So I forgot to mention last week that this week is transfers week, that's why we are late to email this week. :)
So I have to say, Easter in the Bible Belt is a big deal! It was an amazing experience to see how excited and dedicated people out here are to the Easter holiday! We heard of countless churches doing what they call “sunrise services” or even count down to Easter. In fact, there was even a live crucifixion scene with a real cross in one of these church’s parking lots! It was pretty touching to see how much these people admire our Savior for his suffering and his death. But one lesson I learned and one thing that was very visible was that they were forgetting the most important part of it all. That HE LIVES!
As I went to conference I thought a lot about how we do things in the church compared to other churches. The thing that touched me the most is the fact that we not only celebrate the death and the suffering of Jesus Christ, but most importantly, we celebrate the fact that he was resurrected and he overcame death and sin, Overcoming the Fall, that we all had to do. We celebrate the good and the truth that he is here and he is still reaching out to every single one of God’s children. How could you celebrate Easter any better way than to watch and listen to his living Prophet and Apostles? How grateful I am for them and for the chance I had to watch General Conference on such a special day! I loved all the sessions; there were some great talks. It was sad to see President Monson not doing very well, hopefully he stays healthy and we can hear more from him next conference!
The last week was really not that exciting. The first week of the month as a Zone Leader is always really busy. We had to drive down to Charleston, WV, for some leadership council meetings. I loved them though! It is so great to learn from our mission president. He is so inspired!
We then had to teach our zone everything we learned at those meetings. So that was a lot of planning and preparing for that. But it went well! It was a blast; it is so much fun to help other missionaries and be a part of this mission.
So we now are going to cover two areas! We just adopted Bluefield, another big city next to ours. There were sister missionaries there, but we are losing a lot of them in our mission. We are holding down the sister area until they can put in some more sister missionaries!
It was fun though to do a lot of pass along lessons with them. We were able to meet the people they are working with and begin taking over and teaching them. I sure wish I could be as loving as sister missionaries are! They are great. But we are excited to see how all of this goes!
So a cool story, there is a young family that we have been working with. The Mom’s name is Courtney. We didn't see them for a few weeks and they invited us over for dinner and a lesson. We went over and Courtney told us that she had quit smoking all on her own! She said that all she could think about were her kids and she kept being prompted to quit, so she just stopped cold turkey and hasn't had a problem since! She has been clean for a few weeks! It is so cool to see how The Holy Ghost and The Lord works in people’s lives. She is now a lot closer to coming unto Christ!
A funny story to end on, that I'm not proud of. . . Elder Trujillo and I were walking down a few streets looking to talk to people. We were waiting at a cross walk and saw this man in the distance waving us down. We were so excited, we thought we were witnessing a miracle! This guy hurried and ran towards us and finally got to us and said "Wow do you boys look sexy today! I love it when a man dresses up all nice and fancy!" Yeah, the guy was gay. It was terrible--we didn't know what to do so we gave him a Mormon.org card and crossed the street as he continued to whistle at us. . . That does not happen every day! It was kind of funny, though. Haha I had to remind myself that "every soul is precious in the sight of God." ;)
We are looking forward to this week! We are finding new people to teach and have some great things planned. I love this work and love being a missionary! I love you all and thank you for all the support.
Keep the Faith!
Elder Kaleb Bingham
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