Transferred!

I AM SO SORRY I DIDN'T WRITE LAST WEEK!!!!!

So here's my excuse. A pretty valid one might I add. So Monday was MLK day, so libraries weren't open to let us email. And in that case, we usually just email on Tuesday. So I think, "awesome, where ever I go I'll just be able to email on Tuesday!" Wrong. Transfers were Tuesday morning, and I got transferred to Seaside, which has a Family History library that we are allowed to email in on Mondays. So I didn't get to email, because the people here had already emailed. So that's my lame excuse, but I feel really bad and I apologize! Sorry! :)

So my new address is:

740 Casanova Ave. Apt 14

Monterey, CA 93940

So stuffs can just go here. Because I'm FOREVER and a half away from the mission office. For reals. 

So since I have two weeks of stuff to catch up on, here it goes!

Not much happened last week. Mostly it was just a lot of goodbyes, and seeing people in the ward I wanted to see. Other than that I pretty normal week. But last Monday (MLK day) we got to go to Monterey! We had no clue I was going to go there the next day since we find out at transfer meeting on Tuesday, but we had permission to go down and hit the beach, and this BEAUTIFUL place called Point Lobos. It was just us Yerba Buena sisters. A little girls day out. We went to Point Lobos and hiked around, and it was awesome. Then we went to Carmel beach. It was super fun. Then that night we went to see Aide one last time. We were reading the intro to the Book of Mormon with her, because she had been kind of confused as it excactly what the BofM is. So we read it, and then we were promising her blessings, and I told her she would recieve an answer if she prayed and asked. She just looked at me and said, "Hermana, ya lo recibi!" or, "Hermana, I already recieved it!" Um, WHAT?!?!!??!!?!? So she told us her story. She was sitting here reading the Book of Mormon, in Ether 12:4, which I had written down for her the time before, and she started to smell roses. (Um, okay, I was thinking she was crazy at this point) So she prayed, and then flipped to Moroni 10:3-5 (which I had also written down for her) and started to smell roses again. Then she remembered that 10 years ago, she was watching the news and there was this story of someone that was sitting in her house, and smelt roses. She got up to follow the scent, and as soon as she moved, a car crashed into the house, right where she had been sitting. When Aide saw that, she wondered if it was from God. So when she read the BofM and smelt roses, she realized that that book is the word of God, and it was true. So she's getting baptized!!!! I'm so excited! I hope I can go back up!!

So I got transferred to Seaside! And I'm in a trio! My new companions are Sister Spackman (who I served with in YB for my first 3 transfers), and Sister Bench. Sister Bench has been out for about 14 months, and Sister Spackman for 11. So I'm the baby again, but President told us he is excited to have all three of us down here and getting the spanish rolling. Right now we serve in the Seaside first ward, and the Fort Ord ward, and both are english wards with spanish groups. My goal is to get a spanish branch here. We'll see how it goes. I"m so excited! It is BEAUTIFUL down here! And it's so fun to be in a trio. We all get along really well, and we're getting lots of members to go on splits with us so we can get double the work done. YAY!! It's awesome. The wards here are great, they are super missionary focused and willing to help us out with anything. It's weird, because we eat mostly white people food, but it's still yummy. I just miss the Mexican food! But I love this area! 

Once again, sorry I didn't write!!! I feel awful, but that is the life of transfers. I love you all! Have an awesome week!!!

Love,

Hermana Bingham

 We got to do service in a Koi pond. And wear waders

 Cute, right?

 The Hernandez family. They will be baptized someday

 The Gonzalez family, my companion and I.
Another one of my favorite YB families

 My grandma, my mom, and me. Packer, Kofford and me

 Point Lobos!

 More Point Lobos! BEAUTIFUL, RIGHT?!?!

 One more from Point Lobos!

 Aide and I

My new companions and I! 
Hna Bench, Me and Hna Spackman with our chocolate de abuelita!! 

It's the best hot chocolate EVER!!!

Goodbyes

My dearest family,

First off, little Vivien is SOOOOOOOOOOOOO CUTE!! Tell Mikey and Andrea congrats for me! She is so adorable! I was sitting here in the library like, dying because she's so cute. Also, the fact that I don't get to see her for like, a year. Or even hold any kind of baby. That rule sucks. Just so you all know. You know how I am with kids... this is torture.

So mom, I'm SO excited for your new calling! YW's will be great for you, and an adventure. Plus, girls camp is super fun, and you'll get to go with Kyla and embarrass her. :) That's the best part right? Jokes. And I think you'll be able to really help those girls. I mean, I was in the same situation as them a couple years ago (a couple years? WHAT?) and you know how much it sucked. Obviously, because you were the one I was crying to all the time. But you understand what these girls need, and you'll be able to help them. It will be awesome! And don't worry about the Come Follow Me cirriculum. If there is one thing I've learned, it's that if you study and try your best, you just need to open your mouth and the Lord will put words in. The Spirit will help and guide you. You just have to tudy the topic! :)

So Jayson got hurt snowboarding, Kyla's back is sore, what's going on over there? You're all getting injured!! Let me know how Kyla is doing. And Jayson. I hope that you both feel better soon!

