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 

Add caption

Some of the swag I bought last week.

Check out my new belt that I found :D

We were homeless

Well hello family! Happy graduation/birthdays/anniversary to whoever it applies. That's exciting stuff. 

Well this week was really interesting here. It kind of started with p-day. We played basketball! And I felt completely destroyed afterwards. It's been a long time since I've played basketball. But yeah. It was a blast. It was p-day, so it obviously took most of our day. We got a couple hours in the area. 

And this is when our week got crazy. On Tuesday we usually have district meeting. And so we all went to district meeting, and I think I had the world record for the largest district meeting. We had the assistants (who are part of my district), the sister training leaders, the zone leaders, the district leader and his comp (that's me) 2 more elders, and 4 hermanas. 2 were visiting from out of town because they were doing intercambios with the sister training leaders. So we were 14 in total. That's the same size as a couple zones here in our mission. That was fun. 

Then afterwards we had intercambios with the zone leaders. We went back down to my old area Perdriel/Lujan, and I went out with Elder Cheney. About 2 hours into the intercambio I get a phone call from a number I didn't know. It turned out to be Elder Romero, who told me that him and my comp just got assaulted with a revolver. No harm was done, but they took Elder Romero's phone and camera, and the guy who robbed my comp took about everything from him that didn't have any worth, including his jacket, name tag, and his scripture bag. They were all okay though, thankfully. We kept working, and then I get another phone call from a different number. It was this random guy who found my comp's agenda and both of their wallets. He saw in my comp's agenda that it had "our number" written in it, so he called it and I answered. He told us who he was, what he found, and we coordinated to meet up with him later that night to get the stuff. We seemed like a trustworthy fellow. And he was. We found him and he gave us all the stuff he found. It was quite the miracle. The robbers didn't end up taking my comp's debit card out of his wallet, thankfully, so that was even better. 

The bad part was, one of the things in my comp's scripture bag was the keys to our apartment. That was quite the problem. Especially because Wednesday, when we ended the intercambio, just so happened to be the 25 de Mayo, the day of Argentina's revolution. So naturally nothing was open. We couldn't go anywhere to get our key replacement, and the landlord didn't have a copy of our key. We ended up getting stuck in the office for Wednesday night and Thursday morning. Finally around 7 on Thursday we were able to get into our apartment. So half of the week we weren't in our area basically. It was pretty lousy getting stuck there in the offices. 

It made me think a little bit about the talk Elder Stevenson gave in this last conference, when he had a similar experience about losing his keys. On the bright side of all this, I suppose I learned how grateful I am that we have the keys of the priesthood here on the earth. Without them, just like what happened to us, we can't get back home. And not having them sucks. So that's my spiritual thought for the week. 

Well, I love you all! Have a good week!

Elder Bingham

Well, part of getting trapped outside of my apartment meant that I didn't have my razor. So I grew a 4 day beard. It's better than that one that I sent a couple weeks ago. 

Also if you can't tell I was way bummed/bored to not be in my area. 

Hi.

World record assistance for district meeting!

Intercambios!

 A 12 stuff chocolate oreo! It actually wasn't as delicious as I thought it would be.

A long rainy week comes to a close

Hi guys!

First of all...Happy birthdays! To Grandma and Amaya! Wahoo! Amaya's birthday is on Argentina's Independence day. Just so you all know. Anyway, I hope you two have a great week.

Well, not a bad week here! Everything's been a tiny bit slow since Ricardo's baptism, unfortunately, but we're still working hard. It's been a bit cold recently as well... We're finally getting to winter I think. The weird thing is that it's been raining here for about 2 weeks straight. It's awful! Cause it doesn't rain in Mendoza! I think Chile must have sunk into the ocean because Mendoza seems like one of those cities that always rains because it's right next to the ocean. I'm not completely sure, but if someone can confirm that theory I'd greatly appreciate it. My shoes haven't completely dried for about a week. I'm down to just a single pair, that pair I bought recently for my birthday. And even these shoes are already looking pretty bad. But, I think they'll last 3 more months. This darn rain made them a lot worse. But hey... On the bright side the rain finally ended yesterday. And now it's really sunny outside :) Wahoo! 

So we had this mission conference thing with Elder Texeira this week, the second counselor of the area presidency. And soon to become the area president, apparently. But anyway, it was a great conference. Elder Texeira and his wife gave us lots of suggestions of things we can do to kind of "turn" the mission around. That's literally what it was all called: "Gira de la Misión." Or "Turn of the mission." Basically the main topics were just being way more bold in our teaching so that our investigators understand why we're there exactly, and also having a more effective companionship study to help us prepare better to teach our investigator. There was quite a bit of cane that was dropped, but it was all taken very well and I'm excited to put their suggestions to practice. :)

We also had our musical number thing. I played the piano. And also I made up the arrangement for the song we played. That was fun. I played my part well. Apparently the singing kind of screwed up really bad, but I didn't notice because I was so focused on my part. For some reason when I practice I never have any problems, but then when I get playing in front of a lot of people I get really nervous and my leg that I use for the pedal starts twitching really bad. Whatever. I made it through. It was all good. 

That's kind of all the exciting stuff for this week. Hopefully we can teach a little bit more this week. But I hope everyone has a great week! 

Elder Bingham

My comp fell into the asequia this week. Poor guy. If you don't remember the asequias are really deep gutters on every street in Argentina for the water to run and for people to throw their garbage.

My 2 day beard. I was busy looking for new razor blades. 

Elder Texeira conference! Office staff reunited!

Got a picture with my fellow Salemite Hermana Henrie. She was helping us out with the singing in our musical number.

I touch the piano

Hello family! And other people! 

