Destruir Satanás

Hello everyone!! Its been an awesome week.  Sounds like everything is doing great at home as well.

We went proselyting out in Lima este on Saturday, and it was amazing.  Let me tell you some stories.

So we drove a bus to a chapel in the middle of Lima Este where we met the missionaries we would be working with.  Elder Prince and I got set up with two latino elders, I think their names were Elder Baltazar and Elder Saavedra or something.  They were really cool.  They both spoke only a little bit of english, but they were really funny.  When we were walking away from the chapel, they asked us about our missions.  When we told them we were going to Bolivia, they both proceeded to tell us bad things about Bolivia.  Like "la comida en Bolivia es, uhh, crap".  Which was hilarious.  But I really don't care what anyone says about the place, I've never been more excited to go somewhere in my life.  I don't really like Lima.  Its too crowded.

So the area we were proselyting in is supposedly the richer area of Lima.  As such, it looks like the Ghetto area of any big city in the United States.  But still pretty cool.  We took a bus over to the Elder's tiny apartment first so they could pick up some passalong cards or something, and then went to work.  Their first appointment fell through on the phone, so we decided to go visit a recent convert instead.  But then that guy didn't have time to talk.  So we just went contacting.  We went back in this alleyway with some tiny little shacks on the sides.  There was a lady sitting outside on a chair, and the Elders started talking to her.  But it seemed like she turned them down.  So for some reason the Elders thought it would be a good idea for Elder Prince and I to talk to her instead.  So the same thing happened when we tried except our spanish was terrible and we didn't know what we were doing.

But then we went and knocked on another door in that alley, and they let us into the house.  Well, when I say house, I mean crowded shack about the size of my bedroom.  So we had us 4 elders crammed by the door sitting down, talking to this 17 year old named David, his mom Esmerelda, and her other 2 or 3 year old kid named junior.  They were super cool.  Esmerelda had a bunch of meals prepared that she was going to take to homeless in Lima Central ( I think thats what she said she was doing with them anyway), which is amazing.  She's super poor but still giving everything she had to people even less fortunate.  But then we started teaching.  It wasn't much of a lesson though.  The elders started out saying we were going to go around and each introduce ourselves, so we could get to know the people and they could get to know us.  So we each shared our name, age, what we like to do, what we don't like to, and our favorite food.  Which was super easy.  That's spanish 1 stuff.  Elder Prince and I nailed it.  We did this to get to know them a little more, and so we could decide on their necesidades.  From what we gathered, family was obviously really important to them.  Which is perfect.  Since the church of Jesus Christ loves blessing families.  So then the elder's had us talk a little about families.  So I basically testified that mi familia es muy importante para me.  Yo amo mi familia mucho, y con el Evangelio, y las enseñanzas de Jesucristo, mi familia recibe muchos bendiciones.  Or something like that.  It probably didn't sound that good when I said it out loud.  But you could really feel the spirit in the room from all of us bearing our testimonies.  You could also feel the heat in that room, it had to be 90 degrees in there.  Since Esmerelda had the oven on the whole time making more meals.  But the Elders said more of our message in their fluent spanish, and we left them with a couple pass along cards, a couple restoration pamphlets, and one appointment for Tuesday (woot woot!).  It was amazing.  Sadly Elder Prince and I won't get to teach them more, but we're going to email our training elders to see how that family is doing. 

By then we were about out of time, so we took a bus back to the chapel.  We had to stand up on this bus, which means Elder Prince and I had our heads tilted at a 90 degree angle the whole ride and our necks hurt after. Since everyone in Peru is short.

But proselyting was amazing, I can't wait to go do it full time where its 20 degrees hotter and sweat even more.  I have seriously never been more excited in my life. 

A new batch of Elderes y hermanas came in this week.  There aren't many americans, but there's a ton of latinos.  The ones across the hall from us are hilarious.  The ones we usually (try to) talk to are Elders Rivas, Peña, y Supayabe.  Elder Supayabe is actually from Santa Cruz, so he's been telling us a lot about Bolivia.  He served a mini mission with the elders in our mission, which is awesome.  He's like the only person we've met who tells us good things about Bolivia.  I love that guy.

