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 :)