Zone Conference

Hello family!

I can't believe you already got my trunky papers... Ay! That's still MONTHS away! Good thing I'm not trunky! haha. But for reals. Does San Jose do flights into Provo? If not, I don't think they'll take me up to San Francisco, so it will probably be SLC. We'll see. 

Happy Birthday Mommy! I'm glad you had a good day! Bacon wrapped meatloaf? sounds yummy. anything with bacon is good! Sounds and looks like the reunion was a blast! I loved the pictures, thanks Daddy! I'm excited to be able to go to those again next year. Sad I had to miss it! But it sounds like it was a blast. 

This week has been so good! We had an incredible zone conference on Thursday. President Mella talked about how his first day here, Elder Packer (our area 70) asked why we couldn't double or triple the number of baptisms we had in this mission. Right now we're on track to get about 500 baptisms this year. So that means like, 1000-1500 would be double or triple that. That's A TON of baptisms! But we talked about changing the way we do missionary work. He talked and said how the definition of insanity is doing things in the same way, and expecting better results. He said that we have to change the way we do missionary work if we want to see more baptisms. We have to up our game too. We have to get more investigators at church, and find more investigators. So we have to change the way we contact. We have to start teaching immediately, testify with power, get to know other people's beliefs. It was really inspiring. He showed us numbers and statistics, and we learned that basically, any investigator that comes to church regularly will most likely get baptized. That's so cool! So if we work hard, and the wards fellowship, every investigator we get to church will be baptized! So cool! So we're working really really hard on getting EVERYONE to church. It's going to be awesome. Really. 

We've been shaping up on the obedience. Every week we get a little better. Progress! I'm really grateful for that! Also, I've decided that I'm changing my studies to only in Spanish. I finally finished the Old Testament, and now I want to do EVERYTHING in spanish. So I'm going to send home a package sometime next week probably with my English Preach My Gospel in it. You're more than welcome to look through it, but save it for me because I'll do more with it when I get home. :) But for now I'm focusing on Spanish. :) 

I got to go on exchanges with another sister in our zone this week, Sister Wheeler. she's great. But we got to eat dinner with their investigators who are Russian! Problem is, they don't speak a ton of english. The wife does, but the husband doesn't understand much. We had a member there translating, but it was still interesting. I've never had the experience on my mission of being "out of the loop" with the language. Usually I understand what's going on, because I've only been in Spanish and English. It was fun though. We had fish (complete with tails and heads), and chicken with wild mushrooms... I'm still alive though, so I don't think they were poisonous. That's good. :) It was fun. 

Yesterday some members of our ward hosted a Peruvian party to help our investigators Amada and Bernardo (who are Peruvian) feel fellowshipped. Some other members from Palo Alto and San Jose came too, and it was fun. BUT, the cool part was is that some members from Palo Alto brought their family from Davis, and we were talking to the lady from Davis, and she has two kids. We asked their names, and get this, one of them is named Amaya! Spelled the same and everything! It was really cool. I finally met someone with my name. Spelled the same! It was fun. the little girl is 6, so her mom looked at her and said, "Amaya, guess what this missionary's first name is? Amaya!" And the girl was so surprised! It was adorable. And then I asked her, "Amaya, how old are you?" Yeah, I felt like I was talking to myself. Never had that problem before! It was funny. 

I love you all. I hope you all have a fantastic week. You're always in my prayers. :) Love you!

Love,

Hermana Bingham

Zone conference: we like to match. :)