I have homework for you all to finish off on.  Go read 2 Nefi 33.  It's an amazing testimony of the Book of Mormon and of Christ from Nefi.  Verses 10 and 11 basically say "The book of Mormon is true, its the words of Christ.  And if you don't believe in it, sucks for you.  You and I are going to have a real 'I told you so' moment on judgement day.  Face to face."  That was my interpretation of it anyway.  Go read the chapter.  He says it better than I did.

Yo amo ustedes, adios

Elder Bingham

All of these were at the temple today.  Sadly, its probably the last time I'll get to go to the temple for about 2 years.  Since the lima temple is closed for the next month.  We made sure to stock up on snacks for general conference this weekend.

Estoy confuso

Surprise everyone!!!  We have pday on Tuesday this week.  All the other missionaries except our district left for the field either this morning or last night, so we're all alone.  We're doing our pday today so it doesn't get in the way of the new missionary's orientation and stuff.  We still have another 3 weeks here, and the new missionaries should be coming tonight.  Then we'll be the avansados! (advanced, i think).  We're basically the leaders and examples for the new missionaries.  It should be fun.  Pday is back to Wednesday next week though.

Estoy muy confuso (confused) sobre muchas cosas.  First off, I've already been here for three weeks.  It feels like that has rushed by.  But at the same time, this feels like its been the longest three weeks of my life.   Its very confusing.  I'm also confused about my feelings about my mission.  The more I hear about Bolivia and the area i'll be serving in, the less cool it sounds.  Its going to be super hot.  Apparently it looks a lot like Idaho (lots of fields, cows, etc).  I got excited about the cows, but then someone told me that they don't really know how to feed their cows super well down there, so the beef doesn't even taste that good.  But the longer I'm here at the CCM, the more and more excited I get about going into the field.  I can't wait to go teach.  Even if I'll be completely drenched in sweat every day.  The CCM feels too much like a college dorm.  And I hated my college dorm.  But I do like the people much better here.  I love my district. 

I'm also just confused about spanish and stuff a lot of the time.  Missionary work is hard.  Learning the language is hard.  But I'm loving it.  Elder Prince and I have had some pretty good lessons this week.

Nothing too exciting happened this last week.  Just regular stuff at the CCM.  Oh wait, I got injured yesterday! Almost forgot!  So we were playing football during actividad fisical (the american kind), and I was going to block a pass.  Problem was, Elder Roberts was going to block that same pass.  And we were both running full speed.  Directly at each other.  So we collied in midair, and almost perfectly scissored the legs.  Almost.  His knee went into my thigh hard.  It hurts to walk on now.  Mostly up and down stairs, whenever I have to bend it a lot.  I also sprained my wrist slightly, either on the fall or on Elder Roberts' body.  It doesn't hurt too bad though.  The leg is worse.  But Ill recover quickly.  I have some advil as well, so that helps.

Today when we went to the temple, we had the session in Spanish.  I could've worn headphones to translate into english, but I decided to try and listen to the Spanish one.  This was great for a couple reasons.  First, I really had to concentrate on the words, so I didn't fall asleep as much. (I still dozed off a little, i'm not perfect).  Second, to my surprise, I actually understood a lot of it! Probably at least half!  It made me really happy.  I'm making some great progress with the language.  Everyone in the district is.  We're trying to speak it as much as possible, which is hard since we really mostly know words about the Gospel, but I'm loving the language.

After the session we always go to the distribution center across the parking lot.  Temples like this one have a hotel there for people who traveled a long way to the temple and needed to stay there, which is really cool.  They also have a cafeteria down there where we can buy soda and chips for a freaking STEAL.  I bought 4 bottles of soda and two bags of chips for 10.80 Soles today.  Which im pretty sure is like 3.50 in American dollars.  You can google it, I'm not 100% sure on the ratio.  The church is true.  Its the only explanation for those killer prices.  Everyone always stocks up on snacks when we go to the temple.  It's awesome.  We went over and talked to Tie Guy for a while after as well.  I didn't buy anything from him this week, but I did actually get a decent picture with the guy.  Attached below.

Spiritual thought for the week.  We watched another killer devotional from Elder Holland this week.  I decided it would be really nice if I could have that guy yell at me and tell me everything I did wrong at the end of the day, but sadly I don't have that luxury.  He talked about the importance of missionary work, and how we owe it to God to work our tails off.  We are going out to save the world, and we need to put every ounce of energy we have into it, and love every second of it.  He said something like "I can't promise heroic success, but you can promise a heroic effort".  He also emphasized that our mission doesn't end when our two years are up.  We are to be disciples of Christ for our entire lives.  That man can preach.

