May 18, 2015

Dear Family,
Well this week was a really good week, A lot of changes around the
apartment and such but it was good to get back into a good groove. As
you know my old companion left me last week on Monday, so me and Elder
Vandehei were companions on Tuesday and that was a lot of fun. We just
split it, we did the morning in his area and then we went to my area
for the last half of the day. It was really weird just having it being
us 2 in the apartment, it was real roomy and kind of nice. Wednesday
was the day of transfers, so I went and picked up Elder Forrest. He
was already there when I got there so that was nice. It was good to
see all the other missionaries. My son Elder Taylor is doing good, it
is crazy, he is almost 1 year on mission now. Feels like I just
trained him yesterday. Well when we went to Transfers I left our phone
in the taxi again, I couldn’t believe it but luckily the taxi driver
was a sweet guy and actually picked up our call when we tried calling
the phone and he brought it back to us, I gave him a little money but
I was just happy I didn’t have to get another new phone haha. Elder
Forrest is really sweet, it is nice already having a companion that I
have known before , so we just get along great already. His
personality is a lot different than Elder Morokes but it is good. I am
going to enjoy being Elder Forrest companion. We really hit it hard
this week, we have a lot of good people we are teaching and I just
pray we can get them all to come. I think that it is really going to
help having Forrest here. One thing that is going to be nice about
having Forrest around to is he can really get me motivated to work out
haha. I’ve got to get my body beach ready for mexico haha. Anyways,
Thursday we had Zone training meeting that we had to present. It was a
little rough, me and Forrest hadnt even been together for 24 hrs and
we had to go present a zone training meeting. We just kind of made an
out line and just winged it haha but it turned out pretty good. Its
nice to be able to get those out of the way. We have a lot of new
missionaries in the zone so it was good to be able to meet them. That
is one thing that is different about here, back in Liberia I knew most
of the missionaries there but here I still just don’t know everyone.
There is just so many missionaries that I havent met before.  We had a
really good Sunday this Sunday though, we had 4 people at church
again. One of them is Brother David, we are planning to baptize him
next week. We have been teaching him ever since I came to Northridge
and he finally decided to get serious and come to church ha, but I am
really excited for him. Another women I am really excited for is a
women we are teaching whose name is Sister Isha. She is a muslim but
is really good friends with the Oteng family. Everytime she would go
over to there house and visit, she would find the pamphlets and book
of mormons we leave for the Otengs and read them. Then one day the son
of the family told us about it while she was there so we invited her
to come and sit with us and she was beyond geeked, it was really
awesome and every since then she has came to church two weeks in a row
and is really loving the church. We talked about baptism with her this
week and she really wants to, but she needs to think about it. She
asked us if it would still be ok to pray 5 times a day and do her
muslim things but we kind of told her that once she is baptized, she
is beginning a new life and she understood, but I am hoping that after
coming to church again this week that she will commit fully. I am just
really looking forward to what the future has to hold here. I hope I
can go out hard with a few more baptism to close my misison off. O ya,
but I did tell you that we went hard this week though, yesterday when
me and Elder Forrest were closing, while we were closing I was
noticing how many lessons we had and so I added them all up and it was
49 haha, I was just laughing, I knew we worked hard this week but
didn’t realize we had that much. Anyways, things are going great here
still, just pushing onward until the finish line. Crazy how quick it
is all coming. I sure do love being a missionary. Love you all
Elder Bowring