Didn't I just talk to all you guys?

Hey ya'll! I could've sworn I just talked to you guys... That was so awesome though! It was weird being on the other end of the call though, like Amaya said. And our call was actually a lot better than the other Elders' in our pension. I thought our connection was great, even if you guys didn't. They had problems understanding each other at all. Elder Stocks and Elder Johnson even had to just make a call instead of a video call because the connection was so bad. So I was pretty lucky! 

I'm still having a hard time believing that my younger siblings got iPhones for Christmas too. That's a little crazy. But I really didn't get to hear what everyone got besides those and that helicopter thing and a robot vacuum! So tell me! Especially my younger siblings who I haven't heard from in 8ish weeks, besides from skype, but that doesn't count. And also I want video proof of this robot vacuum thing. It sounds awesome! 

So this week is probably going to turn out to be the same as last week for the most part. As far as New Years goes. We don't have a mission New Years party, unfortunately, but we are pretty much locked in our pension for the afternoon on Wednesday and all of Thursday. Apparently New Years can be even MORE dangerous than Christmas. So we'll probably just play Magic the Gathering again or UNO or something. Who knows?

It was a good week besides being locked in the pension though. The days that we weren't we actually had a lot of success! Mainly with less-actives this week, but with our new key indicators that we have it feels like there's a new emphasis on them! Because they really are just as important as baptisms! We taught something like 11 less-active lessons this week. One in particular to this guy named César. He's this super awesome less-active returned missionary who even speaks a little English! I'm not exactly sure the reasons why he's less-active right now, other than that he works a lot (because I still can't understand spanish), but our main focus with him has just been to get him to remember his time as a missionary and the testimony he had. We really believe we can start getting him back to church. We've had a couple really good lesson with him and it sounds like he wants to come back. We're such good friends with him already that he invited us to play this kind of racket sport they have down here with him for his birthday this morning! But unfortunately his sisters kidnapped him or something so that kind of fell through. But pray for him and pray that we can help him! Cause his returned missionary skills are super needed in this ward!

That's about it for this week! It was great to hear from you guys!

Elder Bingham

GIANT HAMBURGER! For only 40 pesos! That's like 4 bucks! I enjoyed it very much. 

I like this picture of me with the hamburger more, but the other one I sent you shows more of the magnitude of the burger. So I thought I'd send both. 

Family pics! I got to meet all my brothers at the Christmas party. I'm Elder Stock's third son. 

Elder Moita is the oldest, (and the shortest) and then Elder Moody, and then me!

Parrot! His name is Lorenzo! Now me and Amaya are twinners! Sorry that that was the best lighting I got! 

Holy Crap It's Christmas!

Hola people! And HOLA AMAYA! Welcome home. It's crazy that you're back already. I'm sad that I wasn't able to be there for it, but I guess I'll get to see you in like 21 months or something! And great testimony by the way! I enjoyed hearing that! It was great to see how much you've grown on the mission. I can't believe 3 months have already gone by! And I feel like once I know the language a little better it will only fly by faster. But I'm still loving it here, as always. 

To answer Mom's questions again real quick: Glad you liked the pictures! We try to do service like once a week, usually on Saturday mornings, and it's usually helping someone build a house. Actually, that's about all we've done. I have gotten to play a little of the Christmas music, and that's been fun! I usually play a little right before our English classes start, which is twice a week. I still haven't gotten any of your snail mail, but I did get a letter from Kaila Olsen! I think she sent it on like Nov 24? But I'd like to send her a reply, prefferably by email because I don't want to deal with sending real mail here. If you could get her email that'd be cool. 

This week was a little hard, I'll be honest. At least as far as numbers go. We tried so hard to get lessons with members, and and actually just lessons in general, but whereever we went the people we wanted to teach were never home. I guess everyone's working really hard to get some money for Christmas. And plus me and Elder Stocks had to travel all the way to Mendoza Wednesday night for a capacitación for all the training missionaries. All of thursday was pretty much another training session for us, and then we left that night. So that whole day we couldn't teach or anything. And then friday we had a ward christmas party, but I guess because everyone works during the day they did it at 9 o'clock at night! We got permission to be there of course, and it was really fun, but I was nearly dead in the morning of exhaustion. I'm never staying up past midnight again. Haha. But yeah, pray for us that we can teach these investigators more! Because that's the thing about this area. We find so many people to teach, but it's super hard to get them to progress because we can't see them very much.

 And haha this next week is only going to be harder to teach people. We've got p-day today, a Christmas party tomorrow for like half of the mission in Mendoza, and then Christmas Eve and Christmas we can't really do a lot of work, because apparently everyone drinks so much on Christmas Eve night, that night and all of Christmas day can be a little bit peligroso (dangerous). We are in the wine capital of the world, after all. So we can go out to members houses and stuff those days, but we can't just be walking around. We're probably meeting up as a district and playing games and eating food. It'll be fun! But also not very productive. So that stinks. 

