the dreaded man-cold

You remember last week how I said it was actually pleasantly cold here in Riberalta? Turns out that cold was the downfall of my companion. He came in with what I think Marianne once called a "man-cold". Which is basically just when a guy gets a cold, but then that cold is bad enough that he thinks he's dying and he can't do anything. And also complains about his cold excessively.  So this week has been full of my companion coughing and doing everything really slowly. Which has been a little frustrating. But lots of good things also happened this week, don't worry.

Those good things include interviews with President, zone conference, and a baptism this saturday! In interviews, President basically gave me the huazca and said I need more to have more faith in myself. Which is very much true. I will be working on that. Basically in every interview I've had with President Cabezas I've come out half inspired and half humiliated (or humbled, how does english work?) half humillado. I think that's humbled. Zone conferences you usually just come out full inspired. This zone conference I learned that we need to have more faith here in the mission field. Sometimes we have a tendency to just get annoyed or frustrated when appointments fall through or people lie to us or investigators don't come to church, so then we lower our expectations. But when that happens in the mission, we just need to work harder and have faith that the Lord will put the prepared people in our path. This week I've seen a little bit of that. We started teaching a funny old lady named Magdalena who has a lot of potential, and this older fellow named Antonio Mora, who's been recovering from a surgery. Antonio is really poor and he can't walk well, so I thought he wouldn't be able to make it to church if we didn't have a member pick him up. But this Sunday, nobody in our branch could make it over there to help him. But I was super surprised to see him show up to church anyway! He had enough faith and desires to sacrifice 4 pesos to take a taxi to church. Which is like nothing for us, (like 50 cents) but this guy has almost nothing. He can't work because he's still recovering, so he doesn't have much money. But he can see the blessings that come with the gospel and I'm happy about it.

Also we had two baptisms this Saturday! I baptized this 9 year old named Aaron, who's parents are both members, but he never got baptized when he was 8 because his dad had to go work in the field. Which happens a lot here in Riberalta. So we had to teach him the lessons, which we were happy to do. He's an awesome kid. We also baptized a 16 year old named Emar who we've been teaching for a while. So that day was also happy.

That would be all for this week I think. Love you all!

Elder Bingham

Look what I found outside of the meat market!

(It is a decapitated cow head)

Our branch secretary, Alexander lended me his sunglasses and I look like an extremely well dressed Terminator

Baptism!! I'm the really tall one in the back (surprise)

I took an awesome photo of Elder Steve Erwin messing with Tincho the pet monkey trying to take his pen

Elder Steve Erwin

So you guys remember the crocodile hunter Steve Erwin? Of course you do. shame on you if you don't. But I decided Elder Quintana is the reincarnated form of the crocodile hunter. Except not with crocodiles. So far he's kind of obsessed with ducks and ants. Yes, you heard that right. I'll explain a little more with the photos I send.

But as far as everything else goes, this week has been kind of awesome but also really frustrating. Awesome because it was "cold" here in Riberalta. Rainy season has started, and I'm loving it. there's been a couple storms recently and I haven't felt nearly as hot or sweaty. Last night I broke new ground and slept with a blanket. And I didn't even use the fan. But I did have the window open blowing nice cold air in. We're still enjoying the nice weather today. So i'm praying that keeps up for a while 

But as far as the work goes, we're finding that nobody has real intent here. Or in other words, we ask them to pray to know if the church is true, or the book of mormon is the word of god or whatever, and they say they'll do it. We come the next appointment, ask them if they prayed. They usually say yes, so we ask them what they prayed about. And it is has never been even close to what we asked them to pray about. Just for health and protection and stuff. And then we ask them, "if god told you to do ______, would you do it?" which they always respond in the affirmative without hesitation. And then we ask "if god told you the church is true and you need to get baptized, would you do it?" and then they always say "i don't know" or "maybe". So if anyone has advice about how to help people have real intent, I would love to hear it.

But other than that the work here is going alright. We're making little bits of progress here and there. we found an awesome family, la familia Aguilar-Hurtado, and they were really interested. We went to a lesson with them on Wednesday when I had an intercambio with my good buddy and zone leader Elder Croft, and I'm pretty sure we taught the best lesson 1 of my entire mission. They understood everything really well and we taught really well together even though I've never worked with Elder Croft before. but I have lots of hopes for this family. But other than all that, its been a pretty normal, boring week this week. 

Love you all, thanks for the emails and the support. Pray for the Bolivians, they need some Gospel in their lives (real, restored church Gospel, that is)    

Elder Bingham

intercambio with elder Croft. bonus points if you can figure out how we made our hats magically float there.

 I came up with the trick myself. It's really handy

Elder Quintana is in love with one of our investigator's baby ducks

he also spent like 15 minutes looking at these giant ants and trying to get this picture.

Triscodekophobia

Well this week included Friday the thirteenth in October, and Elder Selinger decided to celebrate. Because supposedly "triscodekophobia" (no idea if I spelled that right,) is the fear of friday the thirteenth or something and that's like his favorite word. And when we all got back to the house friday night, the power had gone out. It was too perfect. So we shot a couple horror movies. We'll see if I can get them to send. Also a few other cool things happened this week so here you go.

One funny/spiritual (?) experience happened a couple days ago. An appointment had fell through and we didn't know what to do, so my comp suggested we say a prayer and ask what to do. Right after I finished the prayer, literally within half a second, our phone rang. It was the zone leaders, and they told us they had our new beds and they needed help getting into our house and moving the old beds and stuff. So not exactly the answer we were looking for, but it was still cool and it gave us something to do.

