Welcome to my office

This week I got a lot of practice for when I'm going to be some super rich CEO and I interviewed a lot of people. But baptismal interviews instead of job interviews. And I will definetly not be paying any of them. Just giving them opportunities for service in the Lord's kingdom. Which is way cooler than employment. I ended up interviewing 5 candidates, two for the church's child labor apartment (one primary girl and one priest-aged kid), two for girl talk department (relief society), and one for the ordinance specialists (priesthood). Sadly, one of those four wasn't quite ready but I'll keep it on the down low as to who it was and why cause we're all about privacy in Elder Bingham's office.

But for three of those interviews we had to travel way over to the chapel in Mangales for the sister misionaries' investigators, which is like 30-40 minutes in bus with a little bit of walking. So not a lot got done for us this week during interview hours, we had to take like two or three hours out of the day basically.

But then Belen 2 had a double baptism on Sunday, and it was a super spiritual experience. The chapel was like half full, we had to do it in the salon sacramental instead of the room where they have the font because so many people came. Also lots of investigators that seem a lot more excited for baptism now! Also I killed it at the piano. Played way better than I normally do in sacrament meeting.

Thats all for this week though. love you guys!!

Elder Bingham

PS Literally everyone is asking me if the general relief society president is family of mine. NOT ALL WHITE PEOPLE WITH THE SAME LAST NAME ARE RELATED, BOLIVIA!!

our pension has a avacado tree that grows GIANT avacados

my district

the whole zone!

one of the members got a new puppy that they named Scott. After the brand of toilet paper

I heard you like referrals

Knocking doors is overrated. Here in Belen referrals are where its at. 

Thinking about how this transfer has went, like 80 percent of the new investigators we've found have been references from members or people in the area book. Which is awesome. Way better than I've done in the past on my mission. Mostly from our convert last week and his brother. 

So this convert Jose Ernesto is a stud. He's brought two of his cousins to church, and one of those cousins invited his uncle to come listen to us! Even our referrals are giving referrals. And then Favio, the brother of Jose Ernesto that just got baptized, gave us a reference to one of his friends in school, and he's super awesome too! apparently he also gave a book of mormon to his uncle but his uncle just told him "you aren't going to convince me". Chump. He has no idea. 

We've also got refences coming off the computer that seem super awesome when we call them, but then they always bail out on us the day of the appointment. Not eveything goes perfectly in the mission sadly. 

But in other news...  There isn't other news. I honestly have no idea what else to write about this week. Sorry folks. 20 year old Elder Bingham feels like a boring old man now.

But things are still good. The mission is still the cinnamon

Elder Bingham  

This is our investigator's cat named Julian and he was a pal and slept on my lap the whole lesson.

Elder Bingham bites the cake

So I'm officially old now. In the mission and in real life. I'm not sure how I feel about being twenty. But everyone in Bolivia seemed pretty excited about it, just because it means they get to eat cake. Also because they get to shove my face in the cake.

So that's a weird, but awesome tradition here in Bolivia. They have their own special birthday song (look it up, its called "hoy queremos que seas feliz"), and then after they all sing, everyone chants "QUE LA MUERDA, QUE LA MUERDA" and then you have to take a bite out of the cake.  And then they shove your face in it. Its pretty fun. If you aren't the one who bites the cake. But if you are, it doesn't feel that great. Lots of frosting up the nose. I'll try to send a video.

So they got to do that to me twice this week. Once in district meeting, and once in a member's house. Fun stuff. But yeah, my birthday was actually pretty awesome. We also had a multi-zone conference where president announced that we can play soccer on mondays again!!! It was banned before but now we're all really happy. Also we got learned about charity and obedience and all that good stuff.

Then on Saturday, which was pretty much my birthday (just the day after) we had a baptism!!! Favio got baptized, he's the brother of another recent convert, and he's a stud. Makes us laugh a lot. So now him and his brother are paving the way so that their parents can get baptized in the near future! We're going to start teaching them, since they're a lot more interested now after seeing the change in their sons.

So all in all, things are going pretty well. Enjoy the photos and the video, if you can see it. Love you all!

Elder Bingham

pics 1-2: Round one of cake in district meeting

our lunch pension made a delicious lemon pie instead of a cake. Which is way cooler

us with the lunch pension, the Meruvia family. They're super awesome

cake round two in the dinner pension with the Montalvan family 

 Favio's baptism!

¡¡¡PRUEBE EL REFRESCO!!!

