September 1, 2014

Dear Family,

Well another week in Ghana down, Its been a pretty good week this week , a little frustrating but still good. I say frustrating because I just aint having as much success as I am in Liberia and that is taking a little bit to get used to but we will manage. Things around here are about to get a lot different to. This week was the last week of the Transfer so  we got Transfer news this week. Tuesday night I got a call from President Hill telling me that he wanted me to be a Trainer this next transfer because we are getting 10 new missionaries so I am going to be training this next transfer BUT that’s not all. We got our regular transfer news on Saturday night and I am also going to be the new DL in the apartment. Not to sure about how I feel about all these haha I feel like I am still trying to get the hang of things here but I will defiantly do what my best and I know that everything will be good. So these next few weeks are going to be pretty crazy getting used to all of these changes but I guess that is just a part of mission. Well this week was pretty good like I said. Tuesday we had a really awesome experience. It rained all day Tuesday so we were struggling to find anybody to teach. In Liberia when it rained everybody was home so it was easy to get lessons but here its totally opposite. No body wants to see you in the rain. Well we were walking and we passed a Barber shop that is owned by a member and we saw him and he waved us into his shop. When we got in there , there was about 7 guys in there with him. I could tell there was something a little bit different  about them at first and I quickly realized that they were all deaf. They all looked very happy to see us, so of course the first thought that came to my mind was “how sick would it be to baptize a deaf person” So we tried to communicate and asked if we could share something with them. It was really hard to communicate though. The member could speak sign language but he couldn’t speak English, only Twi. So in order to communicate with them we went and got a member close by that could speak English. What we did is we would speak English to the member who would then translate it into Twi for the other member and then he would translate it into sign language for the Deaf people. It was quit the experience.  It was really cool though, all the deaf people could read and write so we left them all with pamphlets to read and they said that they would come to church. Well, come Sunday we weren’t seeing any of them but I was sitting in the investigators class and Elder Wickham was out In the hall and called me and asked if I knew this guy who he was standing by and it was one of our deaf buddies. His name is Darius. I was so freakin pumped. Well his friend who was a member who spoke sign language wasn’t even there so what I ended up doing was getting a white laminated paper and a marker and I would just write what I wanted to say on the paper and he would respond. Also he has a phone and can text so we can communicate that way. He told me that he wants to become a member so I am going to do all I can to teach this guy. It is really cool, even though there is no words being said , you can just feel the spirit so strong. So I am really pretty excited about that. Other than that we are really just trying to find some more serious investigators. It is kind of frustrating, I feel like I am just working my hardest but that I am just not seeing any results. It is defiantly a lot different from Liberia.  O ya, this week I also went on an Exchange with Elder Mybia. That was really fun, he is from the DR congo and has only been here for 4 weeks and is learning English so that was really fun, he is also staying in my apartment and we are getting to know each other better so that is good. Well, I am defintily in for an adventure this week and for these next couple of weeks so things here will be interesting. I don’t know who my new companion is or where he is coming from, we will be picking him up on Wednesday. I guess when they announce your new companion they do it at the chapel. They put all the trainers on one side and all the Trainees on the other side and then they bring the new missionary up and announce his trainer. It sounded like the NFL draft to me so what I did today is I bought a cheap little jersey and I am going to Right Nsawam on the back and maybe Elder Bowring or something haha and then take is up there so it will look like when the number 1 draft pick get picks and he holds up the new jersey for a picture haha so we will see how it goes, I hope my new campanion gets it. Anyways, I hope you all have a wonderful week and that it is full of excitement in what ever you do. Love you all,

Elder Bowring