little sacrament cup sized miracles

Well this week has been pretty good. A whole lot better than last week. But I'll avoid giving you guys boring details of everything and just share the coolest experiences.

So the other day we contacted this guy named Pedro Salvatierra. Este chango es muy interesante. He basically lives in a pile of trash that is kind of shaped into a house with some shelter. The poorest living conditions i've seen in my area. But he came out and talked to us for a while, and was really interested. He has some mental problems he told us about where he has a hard time remembering information or something. But he's eager to talk with us because he feels like we understand him, being "profesionales espirituales" or something. Like the doctor is the mental professional but we're the spiritual professionals. I was very flattered. But we offered to come back Saturday morning and do some service for him, help him clean up his trash pile a bit. He accepted and we were excited to come back Saturday.

Unfortunately, we had a surprise multi-zone conference Saturday morning! Well, the conference was cool, but we were bummed out that Pedro would be waiting for us and we wouldn't make it. So luckily Friday night we passed him in the street as he was walking! And he called us out by name as we walked across the street ("Moreno! Bingham!"). Which is awesome. Literally nobody else has ever remembered my name. Instant golden investigator. So we told him we wouldn't be able to make it to serve him, but we ended up having a really cool lesson with him Saturday anyway. I appreciate the guidance of the spirit in these situations. Little miracles every day. 

We also had a cool visit with German, the rich Chileano we've been teaching. He said he had a doubt when we talked to him in church, so we asked him about it in his house during our lesson. And his doubt was just wondering if his uncle, who is a mormon, could come from Chile to baptize him! That was easily the best doubt ive heard from an investigator. So he should be a baptism in the near future, and Maria will be baptized this Saturday! I'm really excited for those two especially.  Except i might get transferred before German's baptism, Im kind of scared. But I also would not mind going to a new area. We're already in the last week of this cambio! Its kind of nuts, time really does pass fast in the mission.

Well that's about what I can think of this week. Some cool pics to come

Love you all, hope you're doing well.

Elder Bingham

Us in the famous plaza 24 en Santa Cruz.

I finally got my scripture cases ordered from the guy who custom makes them with different leathers. And they're awesome. The triple is the one with tiger and the tree of life on the front, and the back is snake with the scripture. And the bible has anaconda on the front and lagarto on the back. I feel más poderoso con estes fundas. I know Bryce said he potentially wanted some. But you would have to send me designs and money. Because they're a bit expensive. But I kind of just wanted to show off. But I can get you some someday if you really want.

¡Llame ******** por su salvación!

So this week kind of sucked. No voy a mentir (I'm not going to lie). But hey, that will happen every once in a while in the mission.

So our area has an extreme lack of solid investigators. So this week, we focused on finding new ones. Which meant contacting. A lot. And looking around for some of the people in our carpeta de area. But mostly contacting. which, we've now learned, is not the best way to do it. But ill get to that in a minute. 

In all our contacting efforts, we had to make it a little enjoyable. So many jokes were made like the one in the subject line. Except I can't write our actual phone number in there. Making the church sound like an infomercial is actually hilarious. Por ejemplo "Hola, soy Elder Bingham, y este es mi compañero, Elder Moreno. Somos misioneros de la Iglesia de Jesucristo de los Santos de los Ultimos dias. Usted, alguna vez, ha preguntado '¿cual es mi proposito en la vida?' '¿Porque hay tantos diferentes iglesias?' O, quizás, '¿Puedo tener más de una esposa?' Aqui en la iglesia, tenemos las respuestas a estes preguntas. ¡Llame ******** hoy por su salvación!"  (roughly translated: Hello, I am Elder Bingham and this is my companion, Elder Moreno. We are missionaries for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Have you ever asked "What is my purpose in life? Why are there so many churches?" or perhaps  "Can I have more than one wife?" Here in the church, we have the answers to these questions. Call *********today for your salvation!) Its funnier in person. And in my infomercial voice, which I can't use over email unfortunately. But in all our efforts contacting, we did find a few good contacts. But presidente Cabezas is telling us that we need to visit all the recent converts, less actives, and member families to find their friends or family members who aren't yet members of the church. This really is the better way. And much more enjoyable.

One good thing this week is that I think we peaked. As in, we found the más durisimo investigador posible. His name is Gustavo. We were in his door for about a half hour in the contact, where he told us basically his life story and how Jesus Christ and the bible changed his life, not "José de Smith" as he said. And that from his experience, the name of our church is a lie and Joseph smith is the center, not Jesus Christ. "Pero vengan mañana a las 3!" he said. So we came back, determined to preach about the book of Mormon and change that guy's life. What ended up happening is he sang us a song on the guitar, (not sure why), we taught and bore testimony about the book of mormon and Jesus christ, and then he proceeded to tell us his life story and testimony, again, only with way more detail and for way longer. And basically completely turned us down hardcore again. But in the nicest way possible. So super good guy, but he's sadly a little lost. We probably won't be going back there. Plus this experience really strengthened my testimony. That I really am sure of what I'm teaching to these people. I know the church is true with complete certainty, and no amount of preaching from anyone can change that. So thank you, Gustavo.

