Well, that was unexpected

Well hi guys! Elder Bingham here, alive and in one piece. And sane still, actually. 

Well, if you were wondering, after that scary email last week, I'm actually great! Really great! I'm not sure why exactly. I'm just going to share some of my thoughts... They're all a little jumbled up so sorry if it doesn't make any sense. 

Before Elder Yugar got here I was trying to get a lot of information about him so I could be better prepared for when he got here. Mostly just specifics about the weird stuff he does that makes him such a struggle for other missionaries. And I heard a lot of stuff. Like "sometimes he might just randomly go to the other side of the street and you have to follow him" or "he spent all of his monthly allowance already on crap like chips and candy" or "he absolutely hates weekly planning session." It kind of set my expectations really low for him. I expected the worst. Sadly. And obviously I got a lot of information from President as well. So yeah. 

And then we get to transfer day, I seem him get off his bus, and once he gets over to me with his bags I say "Elder Yugar! Hi! I'm Elder Bingham." Something like that. And I give him a hug, like we do as missionaries, and I get a very half-hearted hug without a response from him. My immediate reaction was "Oh goodness... This is going to be just as bad as I thought." But we continued on, we got back to the area and started working. And I soon came to discover this: He's a very odd duck. He just is. But what I also discovered is that what I had heard about him didn't seem to be true at all! Everything! Even what President told me. President told me that he didn't participate in planning, he froze up in lessons a lot and didn't say anything, but what I saw of him this week made me think "Did President send me the right Elder Yugar?" He participated in planning, helped in the lessons, (although he does stutter a lot and he's not the best at it still, but for now he's fine) And he talked a lot more with people than I thought he would. So to sum it all up, he completely surpassed all my expectations. My expectations of him were very low, so that helped, but I don't recommend that to anyone either. 

And President called me this morning to see how I was doing and I was like "President! I'm great! Elder Yugar's great! We're all great!" More or less that. And President was really happy. That made me happy. 

So yep. I can live with an odd duck. I'm an odd duck. That's what I've decided. That's about all though. I love you all, and hope you have a great week!

Elder Bingham

I found Elder Villatoro last week. Happy picture

These Elders of my district and I found a picture of a Catholic Jesus who does this with his hands like he's really confused or something. We don't really know why, but we think it's funny. So we took a picture. 

Selfie with like all of the dead missionaries! And some of the almost dead ones. Like me. 

Family Home Evening with the Coria family!

Me and Elder Yugar!

Well... I guess I got a change

Well hey guys! How's everybody?

Well, as I commented last week, I was still having a rough time with Elder Huaman. Fortunately, this week went a little bit better, I think it was thanks to a lot of prayer and fasting. It was a little bit easier to communicate with him this week, and we didn't have as hard of a time teaching, which was basically my biggest struggle. So, that was nice. 

Continuing. Well, I think I might have commented as well that this week is transfer week. And... It was a very interesting transfer. I thought for sure I was leaving Sarmiento, for the time I have in the area and for the time I have left. Well, that was the exact opposite of what happened. Of course. I'm staying here. At least there's changes though. Elder Huaman's leaving, and he's off to my birth-area, Caucete in San Juan. That's cool for him. I liked that area a lot. So I'm getting a new comp! His name is Elder Yugar. He's a little bit new, he's from Salta Argentina I think. (I wonder if Lauren ever met this guy... She served in Salta right?) But... Let's just say this: I'm not really sure if this is a good change? I've heard things about this Elder... And I hate saying that because I don't want to go into a transfer with bad expectations. But that's how I feel right now. And frankly, that's how it actually is. I got a call from President Goates this morning. He was calling me to brief me about this transfer. He told me that Elder Yugar, well, he's basically just really childish. He had an accident when he was a kid or something, and he's just been kind of immature ever since then. President's words. He can get super nervous when he's talking to people sometimes, and he just won't talk or he'll freak out. Yikes. So... This should be interesting. 

The comforting part though is that President told me he's putting Elder Yugar with me because he trusts me a lot. He said he needed someone "really mature" to help this Elder out, and to kind of see if he's fit to be here in the mission field. He's putting a lot of responsibility and trust on me. It's comforting to know that. At the same time though I feel like it would probably more comforting to not have so much responsibility. Haha. I suppose that's not what the Lord wants from me though. 

So... I was kind of hoping for a break this transfer. It looks like that might not happen. 

This kind of reminds me of one of Amaya's letters from her mission! If I remember correctly almost this same exact thing happened to her. 

Anyway, I love you all lots. Pray for me this week! I hope it all goes well. 

Elder Bingham

- Four generations of financial secretaries... solo and with President Goates

Change is in the air?

Well hi everyone! How's it going?

