May 17, 2015

Talofa lava!

This week has been a long one... I've had a few ups, but also quite a few downs. It's just been one of those weeks that I am happy is over now!

Sister Dere and I still stayed more busy than usual, which I enjoyed. We saw Mere on Tuesday and invited her to come to mutual on Wednesday. She agreed, but when we went to confirm on Wednesday she told us that she had math homework she had to do instead. Stella is also doing alright. Slow progress at the moment, but at least it's progress. We were able to see her this week and teach her the Plan of Salvation. (finally) The only other update as far as investigators goes for this week would probably be Craig. He's the guy we tracted into like two months ago and then taught him about the Book of Mormon. After that we started having some trouble getting a fellowship to come with us so we could teach him again. Sister Dere and I finally stopped by just the two of us a couple weeks ago and talked to him about the possibility of getting the Elders out to teach him, but afterwards it just didn't feel right. So instead we decided to set out to find someone to come teach him with us, and we did! Sister Tia, the branch president's wife agreed and she came with us about twice in the past week, but those times he wasn't home. Sister Dere and I tried again on Saturday to go by ourselves and set up an appointment with him first, but again he wasn't home. Heavenly Father has truly been trying my patience with this one. I want nothing more than to be able to teach him, because I know he needs it right now. Btw when we followed up with him a couple weeks ago he said that he is already to Alma in his Book of Mormon reading and I can see that he is starting to feel the Spirit. He needs to be taught!

Thursday was probably the roughest day this week. Sister Dere and I had to just get out, take a break, get some ice cream, and relax for a bit. After we got our ice cream we stopped by Judith's shop (less active that recently moved to town and opened up a plus size women's clothes store) and she gave us both a bunch of clothes that she had ordered online in plus sizes, but when they came they were really skinny. I felt even better after that. There's nothing more therapeutic than some shopping. Blessings!!

I think that's about it for this week. I'm just doing my best to get over my cold that I've had for a couple weeks now and keep up with the work here. I have the faith that everything will start to settle in soon.

Love yous heaps!

Sister Bingham

1. Thursday taking a break at the lookout

2. can you spot the chapel??

May 10, 2015

HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY MUM!!!!!!!!!! I hope the family spoiled you heaps! Sorry we have to wait a couple weeks to Skype, but it will be worth the wait! :) I am SO grateful for you this day and for all the many things you have done for me throughout my life like driving me to after school sports, cooking all my food, doing my laundry, and most importantly for raising me in this gospel. I would not be anywhere near the person I am today without you! LOVE YOU HEAPS!!!!!

Also, a happy mother's day to all the other motherly figures I have had in my life, be it grandma's, teachers, young women's leaders, etc.

Last but not least, happy mother's day to the mother-to-be: my sister Kelsey! I am excited that you and Isaac have FINALLY made the righteous decision to start giving me nieces and nephews! :)

Back to the missionary work now. So this week wasn't too bad of a first week of the transfer. I have started to feel a cold coming, so I haven't been going too hard out, but we've still done our best to work effectively in the changing weather.

We had a zone meeting in Finley on Friday (two hour drive one way), but it was worth the drive! We had trainings on all the things I needed to hear! It's crazy how much those meetings can boost my spirits and give me enough strength to go back out and go hard!

We saw the Soqosoqo's this week. They are doing pretty good, but we are still working with them to try and get them to start reading the Book of Mormon again and to come to church.

Stella is also doing pretty good. The Jehovah's Witnesses came to her door this week and gave her some stuff, so I just hope that she can see clearly enough through their rubbish. But other than that she is doing well. We will go see her again later this week when she gets back from Sydney again.

Mere might be postponing her baptism for May 23. She told us that she has mid-term exams coming up in May for school so it just might not be the right timing. But we will still visit her and help her to be able to be baptised as soon as possible because she is absolutely golden! We went over the baptism interview questions with her and she can answer everything no problem!

Funny story of the week: Sister Dere and I were tracting earlier this week and there was this one door we knocked on. A man answered the door and started talking to us. He was friendly, but there was just one problem... His pants zipper was down. We could tell that he had absolutely no idea, and apparently had forgotten to check that before he answered the door, so we just did our best to remain eye contact and not to bust up laughing haha!

Love yous heaps!

Sister Bingham

1. Sister Tia with all her Cheetos her auntie in Utah sent her! (yes they are all already gone)

2. Some of us at the mother's day breakfast Saturday morning (I'm in my jumper because we went at 6:30 to help start cooking)

3. this is cocoa rice. It is a Samoan dish you make by combining rice, coconut cream, and cocoa Samoa

4. Lollies we helped prepare with the Primary presidency for Mother's Day

5. This is the Huntsman that somehow made its way into our flat. Mum, I have a really great video of Sister Dere and I killing it coming your way soon. :)

May 3, 2015

Dear family and friends,

This week was a pretty good last week of the transfer. And even better, we got the news on Saturday night that Sister Dere and I are both staying in Griffith. She is now my longest companion... Three transfers! It will be interesting to see how it goes! I just hope I don't get stuck up here for too long. I do love the bush but sometimes I do miss civilization haha!