Bryce, your masquarade mask looks pretty cool! I like it! It looks much better than the one I got, that I spent a decent amount of monies on and then didn't really like it.

Jayson, it sounds like basketball is going really well! Tell me more! Since you were all supposed to write me and NO ONE DID!! Stinkers. :) And yes, I did have to rat you out to mom. :)

So this week... I don't even remember what we did. It FLEW by. And now we're in week 6 of this transfer, so this Saturday night I'll probably be getting a phone call giving me the worst news ever... transfers... yuck. I love this area too much. I don't want to leave! Ever! It is seriously the best! And things are getting even better! This last week, as a district (3 yb companionships and 1 english companionship) we had 21 progressing investigators, 16 investigators at church, 94 lessons and 53 baptisimal invitations!!! It was so awesome! (And may I just throw out, that 14/16 investigators at church were in Yerba Buena. We doubled the size of the primary :) ). We're so excited. Everything is getting better and better, and I'm going to leave... yup. not fun. Transfers are the worst. But, it's okay! I'll just go make some other area the best!

This week we've been exploring a part of our area that has been pretty missionary dry for a while. We hadn't had a ton of success in that area before, so we kind of just left it. But this week we went there and have been seeing a lot of success. So that's been fun. I couldn't stop smiling the whole time. I had no clue where I was, no clue what was going on, but it was so fun! Maybe I'll do okay with transfers... who knows. I had to say goodbye to Marifer Paredes yesterday because she's leaving to go to Canada to see her family tomorrow, and I cried. I don't want to leave. So that makes me think I'll have a really hard time.

Wish us luck this week. We're going to work hard, and make this the best last week ever! I love you all, have an awesome week! Love you!

Love,

Hermana Bingham

 Sleds?!?!?! What is this! There is no snow!!!!

 Happy one year mark Sister Monical!!

Last dinner with Jared and Marifer! And Fusar, the dog!

Changes

Hello Family!

So honestly, nothing too exciting happened this week. Probably the highlight was testimony meeting yesterday. Many people bore their testimonies, and it was great. But the best part was when little Geisy got up and bore his testimony. Do you all remember Geisy? He's 12 and got baptized a couple months ago? Well, when he got up and bore his testimony, and was so so nervous. And he started crying, and it was the most heart warming thing in the world. He talked about how he knew this church was true, and he knew he could pray to ask Heavenly Father to take care of his family, and that Heavenly Father would help him. It was so tender. Also, there is no better feeling in the world than seeing your recent converts get up and pass the sacrament, or bear their testimonies. It was awesome. And then Michelle got up and bore hers. It was the best ever. And then to top it off, Yahaira found us after sacrament meeting, and told us that she took out her nose piercing because she wants to feel cleaner and more pure. Later she told us she had a really good feeling when she took it out, and is going to take out her lip piercing this month. She wanted to take it out yesterday, we don't know if she did our not, but she's starting to change. She got a calling yesterday as the YW's secretary, and she's super excited. She's excited to be a friend and an example to the girls, and work with them. And she's working on changing even more so that she can feel clean and pure when she goes to the temple on the 8th with the ward to do baptisms for the dead. I'm so excited for her. Just the changes that you see others make is a huge blessing as a missionary. You watch them change their lives for their Savior. And it makes me think. What am I doing to change myself every day? What am I doing to be better for the Lord? Am I really repenting and changing? Or am I just stuck in a rut? So that's one of my goals for this year. Change. I know it's not super specific, but I want to leave old habits behind. Habits that don't bring me closer to my Savior are going in the trash. I am going to use the Atonement, and be better. Become better for me, for my investigators, for my family, but most importantly, for Him. Because He has given me everything, and I can give him a little of me back.

So New Years... it's different as a missionary. We still had to be in our houses at 9, in bed by 10:30, so we got to go to the ward party for an hour! from 8 to 9. But since it started at 8, and it's a latino party and we're on Latino standard time AND mormon standard time, it didn't really start until after we left. But it was still fun. 

This week we watched the Restoration movie with one of our investigators Cinthia who is 16, her 11 year old brother Rodrigo, and her 7 year old sister Darlin. So we watched it, and then asked them what they thought, what they liked, and Darlin piped up and said, "That was the best movie I've ever seen!" It was so cute. What 7 year old likes the Restoration movie? She did! It was awesome! It was a really good experience, and Cinthia asked a lot of good questions. It was great. But really, Darlin is so adorable. She loves us. She gave us little Christmas presents. She drew us a picture, wrote Merry Christmas on a paper towel, and then painted a cross on these little stones. So cute. She's the greatest. out of the whole family, she's the one that reads in the Book of Mormon the most. Too bad we can't just baptize her. We need to find out when she turns 8. :)

Well, I hope you all have a fantastic week, I love you all! Talk to strangers! (Oh wait, that's my job... :) 

Love,

Hermana Bingham

Sandy's off to BYU!!

 Happy New Year! Love, the Yerba Buena missionaries, 

plus Sister Christensen, our STL, who was with us for the day.

 Crazy sister missionaries. And Sandy!

At the ball drop in NYC! oh wait... :)