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I served my mission in OZ with quite a few Maoris. I was always amazed by the deeply spiritual ancient oral traditions they'd share with us about their "Lamanite" heritage, which all just happened to confirm the Book of Mormon account.

Now I know it was just a bunch of BS and the Maoris were probably just trying to curry favor with the Mission President by telling tall tales that validated the Book of Mormon.

Pretty funny in hindsight actually, since the Maoris were about the least concerned with obeying the white handbook. It seemed their main mission was finding the next hungi to throw down, hauka to perform, or rugby game to play. They had a real thing for pork bones and pooha and ice cream.

I was Zone leader for a bunch of Maoris and I had one group of them down in the furthest district away from mine who were going out to movies every weekend with the members and every day was basically a big party.

One funny story about a Maori I served with named Dalton Winera. He was a rugby player and I think he took a few too many shots to the head without a helmet. We knock on the door of this feminist exmormon. She tells us she used to be Mormon but resigned from the church because she was disgusted by the patriarchal heirarchy.

I hear Winera say, "Hi Rockey!?!?!? Hi Rockey?!?!?!? What's a Hi Rockey?!?!?!?"

I had to explain to him that she wasn't saying "Hi Rockey, but heirarchy, which was a pyramidal social order." At which point the woman slams the door.

And Winera says, "Well if that's what she meant then why didn't she just say so? Why does she have to use all those fancy words?"

I just shook my head and carried on.

The one nice thing about him was that I never had to worry about my safety with him.

If anybody taunted us he'd just go beat the s*** out of them. One time a whole gang of kids was giving us a hard time when we stopped at a light at a corner on our bikes. I said, "The hell with this, I'm outa here" and took off. One of the kids took off after me and tried to knock me off my bike. I stuck my leg out and knocked him down and kept going. I get down the hill and no Winera. I look up the street and see a siloette of this huge Maori beating the s*** out of the kid who tried to knock me off my bike. By the time I get back up the hill the whole gang has Winera surrounded with knives pulled. I talked them down from stabbing Winera. They stabbed his bike tires instead. Fortunately we got out of that with a couple of popped tires.

Later on he got to feeling guilty about beating up one of the natives and went and confessed to the MP.

The MP asked him, "Who won?"

He told everybody in the mission that I got scared and abandoned him and he had to defend himself.

If it wasn't for me he would've been dead.

So what's you're mision story?

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In Japan I had this one senior companion, a native, who, when riding his bike, was pretty much oblivious to everything else around him.

He was in the lead one day, and we were riding along the sidewalk with some sort of guardrail on one side and a cement wall on the other. Some older man, also on a bike, was going the opposite direction and was thus headed toward us. He was hauling a bunch of stuff in these baskets mounted on the handlebars and over the rear wheel, so he had some momentum.

Anyway, the tip of my companion's handlebar made contact with the guy's front basket, causing the guy's handlebars to wrench to the side. This of course caused his steering to veer off sharply, and the old man went plowing into the cement wall. All his goods in the rear basket pretty much pinned him to the wall, and there he was, flapping his limbs and flailing about, when I passed him.

I wanted to stop and help, but I was a brainwashed young missionary who wanted to obey all the rules and thus didn't dare let my senior companion out of my sight, so I rode on by.