The other experience that stood out this week was a family we started teaching, the Olmos family. Or basically just the mom and her 21ish year old daughter. They're super friendly, but also super active in their church. But we talked to them about the restauration and invited them to read the Book of mormon, and they had a bunch of questions and it was an awesome lesson. When we came back to visit them, the daughter Alejandra had read some of the Book of Mormon, which was cool, but she started telling us that we had basically put doubts in their minds about their church. They seemed really stressed about it, I almost felt bad. But we testified that if they read the book of mormon and prayed about it, they would know our church is true, even if it would be a hard change. And then Alejandra turned to her mom and said "creo que vamos a hacer una semana de oracion y ayuno" (or, they're going to be fasting and praying this week to find out). So we obviously got really excited about that. If they get an answer, they'll be some awesome members with awesome testimonies. So I hope you can all help us out in praying that they get that answer. We'll let you know how that goes next week.

But thats all for now, love you all! I also have some good pics this week, don't worry.

Elder Bingham

you better watch out or this Jayson (me, not the horror movie one) 

will be coming to haunt you the next Friday the thirteenth

Remember that pet monkey I sent a pic of like a month ago? We started teaching the owner so i could take a pic a little closer up. But I can't remember his name

Elder Quintana was playing with an investigator's ducks and one of the baby ones pooped on his hand. it was hilarious.

Old geezers and mangos

Well this week has been filled with old geezers and mangos, as the title describes. So in other words, its been a weird week.

Well as far as old geezers go, we've been focusing a lot in finding people to teach this week. Mostly because Elder Quintana really likes contacting everyone. Which is great, but he almost does it in excess. Like makes us late for appointments sometimes. But we've ended up teaching a few old geezers who don't really understand what we're talking about. Also most of them cant see good enough to read the book of mormon if we give them one, which makes it kind of hard for them to progress. Also Elder quintana is really intelligent, which means he likes to teach everything he knows with complicated scriptures and like lots of details about the history of different churches and the apostasy and stuff. But I think thats because he hasn't adjusted to Riberalta yet. Where the people really don't get stuff like that. Here you have to teach in the simplest way possible or they will have no idea what you're talking about. Also we've ran into a lot of people who kind of just want to bash with us this week. So I learned a lot about using the book of mormon to respond to objections. As missionaries, we don't have to respond to every question or objection they have. I've learned this week that that just leads to more objections or more contention. Also longer, less spiritual visits. So this week I've been trying to improve, and teach (like in district meetings) about that. Cause sometimes people have a lot of apostasy built up that just needs to be destroyed by the book of mormon. So I highly reccomend reading it if you havent done that yet. Its a good book.

Also, its freaking mango season in Riberalta. Theres mango trees all over the freaking place here, and all the fruit is starting to get ripe now. We went and did a service saturday digging some holes (and I felt like a manly man swinging that pickaxe around. Also my back hurt because I'm a large man trying inside a relatively small hole digging), and the family we helped gave us a whole bunch of mangos to eat in return. And they're freaking delicious. So we just constantly have mangos in the house to snack on. I bet you're jealous.

Well, that would be all from this week. Once again I haven't taken too many pictures, sorry. But I think I have a few. We'll see. 

Love you all! Try not to be too sad that you don't have fresh mangos growing all over your city!

Elder Bingham

also from the las pday this last transfer with elder Gonzales at "el mirador" which is basically just a place where you get a really cool view of the river

pic from last transfer with a cool family in our branch. also where we eat lunch

it was raining really hard one day. looked up at the sky and it was basically clear. Bolivia

Gringos invade Riberalta

Well, I think I'm probably setting a record. I now have my 6th companion in 6 transfers in the mission. Including the MTC. My son grew up really fast and he moved out already.  Elder Gonzales got transferred to Santa Cruz for some reason, and I'm staying here in Riberalta with my new companion, Elder Quintana. He's this Peruvian kid who looks like he's about 16, but he's really like 3 months older than I am. Also I'm district leader again. So I just decided that I'm going to have a different companion with some kind of assignment every transfer of my mission. But I guess that's what President Cabezas wants me to do. Or the Lord, I guess. So I'm fine with it. I just hope one day I can have a comp for at least two transfers. Cause I have yet to have that best friend mission companion that I stay with for a couple transfers and then i also my best friend at home. But some day.

But transfers were really eventful. Three people are training new missionaries in our zone. And all three are new gringos. Over half of our zone is gringos now. And also, all the new guys that came are as tall or taller than me. So I don't really feel that special anymore. On the bad side, we kind of suck at playing soccer now. almost all our best soccer players in the zone got transfered. But ni modo.

So General conferece happened. And I was suprised to find out that I could watch it in english. They had one room sectioned off in the church with a tv transmitting in english for all the greenies in our zone. But unfortuately, it was really hot in that room. The only room with air conditioning in the church is the chapel, but that's where they transmitted it in spanish. So I ended up going with that for the rest of the sessions anyway. But of course, I got the most out of the first session. Elder Holland's talk helped me out a ton as usuall, when he talked about imperfections and stuff. Cause normally I feel like my missionary abilities are like slightly above sub par. Or, I guess I feel like I'm a good missionary, but not a great one. But that talk helped me out a lot when I listened to it, but I've already forgotten most of it. I'll go over the few notes I wrote down. I'm looking forward to having all the talks in english in about a month when we get the liahona.

I did hear about Elder Hales' death, we were able to watch every session. That was kind of a bummer, but Elder Anderson's mini tribute to him was amazing. I felt the spirit a lot there.

But the mission work goes about like normal here. I'm happy, its really hot, and we're progressing in our area little by little. I'll let you know how that goes next week, I think we should have a great week of teaching.

Love you all. Glad to hear that all these freaking hurricanes and shooting and fires and stuff aren't really getting too close to home. But for real like what's going on over there? I just keep hearing about how our country is getting destroyed. Those areas will be in my prayers.

Elder Bingham