Stella is still doing well. We saw her this week and answered some more of her questions about the Book of Mormon. She wasn't able to come to church this week because she went to Sydney, but we will keep working on that!

We taught Grace and Rino as well this week. It was actually pretty funny because as I was teaching the Restoration briefly, right before I was about to start talking about Joseph Smith, Grace started telling this story about how her vacuum died and they had to go buy a new one haha! So I suppose Heavenly Father knew that the timing just wasn't right. But after that they did invite us to stay for dinner and we had a great time with them!

Mere is also doing great! We re-taught her the Plan of Salvation yesterday and she said that it all makes sense to her! The only thing we are worried about for her baptism now is how on-board her parents will be with it because we aren't sure if she's talked about it much with them.

That's all the updates for this week. Hope yous have a good one!

Love ya heaps!

Sister Bingham

p.s. sorry the computer doesn't want to upload any pictures today. It doesn't seem to be working properly.

April 26, 2015

Talofa lava!

Heaps of updates for this week so here we go...

I finally had an actual district meeting on Tuesday. In the bush usually we do them over the phone since we're all so far away, but President Maxwell just made a new rule that we have to have at least two in person meetings per month. And the great part about it was that the rest of our district (from Wagga Wagga) had to make the drive to Griffith for our meeting, so we hardly had to travel at all! It was great!

We saw a couple investigators this week: Grace and Reno. They are mother-son and are Italian Catholic. Reno told us he is going to start reading the Book of Mormon because he is curious about it. They are doing well.

Stella told us this week that she knows the Book of Mormon is true!!!!! So exciting!!!!!! Now we just have to get her partner on board because he is Seventh Day Adventist, but huge progress with her this week!!!!

Sister Dere and Sister Best met a less active member, Judith, during exchanges the other week who had just moved here from Adelaide. She had a dream the night before that she had gone back to church in Griffith and met the Sisters there and the next day she saw them walking past her shop! So this week when Sister Dere and I were walking around town talking to people we stopped in and started talking to her. Then just a few minutes later we ran into the branch mission leader's wife, Sister Saipele, who we had already been thinking about as a fellowship for her. We took Sister Saipele over to meet Judith and they hit it off great! She now has met us, Sister Saipele, President Tia and his family, the Elders, and Sister Saipele continues to tell everyone to go into her shop and introduce themselves to her. The branch is doing really well working together right now! I love it!

Thursday morning right before Sister Dere and I were getting ready to start our weekly planning two Jehovah's witnesses knocked on our door. We proudly introduced ourselves to them as missionaries from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and then proceded to talk with them for a good hour. The thing that stuck out to me most from our conversation is that I feel really bad for them because they have no understanding about the Plan of Salvation, especially about the Pre-Earth Life and our divine destiny. I cannot understand why anyone would want to believe that they are anything less than a child of God and that they have an equal chance from anyone else on the earth to go back to live with God and become like Him.

Last thing. So the youth in our branch did a mini mission this weekend, and it was really great! They started on Friday night with a fireside where we did some role plays with them and got them as ready as possible to go tracting on Saturday. Saturday the forecast said it would be rainy all day, so we said a prayer that the rain would go away so that we could do our missionary work. Right at 10:30 when we met up the clouds moved away and the sun came out. We walked along for the next two and a half hours, all of us taking different routes to the park across the street from the chapel. I was paired up with three young women and an eleven-year-old primary girl. The second door we knocked a Hindi Indo-Fijian lady let us in to share a quick message with her. The next house a 30-or-so man came out and told us that he was Muslim, but that he would listen to what we had to say. He was very eager to accept a Plan of Salvation pamphlet from the girls so I went ahead and gave him a Book of Mormon, which he gladly accepted as well. We have another appointment to see him this week. After that we continued to go along with not much success until we made it to the park. When everyone was finishing up eating lunch a huge wind came in and it started to rain again, so we went to the chapel and had some activities for the next hour until everyone went back to their houses with their companions for dinner, studies, etc. and sleep. Overall, the mini mission was a big success and helped motivate a lot of the young men to want to serve a mission. It was so good that they even proposed in branch council to have it once every quarter.

Well that's it for this week. Sorry for such a long email, but the work here really is going great right now and I feel really lucky to be in the Griffith branch. I'm a bit nervous because every time I feel this way about an area I am in the next week I get transferred... and transfer calls come this week. But hopefully I will be able to stay up here a bit longer.

Love yous heaps!

Sister Bingham

April 19, 2015

Talofa lava!

So we had a pretty busy week... On Wednesday Sister Dere and I drove down in the afternoon to Wangaratta, and we decided to stop on our way at a member's home who lives about 45 minutes away. We looked up the address on the gps and it didn't come up, so we figured 'how hard can it be to find one road in a small as town in the middle of the bush?' haha big mistake. We got to the little town and couldn't find it, so we stopped at the petrol station and the people there told us it was like ten K's out of town and we had already passed it. So we tried calling the family and had no network. Eventually we turned around and as we were on the road back to the family's home they were able to get ahold of us and meet us by the highway to guide us to their house. Haha it was a good adventure and I definitely learned to be sure where we are going next time!

