I'm in Freakin California!

HELLO FAMILY!

I'm in freakin California! Craziness right? And I LOVE it! Mom, I am allowed to read letters any day of the week, but this works too. I have an hour to email, and that's plenty of time to read emails from people and write back. So we're good. My bedding was there waiting, so thanks so much for sending that. I love having my quilt with me. It's like having a piece of home right here in San Jose. And I am going to need a bike. I think. Here's the deal. right now we have a car, and the other sisters in our zone have one too. But one of our cars is getting pulled, so there will be one car for the 5 of us (the other sisters are in a tripanionship). So we will need three bikes total so that we can take turns with the car and the bikes, but I'm thinking that the other sister will be buying since there are three of them, but if I do end up needing to buy one, I'll just use my card and then you and dad can decide what you want to do about that. But I'll let you know if I need one.

So right now I'm in the Yerba Buena area, which is basically the best area ever. We are in the area that covers the mission office (which address you have) so you can continue sending letters there for now, because we are there all the time so I can pick up mail whenever. We hardly ever check our own mailbox, and honestly, I don't even know my address. So if you choose to send mail mail, send it to the office. It works best. :) So my companion is Hna. Kofford. She's from Idaho, and she's 20 and basically awesome. We get along super well. She's hilarious and I love working with her. She's a great trainer, and I love her. It's a little weird being without Hna. Raney, but she's in a zone super close to mine, so I actually saw her the other day. So in our zone, we have a goal for this transfer. That goal is to get 21 baptisms, which is about 20 more than we usually get in one transfer. And our neighboring zone is doing the same goal, which means in our stake (both zones cover the same stake) we will have a total of 42 baptisms by the end of this transfer. So to help us acheive our goal, we get 21 contacts every day, 5 new investigators every week, 5 baptisimal invite every week, and we fast every Sunday and do all this awesome stuff. It's hard, but it works. We got 5 new investigators in 2 days last week, and 5 baptisimal invites. CRAZY STORY TIME! So it was 9ish last night after our zone meeting, and we were heading home. We only had 4 baptisimal invites, and needed one more, and 2 more contacts for the day. So I jokingly said, I just really want a car to pull up at this light with two people in it so I can give them a card and invite them to baptism. And IMMEDIATELY a car pulls up with two people in it. So I rolled down my window (their's was down) passed them a picture of Christ, told them who I was, and asked if they would like to learn more. They said maybe, so then I continue onto say that as they learn more about our church and come to know that it's true, would they "follow the example of Jesus Christ and be baptized by someone holding the priesthood authority of God?" And they said yes. We didn't have time to get a number, but they have ours. We probably won't hear from them, but I was able to get the invite and we reached our goal. Not in the way we would've preffered, but we reached it. But this whole 21 thing is going to work. I've been here for 5ish days now, and I've already been to 5 baptisms. None of them are our investigators, but they're all in our district (and our ward). And our zone had a total of 8 this weekend I think. It's crazy. The Lord is definitely blessing us with a miracle.

So basically, I love it here. There are tons of Mexicans and they feed us yummy food, and basically every night. I have been told I'm going to gain weight, and I believe it. They feed you so stinkin much! But it's awesome! It's delicious. I've had pupulsas twice now (they are a El Salvador food, and delicious). They are  basically a little tortilla kind of think, but the meat and stuff is inside, and they are small, but then on top you put this cabbage stuff and hot sauce. It's yummy. Maybe Sister Finkenthal knows how to make them. You could ask. And last night we had beens and rice and this super delicious beef and homemade tortillas with another family in the ward. It's awesome, but when I come back 8 billion pounds, don't be surprised. Just kidding, I'm going to try to not gain weight. I don't want to buy new clothes! And I think the bikes will help with that.

This week was super awesome. We had some good solid lessons with some of our investigators, and some good solid finds. The other day we just happend to bump into this little Mexican lady on the street that we said hi too, and she just started crying. She's had a rough time over the past three weeks, and she just needs to be happy. She's all alone. So we're going to get in touch with her this week and go help her. She's so tender and cute. We've also had some rough experiences though. We're teaching this lady named Magdelena. We had this super awesome lesson with her, like, she was basically punched in the face with the spirit, and then we asked her about baptism (again) and she just said, "I don't know... maybe" we can't get her to commit. And apparently this happens every time. They can tell she feels the spirit, but she won't commit to baptism. And Victor. He's like golden. He understands everything, and loves church and the gospel, he says it makes him happy, but he doesn't want to talk about baptism dates because his life is already super crazy right now (he's a single dad with a hard job and he has to sell a bunch of his Father's land in Mexico) so he wont' commit to a date either. It's a little sad because we can see that they're both ready, but they just won't commit. But I can definitely see the Lord's hand in everything we do, and I know that if we have faith, He'll help us out with everything. I love this gospel, and I know it brings us true happiness. I'm so grateful for the opportunity I have to be out here, helping others find their way back home. I love it, and I'm excited for this upcoming week. I love you all, have an awesome week!!

Love,

Hermana Amaya Bingham