This week was the cinnamon again. Lots of miracles and a general conference full of revelations and some huasca, but you all already know about that. I wont talk about it too much.

But the main highlight this week was a lesson we had on Thursday. First we had our interviews with president so we walked out of there pretty motivated to work. And then the first house we tried one of our investigator's husband cussed at us a little bit and told us to go away. I think. I don't really understand insults in spanish too much. But then we decided to go visit Rosemary. Remember the other week how I told you one of our members was giving us referals to all of her old catholic lady neighbors? Rosemary is one of them. So we stopped by her house since our appointment with here the other day had fallen through. She let us in and seemed kind of excited to see us. We started talking a little bit about the Restauration, and then we asked her how she feels about it and if she has any question. Then she told us the coolest analogy ever. She said she feels like "I've been drinking this same chicha my whole life (chicha is a traditional drink here), and I like this chicha, its good chicha. But then somebody put a new drink on the table that I've never seen before, and I feel curious. I want to try the drink, see if it tastes good, and if i like it, I might start drinking that from now on."  And in my head I was like "Yeah girl! pruebe that refresco!! Its way better than chicha! This is like an exotic tropical mango smoothie and you're just drinking freaking chicha!"

But that lesson was just awesome all around. I'm thankful for the member that is such a good example that made Rosemary so interested in the church. And God prepares people to receive the gospel! Even the lifelong old Catholic ladies!!

And to sum up conference, it was dope and one of the members got mad at me because they're building another temple in Utah but not in Bolivia. Gotta be honest, I'm a little annoyed about it too. Layton needs a temple way less than Santa Cruz. No offense, Layton. Go to one of the other 15 temples in your state.

Love you guys! Thanks for all the support and the birthday emails!!

Elder Bingham

ps I might start contacting the nuns now. 

the tiny trash filled river in the jungle on the edge of our area

enjoy this graffiti of an archer riding a flying alligator

 our pensions dog named Choco. Which is also the nickname they give white people

¿successful week?

So this week I'm kind of a proud district leader. My district absolutely killed it this week! Everyone but my area haha. We had a pretty mediocre week. Between the four areas we found 45 new investigators and 21 with a baptismal date!! The sad part is that only 8 of the 45 new investigators and 1 of the 21 with a date our from our area. 

Our area is like really low on investigators since Belen split in two, so we've been trying really hard to find this week, with limited success. Elder Tuares has been really good at working with the area book and with the members. Almost all of the 8 we found came from references from members or the future investigators. Our members are kind of awesome. Theres this one lady in particular named Forinda who literally just goes and contacts all of her neighbors for us and invites them to family home evenings or lessons with us. The only down side to this is that all the neighbors she brings to us are old catholic ladies who don't really want anything to do with another church. But we can work with that. Nobody's taught them the REAL truth yet. Hopefully we should be baptizing some old Catholic ladies soon.

Other than that this week has been pretty boring. Other than the pictures I'll send. Love you guys!!

Elder Bingham

Sorry I kind of ended up just sending photos of dead stuff this week. But hey, I'm in Bolivia.

Someone graffitied black Emma Smith on a wall in our area and I will hear nothing otherwise. Check out the side by side

Mystery animal foot we found in the street. Literally just the foot. I have no idea what animal its from.
Don't get too grossed out.

Hermana Florinda cooked up these little birds for us that they go out and hunt hundreds of.
Pretty delicious despite the fact that they look like tiny pigs

Also Florinda's husband killed and skinned some weird mountain cat

Invisible Me

Hey fam Elder Bingham here. This week has been the cinnamon, once again. You might be noticing a pattern here. I'm really enjoying myself in this area. But sadly, transfers are coming in so I might have to change comps. But I'm really hoping I can train this transfer! I feel slightly pregnant, I think my son is coming to me this transfer. I'm excited.

But this week was awesome! First off we had a conference with Elder Godoy, a general seventy from Brazil and the area president, and it was awesome! Elder Godoy is one of my favorites for a few reasons that don't have too much to do with spiritual things. But he's also a really good speaker and he's inspiriational and all that good stuff. But I also like him because of his weird Spanish with a brasilian accent, all the jokes that he makes, and the fact that he's the only general authority I've seen who wears skinny ties! Style is important kids. But we had a confernce with him that the whole mission came to, including the missionaries in Beni, (they had to fly down here). One thing he talked about that I liked most was the parable of the talents. But he focused in the fact that the guy who only had two talents just made two more, but the master still let him in the house or whatever it says. Basically god knows our potential, and we don't have to do giant things, we just have to do what he asks us. Fufill the purpose that he gives each one of us. If I only have 2 talents, I don't have to make 20. I just have to make 2 more. But everyone has a specific purpose in this life, and we should look to complete that.

