April 7, 2014

Dear Family,

This week was a good week as usual. This week I started it off by going on an exchange with Elder Humphery’s. We had a great time haha, we just had fun. He only has like 3 more months left on mission so I was able to learn a lot from him but still be able to joke around and have a good time. There was one lesson where I was being stupid. There is a missionary here who when he teaches , he like tries to be like an apostle and while he is speaking he says. Quote……says his stuff…….Unquote. You know how the apostles do in General Conference. So we were joking about that before we went out that day so I totally tried to pull it off in a lesson and I just started laughing so hard and so did he so I had to kick it over to our member who was there haha, it was pretty funny. This week it has rained a couple of times which is nice. It means that rainy season is coming back. I am sick of everything just being so dusty and dry. It is totally trashing my shirts and I am getting pretty lazy at washing them haha. So on Friday we had a zone meeting which was really good. We just talked a lot about how we can make our lessons more meaningful and more powerful and how we can help our progressing investigators the most. One of the things that this included was how we can drop investigators, which means that they are not keeping commitments and they are not progressing in the gospel so we have to move on from them. This is honestly one of the hardest things to do. There are a lot of people who I have really gotten to know who are just the sweetest people but they just don’t come to church and keep the commitments we give them. This is probably the hardest thing as a missionary is seeing some one that you have came to care about and to see them just reject the thing that is going to bring the most happiness in their life, especially here in Liberia where most people don’t have much at all. So that is what we are working on now or refocusing our selfs on. Me and Elder Cottrell just keep on finding great people. We have found several more husband and wifes this week, only thing that sucks is that they are all traditionally married and they have to be legally married before we can baptize them but it is something that will just build there faith. This week we are hoping for 2 baptisms. They are 2 of our Sierra Leone boys . We are not super positive that they both will be baptized because one of them has to be interviewed by some body from the mission presidency because he has done a few things in the past, and the other guy is just coming back in from traveling so we still got to get him interviewed tomorrow but they both are totally so ready, so make sure to be praying for them so that everything this week will work out. Yesterday me and Elder Cottrell had a very interesting experience. There is this guy that we can only see on Sundays (which is hard because we have so little time because we have church at 12) so we went and seen this guy before church. We had an awesome lesson with him and he really wants to something in his life to change him. We taught him about the restoration of the gospel and then at the end of the lesson we asked him to pray right then if what we were saying was true. So we all go on our knees and wha we were planning for was  for him to pray out loud but he went strait into his own personal prayer. So me and Elder Cottrell did our own little prayers to. Well I didn’t take very long and after a few minutes we were all still kneeling there and he was still praying. Me and Elder Cottrell were just looking at eachother like what should we do. Well after about 10 minutes of this we got up and sat into our seats and then waited some more. I got my scriptures out and read a chapter and after that the GUY WAS STILL PRAYING. I had no idea what to do , I didn’t know if he was having some super spiritual experience or if he fell asleep on his knees or what. Well we were running low on time because we had to go to church so Elder Cottrell took his hand and like had to stand him up because we had been tapping him on the shoulder and stuff and he would respond. After we finally got him up we asked him what his experience was and he said that he heard a voice that told him not to let this opportunity pass, so it was a really cool/weird experience haha. We had a really good day yesterday at church, we had like 7 new people who hadent come before come and they all loved it.  I had to do a baptism interview yesterday and I felt so bad because we had to postpone the guys baptism. He was so excited to be baptized but he just didn’t really understand the law of chastity and the Word of Wisdom very well so I felt like it was best for the other missionarys to come and to teach him those a little more and then postpone it but I felt good about the decision afterwards because I had the guy pray about it. It is crazy doing these interviews because its like I am being a judge in Iseral right now like freakin got to be clutch for that haha. Well last night we made home made donuts because it was fast Sunday and then to top it all off we decided to have a little fun so we whipped out the icy hot again and I think you know where this is going haha. I swear it was more painful the second time, we had Elder Cottrell and Elder Anderson and One of the Nigerian Elders Join us this time. It was so funny. It honestly did not even phase Elder Osanebi (Nigerian Elder) Anyways, things here are going great and the work is still just moving along . I love seeing everyday how much the gospel can change peoples lifes and just how important it is to us to find true happiness in this life. That is one of my faovirte things to tell people, is that the gospel is where we find true happiness. I hope you all have a great week this week. Sure do love you all. Love

Elder Bowring

Dear Mom and Dad,

This week I FINALLLY GOT YOUR PACKAGES. I got both of them that you sent. The one that you sent in January and then the one that you sent in March. I am freakin loving the Niners gear for sure and I am pumped for some more juice plus. So you sent me 3 bottles this time, am I supposed to take all three twice a day? I was telling Elder Cottrell about it but I didn’t really know how to explain it to him like what it is and the benefits so you might have to put me up to date on that. I told him to tell his parents about it though. I ended up giving that scripture marker to Elder Osanebi because he doesn’t get much stuff and he could really use it and I haven’t seen Elder Cooper in a long time so that is where the scripture marker ended up going. Trust me,  Tuesday I am going to be rocking my new niners tie and my new niners shirts. I was pumped about those if you cant tell. Haha Well I hope you guys have a great week, thanks for everything, you guys are the best. Love

Elder Bowring,

If you could just put, Turner Blamo Teah name in the temple this week along with the ones I have given you before that would be sweet. THANKS A MILLION. LOVE YOU