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

¿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.