Hastening the Work in the Argentina Mendoza Mission : Airports, stick shift, blah.

Why hello everyone! It was just a lovely week in the offices! More or less. I can't believe everyone's going back to school already. And Jayson's on his SENIOR YEAR! Sounds like everyone's pretty busy. And Hailey's in the MTC, it sounds like she's having a good time, judging from her letter. That's good to hear. That "Get out Games" thing sounded way fun! I'd be down for doing that when I get back! I liked all your crazy hats and stuff. Sounds like my kind of game :)

So we're nearing the end of this transfer already. Actually today we get all the transfers. We get to see them earlier than the rest of the mission, which is way fun. I'm obviously not going anywhere, but Elder Mortensen and Elder Lawrence will find out where they're going today. Anyway, the reason I brought it up is because this week I felt like I was at the airport a bunch. I'll probably be there way more next week when the whole going-home group actually goes home, but this week we sent a couple people home. One Elder went home early for some health problems, and one Hermana went home like 4 days early because she's going to study. But I bring this up because we had a way cool experience taking the Elder to the airport. It's a little long, so bear with me.

So, it was kind of short notice that this Elder was going home. So the morning of, me and Elder Lawrence went and paid some quick fees so that this Elder could be legal to go home. We got that done at like 9ish. After that I got back to the office and me and Elder Mortensen decided to go the bank to take some money out for things we needed. Here's where it gets exciting! Back at the office, Elder Lawrence receives word that this Elder had to be in Buenos Aires at 8 that night to fly back to the states with this other elder that was going with him. The problem was, like every possible flight to Buenos Aires was full, I guess because this weekend there was a big holiday in Argentina. So Lawrence said a prayer asking what he should do, and then he gets a phone call from somebody saying that they could get him on a flight going to Chile and then to Buenos Aires before then, but the flight left at 11:30, and it was already like 10:40. Him and Elder Child booked it outside to our parking lot only to find that there was no cars, me and Elder Mortensen had the only one that was there that morning. So they tried calling a taxi, which didn't show up for 20 minutes. They're flying down, and then Elder Lawrence realized that he didn't have this Elder's passport. I DID. He gave it to me to hold that morning when we were paying for fees. So they call us, and we're just getting out of the bank with our money and his passport, and hardly any gas in our tank. Sounds like we're screwed right? Yep. We were. We all got there at 11:15, way too late for the flight. They wouldn't let us put him on. But wait! When Elder Child was in highschool he took a class on travel and tourism, and learned that it's very common for airlines to overbook their flights. And so he asked the people about it, and they said that they did have one available spot on a plane going to BA at 11:40, but that we'd have to pay $1.800 pesos in cash. And that's a lot of pesos to have on you in cash normally. But surprise! Me and Elder Mortensen just went to the bank! And we had a TON of cash! And so we paid the ticket and got him on his plane, and got back into our car. It said we only had 5 kilometers left in the tank. That was scary. So we're driving looking for a gas station, and we just happened to find one when I had 1 kilometer left. It was actually in my old area Algarrobal, funnily enough. So I actually knew it was there. BUT IT WAS CRAZY! So many things just fell into place for us that morning! If I hadn't gone to the bank with the Elder's passport, we wouldn't have had an excuse to go to the airport and go pay for that ticket. If we hadn't been there to try and get on the flight to Chile first, we would've never known about the flight to Buenos Aires 10 minutes later. So I learned that day that God works in VERY mysterious ways. Sometimes very bizarre ways in our eyes. But he knows what he's doing, we just have to let him guide us.

Sorry for the long story. I'm going to try to end quickly now. I finally got to drive stick shift this week... Our truck has been getting some maintenance done on it recently so I haven't had the chance. It was way fun... Learning how to drive it in the big city... I only killed it like 12 times. There were lots of angry drivers. I got a little better at it later. So... That was fun. I still don't understand why you'd ever want to make a car that works like that. But yet every Argentine drives with a stick shift, so I guess I'll have to deal with it.

Anyway, I'm tired of typing. I hope you all have a great week!

Elder Bingham