Hermana Bingham's Adventures in San Jose: Best 2nd to Last Week Ever!

Hey family!!!

Wow, what a great week it was! It was fantastic! The best second to last week that one could possibly have. First off, nothing crazy or bad happened this week, so that was good! It was a week of normal missionary work! And then, we had the ward Christmas party on Saturday, which was a blast! I love our ward so much. It sounds like you've already seen some pictures of us and crazy elf hats, and even a video, but I'll send you some more. I'm glad you enjoyed the video, and had fun showing it off to people. It was fun. The sister that always sends you those pictures has a son serving in Salt Lake, so she gets how it is to be a missionary parent and loves to send pictures every time we see her. :) But the ward Christmas party was great. There was tons of yummy food, including tamales!!! So we all ate delicious food, talked to everyone, and we even got to get our picture taken with a Mexican Santa Claus! So that was really fun.

Then on Sunday we had a great day. We actually weren't able to watch the first presidency Christmas devotional because we were filling up the font for the baptism and couldn't figure out how to get it turned on... awkward. But we got everything ready for the baptism, and at 7pm we had the baptismal service. I gave a talk, then Andres got baptized, and then Hermana Buys and a couple of the elders bore testimony while Andres was changing, and then he got confirmed, and then Adriana his wife bore her testimony, and then he bore his testimony! It was a great baptismal service, and the spirit was really really powerful there. I'm so excited for their family to continue progressing. They'll be at the temple in a year. That's for sure. Hopefully I'll be able to get there.

We also set a baptismal date for Amada and Bernardo's daughter Nicole this week. She's 10 and has learning disabilities, so she didn't get baptized with the rest of her family. But she's going to get baptized for her birthday, so we're super excited about that. Too bad her birthday isn't until January. :( who knows, maybe Hermana Boyd and I will road trip it out here. :)

If you haven't seen it yet, you should all go to christmas.mormon.org to watch the new video the church made called "He is the Gift." Watch it, share it, spread the Christmas spirit. There is no better way to share the gospel than through that video right now. It was supposedly the only add on youtube yesterday, so it's going to be big. It's a really good video, kind of like the "Because of Him" one for easter. It's really good though. We even have special contacting cards for it. I love it!!!

Well, I hope you all have a great week. I'll see you all really really soon! Oh, and I'm sending two packages home today. One with books and stuff, and one with bedding and stuff. We have some spare bedding in our apartment, so no worries, I'm not going to freeze this week. :) I love you all. I'll see you really soon!!

Love,

Hermana Bingham