Normality

Hello Family!

This week has been pretty normal. On Tuesday we had Zone Conference which was awesome as always. We talked a lot about using the less active members to find people to teach and at the same time help the less active members come back to activity. We also talked about teaching shorter lessons which I think will help us be more productive. We talked about different ways to find people to teach like through family history or doing service. There´s a lot of stuff that we´re supposed to be doing right now and sometimes it´s hard to take it all in and apply it but we´re doing it little by little and I think it´s going to pay off.

I was able to do a baptismal interview this week for the sister missionaries in my district and it was way cool. I think sometimes God gives you a little extra spirit in situations like that. The lady was pretty nervous so I had to spend a lot of time trying to help her feel comfortable and then we had to review a couple things to help her feel more prepared for her baptism. A lot of time the people are way prepared but they don´t feel like it so we have to help them see that they really are. At the very end she was still trying to kinda put off her baptism for a couple weeks so I was just like, alright, let´s say a prayer and ask God. And she did, and afterwords I was like alright, how do you feel? Do you think God wants you to get baptized this week? And after that she chose to do it this Saturday instead of putting it off. It was a way cool experience.

Other that that this week both Elder Hibbert and I have been a little under the weather so it´s been hard to stay excited because we´ve just felt sick and without much energy haha. But, we´re feeling better and I think next week we´re going to have a great week. We really want to try to find more people to teach because right now the main people we have need to get married and that takes a while here in Argentina. The good news is, the lady of one of the couples we´re teaching has started warming up to us (now that she has it clarified that we don´t worship Joseph Smith, that we celebrate birthdays and it´s alright to drink soda) haha. She still feels like the Book of Mormon is something super foriegn so we´re going to keep working on that next week.

In other sad news, I kicked that ball you sent to me for Christmas over the fence while we were playing today and so far we haven´t been able to find the people home so I´m a bit nervous/disppointed it could be gone forever. We´re going to go back and see if the people are home in a little bit so keep your fingers crossed for me will you? Thanks.

Welp, with all the love of a fence just a couple feet too short,

Elder Lounsbury

Valle Grande

Hey family! Sorry I didn´t get to write much last week, how did you all enjoy General Conference? I absolutely loved it to death. Like seriously, I am pretty jealous of all you people who can download them and listen to them on your way to school or soccer practice etc. because I already want to listen to them again and I don´t want to have to wait to read them in next months Liahona. haha. I suppose patience is a virtue huh?

General Conference was a great booster which was great because this week was a bit tough. It wasn´t terrible but there were a couple disappointing moments. The family that we were teaching who came to church two weeks ago dropped us because the mom read something in the bible and interpretted it weirdly and made it out to mean we don´t need churches and that she´s "not looking for a label" even though we know that the name we carry is that of Christ. I just felt awful that night because I knew she was missing out on so much and I had seen true desires to find God. But in the end she relied on her own wisdom and wouldn´t put the promise in the Book of Mormon to the test by reading and then asking God in sincere prayer. Everyone has their agency and at least she now has a good relationship with the missionaries and maybe will have her heart softened sometime in the future. We´re told no effort is wasted but sometimes it´s still hard to feel like that haha.

I don´t know if you all noticed but to me it seemed like there were a lot of talks in General Conference focused on fullfiilling our callings and the role we can play in bring inactives back to the Sheperds fold. I especially noticed it in Priesthood Session. As missionaries we definitely see a need for that, there´s been a new focus on "real growth" which means families sealed in the temple and that every member can have a current temple reccommend. In every ward I´ve been in I think it would be safe to say less than half the people on the ward directory are active. So we´re definitely seeing the need for a bigger focus on less actives and with so many people inactive the missionaries can´t do it by themselves. We´ve been working with a couple of these families in our ward. The idea is we can teach them, help them feel the spirit again and remember what they´ve felt before and then strenght them by helping them share the gospel with a neighbor and a friend--which is where we can come in and do what we´re called to do. That last step is vital because if we don´t meet any new people that we can possible teach through those families then we´re just full time home teachers instead of full time missionaries. So this week we´ve been trying to find new people to teach specifically from these families, and like three times this week it looked like it was going to work perfectly--we were in the house talking with non-members--and every time it pretty much failed. haha. Either they left right when we started sharing our message or they refused to keep listening in another date. Sooooo, that part was also kind of a bummer this week. I think we might have thought of it like every person we teach who fits that situation will listen to us and obviously it´s not that easy. But we´re going to keep working at it, because if we can get it right our productivity will double by simply focusing our efforts more effectively.

Last but not least, we took a little escursion today and went to this dam that everyone talks about here. I think I kinda had my expectations up because seriously, anyone you talk to here will tell you it´s the most beautiful thing on earth. I also think it doesn´t help that I was raised in the most legit tree-filled state ever, but to me it was just a lake surrounded by some pretty ugly idaho-like rocks and dirt. haha. Nah, it was fun to get out and do something different for P-day. It made me super miss hiking and backpacking though.

