Can I start saying "Adios" instead of "Chao" now?

Well, my time has come to its end.  I'm not even sure what to say. I have loved my time in the mission. There were times where I hated my time in the mission, but those hard times serve for learning experiences and I'm thankful for them. But we finished off strong, with a couple of miracles and lots of happy times.

On Friday a miracle happened! Remember how we were supposed to cram our baptisms in for today because our investigator Bertha was traveling? Well, Bertha called us on Friday and said "Elders, I'm already back in Trinidad! I'm ready for my baptism tomorrow!" I cannot even describe how happy and relieved I felt, because we weren't sure if we were going to be able to get those baptisms in on Monday. Thank you all for your faithful prayers, they were answered. :) 

So Freddy and Bertha got baptized on Saturday. I had the privilege of baptizing Bertha, and Elder Reynolds baptized Freddy (proud dad moment, it was his first baptism). It was a really spiritual experience and I couldn't have asked for a better way to finish off my last week in the mission.

But, I'm not going to bother writing too much more right now, because as it says in 2 John; 12 Having many things to write unto you, I would not write with paper and ink: but I trust to come unto you, and speak face to face, that our joy may be full.

Farewell all. Until Saturday :) 

Adiós Bolivia. Te amo mucho

Elder Bingham

my last zone!!

Freddy and Bertha's baptism

Raul and Blanca! (and lucas) Sadly, they won't be able to get married and get blanca baptized before I leave, but I'm confident that Blanca will get baptized this Saturday! they're the best

Elder Bingham tries to plan a wedding

OOOHHH getting people married is so stressful. It's way harder than it should be. We're trying really hard to get Raul and Blanca married so Blanca can get baptized before I go home, and we just might pull it off. But We definetly need many of your prayers por favor.

Wednesday we kind of ended up having a crappy day in which we learned that Raul didn't have the money to get the birth certificates they needed to get married. But then with the help of our awesome relief society president we've been able to organize an activity that we will be doing in the near future to help raise funds for their wedding, and a member was willing to lend them the 100 Bs they needed to get the papers going until the activity can pay her back! It was a miracle!! But then the next day when we were going to go in for the papers we get a call from Raul saying the guy he had a debt to came to him asking for the money and he was forced to give him the 100 Bs the ward had just lent him. So we were once again devastated. But hopefully today that guy will be lending him money again andwe can get the papers going today! If all works out well, they should be getting married and baptized on the 11th, my last day in Trinidad. Please pray for this miracle!!! Raul and Blanca are amazing and Blanca is super prepared to be baptized, we just need a little bit of good luck.

Other than that our week was alright. We somehow mananged to find 21 new investigators this week, which is a new personal record. Elder Reynolds and I are giving it all we got here on the final stretch. This next week we have chuck full of family home evenings with members to help out our investigators and hopefully next monday we should have 3 baptisms! Its all really stressing me out. I'm going to be exhausted coming home. 

But talk to you guys next week! for the last time...

Elder Bingham

ps sorry this computer is being stupid and not letting me open up my SD card to send pics. next week!

Return of the Dragon

Do you guys remember way back when from when I was in the MTC and I talked about our fight with the dragon? I'll be kind of impressed if you do. Well, he came back this week, but this time the double-headed dragon struck. Luckily, Elder Bingham is an experienced dragon slayer and was able to conquer his foe with the help of some Powerade and an IV: let me explain.

So on Tuesday I opened up a pack of oatmeal that I bought the day before, and noticed that it seemed a little old. But I decided to eat it anyway since the expiration date was still a couple weeks away. That would come back to bite me in the butt later.

Wednesday the dragon came in attacking strong but with the help of a faith filled prayer I was able to hold him off for all of the proselyting day and we got some good work done. 

Thursday we had our zone conference with President and an area seventy, Elder Camargo from Colombia! It was a great conference and at the end of it he asked me to get up and share my testimony about how I was able to learn spanish so well and to relate it to the savior. He also told me to share it in English. I guess the guy is worried about all the new American missionaries in the zone. It was the strangest testimony I've ever given. my english is terrible now. I'm pretty sure my homecoming talk is going to be a disaster of me trying to figure out how to say stuff in english.

Then after the conference the dragon decided he wasn't going to leave me alone and we had to stop by a member's house in the middle of our proselyting to go fight the beast. After a long time in the bathroom we called sister Cabezas to ask her advice and she told me to go to the clinic to get an iv stuck in me, which took the rest of the night. So that was fun. But I'm all better now, don't worry. 

But besides that story we actually had a really solid week! We found lots of great new investigators and we're setting up a few baptisms for the 9th! The pics will tell the rest of the story.

Elder Reynolds counseling me on my trunkyness

the clinic! I hate IVs.

Trinidad gets invaded by noobs

This week made me feel really old. That tends to happen basically every week now. But this week it happened for different reasons. 

On Wednesday I had an intercambio with Elder Lore. He's new, he has about 3 weeks in the mission. I have about 3 weeks left in the mission. Probably about the biggest difference in mission time possible for two people proselyting together. It was kind of weird.  And then that day about 15 newish missionaries flew into Trinidad because they had to do papers and boring legal stuff. So our district meeting on Thursday had double the amount of normal missionaries and almost all of them had at least a year less in the mission than I do. I felt so old and wise pitching in my experienced missionary commentaries. But the cool part about that is how much you can learn from the young guys. I am continually inspired by our 4th transfer district leader Elder Cahua and the other new missionaries' excitement for the work. So noobs are good thing.