Wahoo new washer and dryer for when I get home! Congrats! That's fun. I'm a little confused about the side gate project though for the boat... How are you planning on doing that? Leveling the yard over there? Sounds cool... But it sounds difficult as well. 

Anyway though... This was the first week of my second transfer with Elder Huaman. It's crazy how fast that first transfer flew by. Anyway, transfer week kind of made it difficult for some reason to work. It seemed like we were constantly busy this week. Lemme explain:

Monday: P-day, but we were in a trio with the comp of one of the elders who just died in our district. 

Tuesday: We had to go drop off said elder in the terminal to get his new companion. I did get to spend all morning talking to my best mission buds though. That was a blast. 

Wednesday: Normal. 

Thursday: Second training meeting for the new missionaries. In other words, the newbies have one training meeting when they get there, the day they get their trainers. And then on the first week of their second transfer they all go back for another training. It was fun... I got to see a lot of friends. It kind of felt like Tuesday except with everyone who wasn't at the terminal that morning. 

Friday: We had a REHEARSAL! What? So this week on Thursday we're going to have a mission conference with Elder Texeira of the Area Presidency, and it just so happens that I got assigned to play the piano for the special musical number. Well, that's no biggie for me. But there was a catch this time: We didn't have any music! So the hermanas that were in charge of choosing the musical number chose 3 hymns out of the hymn book and I had to make up a medley to all of those songs. And make it sounds fancy and cool. Well, that's a new thing for me. But it's something I've been working on a lot lately, and I did it! I'm getting better at the piano in that sense, and it's cool! So we rehearsed on Friday. It sounded okay, due to the fact that half of the people in our zone don't know how to sing. Oh well... I had fun at least. 

Anyway... So we were busy this week. And we're going to be busy with the Elder Texeira conference as well, but I'm way excited for that! 

Ricardo is still doing fantastic... The bishop had an interview with him yesterday in church and I think it was probably so that he can get the priesthood. I didn't have time to ask though. But that's cool! He's doing way well. 

So, that's about it for this week. I love you all! :D

Elder Bingham

Selfies with my friends

We got wet in the rain this week. Mendoza is being weird... It's like Utah and it never should rain, but this whole fall it's been raining.

WE HAD A BAPTISM!

Hi guys! I talked to ya'll yesterday! 

So I'll just say again...  For those who read the blog... WE HAD A BAPTISM! WAHOO! You guys already have the photos! Well done Ricardo! I was so happy this week. Basically the whole week we were getting things ready. We were trying to invite all the members we could, because all of the women were going to be in the stake center for a relief society activity that day. We needed all the men we could get. It turned out okay. And we had to finish teaching Ricardo, fill out the baptismal record, do the interview, make banana bread, make sure the font worked, and it seemed to take up the whole week. But it all turned out well. As I was telling the family... The baptism itself was a little bit clumsy. I was briefing Ricardo when we got in the water about him being able to plug his nose, that he needed to bend his knees a little bit, everything like that. I guess he didn't understand very well. I held up my arm, said everything I had to say, and then went to dunk him, and he kind of just put his hand over his face (didn't plug the nose) and kind of just fell over into the water. I was like "Oh gosh!" and I felt really bad when I was pulling him back out. (he was submerged completely)  I apologized, but Ricardo is just a really nice old man and he just was smiling and laughing about it. I love that man. He felt great about it as well, I was asking him afterward and he said he felt really good as he was coming out of the water. It was a really great day. 

And really I don't have much more to say than that. I talked to you all yesterday. it was great, by the way. I love you all!

Elder BIngham

Baptism pics

Our Skype

saying goodbye to Elder Benitez, who goes home tomorrow

Me and Elder Shields! The first of my future roomates to go home. 

Selfie

Playing with my selfie stick

The bishop's rock band! He's got the electric guitar

They're jamming in the nursery room. 

We're so close!

Hello guys!

Guess what??? We're so close with RICARDO! We had another fantastic week with him. We were just working on teaching everything basically. We taught him the Word of Wisdom, Chastity, Family History, Temples... And we almost got around to teaching him about the Priesthood but he wasn't there the last day. Bummer. And the best part is: He doesn't have any problems with the Word of Wisdom or Chastity! He's like basically a member already. This week we've got to go over the baptismal interview questions a little bit, then on Thursday he's got the interview, and on Saturday we've got the baptism! Hopefully the interview goes well... Cause the whole ward knows that Saturday is the baptism. If that doesn't happen... Well... It'd be awkward. 

This is my first baptism in my mission! Did you guys realize? And I've got like 19 months, and I know a lot about things we have to do to make sure the baptism goes smoothly and everything... But I'm like flipping out! We talked to a returned missionary yesterday and he was telling us about all kinds of things we needed to be doing this week for the baptism. For example: Does the hot water work in the chapel? The drain? Is there baptismal clothing that fits him? Does it need to be washed? Do the members know? Are you going to bring food? Things like that. There's just lots of things that I didn't even think about. The hot water was the last thing on my mind... Cause that's just something you kind of expect is already going to work... But here in Argentina you never know. So last night we went, and fortunately it does work. The bad thing is the font doesn't drain, so we had to run over to the bishop's house so that he sends someone to fix it before Saturday. That was a close call. 

Really I don't know what else to tell you guys besides that... It's like the only thing on my mind right now. We taught a few great lessons this week... We've got some other progressing investigators... It was kind of an average week with my comp... And yep. So... Keep praying still! It's not over yet! But we're really excited here. Ricardo's excited, I'm excited, Elder Huaman is excited, the zone leaders are excited, and I'm REALLY excited. Yep. 

Well guys, I'll be seeing you all on Sunday, at 3 o clock. Love you all!

Elder Bingham

So one of the elders in my district had his dad draw this. That's me!