December 16, 2013

Well this week was a good/frustrating week. I guess I could label all the weeks like that but for sure this week fits that description perfectly. Well this week started off with our zone meeting which was good. I really went away from there thinking of things I could do better as a missionary, so this week we have been trying to plan a little bit better for our investigators and it has really been helping. Well on Tuesday we went and seen Winston. He is the one who has been having a hard time giving up alcohol so we made him his 6 week plan. Well on Tuesday he told us that he just wanted to give it all up from that point on because he wanted to be baptized by the end of the year so he could start the new year off right. Well so far I think he is doing good on the no drinking part but he didn’t show up to church so we will have to push his Baptism to January 4^th. That was a little frustrating but I guess nothing you can do. Well on Wednesday we had a sweet experience in the middle of a lesson. We were teaching this guy that we had contacted the week before and we were having a good lesson with him. He was asking a lot of questions about the church and things were good. Well towards the end of the lesson, out of no where the member who was with us yelled out “snake”. In a split second our investigator took off and got his shovel and started chasing the snake. I was right behind him but I didn’t have anything to club the snake with but we eventually got it. I guess the snake was what they call a yellow snake. It was about 4 feet long and I guess they are pretty poisonous so that was freakin awesome.  I didn’t have my camera with me so I don’t have a picture of it which sucks but it was sweet. After that we finished our lesson and everything was good. Well this week is week 6 of the transfer so its technically the last week of the transfer but since the end of the transfer falls on dec. 22 they decided to extend it one more week so that it didn’t interfere with Christmas. So this transfer will be 7 weeks and next transfer will be 5 weeks. BUT, we have an Elder in my apartment Elder Inyang who is going home on the 19^th so that will leave his companion Elder Enwukarwi companionless for a week so I am guessing that they take Brother Freeman on the 19^th as well and me and Elder Enwukarwi will be companions for one week. It will be interesting to see but we will still get transfer news this week anyways so we will know whats up.  So I am not even sure what we will be doing on Christmas but I hope we can do something fun. Well on Friday I got bombarded with packages, I got 4. I got one from Gpa &Gma Lovell, one from Mom and Dad, One from the Shumways, and One from Ashly so Friday was a fantastic day. Thank you all for the packages and letters in the packages (Thank you Palmers). They were so sweet, I felt like it was already Christmas. I was almost overwhelmed with everything I got haha. The Shumways sent some Tinsle in there package so me and Brother Freeman decorated our room and strung it up everywhere so we are all festive now and Gpa &Gma Lovell sent two chirstmas hats so we have been wearing those every night to. Well on Saturday I was expecting to just have a fantastic day because we had a baptism planned for that morning. Well we told him to be there at 9 and when we showed up he wasn’t there but I wasn’t to worried because most Liberians run on there own time anyways and are always late. Well the Baptism started at 10 and by 9:30 he still wasn’t there so I was starting to get a little stressed out so I started trying to call him but of course his phone was off and I couldn’t get a hold of him. Finally I got a hold of member and he went and checked his house and he was just chillin at his house. He said he had no money for transportation so he wasn’t going to make it. I was so mad. Liberians seriously don’t have much cooth when it comes to informing people about things and its so frustrating. I guess it isn’t uncommon here to have the investigator not have any transport but he didn’t even let us know and he wasn’t going to let us know either. Well we are hoping that we will be able to get him baptized this week. We also have another man, Brother William who we are planning to baptize so if things go right we will have 2 baptisms this week. Also on Saturday we had a Christmas Devotional that president Kirkham put on for us. We really went deep into the birth of Christ and the importance and meaning of it. It was so awesome and I loved it. I honestly learn so much more from somebody teaching me than I do from reading things by my self, sometime I have a hard understanding the scriptures and what not but I really did learn a lot. It really made me think and appreciate the birth of Christ and really just how important Christ is to all of us. Jesus Christ, the god who created the world and numerous worlds, loved us so much that he was willing to be born into a mortal world, totally defenseless as a baby and go through mortality. That means so much to me, he is literally a god and he was willing to come down and serve us all by ultimately dying for us all so that we can repent and live him again one day. Its so sweet so I hope that all of you don’t forget the true meaning of Christmas and that you enjoy it all with your family’s and to just be greatful for everything that we do have. For me I thought I would just list of few of the things I am greatful for. I am so beyond greatful for all of my Family and my friends who have supported me my whole life in everything I do, I am so greatful for this gospel and the peace and comfort it brings into our lives by knowing why we are here on earth and by knowing the things we need to do to get back to our heavenly father, I am greatful for temples and the everlasting effect they have on all of us and I am so greatful to be serving a mission and helping these people here in Liberia. These are just a few of the things I am greatful for so I just  thought I would let you all know that. I love you all and I hope you have a Fantastic week.