The only other thing that happened this week was that our investigators finally came to church! We had 6 at church yesterday, which is more than I've had any other week in Trinidad. The work is progressing here and we should be able to dunk a few souls before I leave. But that is all. I bid thee farewell.

Elder Bingham

wilderness explorer elder Bingham with another great find! a tiny crab

also a parrot that can't fly so it's stuck in this tree

We are in love with Bolos (little homemade popsicles everyone makes here)

the nut sack a member gave us. I swear no immature jokes were made while we busted them open and ate them.

today we cleaned A TON and burned most of the trash. and somehow we accidentally threw away a smoke alarm with all this trash and it was beeping the WHOLE TIME

An old man gives me a coconut

So this week we had a couple of awesome experiences. While we were walking around one area contacting, Elder Reynolds spotted a very strange fruit on a tree outside someone's house, so we felt prompted to knock on their door, with half of our intention being to preach them the gospel and the other half being to ask them what the heck that fruit was. So we did, and a friendly old man came out and immediately let us in. His name was Felix. He is more than 80 years old (didn't tell us the exact number) and still works as a veterinarian (did i spell the word for pet doctor right?). He started asking us questions about our beliefs and told us about all these things about God that he's been meditating for years. Turns out, everything he had been thinking about was almost exactly what we believe about the plan of salvation! He was really excited to learn that we believe the same stuff he does and accepted the invitation to read our folleto and the Book of Mormon and pray about it. 

Then when we were leaving our visit with him he invited me to take a coconut off of his tree and Elder Reynolds grabbed the other strange fruit that was growing outside. Someone has since told us what that fruit is called, but I forgot the name. But turns out it's not actually edible and they just use the shell to make bowls and stuff.  So the rest of that afternoon we were carrying around obnoxiously heavy fruits everywhere and people were giving us weird looks.

We also put a baptismal date on a nice girl named Blanca. Her "husband" is a super less active member but they're both excited to come to church and for her to be baptized! Her date is for the 9th (the last Saturday of my mission) so wish us luck!

That's about it for this week. Or all I feel like writing anyway.

Elder Bingham

Wilderness Explorer Elder Bingham spotted this crane on a post and it led us into a longish conversation about panda babysitters. See if you can guess why. I will bring a prize home to whoever guesses correctly.

We baked cookies on an electric stove. Mission kitchen tricks

Walter B., the coconut. I drew him myself scraping with my fingernail

us with our large fruit. Elder Reynolds named his Keith

I ran into the Lujan family from Belen! they were up here organizing a giant mission wide efy type thing for the YSA!

Elder Reynolds wish comes true

So this week wasn't super eventful honestly. Oh yeah except for cambios! But nothing actually happened for me. I'm going to stay here another cambio in Trinidad and Elder Reynolds is officially my last companion. His only wish was to kill me and stay here in Trinidad longer, and looks like it's happening. So begins the end of my mission.

Amidst mildly trunky feelings at the start of the week, things actually ended up going pretty well! We had a solid week of finding with 16 new investigators this week. I got pretty fired up to work after a bomb district meeting from our new district leader Elder Cahua. Then Elder Reynolds and I went ham! We've found some pretty prepared people this week and a lot more people than normal have been willing to listen to us. Hopefully we can finish up strong here in Beni. 

Well I'm basically better already. I just have some random cough attacks every once in a while. But nothing to worry about, I can at least talk loudly again.

Interesting how many things are changing. I'm pretty excited to be able to go to the temple when I get back. We should do that in that first Saturday that I'm home. After I catch up on sleep, of course.

2 hour church was sooo nice. I enjoyed it a lot. especially since we have sacrament meeting first now. it used to be last in our ward. But I don't even bother with the whole Sunday school/elder's quorum trade off since us missionaries are just in gospel principles with the investigators every week.

But that's about it for this week. Hope you enjoy the pics. And happy 2019 everyone!

Elder Bingham

Elder Reynolds and I decided to see if we can tell the difference between Agua linda and agua purita.
Turns out we can't

The triny tree in the plaza! (a christmas tree made out of triny bottles)

This morning I found mushrooms growing out of our mop. I think we need a new one.

Merry *cough* Christmas *cough cough*

Hello everyone! We're all winding down here after christmas trying not to eat too much candy and trying not to get too trunky. Honestly other than Christmas this week was pretty boring. Mostly because we got super sick right after.

Around Thursday in district meeting we figured out like half the zone got sick at the same time. I came in with a fever and back/knee pain and just felt super weak. Elder Reynolds got back from an intercambio with a bad cold. Elder Fernandez and Elder Allen were sick with basically the same thing I was. And then the next day we found Hermana Paico in the clinic with a fever and back pain. So I think most of the zone just came down with almost the same thing at the same time. It's been fun.

Thursday we had to rest in the house quite a bit because we just were not functioning. Friday morning was the same. But then after that luckily my sickness has dropped down to just a really bad cough and a stuffy nose. But i'm still coughing up a storm. Wish me luck.

Happy new year everyone!!

Elder Bingham

christmas eve dinner! people brought us way too much food.

our pension got a new puppy and it fell asleep on Elder Reynolds' arm