Elder Jayson Bingham : Christmas literally came early!

So this week was extremely eventful. One of the coolest weeks we've had in a while. Christmas miracles are coming in full-swing here in Riberalta

On wednesday President Cabezas came into town for interviews, and on Thursday we had the multi-zone conference with the missionaries in Guayaramerin (the neighboring city in Beni). Those missionaries all took a 45 minute taxi ride down here for that, which was awesome because I got reunited with my good buddies Elder Prince and Elder Hernandez for a day! I'll send some pics about that.

Also the conference was super awesome. Literally the whole time (9:00-2:30ish), we talked about faith. Faith in different things, but faith. Something I need to work a lot on. What I liked most was when we talked about miracles. God is a god of miracles, and he's never going to change that. So there's no reason he can't make miracles happen here in the mission either. Alma 26:12 says;

"Yea, I know that I am nothing; as to my strength I am weak; therefore I will not boast of myself, but I will boast of my God, for in his strength I can do all things; yea, behold, many mighty miracles we have wrought in this land, for which we will praise his name forever."

As missionaries, we can work with the STRENGTH of GOD. There is absolutely no reason we shouldn't be seeing miracles here. Even though we are weak, God is like super jacked (spiritually). He has the POWER, which he kindly loans to us when we serve him diligently. What a nice dude right?

After the conference Hermana Cabezas surprised us and said we were going to have our super fancy Christmas lunch right then, since they wouldn't be able to make it up to Beni in a date closer to Christmas. So we all headed out in taxis to what is literally the nicest restaurant in Riberalta, some super fancy place called "El Tropical". And we wonder why people think the Mormons are all rich. We disfruted very much from the fancy buffet, and also the fact that hermana cabezas gave everyone santa hats. Pics to come

After the lunch, we all headed to the chapel to do a #iluminaelmundo activity. Everyone took a couple helium balloons, attached a contact card to it with some Cristmas message and our phone number, and we released them into the sky together hoping someone would find them. It would be a miracle right? I'm convinced if somebody finds one of those cards and calls it, it would be because God led them to that card and they are super prepared to receive the gospel and change their lives...

And then the next day, that freaking happened! Like for real! The zone leaders called and said someone had found a card attached to a balloon, read it, called the number, and wants us to visit them! Miracles do happen! They live in our area, only problem is, they only gave us the name of their street, and they don't answer their cell phone. But we are going to contact that whole street until we find them. Also, it was kind of funny, looking for that reference, we found one less active family that we didn't know existed. and one other lady that has the exact same name as the one who found the balloon. We got really confused talking to her, since we thought it was our golden balloon investigator, but she was really confused, because she had never found any balloon or contact card. It was kind of awkward. But God works in mysterious ways.

Wow that was a lot. my arms are tired from typing. love you all, pray for more Christmas miracles please!

Elder Bingham