Life in San Jose

Dear Family,

I have realized I haven't been very informative (thanks to Mom) about my whereabouts and situation. Just that I'm happy and I love it here! So let me do a little explaining...

Once upon a time there was this girl named Sister Bingham (because that's always been my name.) and she was on a mission in San Jose California. Well, she spent about 6 weeks in the MTC and then got to California, and forgot to tell her family what it was like. So after spending about 7 weeks in California, she decided to tell her family what her life in California was like.

Done with that... anyways, I am in the San Jose zone, which is right in the heart of San Jose. Obviously. We are one of two zones in the San Jose stake. And then my ward/area is the Yerba Buena ward, which is a Spanish speaking ward. Yeah, we have a whole ward. There are a lot of Mexicans here. :) Also, we like baptizing them. There are currently 7 missionaries in the Yerba Buena ward: Sister Kofford and I, Sisters Spackman and Jensen, and Elders, Alvarez, Phillips, and James. We love it. We are very blessed to have so many missionaries in our ward. Our ward it great too. The Bishop is amazing, and works really well with us. He is always trying to make sure we have the help we need and is wonderful. He also has decided to do this new thing: we are going to just plan to have a baptismal service every two weeks and plan it out and everything. His philosophy is, "If we fill it they will come." (Yes, my Uruguayan bishop quoted Field of Dreams while presenting this plan. It was awesome). Our zone consists of English, Spanish, and Vietnemese speaking missionaries. We have 1 spanish ward, 3 english wards and a Viet branch. It's awesome. Also, we do 21 here, so it's the greatest. We have a lot of cool people here in our ward too. It's great.

So service: Yes, we do have a lot of service opportunities here. Our mission president has asked us to get about 10 service hours a week: but not more than that. So every week, Sister Kofford and I average about 4 acts, with 8 hours. We teach an English class every week for an hour, and my favorite is park service. We go to this park every week called Guadalupe River park, that is completely run by volunteer work, and we sometimes pick fruit, sometimes we weed, mulch, prune, and one time we even made apple cider. It's fun. It's nice to be outdoors and be with lots of missionaries doing stuff. I like it. We also play the piano in Primary every week, which counts as 2 hours of service, since there are definitely other meetings we could be in. :) that's fun too. And then we usually try to find something else to do. Lately we've been going to this place called Veggielution, which is a volunteer based organic farm. We weed, harvest, and do all that kind of stuff, and every week after there is a potluck lunch, which consists of veggies grown there made into yummy stuff, so we help prepare that too. It's super fun.

Sister Kofford and I live in a little one bed room apartment, that is kind of a dump. Well, ours is because missionaries have lived in there for who knows how long. We have some memebers that live in the same complex, and their's is nice, but ours just isn't super great. And it's not super dumpy. Just... missionary like. Lets just put it this way: Elders have lived in it for a really long time, and sisters just started living there a little while ago. But I like it. It's fun. We're really close to all the other Yerba Buena missionaries (as in we're all in the same complex) so sometimes we do breakfast or dinner together. It's fun.

Does that answer all your questions? I hope so! I"ll send more pictures.. I just have to take some first. I'll send a  couple though. Love you all, Hope you're week is fantastic! The gospel is true, and missionary work is amazing!

Love,
Hermana Bingham

 We contacted a guy with a parrot a few weeks ago. I got to hold it. Then it bit my finger... So I have had a parrot bite my finger. How many other people can say that? Cool right?

Sister Kofford and I with Sister Barker