We've got a new Elder in our pension! The Brazilian Elder Andrade left, and now we've got another gringo! His name is Elder Johnston from St. George, and he's only got one more transfer than me. So we're both pretty new! It's pretty fun.

I'm looking forward to skyping on Thursday! I think we're planning on skyping at 3 in the afternoon, which would be about 11 in Utah? Sorry I couldn't do it sooner, but we've got lunch at a different member's house before that so that's the soonest we can make it. 

Love you all! And have a super mega fantastic Christmas!

Elder Bingham

Another asado! I ate cow intestines and heart! The intestines were kind of weird, but not too bad! 

Got a picture with President Monson in the mission offices! Or rather, a cardboard cut-out of him. Whatever. 

My traveling group reunited! Mostly! Elder Clarke for some reason wasn't in the picture, and a couple Elders couldn't make it to our training thing, and also like 4 elders have already gone home from our traveling group. Kind of sad. 

Our Christmas tree! Elder Nelson cut down a palm leaf right outside of our pension and we just hung a bunch of random crap on it. But there's our christmas card pic I guess!

Done with my first transfer already?

Hola familia! Just another great week for me. It's crazy that I´m already done with my first transfer! Time here seemed to fly way faster than it did in the MTC. And it´s also crazy that Amaya´s like going home this week! I'm only going to get one more letter from you from the mission Amaya, so make it good! I'm sad I missed out on the Angel tree thing this year, I'm only now realizing how cool it was. I'm glad you guys were able to spread some Christmas cheer! And you can spread some more with that "He is the Gift" video Amaya mentioned! We are also working hard on using that in our proselyting efforts, except here it´s called "Él es la Dádiva." And the funny thing is that nobody uses the word Dádiva down here, so we have to explain that it´s actually a "regalo." But share that video on Facebook and stuff if you haven´t already! 

To answer your questions again Mom: The language is coming along much better. When I think about it, the first day I couldn´t understand a word of what people were saying, but now I can usually get the gist of the conversation. Most of the time I still don´t know how to reply, but there has been a dramatic improvement. Thank you, don de lenguas. 

Also, teaching is still going pretty good down here. The problem that actually kind of bugs me a little bit is that we don´t have problems finding people to teach. People are always like "Yeah, come on by sometime! No hay problema!" But it´s just so hard to get more than a few lessons with people! Even some of our best investigators that we probably found in week 2 or 3 of this transfer we can´t see more than like once a week, if that. We try to communicate with people, but people either don´t have cell phones or they don´t use them when they do! So that´s frustrating.

I can´t really think of very many specific teaching experiences this week, just that we focused really hard on getting lessons with members. We had some success with that. Whenever we go out to this place called Las Viñas there's this member that lives there named Ramón. He just barely ended his time as a recent convert unfortunately, so we can´t count lessons with him as recent convert lessons, but he helps us so much! He has such a strong testimony, and he helps us find so many people to teach out there, and he goes with us to lessons, and he sets up Noche de Hogars (Family Home Evening) like every week for us and invites nonmembers to them. So we get so many lessons with him, and they´re so much more powerful when he shares his testimony. I think we got like 5 member lessons with just him this week, and we had like 7 total. And we got references from him too, which turned out to be very good contacts. 

I haven't received any of the snail mail yet.... We only get mail at zone meetings or zone conferences, which are like once a month. And we just had ours last week. So I have no idea when it´ll get here. 

I think that's all for this week though! I guess just pray that we´ll be able to get more lessons with the good investigators that we have right now. It'd be much appreciated! Cíao!

Elder Bingham

I decided we need a picture with this dog! We named it Gruff, and it´s like the most annoying, smelliest dog ever. But it like lives at the church, and every time we pass by or try to get in the church it tries to like jump on us and stuff. And we had to use a timer to take the picture, so that´s why it´s off center. And I definitely washed my hands after. 

Servicio! We helped build a house on Saturday, and got pretty sunburned! It was fun.

Here's a christmas card kind of pic! Elder Stock's mom wanted one, and his camera is broken. So there's just a nice looking picture of the two of us in Argentina. 

It's not even close to looking or feeling like Christmas here

Hola people! And happy birthday dad! I figured I´d rather tell you that the day after your birthday than last week. I hope it was great. I probably need to see these bald guy hats you were talking about. And also, about the whole grandpa thing at work, it'd be really weird if you actually were if you were before I got back. (hint hint Amaya ;) ) Kyla, sweet gymnastics routine! I´m glad to hear you´re improving your scores so much! And ahh... the Mr. Bills Festival. Sounded like a blast. I'm just glad I didn't have to be in it this year. Haha. 

Another good week in the hottest place I've ever lived in! Haha. I think it´s definitely getting hotter. We had some people tell us that it was probably 43 degrees celsius some days this week, so those days were FUN. Mom, those leather wipe things actually sound very useful. I am constantly wiping off my forehead with my hand, it it´s not very effective. It´s weird that Christmas is in just a few weeks and it´s like summer here. On the bright side, no knee problems this week! Hopefully I don´t feel that ever again. 