Thats most likely all from me today.  Thank you for the emails, I love you all.

Elder Bingham

We discovered I have the biggest mouth in the district.  In the literal sense.  Its a long story.  And thanks for the selfie stick Bryce, people love it here.

We decided to all sit at different tables since we had the whole comedor to ourselves today

Testing how impressive my camera zoom is on Elders Lupton and Yumul

Elder Prince and I with tie guy.  And a Peruvian flag even though we're going to Bolivia.

I almost forgot.  We found out this week that there's been some natural disasters in Peru.  You guys might have heard about it.  Peru is a bit of a desert.  they don't get much rain here.  But about a week ago, there were massive rainstorms in some parts of Lima, and other missions around Peru.  They caused massive flooding in these areas.  The Mtc is unaffected, but other parts got hit hard.  About half a million people lost their homes, and many places are currently without water. Its sad.

The cool part about this is apparently the local church leaders in the area gave an address about being prepared for disasters like this a couple weeks ago.  Spare water, food, stuff like that.  So church members were prepared.  This is a church of revelation.

But please pray for the people of Peru.  They need it.

Elder Bingham

Week 2 in the CCM

Hello family and friends!  Thank you all so much for the emails I received, they made me really happy today.

Oh and I decided on a mission scripture for my plaque, sorry I forgot last week.  Alma 26:30.  In elder Hollands devotional last week that I told you about he went through many scriptures in that chapter, so I went and studied it after, and that scripture was one of my favorites.  One of my new favorite chapters.  Everyone should read it who is planning on serving a mission.

Lots of great news from the extended family as well!  Tell Hailey welcome back for me.  Those experiences from her mission sound amazing, I hope I can be as good a missionary as she was.  And congratulations on Tommy getting sealed, and Sierra is engaged??? What? I feel like I have a special connection to this engagement because I saw them holding hands before it was common knowledge that they were dating.  But congrats!!

So what happened this week? Nothing too exciting really.  Im happy to say that el dragón has passed.  And then I instantly started clearing every plate and eating way too much.  The food kind of sucks here I decided (since they have to prepare so much for so many people, cant expect too much.)  But I always seem to be really hungry, so I take what I can get.  My trips to the bathroom have been much less frequent and much less disgusting.  But I have to be careful, the dragon is a patient beast.  He's just waiting to strike, going from elder to elder until he comes back to me.  But I will drink lots of water, thanks for the advice.

This week was pretty much exactly like last week, except it went faster and lessons were harder.  Nothing really changes too much at the CCM, the schedule is pretty specific.  We have 2 ´´investigators´´ now, Nicolas and Andrea.  Nicolas is super easygoing and keeps all his commitments.  Except he apparently played rugby on Sunday instead of going to church (GAH).  Its pretty easy to prepare a lesson for him.  Our last lesson with him was amazing.  We didn't know what else to teach him about since we've already gone through the first 3 lessons, he´s reading the book of mormon, and he's praying.  So we just decided we were going to talk with him for the 15 minutes and find out what he wants to learn from us and how we can help him.  Which is a little tricky in Spanish, but it went great.  We talked with him about how faith is a principle of action, and he needs to have faith in Christ and act on any promptings he receives, and have faith to act on commitments, like going to church.  I normally do most of the talking in lessons because I know a lot more Spanish than elder Prince, but he's been doing much better and is learning quickly.  That lesson he did a great job of testifying and bringing the spirit.  He testified to Nicolas that the spirit was here, with us, in that lesson, and it was really powerful.  He said he almost cried.  But Elder Prince and I are getting along great.  We're teaching together better and learning lots from each other.

Andrea is this 17 year old girl who's parents are separated, and is having trouble with school, and she's a lot harder to teach.  She doesn't pay attention all the time, and doesn't really seem too interested.  And she asks really hard questions.  Like questions I don't even know how to best answer in english, let alone spanish.  But one maestro (teacher) told us that often a great way to answer questions when you're struggling with an answer is to either testify of truth to bring the spirit, or answer that question with a question, like ''why do you think God would *insert one of Andrea's really hard questions about why God allows things to happen*?''  I think we'll try that in our lesson tomorrow with her, and see how it goes.  We just need to have faith that we can have the spirit with us while we teach.