That's about all I can think of for this week. Here, have a spiritual thought. 

The Baptismal covenants took on a new meaning for me this week. Or more specifically, taking upon us the name of Christ. Mosiah 5: 8-9 says this:

8 And under this head ye are made free, and there is no other head whereby ye can be made free. There is no other name given whereby salvation cometh; therefore, I would that ye should take upon you the name of Christ, all you that have entered into the covenant with God that ye should be obedient unto the end of your lives.

9 And it shall come to pass that whosoever doeth this shall be found at the right hand of God, for he shall know the name by which he is called; for he shall be called by the name of Christ.

Taking his name upon us, we are literally promising to try and become like him. Be completely obedient unto the end of our lives, like Christ was. Only through this name can we gain salvation. But then if we keep our covenants, we will be found on the right hand of God, just like Christ. Which is super cool.

Well I guess I'll leave you with that. Not sure why there's like 3 different fonts here, and I don't know how to fix it. Sorry about that. And the spacing is weird.

But love you all! 

Elder Bingham

We sort of did it!

Well this week has been really interesting and extremely stressful. First off, Elder Moreno finally came Monday night, so I have a comp now! A comp that doesn't know the area or the people, so I have to take charge with that. But Elder Moreno is super cool. He's from Honduras, tiene 6 meses en la misión, y tiene 23 años. He's a convert of about two years, so he's able to share some pretty awesome testimonies about his conversion with people. Almost makes me jealous that I'm not a convert.  For the first part of the week he was basically dying from the cold. He came in from Beni, which is ridiculously hot, and when you go to Beni, you can only take one bag. So he didn't have his other bags with winter stuff for a few days, so I let him borrow my gloves and hat and jacket and sweater and whatever else he wanted. It's kind of hilarious how much these South Americans bundle up in the "winter" here. Like it gets cold, I need a jacket or sweater or whatever, but I can always handle it way better than them. I love the cold. Makes me feel tough. Anyway, he has his other bag now, and plus it got hot again the last few days. Miss you winter.

This Wednesday we had interviews with Presidente Cabezas. Which involved going to the offices for a while, watching mormon messages and stuff while waiting, and then having the 10 minute interview. We were there for about 4 hours. But it was still fun. Plus we got KFC for free for lunch. In my interview, Presidente basically told me I need to do better. I'm not doing bad, but I need to do better. He asked to see my study journal, which I've used basically not at all, so I need to improve in that. And then he asked me how we're doing in my area with the 20 encuentras every day. I only learned about this recently. Basically presidente wants us to make 20 encuentras (or contacts I think) every day. An encuentra involves talking with someone who isn't already an investigator or member and setting a time to return and talk some more. Which getting 20 of those in every day is pretty much impossible. We've been trying really hard this week to contact and find new investigators, but this area is really hard for that. But, I guess we need to try harder. Cause we're running out of solid investigators. Lots of contacting will be happening this week I think.

As far as highlights this week go, I can really only think of the baptism of Yolanda y Raul. And not Maria (GAH). Maria is super ready for baptism, but she wasn't able to make it to the baptismal interview this week. And she really wants the support of her parents for baptism, but she says they think she hasn't been investigating long enough or something. They don't think she's sure about her decision. We know she's ready, (she's already in Moroni in the Book of Mormon. Freaking Moroni. Almost finished.) and she really wants to be baptized soon, but her parents aren't sure. So we're going to talk to them tomorrow and get that sorted out. And maybe start teaching them as new investigators. Sería chevre. 

Getting Yolanda and Raul baptized was equally as stressful, except we actually got it done. We had to visit them like every day this week to get all the lessons in and an interview done. But unfortunately, there usually isn't a man in the house when we go to teach her, so we had to look for a member every day to come with us. Which is the worst. because all the men are always working when we need them to accompany us.  But with some prayers, some luck, and some gift of the Holy Ghost, we were able to find someone every day, get the entrevistas in, and get them baptized! I'm really excited for them. They'll be leaving to Spain this week, but hopefully we can get them in contact with some missionaries there. they'll be great members.

Thats about all for this week. Love you guys

Elder Bingham

BTW, I'm not sure why we can't eat pig. Its a mission rule. Also cant eat strawberry or lettuce. Something with them could potentially be unsafe if not prepared right. It's for safety.

Elder Moreno and I pre-baptism. I baptized Yolanda and he Baptized Raul.

All the people that came. Raul and Yolanda in the middle.

The best looking elders in Santa Cruz