I had my first zone conference this week! That was fun. President Goates really emphasized obedience and working with the members. So me and Elder Stocks have tried really hard this week to get the members down here to find people to teach and invite them to be taught at their house and stuff. This week was a little difficult to that unfortunately, we had lots of appointments fall through. But the members are still working very hard with us. So hopefully next week I´ll have a little more to report on that. 

Haha on a side note, I´m noticing that I´m eating much more down here than I did in the States. I think all the walking/morning exercise helps. For example: at zone conference I ate about 2 chicken breasts and legs, 2 servings of "salad" (which is pretty much really salty lettuce and tomatoes) 4 giant rolls, 4 apples and dessert! Haha I hope I don´t get fat down here. 

That´s it for this week! I think we probably have found a member to skype with, but more details still to come once I get it figured out!

Elder Bingham

This picture´s a little old, but I didn't really have any others this week. 

But GIANT HOTDOG!

I found America! Or Walmart! 

Too bad it´s not really in our area, we just ended up there on P-day last week.

It was slightly less hot this week!

Hola familia! Sounds like ya'll are doing well! Thanksgiving sounded fun! I definitely miss being over with all the family for Thanksgiving. It wasn't quite the same here. Haha we did have our own Thanksgiving though. I´ll tell more about that later. Amaya, how did you blow your driving privileges 3 weeks before the end of you mission? Haha just kidding, I´m glad it wasn't anything too serious. Mom, I opened up your first present today and THANK YOU! I really enjoyed that. I´m hoping I´ll be able to find time to practice some of those songs sometime soon. And I was glad you sent All of Me too, because it´s been a little bit of a struggle trying to remember how that goes. 

So I was being totally serious when I said it was slightly less hot this week. Probably because I wasn't in my area for a lot of this week. Tuesday I went on my first intercambio! I went with Elder Breinholt to this area called Benavidez. It´s super ghetto compared to Caucete, and it was still slightly hot there, I was only really there for the evening on Tuesday and Wednesday morning. But it was fun! I learned that not every missionary does things exactly the same, which I was glad for. There´s definitely different ways you can teach lessons and stuff like that. And Elder Breinholt´s a pretty cool guy. 

And Thursday was Thanksgiving! Our whole district got together in Caucete and had a "district weekly planning session." We did plan of course, but then after that we had Thanksgiving. We bought like 3 grilled chickens from some of the places that sell asado, and then we had some mashed potatoes, a carrot cake, and apple pie, and some cookies! It was pretty good for what we can get here. Unfortunately, me and Elder Lujan from my district had to leave early to Mendoza, because we had to work on VISA stuff in the morning. So another intercambio, with a latino! It was fun though. Plus I got to see Elder Clarke in Mendoza. And it was way less hot in Mendoza. 

My knee has felt slightly better this week. It´s only bothered me a couple times, and I´m doing what I can to strengthen it. And I am wearing my shoe inserts. 

As far as emailing goes, I would rather have the email than the Dear Elder thing. I have no idea how long that could take. And I do get to Skype for Christmas! More details to come, because I don´t really know all the details yet. I just know that President Goates emailed today and told us we could skype. 

That´s really all for this week! Since I was gone so much I didn't get to teach a whole lot of lessons to the investigators in our area, but they´re doing well. Oh and ALSO me and Elder Stocks are teaching an English class right now. So that´s fun. 

That´s it for this week! Love you all!

Elder Bingham

Intercambios with Elder Breinholt!

Thanksgiving! I wasn´t really ready for the picture.

It's a wee bit hot down here

Hola people! Sounds like ya´ll are doing well. And Happy Thanksgiving this week! I think my district is going to try and make a slight Thanksgiving dinner on Thursday. So that should be fun. St. George sounded pretty fun! I´ll bet it´s nowhere near as hot as it is here. Luckily we´ve been blessed with couple cloudy/windy days this week. I found out today though what kind of tempertatures I can expect in January and February. 45 degrees Celsius, or like 113 FLIPPIN DEGREES FAHRENHEIT! Luckily it´s not humid here. I almost died yesterday though, it was pretty hot yesterday and we had lunch at a member´s house, and I was really surprised when she served us soup! So that was fun. 

So, to answer mom´s many questions: First of all, mom, we´ve got 3 piano playing missionaries in the ward. We live with two other Elders in our pension. But me, Elder Stocks, and Elder Nelson all play the piano. And he´s been here longer than us. And the ward knows we play the piano. So I´m not sure if the crazy kid is the real reason, but we still use the boombox. 2nd question: we just read our emails at the internet cafe. Not really a printer here. But it´s fine with me. 3rd question: We do pretty much wash our clothes in a bucket. It´s a really big bucket, that also kind of rotates the clothes back and forth, but usually I just use my hands. Then I have to drain the soapy water and fill it up again like 2 or 3 times for the rinse cycle. But whatever. 4th question: We do have running water! And a hot water heater! Unfortunately the hot water heater has been known to make the water boiling lava hot! Like the first week here I was trying to use our beday (I think that´s how you spell it? and yes we do have a beday) but the beday like scalded my butthole. Now we have toilet paper.So there´s a laugh for you.  5th question: we have done quite a bit of service. We´ve been helping these members build a house right next to our pension! It´s kind of fun! And last question: I do think my language is improving. I came to a realization this week that I have improved significantly since the first week. I remember the first day I couldn´t even pick out words they were saying, but now sometimes I can get the gist of the conversation! If the spirit´s there. But I am getting way more words out of all the people we talk to. So wahoo!

