Hermana Bingham's Adventures in San Jose: Changes Are Coming

Hello family!

First off, I'm getting transferred! So today is my last day here in Seaside. Tomorrow I'll wake up bright and early and drive to San Jose for transfer meeting. I have no clue where I'm going yet, but I'll let you know next Monday. I'm excited! It will be a new adventure.

It's been a pretty good week. We have had tons of success. We met most of our goals, slacked on a few, but it was okay! We had tons of help from the members. It was fun!

This week we had meet and greets up in San Jose with President and Sister Mella. Let me tell you, they are awesome! I'm so excited to work with them. They will do wonderful things in this mission! I'm very excited to see everything he has in store. It will be so fun. They have really shown and told us how they are going to focus on following the spirit. They really want every decision that they make to be spirit guided. It will be so interesting. He also told us that we will become a technology mission! We don't know when yet, but very soon here we will be getting facebook and iPads. Woohoo! My guess is sometime within the next 12 weeks. It will be an interesting change. I thought it was really cool though; he talked about how the First Presidency and Quorum of the 12 want us to learn how to use mobile devices responsibly on our missions. I thought that was really interesting. I had never thought about it like that before. And it's a really good point. Most youth, even adults, have all these smart/mobile devices, and they get to a point where it becomes an addiction. They can't live without it, and are constantly wasting time on it. Before the mission, I was guilty of that. I wasted way too much time on facebook and netflix. But if we learn how to use these devices responsibly, and for good, to hasten the work of the Lord, then we will take that back with us after our missions. I'm excited to be able to learn that. I think it will be an excellent thing for missionaries to learn. Bring on the iPads!!

For the 4th of July we got to do service at the Monterey parade! We were on traffic control duty: making sure cars didn't try to drive where they weren't supposed to, which basically means we just got to sit there and watch the parade. It was super fun. We did that, went to lunch with our zone because everyone came up for service, we did weekly planning (planning ALL our lessons for the week--takes a few hours), and then we headed up to the Bowman's house for dinner. She is our RS president, and invited us, the Seaside elders, and the Fort Ord elders over for dinner. It was a beautiful 3 course meal, complete with appetizers (veggies and dip, and bacon-wrapped scallops), a main course (salad, mashed potatoes, watermelon, chicken, bread...) and dessert (homemade peach pie with fresh peaches and vanilla ice cream. Yum!) It was super good. Also, super classy. The Bowmans are fairly wealthy, so the best of manners are expected at their house, which is like a museum... yeah, it's nice. Lets just say we ate our watermelon slices with a fork and knife. Yup. That happened. Then we headed over to visit Tiffany, a less active member, and we got to watch the fireworks from her balcony! President Mella gave us permission to be out until 10 if we were invited to watch the fireworks by a member and there was a proselyting opportunity. Since Tiffany is a less active, and invited us, we got to stay! And there wasn't even a show, but just a TON of illegal fireworks. It was super great. And she has a killer view of all of seaside, so it was pretty great.

I hope you all have a fantastic week! I love you all!

Love,

hermana Bingham

p.s. Tell Kenna congrats for me!