door-knocking and Satan-stomping

At the beginning of this week Elder Morocho and I just told Satan to go to hell (I mean, that's where he's from really, don't be offended) and to stop discouraging us. Then we decided to have faith and go to work. But since we didn't really have any investigators, that work meant contacting. A lot. But, as it turns out, when you have faith that the Lord prepares people to receive the gospel, and then you go out and work, the Lord guides you to those people! Who knew? Also the Zone Leaders were bribing us saying that the companionship in the zone that finds the most new investigators this week gets free ice cream. So we also had that motivation but we fell behind early on. But we still kept trying to find as much as we could, and we ended up finding 12 new investigators this week!  Elder Winger and Elder Carlson will be their creamy sundae reward since they found TWENTY TWO new investigators this week. Be sure to congratulate them.  And suck it Satan!! Nobody likes you!

Other than finding people we don't actually have anything going on in our area. We don't have any progressing investigators. But some of these new guys are pretty solid! On Saturday we decided to go contacting in a part of our area that we don't spend much time in. And the first door we knocked was the golden one. There was a nice lady named Patricia that came to the door, and she let us in to talk with her and the fam. So we ended up teaching her, her husband Roberto, her daughter Xihomara (don't ask me how they come up with names here, I don't know how to pronounce that one either) her sister Mariana, and her nephew Joani! Family of five baby! And they were all super interested, we taught them almost everything from lesson 1. And supposedly Roberto also helped to build our ward's chapel like 25 years ago, so that was cool.

Hey another cool story! We had stake conference yesterday, and there was a special guest there. Brother Larsen, from Highland Utah.  Along with his companion, Brother Larsen was the first missionary to come to Santa Cruz. He opened up the missionary work here in 1966. He said when he came, there wasn't a single mormon. There also wasn't a single paved road in the whole city. And then like two months later, they had their first branch conference, which Elder Spencer W Kimball came to (yeah, that Kimball). and they had an attendance of 28 people! Thats insane! In that meeting, President Kimball said that he felt the spirit stronger there in Santa Cruz than he had in any other place he had been to in South America. And now, there's over 10 stakes here! Its awesome how fast the church grows sometimes.

But I ran out of cool stories now. Love you guys!

Elder Bingham

 took this stunner in the Hipermaxi. Happy Bolivian Mothers day Mom! (its on the 27th here)

Us with Elder Larsen and his wife, the first missionary in Santa Cruz!

Elder Carlson and I have started a nametag hiding war. I've put his in some pretty solid spots.

The great wall of Belen

Hello fam. This week has been a little rough, for multiple reasons. Our area's kind of hit a wall. We're looking for new investigators but its been really hard to find this week. Especially now that it's getting cold here. So as far as proselyting goes, there is literally next-to-nothing to report. Sorry boys.

In other news, we're getting kicked out of our house! The owner of our house just came back to Bolivia from Spain, and she wants to move in to the room in the back. Which she obviously can't do. So hermana Cabezas just told us we have to change houses. Before the end of the month. So this week has also been full of frantic house-searching with limited success. We're probably going to have to just move in to a room in our Bishop's house. Which will be really tiny for 4 missionaries, but it will work out. I'll let you know next week how house hunting went. 

But other than that, I don't know what else to write. Here, have some pics!!

 I hope someone that speaks Spanish understands my attempt at a pun. ¿mis hermanos tal vez?

theres a killer bakery right in the corner by our house that we go to like every day and the owner loves us.
So he wanted to take a photo since we came in so well dressed.

The group back together for the first time! Me, Elder Prince, Elder Buhler, and Elder Samuels

Obligatory email cause it's Monday

I feel like I have absolutely nothing to talk about this week since I already told everything interesting to the fam. But I guess I'll give a brief sum up for the rest of you folks.

Juan Carlos got dunked!! Luckily, most investigators want to be able to say that a white person baptized them so I got to do the dunking. It was a lot of work to get him interviewed and baptized but everything worked out! He came out of the water and I asked him how he felt and he just started saying stuff like "que belleza" or "completamente limpio" or "nuevo hombre". You know, the classics for someone who's sins just got washed away. And then he gave an awesome testimony in front of everyone about how the gospel helped him quit alcohol and stuff. It was a good night.

But other than that nothing really happened. I'll just send some pics. I think I have lots this week, hope you're happy.

Elder Bingham

Bowling last monday!!

#misionerorebelde 

Juan Carlos' baptism

a member invited us over yesterday for "fruit salad". They spoil us here.

Elder Bingham narrowly escapes the police

Had a couple close encounters this week. I swear Bolivia, I am NOT a criminal!! Representatives of Jesus Christ aren't criminals. But I'll get to that in a bit.

Proselyting this week was pretty uneventful. We found a few solid new investigators but nothing too memorable. The good thing that happened was that Juan Carlos finally came to church!!!! He should be getting baptized either this week or the next. And you remember Javier from last week? He didn't end up making it to church yesterday. Why, you might ask? He went and got baptized! In some other church. Not even kidding. Literally the worst excuse ever. Even after we explained the priesthood authority. But I think the guy didn't really understand our lesson too well and he just wanted to get baptized already, doesn't matter in what church. But luckily, I don't think he's committing himself to the church, he just wanted to go wash some sins off. We'll see how that goes. Pray he doesn't turn evangelical.

But we had a couple funny experiences this week. We were knocking on an investigtors door to see if he was home when for some reason Elder Bingham decided to pull on this little metal loop in the door, not really expecting anything to happen. and then the door OPENED. And then it WOULDN'T CLOSE because I couldn't pull the handle on the other side. So as we were trying to wiggle it shut and not let their dog escape, Elder Morocho saw our investigator's mom way back through the cracks in the door. She saw us, and then picked up her cell phone and walked into the other room. Elder Morocho was like "oh fetch she's calling the police" so we just started yelling at her and trying to get the door shut. We were literally stuck like this for almost 10 minutes before she came out and talked to us. Turns out, someone just called her and she was not calling the police to arrest us. All the neighbors were looking at us kind of looking at us weird because we basically looked like we were trying to break in. It was really awkward. Close shave.

Later that same day, we were walking in the street when we had a change of plans and turned around, and there was a lady right behind us. She looked me right in the eyes, and said "oh, you guys", and then just started railing on us (or just me basically) with false accusations. Like "what are you going to do to me, kill me?" or "how could you do those things?" or "are you going to do the same thing to me that you did to Jennifer?". This lady just thought I was some sort of spouse abuser or rapist or I don't even know what, but it was definetly one of the most uncomfortable experiences of my life. We just kindly tried to explain to her that we didn't know her and we haven't done anything, but she just started backing away in the other direction trying to get away from us. As she was walking away she yelled a few ugly things at us and also said "thats why I don't go to your church!!"  Like geez lady, don't blame it on the Mormons. So that was my second experience this week when someone thought I was a bad person. We'll have to make it up this week with dedicated service.

I hope you all enjoyed my extremely awkward experiences in Bolivia this week.

Elder Bingham