This week was really good though! Unfortunately I´m already having knee pain, just in my left knee, that sometimes makes it difficult to walk at all. I think it´s probably very minor, nothing to really worry about. I´ve just been walking a lot.  I´ve been doing stretches and stuff to try and get it feeling better. But I´ve noticed that when I´m focused on serving other people I don´t notice it as much! So that´s cool. But we had a pretty successful week! We got something like 21 new investigators (the standards of excellence for new investigators in our mission is like 8) and 10 lessons with less actives. And we´re finally getting some progressing investigators. It´s really tricky to get second appointments with people because they´re never there when we try to show up. They´re totally willing to hear us again, but they´re just never there. But we did get some progressing investigators this week. So yeah! Good week in general.

Thanks for all the letters! I love you all!

Elder Bingham

 My second "asado!" Or in other words, Argentine barbecue! Apparently these don´t happen very often. This one we did with the district last p-day, but pretty much all they do is get the biggest hunk of cow meat you can find and throw it on the grill, and that´s all you eat! It´s super good, if the person grilling knows how to do it right. Which fortunately they have every time for me. I had like 3 pieces of meat about that big. And me and Elder Stocks are going to another one today! Wahoo!

This is my new distict! From left: Elder Breinholt, who apparently I´m going on an intercambio with tomorrow; Elder Lujan, from Bolivia, who is also new like me; Elder Hawes, from Utah; Elder Andrade, from Brazil, who also lives in our pension; Elder Stocks, my companion obviously; Elder Castro, our district leader; and Elder Nelson, from Idaho, who lives in our pension with us. And on a side note, all 5 of us gringos are also Virgin Lips! The Latinos are going crazy. Haha.

Hola from Argentina!

Hola everyone! It was great to hear from you guys! Things are still going great here! It´s super hot, but we do have our sombreros now! And apparently we haven´t even hit the worst of the heat yet. Everyone keeps telling us that it´s the hottest in January and February. Luckily we do have AC in our apartment, but most of the time it´s still super hot in there, because our house is made out of bricks. Wahoo. Dad, the place where we bought our sombreros is actually in the bigger city about 30 minutes from our area, called San Juan. We have to take a bus down here to use the internet cafe. Our area Cuacete is much different, and much smaller. I don´t have an address really besides that, so good luck on the Google Maps stalking.  

I guess I´ll start from where I left off last week, Elder Christofferson! (I realized that I also spelled his name wrong last week) It was a super great experience. All the missionaries in our mission came down to Mendoza to hear him speak. He started it all by letting each of us come up and shake his hand, tell him our name, and where we were from. I can tell you that as soon as I grabbed his hand I could feel his spirit. It kind of made me a little giddy! He then spoke to us and talked to us entirely in Spanish, and I kind of got from his talk how important it is that we use the Book of Mormon in our teaching. I wish I could´ve understood the whole thing, but I think the Spirit told me what I need to hear. 

But back to this week. It was really good! I don´t know if it´s just the area I´m in or the people or what, but I´ve been super surprised here to see how many people we talk to about  that are just like "Sure! Come by our house sometime! We don´t have a problem with hearing your message!" And stuff like that. Given, there are still people who are like "Nope! I´m Catholic! Bye!" But I was totally expecting to get the majority of our answers like that. So we´re still getting lots of appointments. Oh, and random trivia because Mom asked: My trainer has been out for 18 months. 

The members are really awesome and willing to help here too. We´ve gotten to know most of them and we get lunch with a family like every day. They feed us well. Mom, I´m not sure if you got that pic over facebook? We were at one of the member´s houses on Thursday or Friday and their son got a picture of me eating flan and tried to send them to you, but we went by again yesterday and he said that you hadn´t seen it yet. I hope you did. But anyway, the ward is a little crazy sometimes. There´s a few kids that are CRAZY during sacrament meeting, one in particular who likes to run up on the stand and mess around with the boombox we use for music and tries to eat the sacrament bread. I think he´s the reason why we don´t use the piano.    

One appointment in particular I´ll share with you guys: On about Friday we went down to like the bottom end of our area trying to find this member we hadn´t met yet. But we get there and it turns out the man´s daughter and her husband are living there! She´s an inactive member who kind of stopped coming to church like 4 years ago when she kind of had a kid with her future husband, but she still had a testimony and everything. He´s slightly Catholic but doesn´t really attend much. But they are married now, and totally want to hear our message, So me and Elder Stocks are all like "Golden Investigator! Booyah!" I was grateful for the Spirit guiding us that day. 

Hope that was enough info for you guys! Love you!

