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

¿El Choco o el Morocho?

So another transfer already went by!! I'm staying here in Belen for this transfer, but I changed comps again! This is giving me serious deja-vu to the first part of my mission. I'm in an area in Santa Cruz for three transfers, I get a new comp every transfer, but then my third comp is completely nuts. I am now with Elder Morocho, who is from my MTC group! he's from Ecuador. Apparently he prophesied to me in the MTC that we would be comps one day, but I didn't understand anything he was saying to me back then. Crazy how the time flies. But Elder Morocho is a good guy. He's just a little crazy. Giving me flashbacks to Elder Ferreira, if you remember those emails.

The other funny thing about Elder Morocho is his last name. Apparantly "morocho" here in Bolivia is like a slang they use for a brown person. So most people here laugh when they here is last name. In Ecuador, "Morocho" is a food, but here, it's a brown person. Like Elder Morocho. So I came up with the genius joke the other day in a lesson that we've been using ever since. If you remember, "choco" is a slang for a white person. Everyone calls us chocos or gringos. So I asked an investigator who they want to say the opening prayer, "el choco o el morocho". *buh dum TSSS*. That investigator laughed pretty hard at least. We've been using that joke in like every lesson sense. Its funnier for the Bolivians at least, don't judge me.

But here have a miracle story!! The other day we were contacting in the morning and I felt a tiny little impression to call this reference Elder Croft gave me the other day. He said they contacted this guy in the center and he asked them for money. But they just wrote down his phone number since us missionaries aren't about charity. (you know, the giving people money in the street kind of charity. Its against rules. We actually do have the pure love of christ.) Croft told me we could just call that guy if we had nothing to do but he didn't seem that cool. But I called and asked if we could come over to visit him and he was like "CLLLLLAAAAAARRRRROOOOO". Cool guy. His name is Javier, he's 21. But he told us when he got there that he's had some alcohol and drug addiction problems in the past and he wan't to make a change. He was thinking about going to a rehabilitation center right when we called him! He took that as a sign from God and decided he should listen, and now he has a baptisal date! God prepares people to receive the Gospel and he guides his servants to those people. It was straight-up a miracle.

But there you go. hope you all enjoyed my slightly longer email this week. Love you all!

Elder Choco

There's a freaking TGI Friday's in our zone. We went there last Monday.
That was like one of the best burgers I've had in my life

Turns out Elder Davis (a dead missionary from our mission) is in a one direction parody video that some mormons made a while back that our pension was showing us. We made fun of him pretty hard

Saying goodbye to Elder Tuares, one of my favorite comps

 El Choco y el Morocho! 

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