Welp, with all the love of a big thing of water,

Elder Lounsbury

General Conference

Hey thanks for all of those notes from the fam! You´re right, I loved conference to death. I was on such a spiritual high, I didn´t want it to end at all. I pretty much loved all of the talks but priesthood had some great ones about our responsibility and in the others I loved the focus on family. I had a pretty decent week this week, we were a little bummed because that awesome family we taught has kinda lost a bit of interest and we had a lesson that was kinda all over the place but we haven´t given up hope yet. However, the mom is the one most interested and she needs to get married and before she can do that the guy she´s with needs to have his divorced finished. THe good news is that they´ve already started the divorce, but the bad news is the legal system is horrible here and so it always takes forever. Besides that this week was pretty normal. Sorry I didn´t have more time to write a bit more but just know I´m doing great and I appreciate your love and support! Thanks for everything all of you guys do.

Love you all a million,

Elder Lousnbury

Who let the dogs out?

Holaaaaaaaaaaa. Man, I am just feeling on top of the world this week. It´s been a pretty decent week, we had a couple long days where it seemed like no one was home and that we just walked around everywhere (which feeling was probably exaggerated in my mind due the fact that I was ridicously sore from playing soccer on Monday) but all in all it was a pretty great week.

I can´t remember if I told you all about the family we met at the end of last week but they are awesome. The mom´s sister is a member so she already has a basic concept of what the church is and we´ve been teaching 4 of her sons and they´re all just great. The first time we taught her her kids weren´t there so when they were there we repassed over everything we had taught and it basically turned into the mom explaining to them the apostasy and the restoration. It was fantastic.

On Sunday morning we had agreed to walk by their house at 8:45 and walk with them to chruch and when we got there a little late at 8:50 they had already left and were like a block ahead of us. It was so great to see that, it is super rare to find people who have that much dedication and will actually do that kinda thing. The only kinda of odd thing is that their dog followed us all the way to the church and somehow got inside during the middle of sacrament meeting. Luckily they were able to get it out super fast or else maybe they would have felt embarrassed or maybe someone would have said something that offended them and they wouldn´t want to come back. We´re super excited to bring them to General Conference next week. Seriously I love General Conference so much. I can hardly wait. I am going to buy so many oreos and chips and chocolate.

The other main investigators we have need to get married so it´ll be a little bit of time until they get baptized but their both super solid and have been to church multiple times. I just love teaching awesome people like them.

I hear things are kinda starting to warm up over there--well maybe not in Oregon since apparently it snowed over spring break but at least from what Cheryl says it´s getting nice in Utah haha. Things over here are starting to cool off a bit. In the morning and in the nights it´s getting a bit chilly but during the day it feels great. Since this zone is pretty south I think it´s gonna be a pretty cold winter. I´m excited to break out the apple cider and hot chocolate again.

Welp, that´s all I got.

With all the love of an obsessive dog,

Elder Lounsbury

El Cerrito!!!!

Hellooo family!!!! I am currently writing you from San Rafael! It's a zone more to the south of our mission. It's like an hour north of Alvear where I started, and my area actually remeinds me a ton of my first one. It's a lot bigger (we actually have a ward) but a couple times I've seen/heard/smelt something that gave me a flashback to my first area. Most of the roads are just dirt or rocks, there are a couple paved roads but they're mostly broken apart. Just like my first area I see people outside watering the dirt infront of their house or outside talking and drinking mate and it's just wonderful. I think I've gotten too used to the whole Argentina culture so I'm making it goal this transfer to try to take note of them and enjoy them in the moment. For example, the other day we had a lesson with a couple and there were chickens walking around in the yard like they owned the place. I gotta start enjoying those weird things that seem completely normal to me now haha.

I love my companion. His name is Elder Hibbert and he's from Arizona and he's a great worker. I think we're going to have a great transfer together. It for sure has started out great....we had a baptism on Saturday!!!!! I kinda just walked in to that one but it's still awesome!! Her name is Paula, she's dating a member and her investigating the church has kinda started getting him active so that's also great. I've only taught her like twice but she seems pretty cool. It was definitely hard leaving my last area, just because I'd been there for so long and I got to know both the members and the investigadores so well, I seriously felt like I was walking into my home ward when I walked in that place, but so far this ward seems great as well. Before the baptism on Saturday the Elders quorom cleaned the church and had an asado and even though the majority of them just showed up for the asado and didn't really help clean much it was still awesome haha.

Yesterday we started teaching a family who seems super cool. The mom is the sister of a member in a different ward here in San Rafael and she's kinda going through a hard time so they invited us over. We basically just got to know them yesterday--there's the mom and the dad and then 4 kids--but we have an appointment to come back and I have pretty high hopes for them.

Basically I'm just having a blast down here. I hope you all are too.

