Thursday, April 3, 2014

March 17, 2014

Dear family,
This week was a sweet week. Last week on Monday for P-day we went in town with Elder Cottrells MTC brothers like Zaugg, Guymon and them to celebrate there one year on mission. There is a new bakery place that opened up that sales pizza there (rare in Liberia) so we went and got some pizza and they also had a good ice cream machine (also rare in Liberia) So we totally enjoyed last Monday, cost me a ton but it was definitely worth it JJ After that we were already in town so me and Elder Cottrell went and decided to go and check out this old run down hotel. The  hotel was a nice hotel back in the day but it was destroyed during the war, and after that the whole building has just been picked apart for everything its worth. All the windows, all the wires inside, literally everything has been stolen from there but we were able to take a tour and go on the very top and you could literally see all of Liberia, it was so sweet, I have some pictures I will send when I have a chance. Tuesday I went on an exchange with one of our Zone leaders in his area so that was pretty sweet. His name is Elder Lamont and is from Oregon, he has been on mission for over a year now but it was really sweet. I love seeing other peoples area and stuff. Wensday we took a trip out to the beach, we have a bunch of LA members out there and it really made me realize the importance of making sure that people feel loved. We have a member out there who had gotten sick and had missed church and never got visited or got called by anyone from the branch so he thought that nobody cared about him and has stopped coming to church. He is bitter towards the church. He told us how can this be the true church when the members don’t even live to what they teach and that really struck me pretty hard. It is true, we need to always show love to people who are in need and need to always practice what we preach. People definitely notice the things we do and in this guys case, it had a terrible effect. I feel so bad and we are really trying to work with this guy to get him back strong into the church. Luckily we had our branch mission leader with us so he was able to apologize for not coming out and apologize for the branch but he still didn’t come to church this week. We will keep working on him. On Thursday I had 2 more Baptismal interviews, I am getting to the point that I am getting used to doing them now and feel like I do a good job. (Atleast I hope so). On Saturday this week we had an awesome baptism. We baptized three people. We baptized a father and a son whose names are Cadarous Zuah and his sons name is Mark. This guy is so sweet, how we met him was one day we were teaching a lesson to one of our investigators and he saw us so he sat down in on the lesson. We invited him to church and he said he would come. Well he didn’t come for like 2 weeks so we just thought he was just another guy who was willing to listen to us but just wasn’t serious (happens all the time) but then one Sunday he called us and asked us where the church was and he came and since then he Hasn’t missed a Sunday. The next guy we baptized was Emile Riddle, he is our dread lock friend and is seriously the sweetest guy ever. We were able to hold the Baptism to our own branch and have our branch be involved and give talks and everything (which is huge). Everything was pretty hectic trying to get things together. We had to have a water truck come in and pump water to our outside font because the water from our well is like red, our branch mission leader hadn’t assigned anybody to talk yet so we had to assign some people at the last second to give talks but it all ended up working and we had a great spiritual baptism. After the baptism, they gave the investigators a chance to bear there testimony and when it was Emile’s turn he went up there and said “I don’t really know what to say, im pretty confused right now so ya” and then just walked off hahaha. I was a bit worried, wondering if he was like having second thoughts and what not but after the baptism we talked to him and he said that he just didn’t know what to say because he was so happy haha it was awesome. He is such a sweet guy. Saturday night was pretty rough, my stomach was kind of bugging me all day and that night I ended up puking 3 times through the night so that was pretty miz. It was coming out both ends to haha just not a fun night but I am feeling better now so its all good. Saturday night we got transfer news to and I am staying and I am still with Elder Cottrell, I am pumped. We are just strait doing work here in banjor haha. We also received Elder Humphrey’s into our apartment to so I am pumped about that. We are going to have a great time and a lot of fun. Its going to be a great transfer uphead. Well that was basically my week. We are having so many baptisms lately I got to take a break ;) My arms are getting tired from dunking people into the water haha jk. It is going to be a couple of weeks until our next baptism though but its totally cool. I hope you all have a good week and I pray that you all love one another and always make sure you are taking care of one another. Really does go a long ways. Anyways love ya all. Till next week.
Elder Bowring.
Dear Mom and Dad,
Nothing to out of the ordinary happened this week that I got to share with you haha. I still haven’t gotten your valentines package so I am still anxiously waiting for that thang to come. I did come up with a list of investigators that could really use some divine help by putting there names into the temple so here they are.
Levi and Merci
Peter Blamo & Minstress Blamo
Nafisa and Richard Swarey
Kelfalla (you have his last name from last week dad)
Lawrence Kezle
I will probably send some different ones everyweek but these ones could use it everyweek, some of them we have been working with for a while and really need some help from our heavenly father. Thank you so much for doing that, it means a lot to me that you guys care so much about the people I am teaching. I hope you guys had an awesome spring break and I cant wait to read about it J Love you both so much. Your son
Elder Bowring

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