Merry *cough* Christmas *cough cough*

Hello everyone! We're all winding down here after christmas trying not to eat too much candy and trying not to get too trunky. Honestly other than Christmas this week was pretty boring. Mostly because we got super sick right after.

Around Thursday in district meeting we figured out like half the zone got sick at the same time. I came in with a fever and back/knee pain and just felt super weak. Elder Reynolds got back from an intercambio with a bad cold. Elder Fernandez and Elder Allen were sick with basically the same thing I was. And then the next day we found Hermana Paico in the clinic with a fever and back pain. So I think most of the zone just came down with almost the same thing at the same time. It's been fun.

Thursday we had to rest in the house quite a bit because we just were not functioning. Friday morning was the same. But then after that luckily my sickness has dropped down to just a really bad cough and a stuffy nose. But i'm still coughing up a storm. Wish me luck.

Happy new year everyone!!

Elder Bingham

christmas eve dinner! people brought us way too much food.

our pension got a new puppy and it fell asleep on Elder Reynolds' arm

Fa la la la la, la la la freaking la

Everyone here in Trinidad is getting in the Christmas spirit! Mostly us missionaries. So Elder Reynolds and I decided to deck our halls. But we don't have holly, so we settled for paper snowflakes and the two paper Christmas trees that we have taped to the wall, one from my fam and one from Elder Allen's fam. "Fa la la la la, la la la freaking la", as Elder Reynolds so nicely put it.

Merry Christmas Eve everyone! To sum up our week, we did some contacting, some teaching, found some awesome new investigators, got rained on, got really muddy, and felt the spirit! I also gave a bomb talk in the special Christmas sacrament meeting. I think I almost made some people cry. Maybe. 

But not too much else went on this week. Tonight we're going to sing Christmas hymns in the plaza and have some good dinner, and then tomorrow I'll call home. See you guys soon! Have a Merry freaking Christmas!

Elder Bingham

 last monday we ate lagarto a la piedra. Aligator cooked on a red hot rock. It was fetching delicious.
and it only cost 35 bolivianos (about 5 dollars)

wilderness explorer Elder Bingham spots some wild chanchos! They must be having a blast in all the mud here in trinidad

our christmas decorations

Everything happens to Elder Bingham, part 2

This week was pretty wacky. Let me give you a quick summary of some of the funny/unfortunate things that happened to me.

1: I accidentally left my umbrella hanging on the back of a mototaxi while I was taking out money to pay him and he took off with it

2: We got trapped in an investigator's house for like 3 hours waiting for rain to pass

3: I got bit in the hand by a parrot. Multiple times

4: I almost fell flat on my back slipping around in the mud. About 5 times.

5: I totally forgot to bring a change of clothes to our baptism and was forced to wear damp stuff coming out of the font. Might have chaffed a little.

6: I accidentally got the key stuck in the door of our house and we were locked out. The zone leaders were forced to kick in the door boards so we could get inside.

But hey we also did some really cool stuff this week! On Saturday we went to a children's hospital as a zone to sing christmas songs to all the sick kids and contact some people. Elder Allen also gave away a bunch of cheap plastic toys that he got in a package. There were many cute kids and we had a blast. Christmas spirit woop woop

Then later on Saturday Adan Soliz got married and baptized! He's an investigator we've been working with for a while but he's super converted to the gospel. He's come to church every week for months now but he just hasn't been able to get married until now. So we showed up to their wedding looking super handsome. I was wearing my fat Santa Claus tie that I still had on from the Christmas activity and both of our shoes were super muddy from trudging around in the mud in our area. But it's okay nobody judged us probably. But then Saturday night Adan got dunked! I had the pleasure of baptizing him and we had a really spiritual baptismal service.

But I think I'll let the pics tell the rest of the story. love you guys

Elder Bingham 

we went to a lagoon last Monday. Beni is cool

This is as close as I could justify getting to swimming. Shout out to Elder Yocom with his perfect photobomb

companionship unity at its finest

I was going to take a selfie with the zone but Elder Reynolds decided to put up his umbrella. The guy's a little camera shy

Adan's wedding!

Capybaras!!!!

Adan's baptism! and a Christmas tree!

Counts as a wilderness explorer pic, even though its just a statue of a horse

a wild Michael Jackson on a throwback pepsi bottle!

Wilderness explorer Elder Bingham spots a crane in flight!! We had to throw a rock at it to get it to fly but it worked out

found this nativity in the children's hospital and for some reason it has two Baby Jesus'. Catholics

Elder Bingham goes on house arrest

So this week was an interesting one. Lots of miracles happened! Well, like one miracle at least. But it was an awesome miracle so it basically counts for lots of them. 

