MY TRUNKY PAPERS!!!!

Dearest family:

Happy birthday Jayson! You're like 18! That's like 1 more than you had last year! Congrats!

Well, it's official. I have my trunky papers! That means that I'm old! For reals actually! Like a million other things have happened recently that make me feel old, but now I have the trunky papers. So I'm old now! I need a few things from you guys though:

1) Name and email of our stake president

2) What airport am I flying to? Salt Lake I presume? 

3) Are you guys coming to pick me up? I have to ask, but I feel like there just won't be time, personally. With school and everything. 

And that's all. Yep. 

Well, it was a decent week. I'm learning a lot. This week had a lot of ups and downs. We'll start with the ups I suppose? Had a cool miracle this week. On Monday night we were really tired. It was like 8:30 and we had nobody to visit... That's like the worst time of day to not have anything to do besides lunchtime. But... You've got to keep working right? So we sat down on a bench really fast to think of something. Elder Huaman sees 3 teenagers sitting on a curb like a block from us. And he's like "How about we talk to them?" And I'm like "Dale, go for it. Your idea, you've got it. " And then he told me he was scared to do it and he wanted me to do it. I tried to give some encouraging words, but in the end it was me who went and talked to them. Whatever. And much to my surprise we ended up getting 3 future investigators out of them! I was really happy. 

A few days later we tried to visit one of them, Claudia. Unfortunately when we went by she was home alone, and we can't be in houses with only women. So we didn't go in. But she came out of the house with a list of like 10 questions about basically everything in our religion, from the base of our religion to what "elder" means to our beliefs on divorce and homosexuality to tithing. I was really surprised again at the interest that she actually had! We committed to coming back later that week when she had parents there. 

Unfortunately, this part was a downer. We go back on Saturday, knock 3 times, and then her father comes out, really angry. He's like "We don't want anything! My daughter was mistaken, and now we've got a problem." And he slammed the door. It was really sad... We found someone so golden and now we're definitely not going to be able to go back. But I then realized that might have been all we had to do for now. We did our part, planted the seed, invited her, and maybe in the future when she's older and not living with her parents she'll have the desire to listen to the missionaries again. I don't think it's over with her :)

I had a semi-ok week with my comp. I'm learning stuff. He's learning stuff. He's really not a bad guy. Just sometimes he says little things that get on my nerves. Just really little things! But they just get me really frustrated sometimes. Like yesterday we were going to try and contact some future investigators we had, and I accidentally pass the house we were going to start at, the one we had written in our agendas first and that was closer. So I tell him "Oops we passed the house, got to go back." And he apparently thought we were going somewhere else first. He tells me "You need to follow the spirit. I think we need to go to this other house." And we were going to go there, it was just going to be easier to go to this house first. So we went to my house, and nobody answered. And as we're leaving he tells me "I told you." And OH! It just got to me. I got over it. And I'm still working on being more patient and humble... Having charity, all that. It's definitely not something that comes right after listening to a conference talk. It's a constant effort. 

That's about it for now. Sorry for venting. But I needed to. Anyway though, TRUNKY PAPERS! That's exciting at least. I love you all. Have a great week!

Elder Bingham

I have a pic! Still don't have a card reader, cause there's nowhere in my area to buy one. But Elder Levander sent me this.

This was before he gave birth to Elder Huaman. 

So this is what I've heard from President in the past: He's required to tell us that the Church doesn't recommend that the parents come to pick up their children. But also they have their agency and can decide. If you wanted to, he just has to send you some form or something that explains why the church doesn't recommend it. But if you came, he wouldn't have a problem with it. Either way though, I don't think we'd have much time for that :/

The official date for my group is September 13, but I think President still has to change my actual release date for school. It should be August 25.