Friday we had Denar's baptism!!! It was really spiritual and Denar got cleaned of his sins and stuff and I was really happy. I'll just let the photos do the talking because I can't really put it into words. But it feels SOOO good to have a baptism after so much time. And we should have some more coming up soon!

Saturday and Sunday Elder Carbajal and I did divisions with two other elders who came in from Trinidad for the conference, but stayed here in Santa Cruz after because they have transfers. They're just waiting for tuesday when we get transfer calls, so the asistants stuck them with us. I was with Elder Winger, who started his mission here in Belen, but has been in Beni for 14 MONTHS. He was really happy to come with me and visit members and his old investigators and stuff. And as it turns out, Elder Winger is everyone's favorite missionary here in Belen. I basically turned invisible and everyone just ignored me so they could talk to elder Winger. But I'm not really jealous or anything, don't worry. Elder Winger actually helped out a lot and we had a lot of success these last two days. And he's a pretty cool guy in general. But we finished up the week strong working double here in belen. 

That's all for this week, love you guys!

Elder Bingham

There's a Nacho Libre tex mex restaurant in the ZL's area and I really wan't to go

Hna Gonzales dies this transfer so we had to take a corny pic in the last District meeting.
Sister missionaries like to do everything way too cutesy.

 ¡¡¡¡¡Denar's baptism!!!!!

our freshly dunked convert and my nametag

¡¡¡¡¡Denar's baptism!!!!!

Elder Carbajal and I with Elder Godoy and his stylish tie

 Our house with the guys from Trinidad

The mission is the cinnamon

Elder Carbajal has been teaching me some peruvian slang and my new favorite thing to say is "la canela" (the cinnamon), which basically just means that something is cool/awesome/lit/dope or whatever kids are saying these days. I mostly just like it because thinking about it in English is hilarious. The cinnamon. You can also say "la pitri mitri" and one other thing that I forgot. I love spanish.

But for real the mission this week has been la canela.  It all started out on Tuesday, when we found SEVEN new investigators in one day, and they all have solid potential. The only problem is six of the seven are couples who aren't married but have kids. People really need to figure out the law of chastity here. But luckily missionaries are pretty good wedding planners. I hope. But they kind of have to get a testimony of the Book of Mormon and the gospel and have a desire to be baptized before they have any reason to get married. But it's a work in progress.

On Wednesday we were shut in the house because Bolivia is protesting against their government and hates their president. Typical.

Thursday we had a multi-zone conference that was also the cinnamon. We learned a lot about how to use the Book of Mormon with investigators and how to help them gain a testimony of it. We tried out the advice they gave us in a couple lessons and it really is amazing the power that the Book of Mormon has. Also turns out that counsel from mission leaders is inspired and stuff. Who knew right? The Book of Mormon is the cinnamon.

And then on Sunday miracles happened! None of our investigators came two church, but members brought two new guys to church, Oscar and Deinar. Deinar has been going to church with his girlfriend for like four months now, but in a different ward. But he wants to get baptized, so they told him he has to go to the ward he lives in to get baptized! We went and taught him after church and the kid is super prepared. He's 21 years old and he already knows the church is true. He committed to a baptismal date for March 10th!! If everything goes well, it should be the fastest baptism of my mission. Just two weeks! It's gonna be the pitri mitri. We also went and taught Oscar after church and he's a 22 year old who moved into the same place as some members, and they brought him to church! But he has some doubts about if God really exists, because he studies science way too much. I knew there was a reason I hated science class. But we gave him a Book of Mormon, and he really really wants to know if its true, and if God is there. He tells us he's willing to do anything, even get baptized, if god answers his prayers.  I'm so excited for our area! things are going awesome. pray for our investigators

The mission is the cinnamon.

Elder Bingham 

last monday we went to some super fancy italian ice cream place as a zone called "coure di latte" or something. And I got a giant New York Cheescake ice cream bowl. And like all of their ice cream specialties look as fancy or fancier than what I got. The city is awesome

pic one testifies of the truth of this inspired quote in the ice cream place

selfie with a goat because Bolivia