One Crazy Week

Dear family,

Sounds like you all had a fun week! The tough mudder looks like it was a blast! We'll all have to do it sometime!

That's so funny that this week went by fast for you, because it was really slow over here! It was mostly just CRAZY, so time went by slower. Let me start at the beginning:

Monday night I was folding our laundry from early, when all of a sudden Hermanas Boyd and Quintana come out of their room and toss their phone at me, both of them crying. Immediately, I knew something bad was going to happen, and when I saw President's name on the phone, I knew someone was either leaving, or someone had died. So I picked up the phone and talked to President, and he had me put it on speaker. He explained to us that hermana Fischetti (remember her from like a year ago) is super sick and has to end her mission 9 weeks early. Problem is that that leaves her companion companion-less. This companion is also a brand new missionary. So President felt like Hermana Quintana needed to be emergency transferred to go up and finish training this new missionary, and that she would go to her new area Wednesday morning. So we spent the night crying, and then Wednesday morning we drove Hermana Quintana to San Jose to be picked up by her new trainee. It was really sad. So that left Hermana Boyd, Hermana G-G and I back in a trio, but this time covering two areas. Problem is that our areas are pretty far away from each other, and there's usually lots of traffic getting from one to the other. So we have been left with the challenge of working in both areas, reporting numbers separately, trying to find members to come help us, and dividing time between the two areas. Lets just say it's been insane. It's super hard, because we all have things that we need to do in our different areas, but trying to condense that down so we can work 50-50 in each area is really difficult. But we're working on it, and we think we have something figured out. in two weeks we'll go back up to 4 missionaries, but the two weeks will be hard. But we'll do it! It's been really fun though. 

Friday we got to have our ward Cultural night activity in honor of the 16 of September, which is Mexican Independence day. I bet you all thought that was 5 de Mayo huh? Well, it's actually el 16 de septiembre! surprise! But we had a fun activity, and you got to see the videos and everything. We got special permission to do the dance, and it was super fun. I felt like a real Mexican. :) Just kidding. But it was really fun to be able to participate and learn a little bit about the culture. They also asked the missionaries to sing something, so that was fun too. :) The member that keeps sending you videos and pictures is Hermana Martinez. Her son is serving in SLC so she is super good to missionaries, and always wants to send pictures and videos home to parents--she gets it. :) She's a sweetheart. I love her so much! 

Then on Sunday we found out that the sewer pipes had been backed up at our church building, and the carpets needed to be cleaned and none of the bathrooms were working. So church was cancelled, and we spent an hour yesterday morning calling and texting the whole ward and getting information on different spanish services. We ended up going and visiting in a little branch that's pretty close to our house. A lot of our members were there too, and it was really fun. I think we tripled the attendance of the branch yesterday. :) 

It's been a crazy week, but a big learning experience and I'm grateful for every minute. I hope you all have a great week. Good luck with final mission preparations, with school, with work, and whatever else you have going on! I love you all, and hope you have a fantastic week!

Love,

Hermana Bingham

Here are the pictures and videos I received from Hermana Martinez this week: