December 15, 2014

Fishing on P-day today

High tech fishing pole

Dear Family,
Well this week was a pretty good and crazy week so i will start off with the craziest thing. We were cleaning at the chapel on Saturday morning when the branch president asked me a quesiton about something we were doing as a misison and so i didnt know what was going down so i called up president hill and asked him, Long story short i got my awnser along with him telling me that i am going to be getting transfered on Wednesday. I am not going to lie i am excited for the
new opprotunity but i am a little bummed to be leaving. I am going to an area called Dansuman (not sure if that is how you spell it) to be the DL over there. It is more in Accra and is like City from what i hear so not to pumped about that. My new companion is named Elder Langi (from Tonga) so that should be chill. I am in just a 2 man apartment so that will be a new experience for me. I have only stayed in like 4 to 6 man apartments. To add on , the only others in my district are 4 sister missionaries. Not sure how i feel about that. I guess i will just have to do my best to whip them into shape haha. I am really sad to be leaving though, i wanted to stay atleast until after christmas, i love these people here in Nsawam so much, the branch is just awesome and of course i love my Recent Converts to, they are just so awesome. We had an awesome plan for christmas to, we were going to baptize our deaf  investigator who i have been working with since i came, then go to the Berretts to have a christmas party over there and then i had it lined up to go and skype at Joshua's on his laptop but now i dont think i will be able to skype any more for christmas. My apartment is really sweet to and we were all ready for christmas. It is definitly a bittersweet feeling leaving at this time. I had to say goodbye to my branch yesterday. This is my first time saying good bye to a branch officailly. My first transfer on mission was weird and they did it on a Saturday.  My next one was when i was emergency transfered to Tolar and then my next was when i was kicked out of an entire country haha. LIke i said i was with President Thompson when i recieved my transfer news so when he found that out he said that to send me off he wanted me to give a talk in sacrament meeting , so i had to give a talk yesterday and say my goodbye. It went really well though. It is going to be a crazy week this week.

Anyways, Tuesday was a really good day, we had our christmas conference and they split it up in 3 days and did it bi zone. My luck, me and Tolars zones got put on the same day so i got to spend the day with him. 

We went to the temple and did a session first which was really nice and then we got to watch the movie "meet the mormons" I about died when it showed the Navy head football coach, making me miss football. THen we had a lunch and did a few other things, it was really good. The best part was being able to see Tolar though. I miss
him alot as a companion. Definitly a life long friend.

We had an awesome week with our deaf investigator Darius. A complete miracle that we have an elder just 15 min. away who speaks sign language so we had the chance to bring him up on Friday and teach him by sign languange and he is just eating it all up. We also sat with him after
church on Sunday and had an awesome lesson with him. THe spirit was there so strong. A huge testimony builder to me that the gospel is true. THis guys has been coming to church for 7 weeks now with out
really getting a good understanding on the gospel but now he is and he is just progressing so fast. He is even getting his LA buddy coming back. Also we are starting a Sign language class at the branch and he is the teacher for it and we did our first one this week and it was just awesome. I am really going to miss him alot. I am just going to miss everyone here alot, Especally Joshua. We tried to go fishing again this mornign with him but had the same luck haha, but i just love hanging out with him and he is honestly just a good buddy now. Anyways, i am going to have a big change this week so next weeks email will probably be pretty informative as well haha. O ya, i got my thanksgiving package on Tuesday with my football in it. Thanks so
much, strait loving that thing. Best present ever, i even sleep with it haha. Anyways, love you all and i hope you have a wonderful week.
Love,
Elder |Bowring

