Young Single Missionary (or YSM)

1 Nephi 4:6- And I was led by the spirit, not knowing beforehand the things which I should do.

Story of my life this week.  This week has been one of the harder weeks, and more rewarding weeks of my life.  You may be curious about the subject line. Well, I finished my first cambio on Tuesday, and Elder Urrutia got transferred to Equipetrol as a zone leader. And I'm staying here in Campo Rosa for another transfer. My new compañero is named Elder Moreno. Only problem is, he's transferring in from Beni. Today in the evening. So I have been without a compañero since Wednesday. Without an official compañero anyway. On Tuesday after Elder Urrutia left, I went with elder Martinez for the rest of the day, since he would be flying to his new area the next morning.  But with Elder Urrutia gone, i'm the only one who knows our area. Except I don't really know it too well. since its freaking massive and I'm really bad with directions and addresses here. So I did the best I could to think of people we could visit and places we can go, and then follow the spirit when I didn't know what to do or what to say. Surprisingly, it didn't go to bad at all. It was actually a really productive and successful day. We taught a few great lessons and now have 3 more investigators with a fecha bautismal!

But the next day Elder Martinez left, so I've been in a trio with Elder Llanos y Elder Bastias, the other missionaries in our house. Which means we had to cover both Monterrey and Campo Rosa. So we decided to work in one area one day the other area the next, and trade off every other day. Once again, the days we were in Campo rosa, I had to take the lead with setting appointments, talking to investigators, and starting lessons and stuff. I have an analogy to describe my experience.

It felt like I was running a big conference or something. But I'm just the guy in charge. I had to invite all the fancy businessmen (or our investigators) to the conference (or our lessons), and guide our guest speakers to the location of the conference. Welcome all the fancy businessmen and tell them what this conference will be about, and open it up with a prayer. I then introduced our guest speakers for the conference (or Elders Llanos y Bastias) and let them take over for a bit. I would occasionally come in with some commentary or some scripture or story about Joseph Smith on the power point screen. But overall our guest speakers did most of the really good teaching. I would then close the conference asking one of our fancy businessmen to give another prayer. I hope that gives you a good picture of how my week has been.

But its been really rewarding. I'm learning I really can do this missionary thing. My Spanish is getting better and better, especially since I have to talk a lot more now. But I've learned this week that if I put my trust in the spirit, I can always know what to do or what to say. The Holy Ghost can always help you in your life if you let him. Thats why the gift of the Holy Ghost is so amazing. Made me appreciate it a little more.

Had one other awesome experience yesterday. We have an investigator named Yolanda. She's super cool, and has been attending church with her 8 year old son Raul for a few weeks now. Only problem is, she's moving to Spain next Thursday I think. But after sacrament meeting, one of our members, who sat next to her during sacrament, said that she talked to him and said she really wants to be baptized with her son before they go to Spain. So we're really hoping to get them baptized this Saturday, along with Maria! We had a lesson with her that night, and I asked her about this, and why she wants to be baptized. She basically told me that she wants to change her life and feels good about this decision. She doesn't know much, but she really wants to attend church and learn. She has some of the best faith I've seen. So we're going to try and visit them every day this week so we can get all the lessons in that she needs and get them baptized! I'm super excited. Please pray for her and her son. That appointment made me really happy and excited for missionary work.

I'm also excited to get a companion today. That will be nice.

Love you all! Oh and happy birthday to Amaya, and happy anniversary to Mom and Dad! I love you guys!

Elder Bingham

We spent like over half the day in immigrations on Wednesday, which sucked. But we got some killer lunch for free. This is like the fanciest place I've seen in Bolivia. And its pretty cheap. I got to eat pig meat and it made me really happy. We normally can't have that. And really delicious sopa de mani. Or peanut soup.

So LDS means mormon in the United States, but here, the LDS is a gang. Which is hilarious. They tag walls a lot.
 But this is easily the best one. Soy LDS de siempre.

Sweater Weather

Uhh, what to write about this week? I feel like I suck at this. This week was pretty unexciting actually, but there were some cool parts. Highlights are as follows.

Winter has come. I'm surprised to say that I almost feel unprepared for how cold it can get. It rained for like two days straight and has been fairly chilly. It's a good thing I look so good in sweaters.

Today we're going to eat churrasco with the zone, which I guess is as close as you can get to barbecue here. So Im excited about that.

Monday we had a lesson with a new investigator named German. He's the richest person I've met in Bolivia. His house is super nice, and he's Chilean, so he automatically became Elder Urrutia's favorite investigator. We'll be visiting him tonight again. Also the Chilean food he fed us is delicious. His wife is a less active member and his mother in law is a member, so hopefully he should progress well. He went to church twice before we even had a lesson. So I'm really excited about this guy if I don't get transferred. Oh and we get transfer calls Tuesday. I kind of hope I stay here for a while, we have investigators I really want to baptize.

We are now also teaching a 54 year old member, and his future wife. Who is 19. It was the most uncomfortable looking relationship i've ever seen. But his future wife, Melania, is our investigator, and she seems like a future baptism. So that's cool, if not for the really weird age gap.

