"Igualamente"

Igualamente is a saying that they have down here that basically means "you too." Like someone will say "Que le vaya bien" which basically means like "I hope everything goes well for you" and then someone will respond "Igualamente" and return the salutaion. Anyways, this week we were opening up the mouth with the lady and her two little kids and we just talked about her family and how the gospel will help raise her kids and bring success. When we were done Elder Robinson said "Good luck with the kids" and just out of custom or habit she responded "Igualamente" haha. Get it? We don´t have any... It reminded me of the Brian Regan joke of "You too!" and I thought it was funny because it was happening to me in another country and in Spanish.

This week for March Madness we had a focus on Assistances (Attendences) and little Bowen pulled through and helped our Zone to another win with 5! We played these kids at soccer and whoever lost had to buy the other team a soda. We lost (except not really because this kid always changed the score) but we said that we´d have their soda along with banana bread at church the next day haha. They´re friends with members so it wasn´t too big of a deal for them to go but they did and even their mom came as well. So that was pretty cool, I think we´re going to try to start teaching them this week.

So the reason I´m writing this a day late (again) is because we had interviews with President yesterday in San Rafael. We had a sweet game of soccer against the Zone from San Rafael on a full 11 vs. 11 field. Zone bragging rights were on the line. They started out well with a 2-1 lead early on but Zone Alvear doesn´t give up. We fought back and ended up winning by a lot actually haha. It was way fun. Interviews with President kind of took a while so we didn´t get back home until pretty late. He just asked questions to kinda get to know me better and he said he´s going to try to find a stud latin to put with me next transfer so that´ll be a fun change. I think I´ll only have one more interview with him before he leaves and the new Mission President comes in.

On another Spanish note, I learned the word for tuna this week. However, when I asked Elder Robinson about it the member we were eating with asked what I said and then said that in some places that´s a bad word. Haha. I don´t really know where exactly but I guess if you´re ever in a Spanish speaking country, be careful to discuss tuna very much. haha.

Other than that this week was pretty normal. We found a couple more solid investigators to teach, one of them is Flipa and her husband who have been to church before and almost got married so they could get baptized but I think moved before anything happened. So hopefully we can finish what other missionaries started for us but we´ll see. Teresa didn´t get baptized yet but we´re hoping to try harder for this Saturday. Vamos a ver. Other than that we´ll still working with the husbands of all the Bolivan sisters. Two of them need to get married and one of them needs to quit smoking. We´re making progress but it´s kinda slow and delicate because we don´t want to mess anything up and do something that the members will get offended by or something. Also, the mission focuses so much on finding new people to teach that sometimes it´s hard to really focus in on a lot of people and go by their houses close to everyday so we have to pick only a couple of people to really focus on and then just help the others progress a little at a time.

Welp, I can´t think of much else

With all the love of a bottle-nosed dolphin,

Elder Lounsbury