Elder Bingham

The view from right outside our pension, if you zoom in you can kind of see what most of the houses look like. 

Sombreros! We had do take one quick in the internet cafe because we forgot to during the week. So sorry for the selfie. And also, I never imagined looking like this as a missionary.

This is kind of what this area looks like when you aren´t in town. It´s super desert-ish and stuff. And I don´t know if you can see it in this picture, but there´s like grape fields everywhere around here. Oh, and there´s some of the Andes in the background. 

ARGENTINA!!!

Wow! I finally made it! Sounds like ya´ll are doing pretty well! I was glad to hear Alex opened his mission call to Madrid! That´s super sweet! Give him a high five for me. Things here have been slighty overwhelming. Where to begin? Well, we made it into Argentina with no problems. And it turns out I didn´t have to take a 12 hour bus ride. We actually took a domestic flight from Buenos Aires to Mendoza. But our flight wasn´t until very late in the day, so it pretty much took just as long as the bus ride would have. We had a nice dinner in the mission home that night, and stayed in a hotel until morning. 

The next day was full of training at the offices. We were trained on stuff like "how to not get robbed as easily" and "how to eat healthy" and stuff like that. Speaking of eating healthy, I already think I´m going to get fat down here. Pretty much all I´ve had to eat so far has been rice, pasta, and not very many vegetables or fruits. It´s been super good, but I´m totally going to get fat. Oh and also, there´s this drink down here that ya´ll need to try. I don´t know why America doesn´t have this. Pretty much all it is is vanilla yogurt mixed with milk. IT¨S SUPER GOOD! Anyway, finally around 4 or 5ish I met my trainer, Elder Stocks. He´s from St. George Utah, and I´m his third "child" I guess. He´s trained 2 other elders before me, so he´s a pretty good trainer. We´ve gotten along pretty well already, and he´s taught me a lot. That night we left to our area, and arrived around midnight. So I was running on pretty much no sleep. 

Finally in the morning we got to work. Our area is in the San Juan province and it´s this little town called Caucete. Apparently it´s a really great area compared to some others. It gets really hot here in the summer unfortunately, so hot that we get to go buy sombreros! Apparently it´s a neccessity. We´re going to buy them today sometime. Luckily we also have air conditioning in our apartments, (we call it our pension here) and all the people here are relatively friendly. We haven´t even gotten chased by dogs yet, and there are many. We live pretty much right next to all the members in the town, and these first few days we´ve just been trying to get to know them. We don´t really have any investigators yet, but we´ve been doing a lot of street contacting and we´ve got quite a few appointments set up for this week. So that´s good. 

So I´m doing pretty well here so far. I´m a bit overwhelmed about learning how everything works down here and stuff like that. And also I´m pretty sure the Spanish here is not what they taught us in the MTC. I can´t understand a word of what anyone is talking about. But luckily I can still speak pretty well. I think I´d rather be able to understand people, but that will come. All the members we talk to compliment me on how well I can speak already, so that´s been nice. 

I almost forgot to tell you guys! We were lucky enough to have Elder Christopherson come and speak to us on Saturday! I can´t believe that I arrived just in time to hear him speak to us, but I´ll tell ya´ll more about it next week! It was a super awesome experience!

Well, that about sums up this crazy week. ¡Les quiero mucho!

Elder Bingham

We made it to Argentina selfie! 

Me and Elder Stocks! My first day in the field!

Last Week in the MTC

Hola people! This week has been kinda crazy. Not really because it's been super busy or anything, but because all of us want to get out of here. You guys looked great in your Halloween costumes by the way. Dad actually looked a bit scary. I actually dressed up for Halloween too... I dressed up as Elder Pyle from our district and he dressed up as me. It made for a lot of confusion yesterday, because we were wearing each other's name tags. I picked up my suit from the dry cleaners and she's like "it's for samuel, right?" She had looked at my name tag, and I was super confused for a minute. Then I realized that I was in fact NOT Elder Pyle, but I did get my suit. It was kind of funny. Anyway, I can't believe Kyla was chosen to paint that quote at the school! That is so cool! Send pics when she actually does it! And I still haven't heard a word from Jayson, just sayin. (hint hint) It's weird that Charlie is home already. And that Amaya gets home in 7 weeks. Amaya, don't get married or anything. Or have kids. That'd be weird. 

So not much happened this week except for yesterday. We didn't have any TRC investigators, which was kind of sad. We did do a lesson with a member in Argentina over skype, which went pretty well, except for the part that we couldn't hear a word she was saying. Not just understand, but we could hardly even hear her. The parts we heard though made us really excited to start speaking Argentine spanish, because it just sounded so pretty! I think it is definitely the most pure form of spanish. So sorry Mom and Amaya, but your spanish isn't as cool. So we hoped that she got a good message out of it. Yesterday was in-field orientation though. It started at like 8 in the morning and went until 5, with only about an hour and a half of breaks in between. They did it really well though. They had us up and doing stuff if different rooms and we definitely learned a lot. But then I realized after that I had been there for 8 hours, and just the thought of that kind of drained me for the rest of the day. But it was good. 