Love Elder Bowring

O ya i almost forgot, I finally got my First mice kill this week. Im pretty stoked about it!!

Dear Grandpa and Grandma Lovell,

Thank you so much for all the prayers and everything. I really wish i could just take a video camera around with me so you could all see what i do everyday. That is probably one of the hardest things is not being able to really show you guys everything i do. Any ways awnser to your questions. They do celebrate christmas here but its not really a big holiday, it doesnt even feel like christmas. It is still just hot over here so that is also wierd because its decemeber. I dont think that logan town has found a church building yet. For us our church is only like a 5 minute walk away from our compound so its really nice. The mission home is a different story though. It is way in town and we are pretty far out of town so we dont go there often. i did get you chirstmas package so thank you so much i loved it :) Well love you guys and i hope your having a great chirstmas season.
 Love Elder Bowring

December 9, 2013

Well hello once again. I don’t ever know how to begin my emails its just akward so I am just going to start now ok haha. Last week for P-day we went to the beach again and chilled. Me and Elder cooper had a baseball and 2 mits that we got from an Elder who went home 3 months ago. He left them at the apartment so we just snagged them up. It felt so good just to play catch out on the beach. I just really wish we could go swimming or something. Anyways this week was good. Nothing to exciting happened on Tuesday. On Wednesday we taught out to the beach and on our way home we went and bought some fresh fish strait off the beach. The place we teach is like a little community right on the beach and most people fish for a living. They have like big huge canoes that they make out of huge tree trunks that they take out and then they use big nets to catch the fish. I have even had a guy offer to take me out on one. I was so tempted to just hop in and go but I figured that wouldn’t be the best thing haha, any way we got some fresh fish from those guys and we even bought a shark to take home and cook. It wasn’t a huge shark but it was a good size. It tasted so freaking good, we just like deep fried it and put it in some soup and it was good. I am going to be buying some more shark to cook. Well this week we have had no power at all. I guess one of the main wires going to our apartment fried and it took them all week to rig up something to get some power to us. So since we didn’t have power, we bought some candles and just did everything by candle light. I felt all old school, it was cool. Finally they got our power back on yesterday so that was nice. Well we had some frustrating things happen this week, we went into the week preparing 3 people to be baptized this upcoming week and now we only have 1 that we are baptizing. One of the guys names that we were preparing to baptize but didn’t end up being ready was Blamo. He is the guy that we said a prayer right in the middle of the lesson to know if Joseph Smith was a true prophet. He actually is ready to be baptized but the thing is is that he enlisted into the army here in Liberia and he has to go to base this week for 3 months, so we aren’t able to baptize him. We do have plans to baptize him when he gets back though so I am praying that I am still here in Banjor for when he gets back because he is so sweet. The other person we were getting ready to baptize is Sister Cynthia. Her husband is a member but come to find out they haven’t been legally married yet, so they have to be legally married before we can baptize her. I was pretty frustrated over that one because we are pretty close with the whole family but they never bothered to tell us they weren’t legally married until we were getting her baptism record ready. Luckily we do have one baptism this week. His name is Mendalla and we have been teaching this guy ever since I got here. I honestly don’t feel like I have don’t anything though. Everything we taught him he already knew and was living it. Its crazy how well the lord has prepared him. He is going to be a solid member to the branch so I am pumped for that this week. This week we also met with an investigator that was being taught by Elder Zaugg when he was in Banjor like 6 months ago. He knows everything and he knows that the church is true but he just a problem with drinking. So we made a big game plan for him to stop. We wrote it down in one of the pamphlets and I really hope he sticks to it. He is the sweetest guy. After the lesson we got talking a lot about like how bad the world is right now. Basically just how it is going to crap with the whole legalizing gay marriage thing to just everything else and it really made me greatful that I am on a mission right now and that us as latter day saints don’t have to worry about all that crap. For us we know where we are going and we know what we are doing so we don’t have to worry about all the chaos going on around the world. It doesn’t mean that we cant try and help but it does give us a peace of mind. Well anyways church this week was good. We finally got a Branch mission leader called so I hope that will really speed up the work. Sadly we didn’t see brother Deconte to church this week but the only reason was because his kid is really sick. I swear that poor old guy cant catch a break. I feel so bad for him. We are working with him trying to get his wife to start coming but I guess she is set on being a muslim but we haven’t really sat down with her so we will see what she thinks after we get finished with her haha. Well the mouse catching wasn’t to exciting this week. My stupid trap broke but I did almost kill mice by just smacking them with my shoe. Hopefully I will get one here soon. Atleast I can kill some cockroaches to keep me satisfied. We have so many in the apartment its crazy (you would die mom) Big ole suckers to. Well anyways that is basically it. I cant belive that I have already been out for 4 months. Me and Elder Cooper are going to celebrate tonight and make some rice crispi treats haha. Well I love you all and I hope your having a great holiday season. Love

