November 1, 2015

Dearest family and friends,

Our week was pretty eventful. On Monday evening we had a FHE with President and Sister Maxwell and all the Sisters on the east side. It was heaps of fun and we had a couple trainings that I felt like were just for me and my companions!

We also got to see President and Sister Maxwell again for zone interviews this week. It was exactly what I needed at the time because President Maxwell is so patient and understanding. I had been getting pretty stressed slowly through the week, but after talking with him I felt much better.

Last exciting thing from this week, we had exchanges! Sister Rhodes and I got to go to Dandenong with Sister Wairepo for the day. It was so much fun and so stress free! Exchanges are inspired, they always bring miracles!

Last thing I wanted to share this week is the scripture that I have been "ponderizing".

"Therefore, dearly beloved [sisters], let us cheerfully do all things that lie in our power; and then may we stand still, with the utmost assurance, to see the salvation of God, and for his arm to be revealed." - Doctrine and Covenants 123:17

As I have been reflecting on this scripture throughout the week I have grown in my testimony that we can only control the things that we do, the things that we put in. We cannot control others agency, but we can control our own. Our job is to try our hardest, to do our best, and then we must wait for God to make up the difference. I know the church is true and that I am doing God's work right now.

I love yous heaps!

Sister Bingham

1. FHE with President and Sister Maxwell

2. our stake president cooked "completos" for Sister Rhodes' birthday

3. happy halloween/ exchanges with Sister Wairepo

October 25, 2015

Dearest family and friends,

Well, we had transfers this week. Sister Rhodes and I are now with Sister Santos, a Sister from the Philippines! She is now my third Filipina companion. She is great and has an amazing testimony and conversion story.

A quote I wanted to share for this week is one from Neal A. Maxwell:

"God as a loving Father, will stretch our souls at times. The soul is like a violin string: It makes music only when it is stretched."

I also wanted to share about my testimony of the priesthood. I received a blessing this week and I can honestly say it was one of the most powerful blessings I have ever been given. The words that were spoken were exactly what I needed to hear and I know they were straight from my Heavenly Father. It was so specific for me and gave me so much counsel I will need these remaining couple of months in Australia. God loves us and knows us perfectly. The priesthood is real.

Love yous heaps!

Sister Bingham

1. I got to say goodbye to Sister Lee at transfer meeting. Can't believe she is already finished and back in Korea!

2. the new district

October 18, 2015

Dearest family and friends,

Another transfer has come to an end. Which means one thing. Transfer news!! Sister Rhodes and I are happy because we are staying together another transfer. AND we will be picking up another companion tomorrow. I'm pretty excited to be in another trio, should be heaps of fun!

Now for all the updates from this week.

We had to drop Trenyce's baptismal date for now. Her mum felt like it was too rushed and that she isn't ready. In my opinion though if anyone waits until they are truly ready to get baptized they will wait their entire life. But we will continue to visit them and help Trenyce to continue to learn until she does eventually get baptized.

We still had good success this week still, though. We went one day to try to see an investigator who has been dodging us the whole transfer. We decided that this was the last time we would stop by and then we would drop her. When we knocked on the door her step daughter Tiffany answered the door. She was really keen so we started teaching her instead. We taught her the restoration, plan of salvation, and the first two principles of the gospel of Jesus Christ by the end of the week. We also set a baptismal date for her for November 28 and she came to church on Sunday. Miracles!!

Last fun experience from this week. So apparently in Cranbourne every year they have a big event where HEAPS of men with motorcycles drive down to Phillip Island and watch some race thing there. But before they drive down they have a massive public event. So of course all us missionaries close by decided to go and check it out and do some GQ-ing in the process. We did and it was actually quite a lot of fun. Sister Rhodes even talked to this one guy for almost 30 minutes and he called us that night saying that he might come to church on Sunday, but unfortunately he didn't make it.

Well, that's all for this week. Hope yous are enjoying yourselves and have a great week!

Love,

Sister Bingham

1. people here really go all out for halloween...

2. Cranbourne GP event

October 11, 2015

Dearest family and friends,

The weeks keep going by way too fast! This week was full of really high ups, and a few lows as well, but that is the normal life of a missionary!