Today's our p-day obviously, so we are just doing laundry and packing mostly. I got the packages and the letters you guys all sent, so thanks for that! Thank you Grandma for the nice handwritten note! And p.s. Dad, the talk you sent me printed on like 7 pages, so all the Elders in the district were super jealous yesterday when I got 8 letters and none of them got any. It was fun. I'll be sure to read it on the plane. Oh, and speaking of the plane I did buy a calling card at the bookstore here. I think I can make up to 3 calls, and I've got lots of time to talk. I think I'll call in Atlanta, and I have a 3 hour layover. I'll be there at around 5 in Atlanta time, so I think it'll be around 3ish in Utah. So I need to know what time you guys want me to call, and if you need me to call you guys on different phones (if dad's at work at something). So try to give me that information by tomorrow, I figure I can get permission to check. 

One last thing: 2 Nephi 22:2. We had a devotional this week from the President of the Primary and she shared that with us. It's super cool, and I wish I could change it to my mission scripture, but ya'll go read it! 

Talk to you guys on Monday!

Elder Bingham

Just a really funny looking picture or Elder Taylor

Last lesson with like the best teacher ever,  Hermano Wolfe.
Unfortunately, he is not very photogenic.

Me and Elder Kimber

Halloween! Elder Pyle is wearing my cardigan, tie and tag, and I am wearing his. It was fun.

TRAVEL PLANS!!!!

Hola familia! I've got some exciting news! My travel plans came yesterday and it looks like i'm going straight to Argentina! Everyone in the district actually got their visas, so all of us going down to Argentina will all be on the same flight to Buenos Aires. Then after that it's sounding like me and Elder Clarke have about a 12 hour bus ride to Mendoza, so that'll be fun! :P But really I'm so excited. I'll be leaving on Nov 03 as planned. 

Sounds like everyone doing well! Cornbellies sounded fun... I'm pretty sure I still have never been to a haunted house. I did remember about Kyla's birthday, and she should be receiving a card in the mail from the entire district sometime soon. Be warned though, I think they all want more girls writing them so they all left their emails I think. Don't pay them any mind.... They're just being weird. But you're lucky Kyla... You're probably the only person who's going to get a personal card from me. Everyone else just gets an email probably. I'm not going to be able to get anything out of the country. And Dad, sorry to hear about your cousin Robby. I'm 90% sure I don't know who he is but he sounded like a great guy. And it sounds like Amaya is still having a great time, as usual. 

This week was pretty good. Spanish is still coming along great, we're finally learning all the harder stuff like speaking in past tense and stuff. So I've been practicing that and it's come along pretty well. We had a couple different TRC experiences this week. Unfortunately me and Elder Clarke didn't get to teach Marco anymore, but we got a new investigator name Adrian from Peru. He's a lot younger, and basically he's got a good knowledge of the church except he has problems with two commandments: the Word of Wisdom and the Law of Chastity. So we tried to teach him about those in the two days we had him. It was definitely a good learning experience. His bio said he had met with the missionaries a few times before, so we kind of just assumed he knew about Joseph Smith and stuff. So we just jumped right into the commandments. Which was good, because that was what he needed, but we assumed he knew too much, which wasn't good. His basic problem with those two commandments, which we later learned, was that he didn't know where in the scriptures they came from. He knew why we followed them and why they were important, but didn't know where they came from. So that was what we explained to him in our second lesson, and it went much better. It was definitely a good learning experience on finding the investigator's real needs and being able to teach them with the Spirit. We don't teach him anymore, but we're still getting plenty of practice in our class time teaching each other, and that's been a great experience as well. 

That's about it for this week! I'm so excited to head down to Argentina in a week-ish! But I'll write you all next week with hopefully some more news about traveling! 

Elder Bingham

Me and Elder Clarke fishin at West Campus...Loved this picture.

Found this spectacular view at the temple. Didn't even know you could go behind it.

A better picture of mine and Elder Clarke's leaf fight.

P-day Part 2

ANNDDD.... I'm back. It's kind of weird having 2 p-days in the same week. But this time I've actually got more time to write stuff. So anyway... West campus is way better than here. At west we had way more freedom, our apartments were way bigger since we were at wyview, and our classrooms are tiny here too. At west our classrooms were at the raintree apartments and there was like 4 rooms in each apartment, and some of them had couches. I miss it so much. But we're all starting to get used to Main campus too. It's annoying being crammed all together in the same room, and I'm not a huge fan of the whole dorm setup, but we're warming up to it. Oh, and sweet new car by the way! 

A lot has happened since I wrote last week. We changed district and zone leaders. My companion Elder Clarke is our new district leader, and Elder Combe and Elder Taylor in our district are our new zone leaders. 2 of the districts in our zone left, including the zone leaders, and we all kind of miss them. They were super fun to have around. But now I guess we're the veterans in our zone. We got 2 new districts on wednesday, but I don't really know any of them yet. I kind of liked being the younger guys in the zone. 