With all the love of a little hill,

Elder Lounsbury

Jello and Flour

Yesterday we had the greatest ward party ever. We were a little nervous people weren't going to show up or that they weren't going to like the games that we had planned but it definitely turned out better than we were expecting. We knew that people were going to show up late (it always happen here) so we planned a game we could do while people were stilling arriving. Everyone got a piece of paper that had a list of things they needed to make out of newspaper and a number which corresponded to someone else playing the game to whom they need to give whatever they made. So for example, my paper said I needed to make a hat for number 18 and then make a shoe for number 7 and give him a hug. So everyone was frantically trying to make all of these ridiculous things out of newspaper and some tape. It was fantastic. I got a pretty sweet hat belt and watch. Other people had newspaper ties or bowties, masks, swords you name it. I can definitely say it was the most fun I've had with newspaper. It sounds pretty simple but it fantastically to break the ice and get everyone comfortable.

Then we moved on to the group games. Everyone sat down and pulled out a little piece of paper that had an animal on it that was taped to the bottom of their chair. They had to find their group by making the sound of their animal so all at once the whole cultural hall was filled with mooing and quacking etc. It was hilarious. There were 5 groups the corresponded to 5 different games. One game consisted of picking up an M&M by sucking through a straw and putting it into a bowl 10 feet away. In another people rolled marbles from one end of a table to the other trying to get it stuck on certain strips of double sided tape. We had the classic game where you have a bunch of candies inside a bowl of flour and the group members have to get it out without using their hands (aka search for it with their nose and dig it out trying to get as little flour as possible inside your mouth). Even though it's a classic watching people like the bishop and his wife doing it was just way too funny.

However, my personal favorite consisted of all of the group members laying down face up, covering their top half with a towel and opening their mouths as wide as possible as one group member went from one to the other trying to drop jello in their mouths from a standing position. We had so much fun with that one. At the very end we still had parts of two bowls of jelly left so I got down to volunteer and ended up pretty much just getting heaps of jello poured on my face. I think after the first spoonful they stopped trying to get it in my mouth and starting aiming for my face. haha. But it was so great.

Other than that this week has been pretty calm. We've just been finishing up the last things in the offices I feel like I absolutely need to do/teach before I leave (I should be emailing you from a different place next week) but I'm starting to feel pretty ready to leave. It's going to be a strange experience because I feel like the last time I had a normal missionary schedule I didn't really understand much of how to teach or deal with the people and I kinda just followed my companion around. Now at that I'm going to go back to that normal missionary schedule I feel like I understand wayyyy more of how to be a missionary so it's going to be great seeing that difference.

Welp, hope you all have a fantastic week!!

With all the love of a jello-and-flour-filled nose,

Elder Lounsbury

Vendimia

Once every 12 full moons there comes a time of special celebration here in Mendoza known throughout the vineyard capital as "Vendimia". The word means "grape harvest" and I don't really know where it comes from or why they celebrate it here but they have festivals for pretty much every other fruit (there was a plum festival when I was in my first area) so why shouldn't they have one for grapes as well? --especially because that's what Mendoza is known for. Like I said, I don't know who planned the details of how to celebrate it, but somehow they fit in a kind of Ms. Mendoza pageant as a central focus. The preparations for this big party start somewhere in February when all of the departments in Mendoza (aka different sections of the city) and other outlaying cities (like Alvear where my first area was) select a queen who will represent their city or department. Later in February, posters of said representatives start lining the streets, filling bus windows and probably also filling the trash because they're just everywhere. I'm not really sure but I've heard it's possible that the city or departments get money if their queen wins, hence the propaganda.

Anyways, pretty much all of that is just build up to this giant parade that happened today. Since today is our p-day, and since the parade goes right in front president's house, and since he invited us over to watch it, that's what we did today. There were a ton of floats. I think each queen had a float but there were also a lot who didn't seem to really have a purpose other than to be a cool float in a parade. The coolest/strangest part about the whole parade is mostly all they do is throw fruit to the people on the streets. Like almost every float had something to throw out. People usually bring buckets to catch it all in. We got some grapes, apples, peaches, pears, plums, and a bag of noodles. haha. There were also a ton of dancers, I can't imagine how they survived because I was almost dying watching them from the shade. And at the very end there were about a million "gauchos" on horses. The whole thing was quite the showdown.

So, besides that slight excitement, things in the offices have been super busy. The end of the transfer is coming right up and I still feel like there's a million things to put in order and get ready to pass down to Elder Wheeler. We're in the middle of making some pretty big changes in the report we send to the missionaries about how the mission/zones are doing because right now pretty much no one reads it or gives it any importance. It's gonna be a little bit of work to get it off the ground but I think once we get it going it'll be pretty cool.

Things with investigators didn't go so great this week. Rusbel called us on Monday and said he wanted to get baptized but then we could never get in contact with him (we still haven't gotten in contact) and we're kinda thinking he might have gone back to Peru a little earlier that he was expecting because school is starting up soon for him. And, Eduardo didn't get back to his house on time when we had an appointment with him so he's kinda gone back to the same super-hard-to-find-and-teach status he's been at for so long. So hopefully we can get back in contact with him next week and he'll get baptized this month.

Welp family,

With all the love of a bucket of fruit,

Elder Lounsbury