We had exchanges this week, and of course it brought miracles! I always learn so much on exchanges and feel so uplifted.

Tish is doing pretty well. We finished teaching her the plan of salvation this week and had another good lesson with her.

We managed to catch up with Elisa again and shared the Book of Mormon story about Abinadi. It really helped her to have a greater desire and motivation to read from the Book of Mormon.

Nana isn't progressing the best at the moment. During our lesson this week we figured out that she doesn't even really know why we come and teach her, so we are going to try and start back at square one with her.

Trenyce is looking really good. We taught her the ten commandments this week and committed her to come to church with a member who will pick her up. We figured this would be the best solution for her to come to church short term and she agreed. Her mum has already taken her shopping and found a baptism dress for her so that is also a good sign. :)

A couple new investigators we found this week were Erik and Twabitha. Erik is an Indo-Fijian man who has been in Australia for a few months. He is Hindu, but genuinely is looking for more peace and happiness in his life. Twabitha is from Sudan and is Christian. I found her with Sister Hatch on exchanges looking for a former investigator and we went back with a returned missionary in our ward a couple days later to teach her the restoration. She was really excited to read the Book of Mormon.

The highlight of this week was, of course, getting to watch general conference. I especially enjoyed the two shout outs for Australia! The one about the sharks definitely fulfils the American view of what Australia is like, haha! I loved all the talks that were given and the inspiration received by each person who had the opportunity to speak. I know that we are led by a prophet of God and that Jesus Christ leads and guides the church today through revelation. I look forward to re-listening to all the talks in the coming months and continuing to apply them into my life.

Love yous heaps!

Sister Bingham

1. Sister Rhodes and I bought expensive as Dr. Pepper because we couldn't resist... It tasted like home!

October 4, 2015

Dearest family and friends,

This week has been pretty alright, not anything too exciting but we keep doing everything that we can to help everyone here.

Jemma dropped us... It was really sad and the first time I can think of that I actually cried when an investigator dropped me. I was just most sad that she is going through a really hard time in her life right now and I know that the gospel is exactly what she needs to help get her through, but she just can't see that at the moment.

We set a baptism date with Trenyce for October 31, but now we just have to figure out how to get her to church since her parents are less active.

We taught Vin again this week. We answered a couple more of his questions about Jesus Christ and read about the nativity in the New Testament. It's really cool to see such a young kid from a non-Christian background so interested in learning about Jesus Christ!

We taught Tish as well. She is doing pretty good. We had a really great lesson with her about our purpose here on earth. She said that she always felt like her purpose was to suffer, but we did our best to follow the Spirit and help her see that she is a unique daughter of God who loves her and has given her trials to make her stronger and to help her rely more on Him.

Sister Rhodes and I had a really great experience on Saturday. We were in one of the suburbs that we cover for almost the whole day and NOTHING was happening. We tracted, we tried to follow up with new contacts, we tried to visit less active members from our ward list, and nothing was coming from it all. Eventually we were ready to give up and move on to another suburb before dinner to try some more new contacts when Sister Rhodes noticed the name of a less active couple on our ward list that we had overlooked before. So we decided to go there and then leave. When we drove up the couple was sitting in their garage talking. We walked up and started talking to them and they said that it was interesting we had just showed up because they were just talking about how they needed to go to church the next day. We sat down and had an amazing lesson with them. The Spirit was really strong and they were sharing their experiences about how they miss the Spirit that they feel when they come to church. Unfortunately they didn't come to church yesterday, but we plan to go back and help them again to want to come.

That's all for this week.

Love yous heaps!

Sister Bingham

1. I forgot to send this one a couple weeks back. This is at our stake president's house. Dad, I thought you might want to adapt it for Bradley who is old enough to date now. ;)

September 27, 2015

Talofa lava friends and family!

This week has been great! We've been so flat out it's crazy, but it's great to be busy as a missionary!

Jemma is still doing pretty good. We stopped by this week and taught her and one of her daughters about faith. Last we heard a couple days ago it had almost been a week since she last smoked, which is really great progress!