We've had a lot of teaching experience over the past week. We just started our TRC, which pretty much means we just got more investigators. Me and Elder Clarke are teaching this older guy named Marco. He's super nice and we've had an awesome experience teaching him. He's had polio for almost his whole life and so he can't walk without crutches, and we gave him a lesson on the resurrection. I know the spirit was there helping us teach. It was such an awesome lesson. We'll get to teach him more next week hopefully. The transfer to main campus kind of screwed things up. 

We've also been giving lessons to our teacher Hermano Wolfe, who has been playing the role of a 60ish year old guy named Juan, who I'm guessing he taught on his mission. "Juan" has had kind of a hard life and has some addictions that he's having trouble overcoming. Our first lesson to him was kind of lame, because we were really rushed. But we taught him again yesterday about the power of the Atonement. It was the best lesson I've been a part of yet. We testified to him about the strength and blessing it has been in our lives and he was really receptive of the message. Hermano Wolfe told us later that is was the best lesson he had ever observed us teach so far in the MTC. The whole experience just made me want to get out to Argentina even sooner. 

That's about it for me! I'm trying to send some pictures, but for some reason all of them are too big or something. So sorry about no pictures, but I'll try to figure it out for next week. Can't wait to hear from you guys!

Elder Bingham

Campus Transfer

Hey family! I'm going to try and keep my letter short... We just transferred to main campus today and they gave us a little time to email and do laundry and stuff, but it's not really a p-day. But on the bright side, our new p-day is on saturday! So I'll send more details later. But for now, I thought I'd catch up on sending you guys pictures because it's so difficult to send pictures from here. But before I do, I'm super jealous that you guys bought a new car 3ish weeks after I left. It sounds sweet. I do want to see a picture of that too, just cause. Mom, my camera is a Canon PowerShot or something like that... Hopefully that will help you find a camera cable. Jayson, sweet date! My companion Elder Clarke looked over at my computer when I was looking at your pictures and wanted me to ask if Rachel was writing anyone. ;) But anyway, I'll write you guys more on Saturday! 

Elder Bingham

Pic 1: District photo, from left: Elder Taylor, going to Bahia Blanca Argentina; Elder June, going to Cocha Bomba Bolivia; Elder Alger, going to Detroit Michigan; Elder Clarke, going to Mendoza with me; and then me, obviously; Elder Melzer, going to Guayaquil Ecuador; Elder Combe, going to Bahia Blanca Argentina; and Elder Pyle, going to Orlando Florida. 

Pic 2: Elder Clarke and Elder Alger fixing a hole in our apartment wall they made while wrestling. They were fighting over what to leave our thermostat on while we were gone at class.... Elder Clarke has been known to leave our room at 95 degrees and Elder Alger likes to leave it at like 60. Me and Elder Pyle grounded them from the thermostat. But they fixed the hole with shoe goo, toothpaste, chocolate milk, and white-out. It surprisingly worked pretty well. 

Me and Elder Clarke having a leaf fight!

I Don't Like Coming Up with Subjects When Every Week at the MTC is Almost Exactly the Same

Hola familia! Thanks for the letters and the care packages! The cinnamon rolls are already gone, I shared one with everyone in the district. They were delicious. Jayson! Way to finally ask someone to homecoming! You definitely had a hot date! (If I'm allowed to say so myself) Hope you had a sweet (first?) date. And Kyla? That picture was pretty spectacular. Wish I could draw like that. Also glad to know that Amaya's doing well with her new companion.

Just another normal week here at the MTC! Can't believe I'm already to week 2! Everyone here says time files after the first sunday and they're totally right... This week flew by. There wasn't a whole lot going on this week, except for a couple surprises. I believe I told you about our "investigator" named Javier last week? Well, even though we pretty much all knew he was really a member, it totally came as a shock on Thursday last week when he showed up as our new teacher! We taught him a lesson that morning and then that afternoon he showed up in a white shirt and tie and was like "Psych!" It was frustrating, because we all did want to believe that he was really investigator because we were doing that well. But his real name is Hermano Norton. He's been back from his mission in Spain for about 6 months, and "Javier" was one of his investigators. He's super cool though. And I wasn't lying last week when I said he had fantastic hair. Just sayin. 

General conference was awesome! I've never had such a good experience with conference, because this time I actually took notes! And didn't fall asleep too much! I got good notes on every speaker. I loved President Uchtdorf's and Elder Holland's obviously, but I also really liked all the talks in the different languages too. I can't remember what they're about right now, because I don't have my notes, but I did like them. I wish I could have been in the priesthood choir, especially since I saw 2 elders from school in it and I saw tons of elders from our zone too. But oh well. I also wish we could have listened to conference in spanish. We were all forced to listen in English, because they had a voice over on all those talks instead of subtitles. I really wanted to listen in Spanish, just to practice, and because my spanish listening comprehension, in my opinion, is already pretty good. Unfortunately, I'm still not very good at talking to people in spanish. Also, listening to general conference entirely in english seemed to really slow down my spanish learning. But we've had some spanish lessons this week so I'm back in the groove again :) 

Well I do have plenty of pictures to share this week :) Hopefully you can get them all. Also I am in need of another care package. I realized that I do need a few more things. 1) more sweaters. It's cooling down quite a bit around here. You can send me that purple cardigan from my bottom drawer (I think?) and maybe another one would be nice too. Idk what color. 2) I need a mini USB for my camera... I might have one plugged in in my room but I'm not sure. I can insert my SD card into these laptops at the MTC to send pictures, but I'm not sure what I'll get in Argentina. 3) OREOS! Oreos would be good. And I feel like there's more I'm missing, but I can't think of anything right now. 

