Elijah and laundry

Dr. Turner was sick yesterday, so I ended up teaching three class periods. Consequently, I was able to finish up my Malachi class this morning. I have the devotional time tomorrow, and I probably will preach in Dandi or somewhere on Sunday, but other than that, my responsibilities are almost over.
I covered the 4th chapter of Malachi today. It’s mostly a warning about the coming “day of the LORD” with its judgment on the wicked and the satisfaction and joy of the righteous. It was a little bit smoother sailing than yesterday. There are several verses in chapter 3 that are difficult to translate, and therefore difficult to understand and apply. The biggest difficulty in chapter 4 is deciding whether or not John the Baptist fulfilled the prophecy of Elijah’s return in verses 5 and 6. John’s dad prophesies that he will minister in the spirit and power of Elijah, and Jesus says that John the Baptist was Elijah, if you can accept it. But John the Baptist explicitly said that he wasn’t Elijah. The answer is possibly found in Matthew 17, where Jesus says, “Elijah comes” after John the Baptist died. So, it seems that John was the fulfillment of Malachi 3:1 but not Malachi 4:5-6. Elijah may be one of the two witnesses who stand in the streets and preach for 3 ½ years during the Tribulation (if you can accept it). Aren’t you glad you read that paragraph? Time well spent.
Anyhow, there was a power outage shortly after class, so that put a damper on my plans to do laundry. I had some battery left on my computer, so I went online to check e-mail and chatted for a few moments with a high school buddy, Rick, and my erstwhile Yahoo! Spades partner, Weezy. Rick just got back from a missions trip to Yakama Indian Reservation, so we chatted about that a little, until I ran out of battery.
When the power came back on, I did enough laundry to get me through the rest of the trip. Doing laundry is a blog of its own, but the short version is: You fill 2 or 3 buckets of water from a faucet in the shower. You dump them in the washing machine and add some soap. Then you put the clothes in and start the timer. The timer ticks but the machine doesn’t agitate. You decide the load’s too heavy, so you take some clothes out. You continue taking out more and more clothes. Soon all the clothes are out, but it’s still not agitating. You worry that you burned out the motor. You go ask Mrs. Turner if there’s some trick to making the washer agitate. She suggests flipping the switch on the outlet. You go back to the bathroom and flick the switch. The washer begins agitating. You put the clothes back in. You take the jeans back out, because they’re too heavy. After a few minutes, you take some other clothes out and put the jeans back in. After a few more minutes, you take all the clothes out and drain the water into the shower. You rinse out the washer tub and add 2 or 3 more buckets of water. You put the clothes back in, sans jeans, natch, and rinse for a while. Etc., etc. You get the picture.