We picked up a few new investigators this week as well. One is Tish, an Aussie lady Sister Rhodes and her last comp tracted into. She grew up Catholic, but thinks that church is really boring and also told us that she doesn't necessarily agree with everything the Bible says. Another one is Vin, a nine year old Sri Lankan boy. We tracted into their house and his mum answered the door. They are Hindu so she wasn't really interested, but Vin really wants to learn more about Jesus Christ so his mum told us we could come in and teach him. Another new investigator this week is Elisa. She is an Aussie lady who the Sisters tracted into almost a year ago. Her sister recently joined the church as well, but she told us that she doesn't really want to go anymore which is sad. Elisa is lovely though and really wants to learn more about the Bible and the Book of Mormon. Our last new investigator this week is Trinice. On Tuesday night one of our appointments fell through so we went over to their house with the stake president's daughter who had gotten home from her mission in Sydney the same day. Trinice is from a less active Samoan family and is the oldest of the four kids. She is nine now and really wants to be baptized, but the parents haven't gotten around to it yet because they don't have a strong desire to go to our ward. Luckily her mum is willing to let us teach her and hopefully prepare her for baptism soon.

Last cool thing that happened this week. So one of the families in our ward called us up on Friday wanting us to come over for dinner on Saturday with them and their non-member neighbors who were getting ready to move soon. Everything ended up working out with our scheduling, so we went over for dinner and to share a message with the family and their neighbors. We were stressing out before because we didn't know what to share, but we ended up getting to share a good message about prophets and general conference. I know it was a good seed that we were able to plant and I really hope that they watch general conference. I am grateful for a living prophet on the earth today and I know that Heavenly Father continues to lead and guide the church.

Love yous!

Sister Bingham

1. We got permission to go to Felicity's baptism in Glenroy on Saturday!! So exciting!

September 20, 2015

Dear family and friends,

This week has had some interesting ups and downs. We had some really busy days, and some really slow days, but overall it hasn't been too bad.

For starters, we saw Jemma and taught her about the Holy Ghost. We really want to help her to be able to recognize and follow the Holy Ghost so she can have a stronger desire to quit smoking and to commit herself more to the gospel. We realized during her lesson, however, that we are going to have to go back to basics and teach everything a lot more simply.

The most interesting thing that happened this week was with a couple we met tracting last week. They are born again Christians and had invited us in to explain a little to them (mostly so they could explain their beliefs to us) but we went back on Tuesday and had a really great lesson with them. They were polite and nice and listened as we taught them about the restoration of the gospel through Joseph Smith. The spirit was really strong and we KNOW they felt it too. Then they had their go at trying to convince us why the Bible is the only word of God. After our lesson they still had heaps of questions for us about the Book of Mormon so they invited us to come back again on Thursday. We left them a commitment to read 2 Nephi 31-33 and then went back and taught about the gospel of Jesus Christ. This lesson was exactly the opposite of the one on Tuesday. We taught them and I could see in them as we were teaching that they were just listening to find fault. By the end they looked at the five steps that we had laid out for them (faith in Jesus Christ, repentance, baptism, receiving the gift of the Holy Ghost, and enduring to the end) and commented that they agreed with all of it except the fact that we didn't have a salvation prayer. They then proceeded to try to Bible bash with us and adamently come back to one scripture that they were so hung up on. Then they decided to completely turn on us and say things like the Book of Mormon is not true, Joseph Smith is not a prophet, our church is not true, etc etc. I got so frustrated and couldn't believe the difference in their attitudes. Not only that, but I was so frustrated because they weren't even listening to what we were saying anymore. They had made up their mind that we were wrong without even giving it a chance or a second thought. They were attacking everything that I hold dear to me and I couldn't handle it anymore. All I could do was bear one of the most powerful testimonies I have ever given in my life and then leave.

I know that the Book of Mormon is true! I know that Joseph Smith is a prophet of God! And I know that anyone who shuts the door before truly listening to us and honestly considering Moroni's promise is missing out on a multitude of blessings. The church is true, there is no doubt in my mind because I have pondered about the Book of Mormon myself and I know that God continues to affirm me that it is true.

Love yous!

Sister Bingham