October 20, 2014

Dear Family,

This week was actually quite a long week but it was a really good week. Maybe I will just start from the top of the week. Tuesday we had district meeting and we doubled the size of our district meeting because we had the Berretts join us and then the Zone leaders also joined us. It was a really good district meeting though and then the ZL’s went on an exchange with the other companionship. Elder Bigler came here with Elder Mybia and stayed the night so it was cool to be able to get to know another missionary. It’s still so weird being used to this mission because being 14 months on my mission I should know most people in my mission but I know like nobody still haha so in that aspect is still feel new on my mission. Wednesday sucked, we had a member come to our apartment who was contracted to come and paint our apartment and he said it was going to take him 3 days to do it, we decided to take turns on days so we got stuck in the apartment on Wednesday and were there until 5. I wanted to kill myself, I hate staying in the apartment. Luckily I had some cards so that killed a little time and I also learned how to play some chess but there was still a lot of reading a nap or two while we just had to sit there and watch these guys paint. We did get to go out and saw Joshua and Alex and a few other people that day though so we atleast ended on a high note. Thursday was just a normal day and so that was nice. Friday, the painter was only supposed to take until 2 but he didn’t finish until 3 so we also had to stay in the apartment until 3 that day as well.  So staying in those two days really made the week go by kind of slow but we survived. Here on Saturday we had a funeral for a women who was a member of the church. When they do funerals here , its no small thing. They do things so differently here though, after the person dies, they will keep the body for about 2 to 3 months until they have the funeral and they just keep the body on ice, so this women whose funeral it was has been dead longer than I have been here in Ghana haha. Our branch president got with us a few weeks ago and wanted us to attend the funeral and help out and use it as an opportunity to find people to teach. So what we did was we got about 200 copies of the plan of salvation and wrote our names and number on the back and we passed all those out at the funeral with the program and we literally handed them all out. I think it was over 200 pamphlets that we handed out though. I know that a lot of the people that we handed them out to wont do anything with them but if I get just one person to teach from handing out 200 pamphlets, it was worth it. I was really cool though, there was so many people at the funeral that there was a lot of people outside sitting on the side and at a point , they all had the plan of salvation open and reading it so that was cool. We made a few contacts so we will see how that goes. The high light of this week is probably just seeing Alex and Joshua getting ready for there baptism. They are just beyond ready and it was really sweet to see them this week. They came to sacrament meeting on time and they got presented in sacrament meeting and there baptism got announced to the whole branch. I am just really excited to finally have a baptism. Everything went so smooth to get them prepared to be baptized as well. We were having to have a special interview for Alex and come Sunday, we still didn’t have anybody to do it but miraculously we had the Berretts come and President Hill gave Elder Berrett the permission to interview him so that just worked out great. Our baptism is on Wednesday and so I am really excited for that to happen. Other than that, there was nothing really special or out of the ordinary this week. We were in affliction week this week (last week of subsistence) if that is anything you care about haha so it was great to finally get some more money.  Anyways, I hope that you all have a great week this week, sure do love you all. Love Elder Bowring