March 24, 2014

Dear family,

Sorry my email is a little late this week. This morning me and Elder Cottrell had a LA member want to help us go fishing. A missionary here brought a fishing pole (genius idea) So we used that and went and tried to fish a little. We didn’t have to much success but we didn’t plan to well so we are going to give it another shot next week. The Place we are fishing they say you can catch Barracudas so that would be sweet. Sometimes we walk by (its in our area) and people will just have a basin full of like 3 or 4 huge barracudas. Its so sweet. Well this week was a great week, totally flew by but I guess every week does. This week was awesome. Things in our district are just going great, everyone just gets along great and we are just having a fun time. It’s fun having Elder Humphreys around again.  This week, we had a service project that was sweet. We went and helped our Elder Quorum president dig out his foundation for his new house that he is building. All we had to do was get a pick axe and bust up the ground (because it was so hard ) and then we had shovels and just dug it out. It sucked though because there is no garbage system here and hasn’t been for a while so there was so much trash and dirt and crap under the ground that we just kept running into. We dug out a tire rim and bunch of just bags and bottles and just a bunch of nasty stuff. IT was a fun service project though, it had been a while since I used a shovel. It makes me so mad though, when we go to do work like that and stuff, there are always some Africans who yell out “what, white man can work” or “ya this is Africa we work”. O my gosh it pisses me off so bad. I always talk back and call them out on it.  Anyways the service project was sweet and our Elders Quorum president was really appreciative of the help. This week things didn’t come as easy as they have been in the past. The last few people that we have baptized have honestly been so ready and prepared by the lord I didn’t even feel like I was doing anything but now that we have them mostly all baptized we have to find some more people and work harder on our other investigators who aren’t coming as easily. I know that It is just the lord testing us though to make sure that we are working our hardest. We have been working with this guy since I have been here in Banjor. His name is Bro. Friday. We were planning on baptizing him this week but the Word of Wisdom is giving him a hard time. Its not even Smoking or Drinking though, all it is is the Coffee and Tea, So because of that we had to postpone his baptism again to the 12 of April. I feel so bad for this guy, he is working his heart out trying to make ends meat. He is all alone, he has no family, no wife, no kids and he technically isn’t even home.  He is from Nigeria. You can honestly just tell by his stature that life has been hard on him so I am hoping that he will be able to kick the Word of Wisdom problem so we can baptize him. He really needs something sweet like that in his life. Well this week our whole district has seen a lot of miracles happen. Just like I said before, me and Elder Cottrell have been having to work a little harder but we have seen the fruits of our labors. Saturday was an awesome day. We had the day all planned out and it was going to be an awesome day but as the day went on we just kept having bounce after bounce after bounce but some how we were led to people that were ready to hear the gospel. After one particular bounce, we decided to go and see a man that we seen on Wednesday and when we got there he was so excited to see us. He told us that he had been waiting for us and that he even skipped out on going to the video club to watch the soccer game (which is huge around here) Then that night we were able to help one of members wife. His wife isn’t a member and we have been teaching her for the past couple of weeks. She knows that the church is true but is having a hard time leaving her church.  We were able to have a sweet lesson with her and really help her understand how she can get an answer to her prayer and to help her leave her church. Then that night we decided to go home a different way and invite a new contact to church on Sunday. We were able to invite him and then on the way home this guy stopped us wanting to know more so we walked with him and taught him about he restoration. It is crazy how much the lord helps us as missionarys. Sometimes I don’t even feel like I am doing anything because he is helping us so much. This Sunday we had district conference, it was so full that all the missionays were out side so I didn’t hear one word of it but I think it was good haha. It was sweet though we had about 1000 people there. This week I have really be enlightened on the importance of prayer. Usually I am the type of person who like to just do things by my self and don’t like to ask for help. I like to just do what I can. There was a few situations this week that I just stopped and thought, why don’t we pray about this and she what help we can get. We were tying to find a women this week who we had contacted. We had no idea where she lived and she wasn’t picking up her phone so me and Elder Cotrrell decided to pray for some help to be able to contact her some way. After about 5 minutes of looking for her having no luck I decieded to try her phone again (even though I had tried like 10 times) Well she awnsered and we were able to get in contact with her. The lord is just always willing to help us. I hope that I will be able always turn to the lord when I need help. Anyways, I am excited for this next week to go and see all of our new contacts. Should be a great week. Hope you all have a wonderful week. I love you all and don’t forget how much I love you.

Love Elder Bowring

Dear mom,and Dad.

Well this week was awesome. Things are just going swimmingly here. I still haven’t gotten your valentines package yet so still waiting on that thing. It will be sweet when I finally get it. I was wondering if you could do me a favor. You offered to send me some hair clippers before and I think I want to take you up on that in my next package. A missionary here has a pair and elder Cottrell  cut my hair this week like they would just be so sweet to have, so if you could do that, that would be awesome. I cant remember who I sent last week for the temple but here are a few more names. 

Derrick Nettey, Friday Deke, Nafisa Swarey, Lawrence Kezle, Alfred Tengbe, William Garnett.

Thanks for everything, I love you guys so much. I am always so glad to brag about my parents. I have had about 10 missionarys tell me that they want to come home and meet you guys.All I can do is agree with them J You guys are aweomse. Love you so much and miss you. Love Your favorite son ;)

Elder Bowring