Well I can't wait to hear from ya'll! Wish I could get some letters from friends too, but I have no idea how to even email them myself since I don't have their email addresses, and I don't know how you could find them. But adios anyway!

Elder Bingham

 My companion, Elder Clarke... 
Someone had these really weird glasses that we were all trying on.

Elder Combe. This is the elder that Hailey supposedly knows from school.

Me and Elder Strong!

District photo at temple

Wassup!

Hola familia! 

Sorry it took me so long to write! I thought I was going to get time the first night but that didn't really happen, and our p-day for our district just so happened to be on Wednesday, so I got to wait a whole week. So that was nice. 

So things are actually pretty great right now! I actually really love it here! I am at West Campus (Wyview) but apparently we are transferring to main campus in like 2 weeks. They're trying to shut down West Campus for good I think. So I get to try out both MTC campuses! I'd rather stay here at West, but I tried Main campus's food today after we went to the temple and that part was WAY better than ours at least. But from what I here main campus is basically a prison compared to West campus. 

So my companion is Elder Clarke, and he's from Georgia. He lived in Utah for the summer at BYU and did a semester so he kind of knows the area. He's really cool, and so is my whole district. We're all already really good friends and even the other districts have told us that they've been impressed with how much we've bonded already and how awesome of a district we are. Our district leader is Elder Pyle from West Valley UT, and then we've got Elder Alger from Surprise AZ, Elder June from FL, Elder Melzer from Mesa AZ, Elder Taylor from IL, and Elder Combe from Draper UT. And obviously me and my companion too. And apparently Elder Combe went to Jordan high school and he knows Hailey! So tell her hi from both of us. 

Even class time is going pretty well right now. I think all of my Spanish came back in like 2 days. I could even mostly understand everything our teacher Hermano Wolfe was telling is only in Spanish the first day. I was super surprised. But that just proves to me that the don de lenguas (gift of tongues) is so real. It was super cool. I'm even starting to think in Spanish sometimes. I'll see things like the campus police cars and think "la policia!" and stuff like that.

We've already got our first investigator too. Well, "investigator." We're all 90% sure he's actually a member. Everyone in the district is teaching him right now. His name is Javier from Spain, and he's really friendly, and everyone in our district wants his hair. Like seriously. His hair was probably given to him by angels. (Elder Pyle's words, not mine) Anyway, I've been super nervous for every lesson we teach him, but once again, the don de lenguas is real. Every lesson turns out great, and I'm always able to understand everything he tells us, and for the most part everything we try to say to him comes out well too. Well, mostly. Elder Alger told Javier that he was "embarasado...." Thankfully not while I was in there. We could all hear them laughing from the other room though. 

I've already grown a lot since I've been here! I've definitely had to rely much more on the Lord than I've ever had too. But everything is going just fine here. And the letters and packages have helped. All the other elders in the district are super jealous, because I'm the only one who ever gets any mail, and no one besides me has gotten a package yet, and I've gotten two. Thanks! And thank the Mckee's for me for sending the donuts. They were delicioso!

There's not much more I can think of to say right now, except that I'm really sorry, but I was really terrible at getting pictures this week. Other elders got some, but I'm kind of stuck in a different room than them typing my email because none of the open computers in their room worked. And also Elder Alger is always gone when we try to take group pictures and we want to get some with all of us in it. He's in the MTC choir for priesthood session. And we all would like to be too, but the only reason he got in is because he knows the conductor. The rest of our district was technically too late to join/audition. But, I will try to send many pictures next week. And I'll steal some from the other elders. I wish I had some to share this week. 

Adios!

Elder Bingham

P.S. Somehow tell any of my other friends that they have permission to write me too :)

Elder Bryce Bingham

"Dear Elder Bingham,
You are hereby called to serve as a missionary of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  You are assigned to labor in the Argentina Mendoza Mission. It is anticipated that you will serve for a period of 24 months."

This blog will contain Bryce's weekly letters home, for you to read and enjoy. I know he would love to hear from you too. His address at the MTC is:

Elder Bryce Jared Bingham
NOV04  ARG-MEN
2023 N 900 E Unit 822
Provo UT 84602

Also, DearElder.com is a great way to send him emails while he is in the MTC. It's free while he is there and they print them off and deliver them to him daily, instead of making him wait until his P-day to check his mail. 

When he is in Argentina, his email will be:  bryce.bingham@myldsmail.net