One more spiritual thought.  The MTC devotional we watched this week (we watch one old devotional every Tuesday from a general authority) was from Elder Anderson.  Everyone looks forward to the devos because its a great break from the constant classes and teaching.  He had three main points.  1) it takes time to see the full benefits of missionary work.  2) be looking for people in their mid teens to mid twenties that are spiritually seeking.  They are often very receptive.  3)  (my favorite) As we testify of Christ, Christ will confess us before his father.  That is amazing.  As we do our best to take his name upon us and share the gospel,  Christ will testify of our works to Heavenly father, because he knows us and our lives personally.

Oh I also finished the book of mormon this week. Ive been reading it a lot.  I was midway through alma when I got here.  We have lots of time to read el Libro de Mormon, and Ive been enjoying it more than ever.  I started over almost as soon as i finished.  I love that Book.

Elder Bingham

ps: we can only take pictures on pday, and since we do the same thing every pday, i only have one.  This is Tie Guy.  He sells lots of ties, bags, coin purses, etc to the missionaries every day we´re at the temple, for pretty cheap.  Ive bought 2 llama ties and a coin case, but I forgot to take pics of those.  Next week.  Oh, he's going to Utah in 2 weeks for general conference, maybe someone can find him there and say hi.  I also now realize this picture only has the back of his head in it, so good luck recognizing that.  Oops.

El Dragón, the CCM, and fuego directo

Hi everybody, sorry I didnt write last week, I sent it last week, but to the wrong email because im an idiot.  The CCM (MTC in spanish) is awesome. The days have gone fast for the most part but the week has been really long, if that makes sense.  Ill try not to write these emails in Spanglish too much, since I know some people will get mad, but Im trying to speak as much español as possible. Ill put translations when i write spanish words. 

This week I have studied more than I ever have in my life, learned more than I ever have in my life, felt the spirit more than I ever have in my life, and gone to the bathroom more than I ever have in my life.  The latter is thanks to el dragón.

What is El dragón, you might ask? El dragón (the dragon) is the very, very bad case of diarhea that plagues many missionaries of the CCM as they try to get used to the food.  For the most part, the food here is either great, or terrible.  Breakfast is never really good at all. Cereal is the best thing.  Lunch and dinner always have rice (but they do rice way better here than in the states so thats okay), and theres usually some good meat dish.  And all kinds of different juices rotate around the different days, some of which are nasty, others are amazing.  But with all this food, my gut is taking a toll.  El dragón causes your stomach to hurt pretty much all the time, and makes you have to go to the bathroom really often.  And its been with me almost this whole time.  It sucks.  Ive had to use the bathroom like 6,7 times a day on average.  Pray that gets better for me.

Enough of that gross subject though.  More about the CCM!!!  My companion's name is Elder Prince, he's from Idaho.  (Yes mom, he is the guy who's mother youve been talking to).  Hes a little shorter than me, has red hair, and is way more athletic than I am.  We've been getting along really well, I like him a lot.  He is the only other person I know of here going to the same mission as me.  Everyone else is going to Peru somewhere.  So maybe we'll be companions again someday.  The other elder from salem who got the same call as me isnt here.  He never showed up to the flight.  I remember the boarding desk person calling his name out when we were leaving Salt Lake, but he never came.  So that sucks a little, hopefully he's figuring out whatever it is holding him back and will be headed out sometime later.  It  would be good to see someone from home.  There are 12 elders in my district (and no Hermanas), all from North America, and one from the Phillipines, who speaks english as a first language.  We are on the 6 weeks program, and all the people who speak fluent spansish already, (all the many latino missionaries here), are only here for 3 weeks.  So typically we get up at 6:30, go eat crappy breakfast, and then have time to prepare a lesson in spanish for our "investigator" Nicolas.  Lessons have been going pretty well.  As well as they can anyway with how little spanish we know.  I have a lot less trouble with the language than most of the other elders in my district, since I took some spanish in high school. Its all coming back to me pretty quickly, and Im learning lots.  Its also been really helpful to teach my companion a little, since he knew nothing when he came here.  He's doing better and better though, and me teaching him is a great way for me to learn as well. So companionships really are inspired, people.  After that lesson, we have a language class, and then lunch.  After lunch we have physical activity for an hour every day.  And we get sweaty.  We almost always play either soccer (on a turf field which makes it even more hot) or basketball (on a really slick concrete court with crappy balls and hoops that make it hard to shoot well on, and the concrete makes it even more hot).  If there's any latinos playing soccer at the same time we are its not quite as fun because they are way better than the rest of us and take it too seriously.  But its still really fun.  I scored a goal one time (WHOO SPORTS!!!) and I felt like the world champ.  Especially since it was on the latinos.

