Hastening the Work in the Argentina Mendoza Mission : Some big changes

Well hi family! I feel like there's a lot of things I have to tell you guys this week!

So for starters, I've got a new comp. I'm in a trio actually. His name is Elder Yugsi, from Ecuador. He's a hoot. This week has been a lot more fun than I've been used to thanks to him. But the reason why I've got two comps now is that our mission right now is lacking a lot of missionaries. The group that just barely went home was gigantic, and there's been like 5 missionaries that have gone home in the middle of the transfer. Elder Yugsi is in my district, and he had a mini missionary. There was actually a lot of mini missionaries in our mission at the beginning of the transfer. But they've run out. And Elder Yugsi's mini missionary went home last monday, for unknown reasons. So now he's stuck with us because he doesn't have a companion, and that also means that we have to work in our area and his area. That's been really difficult. We have to spend a lot of time traveling, and there's not really a lot of time to find new investigators in either area. So we're just focusing on really small parts of both areas where we have things to do and finding more people in those parts of the area. It's interesting. Plus is sucks to teach... Because everyone's so used to teaching in pairs, that when one missionary stops talking it's like "whose turn is it to talk?" And it's just awkward. But we're getting used to it.

On Wednesday I had my last interview with President Goates, before the FINAL interview, where he talks to everyone about stuff like marriage and stuff. That's coming up. But it was my last normal interview. We had a good chat about how I can help Elder Yugar, how to work in 2 different areas, how to be in a trio, etc. It was great.

Thursday we had intercambios with the zone leaders. I went with our new zone leader Elder Hakes and also Elder Yugar. And WEIRD CRAP went down. Our last lesson for the night was with some recent converts and ex-investigators of mine, two girls that are 19 and 18 years old. The older one has fallen into the temptation a couple times since her baptism of drinking when she goes to big parties and stuff. So we were helping her with that. But Elder Yugar went nuts. I've never seen him like this before. He started attacking them really hard and made them feel really bad, and he didn't do it with any love. They felt really pressured and offended, and me and Elder Hakes were trying to stabilize the situation. But in the end we just shared a quick thought and left. And then we tried to make Elder Yugar understand and learn why he couldn't be like that in a lesson, and we're not really sure what happened after that. He didn't talk to anyone else the rest of the night.

We got to the pensh and he isolated himself from everyone else. He was standing in the open window leaning out, and we got kind of nervous so Elder Hakes convinced him to move away from the window. He sat down on the floor facing the wall and didn't say anything. Then at 10:30 it was time for bed, so we tried getting him to go to bed but he wouldn't budge. And that was when we realized he was actually unconscious. UNCONSCIOUS! We called President, called the bishop of the ward to come take him to the hospital, and tried waking him up. We loosened his tie and collar, elevated his legs, and he finally woke up coughing. They went to the hospital anyway. They tested his blood and stuff, and everything was normal. Nobody slept much that night.

So yeah. Everything was back to normal in the morning. But on Saturday morning I got a phone call from President. He wanted to talk to me and Elder Yugar. So we went to the office for more interviews. I went in first, and President told me that the area doctors want to send him home. President was trying to get an idea of the situation, and we basically came to this conclusion: I can handle Elder Yugar. It's worked well so far. But we don't know what will happen when I go home. He might have another episode like this one. So President talked to Elder Yugar, and he's going to fast and pray to decide if he's going to send him home or not. We still don't know what he's decided, but I imagine we'll find out this week.

Sorry for the long letter, but I felt like there was a lot of important stuff. I'm going to end now, but I hope everything goes well this week. I love you all!

Elder Bingham

So I didn't finish my Cyber time this morning before we left for our p-day activity, but since then there are MORE BIG CHANGES.

So we went with a bunch of other missionaries to this place called Potrerillos. It's this really pretty lake in the mountains. We took lots of awesome pictures that I'm going to send now.

But on our way out I got a call from President Goates. It seems that Elder Yugar is going home tomorrow. So.... Looks like I'll be solo with Elder Yugsi now. It was so sad to tell him. It felt like I was breaking the news to someone about the death of a family member. He was really sad. I was really sad. It seems I've really come to love the guy. Even though he's really bizarre. He's good now... I think he's gotten used to the idea now. But, there's another update from here.

You can add this to the other letter.

Elder Bingham