Elder Bowring

Dear mom and dad,

Well love you guy, I am sorry if I t seems like I am always just asking for crap but I was wondering if in your next package you could send like a lot of protein bars or something like that and some like healthy things I can snack on. I need to start eating better hahah. But that is basically it and o ya I ran out of those probiotic pills so just FYI. Ha well I love you guys. I love all the pictures you send and I am glad the family is doing good. I cant belive how much Jaycelyn has grown. She is so cute now. Well love you guys have a great week. Love

Elder Bowring

December 2, 2013

Well this week was a good one for sure. Last Monday we ran into some other missionary’s and they were going to go eat at Evergreen(a really nice restaurant )  so we just hopped along and me and Brother Freeman split a Hamburger. It was really good. Well on Tuesday I received your guys pre-Christmas package and I loved it. The tree that you guys made me was so sweet, I hung it up the second I got it and all the other elders were pretty jealous haha. I have just been jamming out to Christmas music all week to. I love the Christmas music so thank you for sending that. Well also on Tuesday I got into my first motorbike crash !!!! haha jk it was really nothing, we were heading out to the beach and we hit some soft sand and the motorbike man couldn’t handle it so we just went down. I got tossed from the back into a bush and then I had to come and get the bike off of the bike man and my companion. It was pretty funny, we were laughing about it. Well this week we got our mouse traps for the apartment. We have been keeping track of how many mice we kill each because we all got a trap. Well so far Elder Enwukray has caught 6 mice, Elder Inyang has caught 2, Brother Freeman has caught 1, and I have caught 0. Needless to say I am a little more than disappointed with my performance on the mouse hunting this week but I am going to step my game up this week. Well Thursday was thanksgiving and it was the day that we got our monthly substistence, me and my companion both had 20 dollars left so we got some nice food. We decided with Elder Montgomery and Elder Cooper to make Hamburgers and fries for thanksgiving. There is a really nice supermarket close to where we pick up our subsistence and we bought a pound of ground beef for 3.80 USD and then some cheese and some French fries. So we had a nice thanksgiving dinner of hamburgers and fries. It was so good and It was nice to actually do something for thanksgiving. This week we also had to go to the hospital for my companion to do another urine test for his mission papers. Well the hospitals here aint like the ones back home that’s for sure but they got the job done. It was pretty funny, we had to go and do the test pretty early in the morning and when we showed up to the hospital they told us to go sit in the waiting room. Well we sat down and it was packed, well come to find out they were having a church service. There was a pastor guy up at the front yelling and clapping his hands and then he started screaming HOLY GHOST and then the rest of the congregation would scream back FIRE haha. They did this for a while, but when they started doing it I figured that me and my companion could just wait out side for them to finish so that’s what we did. It was pretty funny though. Well, it was my companions birthday (same as Brittians) And it was also a big holiday for Liberia. Basically all they do for the holiday was go to the beach and party though haha.  Well on that day we went and saw one of our members and when we went to go see him he was in the process of gutting out a fried up dog. The dog still had its head on it and it looked like it was growling at me haha. I wish we could of stuck around to try some bud we had an appointment to go to.  This week end we had district conference and it was so freaking good. We had the second councilor in the area presidency come and talk to us. His name is Elder Edward Dupe. He is from zimboway Africa and he was so sweet, my new favorite 70 now haha. The conference was so powerful and we even had like 6 of our investigators come. 2 of them are like whole familys, and they talked a lot about familys in the conference it. It was so good. In the general session we had about 1,031 people there from our whole district. It was so cool because a bunch of the members from Logan Town were there and I got to go and see them all. Also all three of the people I baptized were there so that was so sweet to see. Well we have some really awesome investigators we are teaching right now. We are also teaching a family called the Tarplah family. The husband is a member and a few of the kids are baptized but the wife isn’t and some of there other kids aren’t. The husband really wants to take his family to the temple and be sealed so we have been teaching them. Well we have been teaching them for like 2 weeks now and the wife is about ready to be baptized. We went over the family proclamation and I know that this family is going to the temple one day. They have started to do family prayer and scripture study in the morning and its so sweet to see them coming together. I already told you about Deconte. This guy is just a boss man. He came to both days of District Conference and its like a probably an hour or two walk to the place from his house because he doesn’t have money for transport, but he shows up with a big smile on his face. We now just need to work on getting him legally married before he gets baptized. There are so many people here who are living together but aren’t legally married. We have an investigator who has been living with her boyfriend for 11 years and has 3 kids with him but isn’t legally married. That is a big problem over here that we are trying to get past, but we are doing our best. 
 Thank you soooo much for the tree, I loved looking on it and looking at all the memorys we have with our family. Our family is so awesome and I really took them all for granted. I love that we always did those things like family prayer, family scripture study and home evening. I can see how much it blessed our family and I always use examples in lessons about how I know by doing these things blesses familys because I have seen them first hand so thank you so much for just everything J.
Well this week was great and I hope you all had a wonderful thanksgiving. I hope your enjoying the cold while I am over here getting toasted by the sun haha. Love you guys have a great week.