Wednesday I had an intercambio with Elder Cahua from San Diego. He's a stud in his third transfer in the mission and he was really excited to escape from the moist, mosquito infested house of his area in Paititi. Elder Reynolds was really bummed out that he had to go over there. Especially since nobody there speaks english, they're all latinos in that house. But Elder Cahua enjoyed his stay in our beautiful house with air conditioning where we sleep at (we also live in a gated community, it makes me feel super rich. I love our house), and we had a solid day proselyting. His shoes got really muddy though because he didn't have rain boots.

Then that night the zone leaders gave us a little surprise. Thursday there were going to be lots of protests and we weren't going to be able to leave the house all day. Which meant the intercambio with Elder Cahua was extended another day. Elder Cahua was super happy about it because our house is a party, but Elder Reynolds died a little inside. Back at our house we spent all day cooking up lunch, playing with Elder Allen's nerf hoop, studying the scriptures, burning old garments that were in the house for some reason, and watching the biography of President Monson's life. I quite enjoyed it, even though we missed out on a day of proselyting.

But then after that we were a little worried about our area since it was Friday already and we had only found 1 new investigator so far. Saturday we spent most of the day contacting to catch up on that but only ended up finding three. Granted, they were three solid people, but we got home tired and a little disappointed that things didn't go better. But we don't stop there! On Sunday we got back to it but we planned a little better and ended up visiting some people we had contacted earlier. As a result, we found 9 new investigators on Sunday!!! We found two different families of 5 people and they were both super solid! One of them was especially cool, their name is the Bolling family. We just followed an impression to go to some 16 year old kid we contacted a week ago to see if his family would be around. When we yelled at their door (knocking isn't really a thing in Beni), a little girl peeked her head out and said "¡pasen!". We didn't really believe her at first, it was too easy. But then she said "pasen" again and we went on in to meet the one of the friendliest, most receptive families I've met in my whole mission. They had talked with the missionaries before in one of their parents' house so they were eager to learn more. Christmas miracles everybody!

Wish us luck, we have a marriage and a baptism this week, and we're stressing out trying to get another couple married so they can get baptized next week. Pray for Freddy and Bertha please! They're the best and need to get married so they can get their sins washed away and stuff.

Elder Bingham

the most hilarious bad english translation I've ever seen

A cool little lagoon out the back of our area. Elder Reynolds refused to turn his head for the selfie,
but Alvaro (the member accompanying us) was a good sport

"Christmas Dinner"

Hey Merry Christmas everyone! It's basically the Christmas season right? But we also basically celebrated thanksgiving this week so I'm kind of torn.

This week President came to visit Beni! He also came accompanied by the assistants and Hermana Cabezas. We were all super excited since they said Wednesday night we were going to go to a restaurant for a special "Christmas Dinner", even though it was only November 28th. They wouldn't be in Beni anytime soon so they decided to celebrate christmas with us right now. But then Tuesday morning the assistants called and said they wasn't going to be any Christmas dinner and that we were just going to have a special lunch on Thursday when we had our zone conference. "President Cabezas did us dirty" as Elder Yocom put it. So we didn't get dinner, but we did have churrasco (Bolivan steak basically, they grill big chunks of meat and serve it with cheesy rice and fried yuca. Its really fetching delicious) for lunch on Thursday. I basically counted that as a late Thanksgiving dinner instead of a Christmas dinner.  Sister Cabezas also gave us all Santa hats and fruitcake! The fruitcake was nasty but I ate it anyway. Why do people like that stuff?

The assistants also stayed in our house for the two days they were here since we have bunk beds and some extra space. They're both really chill. One of them is named Elder Angulo, and he was here in Central 2 for six months earlier in his mission, so he gave us some handy advice about the area and got really excited when he found out his converts are still going to church. He got me a lot more excited about my area and it went great.

Saturday we participated in the worldwide day of service for December 1st! our ward got together and cut all the really tall grass outside of a children's hospital here. Cutting grass doesn't sound like something it should take a whole ward to do, but there was a lot of it, and here in Trinidad, we didn't have any working weed whackers. So we all went to town with machetes and little shovels. I was going ham with the machete and hermana Paico was all like "Elder Bingham is Indiana Jones". Which is true. 

Then the rest of Saturday it RAINED. Really hard. All of the streets in our area got flooded and it was useless trying to proselyte, so we ended up just staying in the house from like 4:30 until the end of the day. Now all the streets in our area are really muddy and we go out in boots sí o sí.

But thats about all that went down this week. Thanks for the emails and the package! Love you guys!

Service outside the hospital! I finally got to wear one of those yellow vests

The flooded street outside our pension. This one didn't even have that much water compared to the rest.
Flooding is a bad problem here in Trinidad

here's the package mom! the sour patch watermelons not included in this pic because
I ate them all immediately after opening the package. Don't judge me

Wilderness explorer Elder Bingham spots a capybara (I think that's its name) chilling in the swampy jungle

Wilderness explorer Elder Bingham spots a snake in the canal! I pushed a tiny frog in front of its mouth
but it didn't even try to eat it. I was disappointed.