Some Useful Spanish

Here in the Missionary Department we work with mission presidents in Central and South America who speak Spanish and only Spanish. Some try to piece together English phrases to ask for the person they want to talk to, and I have a few phrases written down (given to me by my friend Nicole when I was new here) to help me tell people that so-and-so is on the phone or to ask if I can have so-and-so call back. It's not conversational Spanish, but I get by.

Today, though, the language barrier brought a president and me to a dead stop, so I asked Tim to please help me out. Tim, along with a few others, are fluent. In fact, he was a mission president in Guatemala for three years. Anyway, I asked him to talk to the president for me, he did, and then he came to my desk and told me that I needed to learn some Spanish.

"The first thing you need to know is, 'quieres combate?'"

Me, "What does that mean?"

Tim, "Do you want to fight?"

I'm going to be challenging callers to put up their dukes from now on.