Zone conference was really good. We are studying PMG ch. 4 this month on recognizing and understanding the Spirit, so we got a lot of trainings on that, as well as some on ch. 11 about helping people make and keep commitments.

After we made the four hour trek back home on Thursday, we turned around on Friday and went to visit a couple members in Leeton, 45 minutes back south. It was really good and we were able to have dinner with a family who just moved into the ward from Seymour. They are also just returning back to church and working on getting their eight-year-old daughter baptised.

On Saturday Elder Leota, former Mission President in Samoa and newly-called Seventy, came to our branch and gave us a presentation on the history of the church in Samoa. It was really cool to watch how the church has grown there! They said that percentage wise the church has the most members in Samoa. I am grateful for the sacrifices of those who have gone before me to build up the church not only in Samoa, but all over the world. The stone cut out of the mountain without hands is rolling forth and filling the earth!

Only a couple more updates for the week. We saw Stella on Tuesday and she has been reading her Fijian Book of Mormon. We talked about it a little more and explained more of the background of the Book of Mormon to her. We also committed her to be baptised once she knows that the Book of Mormon is true and she said she would pray about it.

Mere is also doing really well. We saw her with Anome again this week and talked about Lehi's vision of the tree of life (where she is up to in her BoM reading). She came to church again and we all had a lunch at Anome's house afterwards and watched Mormon Messages together.

That's about it for this week besides the fact that I need to wish my wonderful sister, Hermana Bingham a HAPPY BIRTHDAY! Or should I say coumpleanos feliz? Enjoy your birthday doing missionary work in Spain! You will see miracles on your birthday! Love you sis and I am so happy to have you out in the field with me!

Love yous heaps!

Sister Bingham

1. Aunt Martha I finally met Elder and Sister Gausnell! (two weeks before they go home)

2. Samoan church history exhibit

3. more Samoan church history

April 12, 2015

Talofa lava!

This week has been pretty good. Nothing too exciting except that we finally dropped Michael. He just doesn't seem to have much of a desire to learn anymore, which is unfortunate, but I just hope that he will remember the things he has learned and felt from us in the future.

General Conference was amazing! I loved all the themes on marriage & family, the resurrection of Jesus Christ, and personal conversion and enduring to the end. Sister Dere and I will be driving down to Wangaratta this week for zone conference so I am looking forward to listening to some of the talks again, in addition to listening to the women's broadcast and priesthood session in the car.

I would encourage each of yous to add Elder Pearson's talk to your list of talks to reread and study. He discussed a lot of the things in his talk that he did with us when we had our meeting with him in January, you guys just got the ten minute version of it though. But all of the principles he discussed were great!

I am so grateful for conference when it comes around every six months. I know that God loves us because he has sent a prophet to lead his church in these last days. I know the church is true and that the Book of Mormon is the word of God. It gives me a desire to become a better person, the person that God sees me as. I love each of yous!

Sister Bingham

1. One of the cute little girls from the new family that just moved into our branch from New Zealand :)

April 7, 2015

Talofa lava!

This week has been pretty flat out. So Monday we had our Sister's p-day and family home evening. For p-day we learned some cultural dances from some of the sisters in the mission. Then for fhe we went to the mission home and had an Easter message from President and Sister Maxwell, played games, and had an Easter egg hunt. Then on Tuesday we went to a chapel for our conference. Our theme was Be Loyal to the Royal Within. We had some really good trainings and food and then Sister Dere and I got dropped off at the train station to wait to go back to Wagga. It was really great to see everyone and to find out how everyone in Glen Huon and Melton are doing! Tuesday night we stayed at the new Wagga Sr. couple's flat (we didn't arrive until about one in the morning and I was so tired!) and then Wednesday we drove back home to Griffith.

On Friday Sister Kruyer and Sister Best came up for exchanges. It was another really great exchange. Sister Kruyer and I saw Jess (the Peruvian lady that we tracted into on my birthday) and her husband Richard, a less active family, Michael, and Mere.

Michael hadn't showed up for his appointment the day before so we stopped by to see what was up and we finally found out for sure what his concern lately has been. He admitted to us that he had read heaps of anti-Mormon stuff online, so we talked about it with him and explained to him that the best way for him to get spiritual answers is to ask God spiritual questions, not by filling his mind with rubbish. So hopefully he will get better at reading his Book of Mormon and keeping his other commitments again.

Our lesson with Mere was exciting! We had been going through the gospel of Jesus Christ with her and already taught her faith and repentance, so this time we taught her about baptism and the gift of the Holy Ghost. Then at the end we set a baptismal date with her!!! Right now she is going to work towards May 23rd, so I'm really excited for her for that right now!

That's all the exciting stuff from this week besides Easter as well and I hit my nine month mark... Officially halfway through my mission. It doesn't feel like it at all! I am not looking forward to continuing to get closer to going home.

Hope yous all enjoy your spring weather. I think our summer days are gone because the past week has just gotten colder and colder. Winter is just around the corner!

Love yous heaps!

Sister Bingham

1. sister's p-day

2. SWEET AS!

3. fhe games :)

4. Southern Cross station waiting for three hours for our train