We had intercambios on Thursday, So I went back to Bajio for the second week in a row, this time with Elder McClune. That dude is trunky out of his mind, which makes things a little difficult. But we spent like the entire day contacting, and had no lessons. But I enjoyed it, mostly because its nice to talk to someone in english for a while.

On Sunday I gave my first talk in sacrament meeting! It was about la obra misional. I was surprised at how easy I found it to write the whole thing in Spanish, and then get up there and speak. It went pretty well all things considered, except our investigator Maria made fun of me after because apparently I looked super red. But I mean, I always feel like I sound really stupid, so that's kind of expected.

Speaking of Maria, she accepted a baptismal date for the third of June! It's been a long time coming, but she should be ready by that day. Hoping that goes well. 

But thats about all I can think of for this week, and I'm about out of time. will send some pictures as well.

Love you all, hope you're all doing great.

Elder Bingham

Our haircut options since Bryce wanted to see them. This is one of the posters with the more reasonable haircuts

lots of streets look like this when it rains really hard

Did a little service project the other day helping this guy move furniture and stuff.

my camera has a fish eye filter and this pic of elder Martinez brought me much joy

Dia del madre. Except not really

Well happy mother's day yesterday to everyone. Mother's day is on the 27th in Bolivia for some reason, but the second Sunday is better. So we skyped then. But I loved skyping to you guys, it was a ton of fun! And I didn't even get that trunky. Just happy.

But for everyone else who wasn't there, here's some stuff from this week.

The weather was perfect this week. I think it's getting into rainy season. It was overcast and cool almost every day this week, and it rained a couple days. Some really light rain, and some super heavy rain. So it felt amazing outside. I've never appreciated cool weather so much in my life.

On Saturday, we had our first baptism!! José finally got his interview in and was ready to go. So we spent Saturday morning cleaning the chapel and the baptismal font for a while, which I kind of enjoyed actually. It's nice to do anything that involves not wearing proselyting clothes.  But when we were draining the font, the sound of the water going through the drain was unusually loud and annoying. Elder Urrutia decided that was the sound of all the sins that were sitting in the water.  It makes sense, I like that explanation. But then we started filling the font again, and left to go eat lunch while it filled. We took longer than expected to get back to the chapel, and so the font was almost flooded. Five more minuted and we would have had to do a lot of mopping. But we got lucky.

But the baptismal service that night was awesome. Elder Llanos gave a good discurso about baptism and the holy ghost, and then Hermano Cacheti (probably not how you spell his name) gave a cool discurso about being a discipulo de Cristo. He's this super old and super white guy who has the most ear hair i've ever seen on a human being. He says a lot of wise old guy stuff. He's really cool.

And then I got to do the baptism! Turns out I've for sure gained weight, since my white pants were super tight. almost unbearably so. But Baptizing José was an amazing experience. Especially since he was the first person I had a lesson with in the mission! I only stuttered a little bit on the words of the baptism. Mostly on his name, since he has like 4 of them. Such is Bolivia.  But I felt the spirit so stong when I pulled him up out of the water, it was amazing. When he bore his testimony after I couldn't stop smiling. The Gospel brings happiness people. Hopefully we can baptize Maria next week! Now she's even more excited for baptism, its awesome.

Well, those were basically the highlights of this week. Not too much else to tell about, but there should be more great experiences to come!!

Hasta la próxima lunes

Elder Bingham 

first four pics are at the baptism

Skype

Elder Martinez has a batman action figure without a head for some reason, 

so we decided Elder Bednar's head would look good on it.

 nununununununun BEDNAR

Estoy cansado

Hello everybody!

Well, it's been another week already. Some good things have happened this week, but it's been a little rough too. It's been pretty hot lately, which seems to make me really tired like all the time. Its usually less hot out in the streets than it is in houses, since it's windy outside, but inside you just have to burn. I really like teaching lessons and visiting with people, but then I sometimes feel relieved to get back out in the wind.  Such is Bolivia. But it's all worth it for the good experiences. And there's lots of them.

This Thursday we had a big conference with a member of the Area presidency, Elder Enrique Fallabela I believe his name is. We were there from about 2 until 7:30, so we didn't get much else done that day, but the conference was great. And yes mom, it was all in spanish. Everything is always 100% in Spanish. But I'm usually able to get a general idea of what's going on.  Presidente Cabezas spoke first, and he talked about how the theme for this conference was being un mision de milagros. Elder Fallabela followed this up talking about what miracles are made of. He said the four pillars of miracles are faith, obedience, hope, and charity. If we have those four things, we can make miracles happen in the mission. So I'm going to work on those, since it's going to take a miracle for me to understand what people are saying here. Everyone mumbles or talks really fast, or both. But the spanish is improving. Elder Fallabela also talked about the atonement, and the importance of asking for references from everyone. All in all the conference was great. Plus they had these killer empanada things and donuts during the break in the middle. And I got to hang out with Elder Prince for a while. Good day.

