Transfers!!!!!

Hola familia! We had a slightly really awesome week here! Sounds I'll talk a little more about it in a minute! First of all, hahaha I really enjoyed those faceswaps. Thanks for those Kyla.... I laughed pretty hard. I thought especially Dad's face on Mom, Jayson's face on Kyla, and Charlie's face on Amaya were pretty freaky. Probably bizarre would be a better description. Hopefully Kyla's ankle gets better soon. Or at least mostly better. Those ankle injuries seem to make your ankle pretty weak for a long time. 

So yeah, like I said: good week! We had a few awesome miracles! First of all, for some reason this week I felt like doing a fast. We just watched this part in the District 2 as part of my training where a couple of the missionaries were having a hard time so they fasted that they could have a baptism, and it worked! So I wanted to do the same thing, or just that we could find someone that was really prepared to be baptized or return to church. Probably the first time I've ever REALLY wanted to fast. It was a bit hard in this heat, but in the end, we were really blessed. Right as our fast was nearly over we were getting a ride home from this less-active member who's a taxi driver basically, and we get rides for free from them. But for some reason he opened up to us and told us he had been struggling with some depression and was going through a hard time at the moment. We briefly shared a little bit of the Plan of Salvation and said a prayer with him, and it was super awesome! I really think we can help him.

Also on saturday we found this lady named María who was about to be baptized like 10 years ago when she was like 10, but something came up and it didn't happen. But we found her saturday and taught her a lesson, and she came to church on sunday! Wahoo! That like never happens! She's totally prepared! 

Also this week we achieved the nearly impossible goal of the stake of having 10 lessons with members this week! The most we've ever gotten is 7, and I'm pretty sure it's been hard for any of the other missionaries in the stake to get 10 too. But we did it! Fasting rules!

So that's that. Nelson and Luciana are still doing pretty well. We taught them about the Book of Mormon this week, and had help from a CRAZY member who was spouting all sorts of doctrine that I knew for sure didn't make any sense to these people, but the spirit was there, so I think it went well. 

But transfers! I'm getting out of this heat! I'm a little sad to leave these awesome members and investigators here, because really we were having a lot of success. No baptisms, but when I thought about it this week, we've found lots of prepared people to be baptized, and also we've helped and currently are helping a lot of less-actives come back to church. Just goes to show that you don't need baptisms to be a successful missionary! But now I'm going to the big city of Mendoza! Like the main city basically I think! Not really my type, but at least it won't be so blasted hot. 

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

Elder Bingham

Lunch with my favorite family in the ward, the Torres! Their daughter just got back from her mission in Brasil this week, and she's having a really hard time speaking Spanish. It's kind of funny! I can even tell that her accent is still very Portugese sounding. She'd be the one in back in the black/white shirt.

So we bought a giant "Lomo pizza." That's what it's called. 

I'm pretty sure it wasn't even close to what Americans would call pizza, but it was good!

Elder Stocks eating an empanada. VERY sexy. 

Crazy lightning storms and stuff

Hola familia! How's it going? Sorry to hear that it was slightly a slightly downer of a week. Kyla, I hope that ankle gets feeling better. Ankle injuries are like the worst in the world. I know from experience. I'm glad to hear Grandpa is home from the hospital, and I hope he gets feeling better too. And haha hopefully Jayson you can get that grade fixed! Of course mom told me about that.... Haha. 

We had a good week here! I basically started off the week going on an intercambio with our District leader Elder Castro. And funny story! Elder Castro knows Lauren from the MTC! He saw a picture of her on my calendar and recognized her. I'm not sure if Lauren will remember him, but I am sending a picture of the both us so Lauren can confirm. I'll be honest though, I was a little worried for this intercambio. It was the first time I basically had to lead the area. And also my first sort-of Latino companion. Elder Castro came to our area and Elder Stocks left, so I had to be in charge of knowing where to go and stuff. Luckily Elder Castro used to be in Caucete for like 3 transfers, so he knew the area a little bit too. But the extra responsibility was good I think. It helped me talk a little more to people and also I got experience in leading lessons and stuff. So it was good! And I had to teach English class by myself too, which was fun. I surprisingly did a lot better than I thought I would. But yeah! That was fun!

Referring to the subject of this email, we had a SUPER COOL storm on like Thursday or Friday or something. For some reason here whenever there's lots of clouds at night time you can see the lightning like lighting up the clouds like every few seconds! And then it got really windy (and I mean REALLY windy, like knocking branches off of trees kind of windy), and really rainy, and it knocked out our electricity for a while so we didn't have AC or light when we got the pension that night, but luckily me and Elder Stocks avoided the rain. Elder Nelson and Johnston got soaked. Haha. So that was cool. And I've got cool photos!

We've got these really great investigators right now! Their names are Nelson and Luciana, and they've got 2 kids, but aren't married. That part's a bummer. But we've had a couple really great lessons with them this week! We actually met them a while ago doing a tour of the church, but this week we were finally able to teach them. We taught the Restoration to them this week, and it was a super good lesson. Probably the best lesson I've ever been able to teach. They seem really committed, and they're even pretty easy to contact! They don't work quite as much as other people and they have a cell phone, so wahoo! But I really hope this family will prove to be golden! They've been very receptive to the message and very willing to read and pray and come to church and stuff. They unfortunately didn't make it this week, but whatever. So pray for this family! And that we can help them! They're super great!

That's all for this week! Pics to come! And love you all!

