¡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