April 14, 2014

Dear Family,

This week was a good week as usual. Started it off great, on Monday last week after I got done email I had Elder Humphery’s pick me up a hat from the market and he got me a sweet Angels hat, so I have been rocking that every night and I am rocking it right now, feels great haha. This week I have been getting spiritually fed non stop all week (not a bad thing) The reason why is because Elder Osanebi downloaded like 10 Jeffery R Holland talks on his chip and is always playing them over and over and over haha. Its pretty funny but I have learned a lot from them. Anyways,  on Tuesday we got some pretty bad news. Kelfala, one of our sweet Sierra Leone guys, got news that his son was sick back in Sierra Leone and so he paniced and he stole a bunch of stuff from his uncle, like ipod, laptop and just a bunch of stuff and he took off, so because of that, Emile got locked up for like 3 days because they thought that he had something to do with it and they couldn’t find Kelfala.  We still haven’t found Kelfala but luckily Emile was let out of the police station. It just sucks but all we can do right now is pray that everything will work out. We had a sweet district meeting this week. As a mission we are really focusing this month on finding the right people to teach. There is a section in Preach My Gospel that talks about finding people to teach and I literally never thought I would have to focus on that section because there are so many people here who are willing to listen but now we are really focusing on trying to find the right people to teach, the ones who will be our branch builders and the ones that will help us build stakes and wards so that is what we are focusing on right now. On Wensday, I went on exchange with Elder Osanebi. It was a sweet experience. He is from Nigeria and his such a hard worker. There was a time when we got bounced so we just went out and contacted. While we were contacting , I was a little bit behind him because the guy strait up like sprints while walking haha and he just disappeared into this big nice compound so I followed him. I thought it was one his investigators so I asked him after we had already talked to the people inside and I asked him if he knew them and he was like “I have no idea, the spirit just led me here” We had a sweet lesson and made a sweet contact so that was really cool. Well this week our morning soccer got shut down by mission president, I am pretty disappointed about that. I loved the soccer in the morning. I just randomly got a call from President Kirkham one morning and he told us no more, I tried to fight for it but no more of that for us.  This week we had a sweet baptism. We baptized Dennis (one of our Sierra Leone guys ) and it was such a sweet baptism. He showed up like an hour early for it. The actual baptism was good. It took me three tries to get the guy into the water all the way. The water was pretty low so after the first fail I had, we had him kneel down to help him get down but even that didn’t work so we finally just had him sit down and I kneeled by him and then just basically leaned him back a little bit to get his head in haha. It was sweet.  Before the baptism, me and Elder Cottrell had to go and clean the font. It was so dirty from the rain and there was even a frog swimming in the font. It was pretty funny. It has been raining a lot more this week so I was really enjoying that. Well, things here are great. I am really learning and growing very much out here. Me and Elder Cottrell and getting along great and we are both learning so much from each other.  I cant believe that I have been out here for 8 months , that is 1/3 done. Just blows my mind. I have really seen how much our father in heaven loves us and just how much he cares about the things we are involved in. No matter what we are doing, he is always concerned about what we are doing and is willing to help us. I hope you all have a great week. I love you all very much. Love

Elder Bowring

Dear mom and dad,

Things out here are going great, honestly there is nothing really that I need. I was just looking at some pictures this morning and it just reminded me of how great of a family we have and how greatful I am for both of you. You guys are the best and I couldn’t ask for any better parents. Thanks for everything. I hope you guys have a great week. Love your African Son (sorry its short)

 Elder Bowring