December 8, 2014

Dear Family ,
Well this week was a pretty normal week I wouldh have to say , nothing
to much out of the oridanary. It was really good though. I am really
getting along with my new companion Elder Peterson and we are doing
hard work together. This week we got our bikes going again, its been
about 3 weeks since I have ridden my bike because my companinos bike
was busted but we finally got a new one so that was nice to get riding
bikes again. This week I would have to say our biggest focus was to
just teach so that is basically all we did all week and that is just
how I like it. I sit here and think , I am just greatful to be on a
mission where I am at , where I can just teach all day long. If I
wasn’t teaching I am not sure what I would do.  This week we have
focused a lot on seeing Felix and Celistina , our son and mother who
we are teaching. They loved church this past week, especially the
mother. We have one small problem though,and that is anytime we go
there for a lesson, we have to fight for time to talk haha, Celestina
can straight talk. We will start off talking about Word of Wisdom and
she will want to make a contribution and about 20 min later she has
moved from the word of wisdom to how everyone in her community calls
her a witch because she teaches her son to follow christ haha she is
all over the place but I do the women, she is funny.  We are really
working on seperating them from there chruch though and that might
take time.  These past two Sundays what they have been diong is waking
up at 4:30 and going to there church which is all the way in Accra and
then they will leave and ride in a Tro-tro for about an hour to come
attend church down in Nsawam. They love the church a lot but are
having a hard time leaving there church completely , although
Celistina did turn in a letter of Transfer to her bishop so that they
can stop going. We will defintly be praying for something there, we
are trying to baptize them on christmas but that wont be possible
unless they stop going to there church. WE will see what happens, but
I know that they will come, its just a matter of time. We are also
really focusing on  our deaf guy now to. We are pusing him to also be
Baptized on Christmas day. We found out that one of the Elders near by
can speak sign languange so we are going to have him come up and teach
him everything and then we are going to baptize him christmas . What
is cool to is that we are going to have him start teaching sign
languange as a class on Sunday after his baptism so that the branch
members will also know sign languange and then it will just open up
the door for a bunch of deaf people here in Ghana. There is actually
quite a bit in our area so this could just open up the door for all of
them getting the gospel. I am really excited to see how it all goes.
Only thing that is making a little nervous is that we have transfers
news coming this Saturday and I don’t want to leave, if I left I would
have to miss all these peoples baptisms. I am hoping for atleast one
transfer here, and it would also just be nice to spend christmas here,
we have an apartment full of all americans and I just love the branch
here so we will see what god has planned for me. Sunday this week was
pretty good, Darius Celistina and Felix (the big 3 ) All showed up for
us this week and it was also fast and Testimony Sunday. Everyone one
in Ghana had  Specail fast for Liberia and Serria Leon so that was
really cool. My new ZL is from Liberia to and the odds, his home
branch back home was Paynesville 2 (hint,that was the last branch I
served in) and he knows just a bunch of the same people I do so it was
cool to talk  to him about that. This week will be a pretty good week
though, we have a christmas conference tomorrow in Accra that will be
really sweet, I am mostly pumped because Tolar is going to be there
and I will get to see him again. Dude strait goes home in 5 weeks, I
cant believe it. Anyways, I am trying to think of anything extra
ordinary that happened this week. I was riding my bike one day on the
side of the road and I got hit by an orange that somebody chucked from
there car, that was cool haha. Anyways, i hope that you all have a
great week, love ya tons.
Elder Bowring

December 1, 2014

Dear Family, well this week turned out to be a lot different than I thought it was going to be but it was still a really good week.
Tuesday was the last day that me and Elder Taylor were together so he kind of said his goodbyes to every one in the area and what not. On Wednesday we went all the way to the stake center which is about an
hour away for transfers. It was kind of a hassle , we had to get a taxi and put all of Taylors luggage in there and then our Branch missionaries luggage as well and then we had to pick up another missionary on the way. Luckily the taxi driver was one of our investigators so that helped a lot. Well we got to the stake center
and I found my “new” companion Elder Mmbulika and talked to him for a bit and he seems like he was a pretty chill guy. Right after I got finished talking to him one of the AP’s came up to me and said President wanted to talk to me. IT took me about an hour to see him but I finally did and he told me that some things had happened to day before so there was a little change it the transfer and that instead of me receiving Elder Mmbulika , I would be Receiving Elder Peterson. So long story short my new companion is Elder Peterson. He is from Spanish Fork Utah and has been out for 14 months now. I was a little taken by surprise but we just went with the flow. So because of that, now our whole apartment is American and everyone is from Utah haha. Elder Peterson is a chill guy though and he works hard so that is all I can ask for, we are getting to know eachother better but he is a
really good missionary and I think that we are going to do really well together so it will be exciting. Anyways, fun fact, we were out of water this week from Sunday all the way until Thursday. For some reason they just weren’t pumping us water so we just didn’t have water for anything. Finally we just couldn’t do it any more so we called a
water truck and payed them 280 Ghc to fill up our Tanks in the back and then we also saved a bunch of people in the compound haha, so we finally got some water on Thursday so that was nice. Just in time for Thanksgiving. We didn’t do to much for Thanksgiving but we figured we had to do something so we just got some good  sausage and some French fries and did some hot dogs and French fries with some sparkling cider haha. It was pretty good but nothing like Turkey and football. This week other than that has just been a really good hard working week. It was pretty awesome on Friday we asked to Branch president to come and Help us proselyte. For some reason I have just like always been intimidated asking them to come with us because I don’t like to bug people I guess haha but he was totally game and happy to come and help us and he really helped us a lot. We saw a Mother and Son who we have been teaching for a little while. There names are Felix and Celistina
and they are really sweet. It just kind of taught me that even though I am uncomfortable doing something like maybe asking a member to come and help with us or something like that , that I need to just do it
any ways because it was so worth it. That is something my mission has taught me a lot to trust myself more and to just get out of my comfort zone and do things that I don’t normally do. Sunday was a really good
day, Felix and Celistina came and our Deaf guy did again  (he has came 5 times, still trying to figure out what to do with him ) but on top of all that we were able to get Big shoe and Caius all Confirmed, I was just stoked about that. This week we having been working a lot with big shoes wife Patience to try and get her and the his 2
daughters to come. I was pretty sure that she was coming this week because we had a really good week of teaching her but I guess on Sunday morning her pastor came by to pick her up for church. I felt bad because big shoe seemed pretty bummed about it but we are just going to keep on doing our thing. Well I hope that you all had a really Thanksgiving , I was missing you guys a little bit but its cool, I cant believe that it is already December and just how fast this last year has gone, to say that next year it 2015 and that I will be coming home next year is just blowing my mind . Time flies for sure. I sure do love you all and I hope that you all have a wonderful week. Lvoe
Elder Bowring