November 25, 2013

Well I am freaking out right now, I just got done looking at all the pictures you sent this week and to see the snow just got me so excited and I literally just smiling. Elder Erickson wanted me to tell you thank you also for the pictures. Looks like you are getting plenty of it, I hope it keeps on coming. Well this week was a good week, not really anything to special happened, just kind of a normal week in the field. This week I finally got your Halloween cards so thank you so much for those (now that is thanksgiving haha) No I really did appreciate them though, I love getting mail, it really just boosts me up during the week. Well last week on P-day me and Brother Freeman made some banana bread and I was pretty satisfied with our result. We got the recipe from an Elder who got it from the couples. We are defintily going to be making it a lot. On Tuesday this week, I just got done with my exercise and I went back into our room and there was a freakin mouse on my desk eating some food I left there. Right as I came in it took off and we have been seeing it around all week. I think we have more than just one in the apartment so today we are going to pick up some mouse traps and we are going to be slaying some mice this week, I am pretty pumped I still get to hunt haha.  This week it was our companionships turn to on and off the Generator, so that wasn’t really a big deal, we just had to turn it on at 7 and turn it off at 10:30 and then just make sure it didn’t run out of gas. We had to refill it like every other day so it wasn’t to bad. In one of you letters I got this week mom you asked about hair cuts, I am actually going to get one today. There are just a bunch of people who cut hair on the streets so that’s where we go, it only cost like 80LD which is like 1$. Well this week I have been studying the scriptures a ton. Because before if any body had a question about anything, Elder Zaugg or Elder Guymon would just take care of it but now that I am the trainer, I have to awsner most the time. I know most the awnsers but most people want scriptural back up, so I have been hitting the scriptures hard this week. We seriously have so many people to teach here it is crazy. Some people we only have to see once a week, which sucks but there is just so many people we are teaching. The church in Liberia is growing so much, I cant wait to see where it is by the time I leave. The only thing that they really need to work on is just the family. I know I’ve said this before but even in the church the family’s here just are not very strong. This week in sacrament meeting a member from the district presidency and he came and laid it on the branch how the Melkezdic  priesthood holders need to step it up and they need to start taking charge of there familys better. He said they need to be doing the little things like family home evening, family prayer and scripture study and those things. I really hope that all the members were listening because that is exactly what they needed. Well we had 4 investigators to church this week. One of our investigators names is brother Deconte. He is an older man and he has been coming to church for like 5 weeks now but this week was the first week that the missionarys sat down with him. He is seriously so ready for the gospel and the lord has prepared him so much. I don’t even feel like we are doing anything, we just go there and lay it on him and he accepts it all with a full heart. He is the sweetest old guy. I feel so bad for him. He doesn’t have a job and every day he walks into town. Its seriously probably like 10 miles one way and he does that everyday looking for a job and just to make ends meet to feed his family. Its so sad to see and I wish I could just give the man all my  money but I do know that the lord is going to bless him. He is always in such a happy mood to which just comes to show you that money isn’t what brings happiness. I hope that we can start teaching his whole family here pretty soon to, that would be sweet. Well this week for some reason I thought that Thursday was thanksgiving because I thought that everything third Thursday was thanksgiving, so I busted out some jerkey to celebrate but turns out I was a week to early haha. We honestly probably wont do anything for thanksgiving, my apartment is kind of lame when it comes to that stuff but maybe will just do a little something by my self. This week I decided I needed to cut back on the rice, I am so paranoid about getting fat and that is the last thing I want to do. Well anyways that was my week, I know not really anything to exciting so I am sorry. Hopefully next week will be a little more action packed. Love you guys hope you have a great thanksgiving and are thankful for everything you have. We are all so blessed J Love

