping it until this weekend. However, Colten said he has always wanted to try goat, so they set out to find someone willing to sell them a nani (goat). It took them longer than expected to find goat for sale, but after visiting four different villages, they found a guy with one to sale. After some intense bargaining, Colten’s companion was able to get the price of the goat down to an acceptable amount, but it was still expensive for their limited money allowance. Now that the goat was paid for, Colten faced the seemingly easy task of leading it home with a rope. That is where everything went downhill. I don’t know if the goat knew if it was going to be the main dish, or if goats are stubborn in general, but it refused to be led by its lead rope, no matter how hard Colten pulled on it. They finally figured out that you had to get on the side of the animal and whack it on the butt. It would take off running down the trail and Colten and his companion would try to run alongside of it and hold on to the rope. At any possible opportunity, the goat would try to take the wrong path or the wrong turn, and at one point ran them all into a deep hole. Getting 2 missionaries and a hard headed goat out of the hole was even harder than teaching a goat to lead. They eventually got the goat home, and they plan on killing, dressing, and butchering it this weekend just before transfers. Colten said they will wrap it in banana leaves and cook it underground like the native people do. I asked Colten if there were any mission rules about killing your own animals for eating. He reminded me that there are no Walmarts in the islands and that whenever you eat meat, you buy the animal alive, and then have to do everything else yourself. Otherwise you would have to be a vegetarian. I am glad Colten learned how to do this kind of thing at home during the hunting seasons that he loved so much, because I am pretty sure that the Missionary Training Center doesn’t have classes on the butchering of pigs and goats.
Posted on: Thu, 04 Sep 2014 16:38:27 +0000
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