Well, it was a good week here! Still working hard, Ricardo is still doing great :) That makes me happy. 

We're now on our last week of the 12 weeks program. Wut? That's crazy. But to be completely honest, I'm still struggling a bit with Elder Huaman. The biggest struggle probably being our unity in our teaching. It's really difficult to teach with him. I've tried really hard in companionship studies to work on that, (when we have them... He tends to sleep frequently during our ciesta studies) and we're doing everything for the 12 weeks program, and I've talked with him in companionship inventories about all of this, but just nothing seems to be working. He teaches great, he knows all the points of the lessons he has to cover, but we just always have these awkward transitions, and even though he knows the parts of the lessons he needs to teach, he seems to always bring up a different point than what I'm teaching. It's like we're teaching two different things at the same time. And I feel like I can teach a lot better with anyone I go on intercambios with than with my own comp, which is a little bit frustrating, cause I'm with him all the time to practice.

Sorry this letter is so depressing right now. The zone leaders Elder Cheney and Romero came to our area to help us out this week. Partly for all of this that's going on with him, and partly because our area has been really slow lately. We went on splits, and I went out with Elder Romero. Boy was it needed. It's so nice to have a friend like him so close. we talked about a lot of things, and how I can help him in this last week of the transfer. We'll see what happens in transfer calls. I secretly hope I find out what my last area in the mission is going to be this transfer, but we'll see. 

Anyway, I thought I'd let you know how I'm doing with that. Really he's doing great. He's a great missionary, he wants to be here, he's got a lot of boldness and he wants to talk to everyone. Sometimes I feel like the problem is mostly just me. That I still need to have more patience and charity. I find my self angry and frustrated a lot. I know I shouldn't beat myself up about it, but still. It's just frustrating that I haven't been able to figure it out yet. I'm trying to be more honest and blunt with him, trying to serve him more, love him more, forgive more, etc. Praying harder than I ever have in my life. I'm going to do it even more this week. 

Sorry for such a depressing letter... I didn't really know what else to write about. I love you guys though :)

Elder Bingham

zone conference last week! Forgot to send the pic

Baptism! These were some of my investigators in my last area, named Brenda and Lourdes. 

Elder Cheney and Elder Romero baptized them this week :D Hooray!

Well...Intercom-bombs and stuff.

Well hi everyone! Happy summer and stuff!

We had a better week this week! We didn't even get locked out of our pensh! Hooray! That was probably the best part in my opinion. 

Well, on tuesday we had intercambios. We didn't actually bomb intercoms, but we just call it that sometimes. Don't worry. Anyway, those were fun. Me and Elder Vejar both vented to each other about the weird things about our comps. That was fun. And we actually taught! Unlike last week. And my comp did really well in his intercambio as well. They abirired la boca (opened the mouth) with so many people that they ended their intercambio with a full page of future investigators. That was awesome. I was proud of him. They were good intercambios. 

On Wednesday we had a nice miracle! We found a new family! Better said they're a new family of members in our ward, but nobody knows them because they moved here a year ago from Chile and they're inactive. It's the grandpa Alberto, his son Diego, and his grandson Yasir. And the best part? Yasir isn't baptized! (That sounds terrible) What I mean to say is that it's really awesome because we have a new investigator! And Yasir is way awesome. He's 12 years old and he was reading the Book of Mormon before we even got there. And Alberto and Diego want to reactivate. We're pretty excited for them. 

On Friday we had zone conference, my last one! Wut? It was pretty awesome. Everything was basically just focused on finding new investigators and baptizing more, the two things that our mission really struggles at supposedly. It's true in my area at least. It was really helpful. I'm excited to start applying the things we learned in our area this week. We didn't really get the chance after Friday because on Saturday and Sunday we had sessions of stake conference. But, those were also great, and they made me really excited to go to the temple when I get home. The President of the Cordoba temple came and talked a lot about that and it made me want to go really bad. 

Anyway, that's about it. I'm working on buying souveneirs for everyone... Among the things I'm buying I think I'm going to have to get new shoes again... I bought the ones I have right now for real cheap, and they were in fact real cheap. They're destroyed. And with how much it's been raining here recently, my feet never get dry. Every night I put my shoes in front of our electric heater. It's awful. So I'll probably be getting new ones this week, and ones that I can wear home. yay. 

And I'm excited for class registration! Yay! I don't really have any other suggestions Dad, so those classes are fine. 

That's about it though. Hope everyone has a great week!

Elder Bingham

I wanted to wear something other than a sweater today. But I didn't. 

Selfie with way too many missionaries.

Go cougars! We will all be at BYU. And many of them will be my roomates.

Zone Conference selfie!

 Fun with Pringles 

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Some of the swag I bought last week.

Check out my new belt that I found :D