Elder Bowring

Well Happy thanks giving MA and PA haha. I just want to say that I love all your emails and letters and everything so thank you. I got a dear elder from you this week and it seriously came at the perfect time and it helped me out so much so just thanks for all of the love and support. I love the emails from my friends that you send me to, its nice to hear how they are doing.  J Love you guys and I hope you have an awesome thanksgiving, tell the whole family hello for me.  Love you guys

November 18, 2013

Alright well this week was a good one. I am getting to know my area a lot better and starting to get the hang of things. Since I am in an apartment with all Africans we have ate rice and different stews everynight and my body is not used to that much rice. Needless to say I have been spending a lot of time in our bathroom, morning and night haha. I forgot to tell you about a cool experience we had last Monday Morning. It was 4 in the morning and all of a sudden the other Elders in our apartment were in our room and they said we needed to go out side to give somebody a blessing. I am really confused at what was going on because I was just waking up. Well turns out our second councilor was outside our compound and he needed a priesthood blessing. When we got out there, our second councilor was on the ground in pain just crying. I guess his stomach was doing something weird but he was in so much pain. So we gave him a blessing and right away you could tell that a peace came over him. After they took him to the hospital and he was at church yesterday. IT was a really cool experience. The priesthood is honestly so important and it can do some amazing things. Well this week on Tuesday we had a meeting for the people who are training new missionarys. It was all the way in town and my area banjor is like the farthest away from town so we had to leave like 2 hours early to make sure we would make it through traffic. It was such a good meeting and they told us how important it is to make sure we train our missionarys right because what we teach them now and show them now they will do it the rest of there mission. Really puts the pressure on haha but President Kirkham said something that I really liked. He said that in order for improvement to happen we need change. I really liked that. After that me and Elder Erickson (since we were temporary companions for the day) tried to get a taxi back to his apartment where I was going to pick up Brother Freeman. Well we couldn’t ever pickup a taxi so we ended up walking all the way back in. It literally took us like 2 hours to walk back in. I don’t know how many miles it was, but it was far and it was hot. Well the rest of the week we had a good week. I am really getting to know my area and really well and we have straight up have the beach in our area. We even got to teach a lesson right on the beach. It was the coolest thing. There is a sweet member who lives out there who works with us every time we have been out there so its really sweet. I hope I stay in Banjor for a long time because I am loving it here. It is a lot less busy and just a little more laid back it feels like. In Logan town you always had people around and the houses were super close together but here in Banjor the houses are a lot farther apart and there is like zero traffic and its just really nice. Well I a sweet experience this week. IN our train for trainers meter president Kirkham told us that if an investigator ever had a doubt that we should just pray about it right then. Well we were teaching a group of guys about the restoration of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and this one guy was having some doubts on the first vision. Well we got down and had he pray about it right there and the spirit was there so strong testifying what we were saying was true. It was so sweet and the guy even showed up for church yesterday. I am straight pumped. We had 4 Investigators to church yesterday and all of them said that they loved it and that they were coming back. We had the primary program yesterday to and it just brought me back to my good old primary days haha. It was really good though. Training is going well. Since Brother Freeman is just a branch missionary there are still some things that he doesn’t understand all the way but he is doing really well and he is a sweet guy. He is even teaching me how to cook some Liberian food, so if we have the supplies back home, I am going to be whipping up some nice stew for our rice back home J.

