Monday, November 18, 2013

November 18, 2013

Alright well this week was a good one. I am getting to know my area a lot better and starting to get the hang of things. Since I am in an apartment with all Africans we have ate rice and different stews everynight and my body is not used to that much rice. Needless to say I have been spending a lot of time in our bathroom, morning and night haha. I forgot to tell you about a cool experience we had last Monday Morning. It was 4 in the morning and all of a sudden the other Elders in our apartment were in our room and they said we needed to go out side to give somebody a blessing. I am really confused at what was going on because I was just waking up. Well turns out our second councilor was outside our compound and he needed a priesthood blessing. When we got out there, our second councilor was on the ground in pain just crying. I guess his stomach was doing something weird but he was in so much pain. So we gave him a blessing and right away you could tell that a peace came over him. After they took him to the hospital and he was at church yesterday. IT was a really cool experience. The priesthood is honestly so important and it can do some amazing things. Well this week on Tuesday we had a meeting for the people who are training new missionarys. It was all the way in town and my area banjor is like the farthest away from town so we had to leave like 2 hours early to make sure we would make it through traffic. It was such a good meeting and they told us how important it is to make sure we train our missionarys right because what we teach them now and show them now they will do it the rest of there mission. Really puts the pressure on haha but President Kirkham said something that I really liked. He said that in order for improvement to happen we need change. I really liked that. After that me and Elder Erickson (since we were temporary companions for the day) tried to get a taxi back to his apartment where I was going to pick up Brother Freeman. Well we couldn’t ever pickup a taxi so we ended up walking all the way back in. It literally took us like 2 hours to walk back in. I don’t know how many miles it was, but it was far and it was hot. Well the rest of the week we had a good week. I am really getting to know my area and really well and we have straight up have the beach in our area. We even got to teach a lesson right on the beach. It was the coolest thing. There is a sweet member who lives out there who works with us every time we have been out there so its really sweet. I hope I stay in Banjor for a long time because I am loving it here. It is a lot less busy and just a little more laid back it feels like. In Logan town you always had people around and the houses were super close together but here in Banjor the houses are a lot farther apart and there is like zero traffic and its just really nice. Well I a sweet experience this week. IN our train for trainers meter president Kirkham told us that if an investigator ever had a doubt that we should just pray about it right then. Well we were teaching a group of guys about the restoration of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and this one guy was having some doubts on the first vision. Well we got down and had he pray about it right there and the spirit was there so strong testifying what we were saying was true. It was so sweet and the guy even showed up for church yesterday. I am straight pumped. We had 4 Investigators to church yesterday and all of them said that they loved it and that they were coming back. We had the primary program yesterday to and it just brought me back to my good old primary days haha. It was really good though. Training is going well. Since Brother Freeman is just a branch missionary there are still some things that he doesn’t understand all the way but he is doing really well and he is a sweet guy. He is even teaching me how to cook some Liberian food, so if we have the supplies back home, I am going to be whipping up some nice stew for our rice back home J.
It can be frustrating getting to know a new area and the people we need to teach especially when there are so many people around that you can teach. Honestly our problem here is finding the right people to teach, because anyone here will sit down an listen to you, you just have to find those people who will actually keep commitments and be serious. So at the first of the week I was a little bit stressed about finding the right people but now I feel like we are doing a good job at that and I am not as stressed. Banjor is a lot bigger area than Logan town is to, so we have to plan to go to certain areas on certain days which is different than it was in Logan town to. We have to take Transport some days to because our area is so big but its sweet. So funny story. We were teaching this old lady this week about the plan of salvation. She is a really strong Christian and the lesson was going really good until we got to us dying and going to the spirit world. When we said she was going to die she like started freaking out telling us not to talk about death. Well turns out this lady thinks she is never going to die, like EVER going to die. She thinks that she is going to live forever because she has lived a good life and all she has to do is ask God to make her live forever and she will live forever. Crazy. We sat and argued for a little bit but was getting no where so we left, but she still said she wanted to come to church and all that so we will go back. So we will see how it goes. We taught the Plan of Salvation a lot this week and it really got me thinking about how special and important it is for us. Our time here on the earth is really short, and it means so much to me that we have somewhere we can go after we die and that we can be with our familys there forever. Teaching it really puts a perspective on things though. Makes me really want to do those things that matter why we are here in this life. Anyways just one quick last thing. One of the members we have been going out with always says this when we ask him how the gospel blesses his life. He always says that with the gospel in his the life “The happiness just never stops”. Its true, with the gospel, happiness is always there and it is such a blessing to have in our lifes. Well I hope that you all have a great week. Love you all
Elder Bowring

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