March 16, 2015

Phillips Baptism

Elder Kiwanukwa (From Uganda), Elder Bowring

Dear Family,
This week was a good week as always. We started the week off pretty dope last monday night. We bought a big 24 pack of Malt (basically non alcoholic beer that every one drinks here) and we had a chugging contest. I won with getting down 6 1/2 and i was so miserable afterwards haha. Elder Vandehei got about 5 down and then puked everywhere. It was hilaroius , been a while since i had some good miz fun. We might have another chugging contest tonight with a local drink they call Sobolo , it has like ginger and stuff inside so it should just add onto the miz haha, anyways, We didnt have water all week this week. They shut it off last week  on Saturday, and it didnt come back until last night. Luckily it rained about twice so we were able to put out some rain buckets so we at least had water to flush our toilets. If we really wanted to, we could have called in a water truck to bring us water but that is always a pain and on top of that our land lady kept bugging us telling us we should call a water truck in and that is what the missionaries always did before us. They just wanted us to do it because then they could homely the left over water and that kind of ticked us off so we were determined to just wait it out so they couldn't homely anything from us haha. Probably not the most Christ like thing but it bugged us. haha. Tuesday we had an awesome day. We had a Zone Conference with one of the 70's Elder Curtis. He came to us in Liberia last year and i really enjoyed it and he was just as good the second time. We had a chance as Zone leaders to have a 1 hour meeting with him in the morning and then we went for about 4 hours after wards with 2 zones. It was a sweet conference. We talked a lot about the BOM and how it can really be a help to us personally when we gain a testimony of it. Then we talked about how we serve our missions and things and when we were talking about who we want to be at the end of our missions i just really felt good about my self. I truly feel like i have had a great mission experience and that i have done all i can to serve the lord to the best of my ability and by doing that i have been able to change and become a better me. Missionary work is just really satisfying. This week we had to do a couple of exchanges with the Elders in our apartment so they could get out into there area and do some work. One of the elders knee is all jacked up so we have been trying to go with Elder Vandehei for half days to get him in his area and out of the apartment so i went and did that a few times. Even with that we are still doing very well in our area though. Our baptism
went through this week which was great. It was a little caotic. Saturday we had a water truck come and fill up the poly tank at the church and so we got the water flowing. We came back a few hours later and the water in the font was basically black. So they decided to drain it Sunday morning and fill it back up and we barely got enough to baptize and it was still a little murkey. we ended up baptizing 3 people for us , we had to do a re-baptism for a girl in the ward whose
record got lost so to recreate the record they had to re-baptize. I felt bad for her. Our investigator phillip was just strait pumped about the baptism. I was giving him his baptism cloths and i pulled one out and he said "that's the one" and then he said " i pray that god will bless me with his spirit and with this dress to be baptized" and then he said " i pray that god gives me the spirit of joseph smith " haha i was laughing pretty hard but he was just so excited. Its people
like that that make my mission so rewarding. Anytime we go by his house he just gets a huge smile on his face and is just pumped to see us and it just makes me feel good. Next week we are looking to have a sweet baptism as well. Sammuel (guy who had a problem drinking) is going to be baptized with his 3 kids this week. Its going to be
awesome. His wife finally came to church this week to so we hope we can keep her coming and also get her baptized here in april so they can all be together as a family. Should be a really good busy week but i am excited for it. Well that is about it for this week, i hope that you all have a great week, i love you all. 
Love
Elder Bowring