It can be frustrating getting to know a new area and the people we need to teach especially when there are so many people around that you can teach. Honestly our problem here is finding the right people to teach, because anyone here will sit down an listen to you, you just have to find those people who will actually keep commitments and be serious. So at the first of the week I was a little bit stressed about finding the right people but now I feel like we are doing a good job at that and I am not as stressed. Banjor is a lot bigger area than Logan town is to, so we have to plan to go to certain areas on certain days which is different than it was in Logan town to. We have to take Transport some days to because our area is so big but its sweet. So funny story. We were teaching this old lady this week about the plan of salvation. She is a really strong Christian and the lesson was going really good until we got to us dying and going to the spirit world. When we said she was going to die she like started freaking out telling us not to talk about death. Well turns out this lady thinks she is never going to die, like EVER going to die. She thinks that she is going to live forever because she has lived a good life and all she has to do is ask God to make her live forever and she will live forever. Crazy. We sat and argued for a little bit but was getting no where so we left, but she still said she wanted to come to church and all that so we will go back. So we will see how it goes. We taught the Plan of Salvation a lot this week and it really got me thinking about how special and important it is for us. Our time here on the earth is really short, and it means so much to me that we have somewhere we can go after we die and that we can be with our familys there forever. Teaching it really puts a perspective on things though. Makes me really want to do those things that matter why we are here in this life. Anyways just one quick last thing. One of the members we have been going out with always says this when we ask him how the gospel blesses his life. He always says that with the gospel in his the life “The happiness just never stops”. Its true, with the gospel, happiness is always there and it is such a blessing to have in our lifes. Well I hope that you all have a great week. Love you all

Elder Bowring

November 11, 2013 Transfers

Well this week was out of control to say the least. We got transfer news on Thursday night and I am now in a new area with a new companion. The new area where I am going is called Banjor and it is actually the same area that Elder Zaugg served his first 6 months of his mission in so that is really cool. He had a lot of good things to say about it. I am really going to miss all of those Elders in the other apartment, especially Elder Zaugg and Elder Guymon. I got to know them both really well and they are awesome men/missionarys. Luckily I will still be seeing them around. Me and Elder Guymon were both kind of shocked when we heard the news because we thought for sure that we would be staying together. Well he is staying and he is the new district leader which is sweet but I was excited/sad when I heard I was being transferred.   Well the area is white washed which means they took both missionarys out of the area and put 2 new ones in, so this will be very interesting. We get to go out and find all of the people that they were teaching before and get to know the area basically by our selfs. Luckily there are some good members that I met at church yesterday that I think will help us out a lot. My new companion is Brother Freeman, he is a branch missionary and I will be training him this transfer. He got his mission papers turned in so now he is doing this to get ready for a mission. Its so crazy, I am actually training and  I am in charge of somebody else besides myself but it will be a good learning experience.  So we got the transfer news on Thursday night and I got transferred on Saturday morning at 6 in the morning. It was way fast, and I honestly feel like I am new on my mission again because I am in a new compound with new missionarys and a new area with new responsibility’s. Its crazy but I am excited for the opportunity.  Being out here has really helped me deal with change a lot better, it still isn’t easy for me but I am getting better at it. I used to hate change back home and I honestly don’t like it still but it is helping me grow and I can feel that. It was so weird to leave the apartment and to leave Logan Town. Even though I wasn’t there for very long I still got to know some people really well and it was weird to leave it all behind. When we got to Banjor though it was really sweet. The area is a lot more spread out and a lot less busy than Logan Town. Even though im not used to it I like it a lot better. It’s a little more like home even though its still pretty far off haha. Instead of being in an apartment  we are in a compound and I LOVE it. We actually get to go out side and get some fresh air at night and get to actually see the stars. In the compound there are three houses with missionary’s and there are 4 in each one. In mine I have 2 Nigerians and then my companion so I am going to be the only American in my house. Its going to be great, I hear you learn a lot from the African Elders so I am excited. Its pretty sweet to, one of my MTC brothers is in one of the other houses, we flew from New York together and he is from Georgia and he is sweet, so we have been talking a lot the last couple of days. His name is Elder Cooper. In the compound we don’t have running electricity so we get our power from a generator and we only run it from 7 at night to 10 30 and then the rest of the time we don’t have any power, its pretty cool. Well that is basically my week, a lot of change but its exciting. I am excited to get to know the area and to start working and training my new comp. I hope you all have a great week and that everything in B-Town is still crack-a –lakin hahaha (sorry for the ugliness) still haven’t lost it. I love you all very much.

Love Elder Bowring

I'm thinking this is when he was teaching the seminary class.

Elder Bowring and Elder Guymon with Branch President and his 3 children that they baptized,
Mary, George, and Hannah