After fisical actividad we go take a shower; change, and then have class the rest of the day.  And dinner.  We also go to the Lima temple every pday! Which is awesome. We did a session this morning.  That temple is really tiny, but its beautiful.  Its good to take a break from the hard work in class every once in a while, especially to go feel the nice quiet spirit of the temple.  I have a much greater appreciation for the temple now, and I testify that it is the house of god.  Everyone should try to make a goal to go there more often.

We have a lot of fun with my district.  Theres a few quiet elders, and a few really obnoxious elders that never shut up.  Me and my comp seem to be right about in the middle of those two.  We all get along really well and help each other to learn.  Our district is fuego directo (straight fire).  Fuego directo has become our catch phrase in the district, which I take full credit for.  Elder prince was wondering how to say "spit fire" in español for some reason, but I looked up straight fire instead, and everybody else seems to think its hilarous.  So that's become the inside joke of the district.  Kind of lame and college freshman aged boyish, but whatever.

Any day we get to take a break from the rigourous classwork is a great day, so that includes Sundays, tuesdays, and pdays (wednesdays).  Sundays we have religion classes all day, and they are all in ingles to maximize the spirit we feel.  They dont want us to have to concentrate on the language then.  So those are relaxing.  Except the 24 hour fast we had to do from after dinner Saturday to dinner on Sunday.  That sucked.  Tuesdays we have devotionals.  This tuesday we watched and MTC devotional from elder holland, which was fuego directo.  He said a couple things that I liked.

First, he said "be yourself, but be your best self".  That's all I want to be in the mission field.  He said if you can honestly say at the end of the day in prayer that you did your best for that day, then you are a great missionary.

The other thing he said was missionaries need to go out and astonish somebody!!!!! We may not be astonishing missionaries, but we have an astonishing message.  He also said lots of stuff about the Book of Mormon and the atonement that blew your socks off and gave you chills and called you to repentance, you know, typical Elder Holland stuff.  It was amazing.

Thats the spiritual thoughts I want to leave you with for this week.  My testimony has grown so much over these few days and Im so grateful to be in the mission field finally.  I testify that the Book of Mormon is the word of God, and the things we find in there will bring us closer to Christ.  I already feel so much closer to Christ, through my many prayers here and my study of the Book of Mormon.

Thats all for this week, I only have a little time left and I have other business.  I love you all, and I would appreciate your emails and prayers.

Elder Bingham

CCM courtyard

Lima Peru temple

Elder Jayson Bingham

Elder Prince and Elder Bingham

I'M SORRY!

Im so sorry I did send an email that first week but I accidentally sent it to lynettebings@comcast.net instead of your gmail. here it is.

Hello family and friends! Don`t be scared by this title. Im fine. They are letting us write this one email at the MTC today.  Im alive and well! The flight was really long, and I couldnt sleep well.  But we got to the MTC around 2:30 am, went to bed around 3, and got up at about 7.  I already got two haircuts.  The barber cut my hair once, and then I went to get my picture taken, and the lady said it needed to be even shorter.  So I have like no hair now.  RIP my luscious locks.  I was also the only new missionary who didnt bring a suit, and they seem to like those around here.  Im having to borrow one from another elder for the picture today.  Also, I figured out what I forgot, and its a big one.  Im pretty sure I didnt pack my english preach my gospel, or my missionary handbook.  So im going to have to learn spanish really quick if they dont have english copies.  Also, i forgot Nate gave me an envelope, and I left it in my suit.  So sorry, nate, I dont know what that is.  But I dont have much time, Ill write more next week. Our pdays are on wednesday here, so expect to hear from me then. 

I love you all, wish me luck with the spanish

Elder Bingham

Also I hate spanish keyboards