On Saturday I had a cool experience with prayer. We were going to teach a lady named Yolanda, who was a recent contact, but as you know, we always need to have another man there when teaching a single woman. We stopped by a member's house to have Yolanda's friend, who is a member, accompany us, but only she could come. Not her husband. So as we were walking over to her house I just kept praying in my heart that there would be another man there so we could teach. And at the exact same time we walked up to the door, her 20 something year old son came home. Boom! Prayer answered! We ended up having a great lesson with her and her 3 sons. But it was great that the one son (his name is Diego I think) came at the same time as us, since he was the only adult. I think she has a strong chance of getting baptized in the future.

Honestly nothing else too exciting happened this week, or I just can't remember it. We had a great day yesterday, I think in part thanks to the power of fasting. We had I believe 5 investigators show up to church, and then got about 4 new investigators later that day. We also taught José y Maria that evening. Jose is on his way to be baptized this Saturday, but Maria needs more lessons and stuff. But then she told us that she wants to be baptized this Saturday with him too! She really feels the church is true and is going to ask her parents for permission to be baptized. She's really excited about it. And so are we. This Saturday should be an amazing day.

As always, your prayers and emails are appreciated. I love you all!

Elder Bingham

Conference with Elder Fallabela

This is elder prince and I at the conference. He's my nephew now. In other words, my trainer trained his trainer.
We're a big happy family.

A couple questions Jayson answered for me (mom):

Mom: So, is “winter” over already? Is that why it is so hot? or is it still winter and it is just hot and summer will be even hotter?

Jayson:I have no idea how the seasons work here. It feels like its gotten hotter, but supposedly the cold season is in June or July. It's very confusing

Mom:  Do you have a large area you cover? Are you walking long distances or is everything pretty close?  

Jayson:  My area is pretty big. Most of our appointments are in walking distance, but sometimes we take a bus

bendiciones, bebes, y bautismos (esperamos)

Wow this week. It was pretty insane. Really fun. Also very different.

On Wednesday, we did intercambios. So I went out with Elder Martinez to the Monterrey area for the day. The first half of the day, it was raining like crazy. I thought I was prepared for the rain, but I was wrong. I had some sweet rain boots that were here at the apartment, my water resistant jacket, which I though was waterproof, and an umbrella. Turns out thats not enough. I still got pretty wet. I need a completely waterproof jacket in the future, I'll probably have to buy one. But when we came back for lunch it stopped raining. The streets were completely flooded in some parts, it was really cool. But that day was mostly spent contacting, only taught like two lessons. But it was really fun to change comps, even if Elder Martinez doesn't speak any english. Somehow I wasn't too confused all day though. Went pretty well.

Anyway, bendiciones.  I have now given 4 blessings of health in my time here. Anointed the oil twice and gave the blessing twice. The first time was on my first Sunday here, when an older lady asked for one in church, so I anointed, elder Urrutia gave the blessing.. Then gave one to my comp when he was having some stomach issues. On Saturday a member asked us to come to the hospital and give a blessing of health to her husband, which we got permission to do. I anointed this time. And then Sunday, when we were teaching a less active family, The member asked us if we could give one to her friend, who was struggling with some stomach issues, headaches, etc. Elder Urrutia kind of forced me into giving the blessing here. So I tried to follow the spirit, and stumbled through it pretty bad. But it was cool. And that lady, her name is Rosa, isn't a member. So then we started teaching her, and now we have a new investigator! woot! Priesthood blessings bring all kinds of blessings. My oil vial is getting a workout.

I have learned this week that many ladies here don't care at all at what time they begin to breast feed their babies. Including while you're teaching them. We were teaching a lesson to an investigator named Alejandra, and then she just started feeding the baby while we were asking her a question. As you can imagine, this is a very awkward situation for missionaries. So we tried to keep teaching and ask her questions, but she was very distracted with the task at hand. So that lesson didn't go to well. We went back another day, and she was busy with her baby again. So we ended up talking to another guy there instead who's having some word of wisdom issues.

And, bautismos. Jose y Maria are both progressing great. Both of them came to church on Sunday without us reminding them, which was awesome. Both are keeping commitments too. Hopefully we can baptize them on the 13th! And Sunday night, we went to a member's house to teach her friend. Turns out her friend wasn't there, but her 11 year old sister was. And she isn't a member. But, she wants to be baptized. Her name is Andrea, she and her sister are super cool. The sister is 19 and wants to serve a mission. But Andrea's mother is a less active member, and isn't sure if she wants her to be baptized. So we are going to keep teaching her, and pray all that works out.

But those were the highlights of this week that I remember. Will send pics as well.

Love you all

Elder Bingham

The chicken restaurant "el solar" on pday. Fried chicken here rocks

view from the balcony at our apartment

our apartment

I look dang good in rain boots

Me with elder martinez the day after splits

My new friend walter the frog. I almost squished him walking home sunday.

I was tempted to take him home, but I let him go free

At the hospital we had to put on masks and coats and stuff to go in and visit the guy. Dr Bingham junior

No, Dr Bingham is my father. I'm Elder Bingham. Here to give a priesthood blessing.