Curbside Prophet

I love General Conference. I always leave wishing it never ended. I think my favorite talk of the conference was by Elder Holland. I don´t think he´s given a single talk I don´t love to death. If any of you missed it, go watch it right now. haha. How crazy that young men can now leave at 18 and that girls can leave at 19! I also LOVE the new youth teaching program, Come Follow Me. I think it´s a great improvement and will really help the youth have a stronger conversion. From what I understand it will be a mostly online-based program allowing for updated links to new Genereal Conference and Ensign talks. Pretty much it´s a brilliant idea. I´m way excited to see its effects. In preparation for conference my companion and I made some root beer from extract his family sent him AND IT WAS DELICIOUS. Although it wasn´t your typical A&W quality, it sure tasted like it after going rootbeer-less for so long. I also found a giant bar of Hersheys Cookies and Cream in Walmart. IN.CRED.I.BLE. This weekend was pretty great. We had four investigators come to conference which was fantastic, but it seemed like either they didn´t understand everything or got a little bored because they didn´t have much to say afterwords haha. I walked out feeling like I was in the clouds and they were like, "yeeahhhh, I guess it was good." Haha. I couldn´t believe it. But at least they´re exercising their faith. They´re just still making WAY SLOW progress. But we´re not giving up quite yet. If Nephi would have given up the first or second time he attempted to get the plates from Laban he never would have succeeded. The harder something is the better the reward will be. We were actually late to the first session of conference. While we were about 3 blocks away, this guy asked us to help him carry his luggage (which he referred to as his cross). He looked about 27 and was wearing worn out clothes. At first I thought it was just that "worn out" style that a lot of clothes have but his patched beard and odd smell made me consider differently. He told us it would be three blocks but I figured it would be a lot more. And I was right. On the way he told us he was a Jewish missionary from Chile (which seemed a bit weird because he was looking for a Catholic church). We asked him if he believed in the New Testament and in Jesus Christ and he said he did. We were pretty confused. I felt way bad for Elder Drennan because he had to carry this giant duffel bag that apparently was full of bibles and study books and I only had a medium sized bag that rolled on wheels haha. After various blocks he started talking to us in broken English. Our weird conversation in half English and half Spanish got even weirder when he asked two men behind us where the closest Catholic church was. Turns out they were both Catholic priests, one was from Argentina and the other was from Scotland. The one from Argentina was fluent in English and I think the one from Scotland at least understand Spanish. I had no idea if they knew the guy with us understood English or if they knew we understand Spanish but the conversation that followed was quite strange. I wonder what conclusions they made from two Mormon missionaries practically held captive by this self-called "Jewish missionary" looking for a Catholic church on a random street corner in downtown Mendoza. After their instructions we walked where they hadn´t told us to go (obviously) and our journey ended when our friend found the "white cross" he was looking for...which was really the logo of a pharmacy. At one point he told us to walk on the yellow curb because yellow protected him from satan. And before he left I thought he mutter something like "we have been discovered." I wonder if the cop car that had pulled over and parked had anything to do about it... haha. It was the most bewildering experience of my life. Oh, transfers were today, and...I´m staying! Which means I will end my mission without getting to know the other two providences in the mission, but I´m alright with that. I was pretty sure that I was going to stay and I´m glad that´s how it turned out. Elder Drennan is staying too which will be great because we get along good and work well together. Welp, I think that´s about it! With all the love of patchy beards, Elder Lounsbury