Bowen Brothers

Hey family!! I just read your email and I´m glad you all are having fun at the beach with out me haha. Don´t worry, I´m doing splendid over here. And, don´t get confused by the title of this email/blog post, I´m not in Bowen anymore! My new companion is Elder Hunter. He is from Phoenix Arizona and he was in Bowen the transfer before I was there! He knows Carlee Terry and was in the same MTC district as Matt Lyle. Haha so some pretty random/crazy connections there. It´s fun talking about the members or how terrible the shower was or just joking about good ol´ Bowen. But I am writing this email from the heart of Mendoza!!! I loved this week. My new area is in a part of Mendoza called Las Heras (just a pronounciation tip, the "H" doesn´t make a sound). My area is called Pascual Segura, just because it´s the name of the road that the chapel is on. That´s right, I have a chapel now. And a ward. With a bishop, three hours of church, youth, and the whole 9 yards. Our area is pretty big, it´s like a 30 minute walk to our chapel haha. But I´m super excited to get to know the city a bit. Downtown Mendoza is incredible. There´s everything from giant outlet stores (which pretty much only sell soccer stuff here so it´s heaven) to McDonalds and just everything else you can think of. It´s soooo freaking huge. But I love it to death. I´ve never really been in a big city like this for a large amount of time, let alone one in another country. My life is like a sandwhich with everything on it.

The futbol team in my area of Mendoza is called Huricán (once again, don´t say the "H") and I think they just got promoted from a lower division to a higher one so the fans here are going crazy. I think they went from Division C to Division B so they´re not quite at the highest one yet but everyone still is loving it. On Thursday when the team traveled to where their game was this weekend there were people on cars and motorcycles honking and waving the team´s flag down the main street of our area. Then on Saturday and Sunday we could hear people doing the same thing from our aparment, which is pretty close to that main road. I tried to send a video of what we heard so hopefully you can get a little taste of what it´s like. Speaking of futbol, I see a lot more here than I did in Bowen. There are dirt and cement courts everywhere, and you can see people playing on at least some of them during practically all hours of daylight. It´s incredible. But all I want to do is play with them so in that sense it´s just torture haha.

Other random stories from this week. I saw a dog on a roof (apparently that´s a common occurence here?) and I saw a dog with 3 legs. Like I don´t just mean it had a broken or messed up leg that it couldn´t use so it hobbled around a little bit on 3 of its legs. I mean it literally only had three legs. It was a super strange sight. I´m trying to think of other stories from this week...Mostly it´s just a lot of change. Elder Hunter only has 3 more transfers than me so we´re both pretty young but we´re doing well. It´s harder to improve my spanish now because all we do is speak English in the street but I´m well enough off where I can pretty much say anything I want to with confidence. I never really thought of myself as bilingual yet but I guess I am now so I guess that´s pretty cool! haha.

Well family, I miss you all a ton. I´m glad to hear you are all doing well.

Love, Elder Lounsbury