Elder Bingham

Me and Elder Castro! See if Lauren recognizes him!

The lightning like lit up the whole sky! 

And kind of the ground too, it kind of looks like day time. So that's cool!

Haha Elder Johnston and Elder Nelson got soaked!

Finally a normal week! For the most part.

Hola family! Just another hot week here in Caucete, but finally the holiday chaos is over! We had a really good week. Since there weren't so many holidays, we were actually able to teach a lot! Oh, and I did get some mail finally! I didn't get all of it unfortunately though. I got the calendar from grandma and the christmas card from Dave and Melissa! But no sweat rag. I was really happy to see how many times I was in the calendar though! With Hailey! And Elder Stocks was really happy to see that he made it in the calendar too. Haha. I think he has 2 pictures of him, one of them with only a tiny part of his face though. And I LOLd a few times in Melissa's letter. I enjoyed hearing that she had to explain to them what a butt hole and a bedet was! And also the card from Eddie was pretty great. So thank you Grandma and Aunt Melissa! Oh, and also please wish Grandpa Sherm a speedy recovery as well from me!

So yeah, we had a pretty normal week. Finally we were able to get some lessons, and we got about 7 with members! Our goal for the stake is like 10 every week, so we've got a ways to go, but finally we made some progress. And we didn't have holidays this week, but we were busy with other things! We had zone meeting and also interviews with the president for example, so we had to travel down to San Juan a couple times this week. Those took a pretty good chunk out of the day, but they were good! I really enjoyed the interview with President Goates, and in zone meeting we learned a lot. We talked about sacrifice and made a goal as a zone for everyone to sacrifice one thing in our lives that's impeding us in our progress as a missionary, and if we do that we'll receive many blessings. I'm still thinking of what I'm going to sacrifice, but I think it will be good. Also we have some new changes in the zone! All the missionaries in San Juan have a new daily schedule, due to the heat mostly. If our areas are pretty safe, we have permission to sleep one hour in the ciesta and then work one hour later at night! It's pretty nice! I'm already enjoying it at least. It's only for our zone though, and only for the summer. 

Really that's about it for this week. Nothing really too specific, but it was good. I'll see ya'll next week!

Elder Bingham

Me and Elder Stocks went by a dinosaur museum last week!
We didn't go in unfortunately because we had to get back to Caucete, but there ya go.

So I'm having pretty big shoe problems already. I should've told you guys sooner, but my shoes are in pretty bad condition already. Or at least, for some reason only my right shoes. I'll send pics, but I did buy a new pair already today. If you've got any suggestions as to what I should do about this, let me know!

This shoe's really bad. Somehow my shoe insert didn't prevent this from happening,
 but I'm probably going to chuck these ones soon. 

This is my other pair of shoes. 

A lot better to walk on, but still wearing pretty badly. 

Another view of the 1st shoe

The holiday chaos is over!

Hola familia! Another good week here, for the most part. Mostly I'm just glad that New Year's is finally over. Holidays here are ridiculous. I think I will mostly hate them when I get home actually. But Happy New Year anyways! Sounded pretty spanking awesome with that Hobbit marathon and all. Even if there were way too many ridiculous Legolas moments. And thank you for the letters siblings! I was glad to hear from you, and I should have time today to send you a personal reply. Usually I'm like loaded with emails and don't have time to get to everybody, but today I should be able to. Mom, I haven't gotten the calendar yet. Hopefully on tuesday when we have zone meeting I'll be able to check. 

So this week was mostly good. As I said before, I'm just glad the holiday chaos is over. It made it difficult to do things this week. For example: on New Years Eve we had permission to proselyte all day and stuff, but EVERYONE was too busy to talk to us. They had to get all their empanadas made and stuff. I guess. So we walked all around town all day and I don't even think we got any lessons. At least we got to celebrate that night. We went over to one of the members' houses and got to stay out until like 11:30 again. We played a lot of soccer with their kids and ate empanadas and pizza and stuff like that. I've sort of kind of got pictures... But they aren't that good. Unfortunately. It was fun! And the next day we had to stay in the pension all day. We just played card games and cleaned inside and outside of the pension and stuff. But... I'm glad it's over. 

I was glad that we did squeeze in a couple good lessons at least this week though. We got another great lesson with our less-active Cesar again that I told you about last week. I really believe he'll start coming back to church. And haha we're really hoping that when he does come back to church he'll hook up with one of the older single returned missionary girls that we've got in the ward! That's honestly something we take for granted in Utah. That we've got so many Mormons to choose from for who we want to marry! But here they get like 0-1 or 2 options if they want to marry inside of the church, or they just have to hope that whoever they marry will get baptized some day. It's kind of sad. 

We also had kind of a miracle this week. About a month ago we found this family through street contacting and gave them a pamphlet on the plan of salvation to read, and maybe a week or so later we went by and the wife said her husband read it and he felt something really good when he read it! Like the spirit! But we still hadn't had a lesson with them because they were either never there or the husband was never there. Finally on Sunday we found them all at their house and we were able to have a first lesson with them! So wahoo! Guess you just have to be persistent. 

That's it for this week! I'm hoping this next week will be slightly more normal.

Talk to ya'll next week!

Elder Bingham

Playing soccer! These kids might be my favorite in the ward. 

Later this game of soccer really just turned into keep-away, which is what this picture was.

New years eve party! Lots of food with lots of people and stuff. It was pretty fun.