Baptism Day

Baptism Day!!

March 31, 2014

Dear Family,

Well this week was an awesome week, Not anything to special happened but we really saw some sweet things happen this week. This week me and Elder Cottrell really worked our butts off trying to get our Members to work with us because we have been struggling the past few weeks on having our members help us and it really has effected our effectiveness.  This week we had a very successful week at getting our members to come and help. This week we really were guided to so many people who are ready to hear the gospel. Every single day this week we met new people who were ready to accept the gospel and the cool thing is is that most of them were husbands and wifes and familys. We have been praying a lot for the lord to lead us to those families who are ready to hear the gospel and he really pulled through for us. (Imagine that haha) A cool experience we had this week was that we were going to go see this Less active guy who we have talked to a little bit and we went and sat down with at his house for the first time. Well turns out that this guy has a wife and that she is not member and what has been causing him to not come to church is that he is just so frustrated that his wife isn’t coming it makes him mad so he doesn’t come. SO we were able to sit down and teach the wife. The lesson was awesome. It was a little difficult because she didn’t speak the best English because they are both from Sierra Leone and they speak a different kind of English over there but her husband was able to relay what she didn’t understand so it was sweet. Then half way during the lesson, the LA brother came and sat in so we taught him to and he was so interested and he had a bunch of questions. It was so awesome. Unfortunatly the wife and husband didn’t come to church this week but, the LA brother came and he loved it.  We had 7 new investigators come to church this week. It was so sweet. Everyone of them are all solid to. We have another guy we are teaching whose name is Junior Cooper Tyler. He is about 22. Sweet guy, one day we were walking and he just stopped us and said “are you missionarys from the church of jesus Christ of latter day saint” We told him yes and he said he had heard a lot of good things about it and he wanted to be apart of us. We gave him a pamphlet and invited him to church and he has came the last two weeks. We have also had a opportunity to sit down with his mother and his brother this week and they both to are just loving and accepting the gospel. I just cant belive how many miracles we are blessed with out here in Liberia everyday. It is so crazy just how much the lord is In our everyday lifes and we can totally miss it if we are not paying attention. The lord is really helping us missionaries to accomplish his goal. Something that I like that one of the area seventys said when they have come is that .This is the lords work, it will get done any way.  He is the ones who have chosen us. There are so many other people out there who know more about the gospel and have stronger testimonys than us 18 year missionarys but to show everyone that this is the lords work he has chosen us. I just thought that was cool because its true, there are about 6 billion other people who could do this work better than me but because the it’s the lords work we are able to accomplish what he has sent us here to do. Anyways, this week in our apartment we have gone on a straight up baking spree. This week we cooked our own pizza with some pepperonis and salami that Ashly sent me and then we had a bright idea to try and make our own bread. So we made our own bread and liked it so we bought a bag of flower between the 4 of us. We have baked bread almost every night since Thursday (even though we don’t need that much haha) and then we made home made cinnamon rolls last night. We are thinking to open up our own African shop in the market and just bagging teaching  haha Just kidding. Plus we have a Nigerian in the apartment and he cooks some sweet Nigerian food to so we are just living life well here on this side haha.  Well things here are for sure great. Sure do love you all very much for all the influence you have had on my life. I hope you always continue to grow your testimony’s. Love you all and have a great week,

Love

Elder Bowring

Dear Mom and Dad,

Well things here are great, Last week dad I totally seen a guy wearing a Chad Reed shirt, I was freakin out and Elder Cottrell had no idea who he was haha so that was funny but it was sweet. I was thinking, I know you didn’t have any success at the google earth but I was thinking you could look up “ St. Paul Bridge” That is right no the edge of my area and then just follow that road up north and that is where Iron gate and those things should be. Just wanted to tell you that I ran out of juice plus at the first of this week and I definitely can feel the difference. Cant wait to get some more of that stuff out this way haha. Well not to much more things going on. You guys are great and I hope you guys have an awesome week. I still haven’t received that package so I figure if I just stop antipating it then it might show up haha. Well everything here is great. Love you both very much.

Love you African son,

Elder Bowring

March 24, 2014

Dear family,

Sorry my email is a little late this week. This morning me and Elder Cottrell had a LA member want to help us go fishing. A missionary here brought a fishing pole (genius idea) So we used that and went and tried to fish a little. We didn’t have to much success but we didn’t plan to well so we are going to give it another shot next week. The Place we are fishing they say you can catch Barracudas so that would be sweet. Sometimes we walk by (its in our area) and people will just have a basin full of like 3 or 4 huge barracudas. Its so sweet. Well this week was a great week, totally flew by but I guess every week does. This week was awesome. Things in our district are just going great, everyone just gets along great and we are just having a fun time. It’s fun having Elder Humphreys around again.  This week, we had a service project that was sweet. We went and helped our Elder Quorum president dig out his foundation for his new house that he is building. All we had to do was get a pick axe and bust up the ground (because it was so hard ) and then we had shovels and just dug it out. It sucked though because there is no garbage system here and hasn’t been for a while so there was so much trash and dirt and crap under the ground that we just kept running into. We dug out a tire rim and bunch of just bags and bottles and just a bunch of nasty stuff. IT was a fun service project though, it had been a while since I used a shovel. It makes me so mad though, when we go to do work like that and stuff, there are always some Africans who yell out “what, white man can work” or “ya this is Africa we work”. O my gosh it pisses me off so bad. I always talk back and call them out on it.  Anyways the service project was sweet and our Elders Quorum president was really appreciative of the help. This week things didn’t come as easy as they have been in the past. The last few people that we have baptized have honestly been so ready and prepared by the lord I didn’t even feel like I was doing anything but now that we have them mostly all baptized we have to find some more people and work harder on our other investigators who aren’t coming as easily. I know that It is just the lord testing us though to make sure that we are working our hardest. We have been working with this guy since I have been here in Banjor. His name is Bro. Friday. We were planning on baptizing him this week but the Word of Wisdom is giving him a hard time. Its not even Smoking or Drinking though, all it is is the Coffee and Tea, So because of that we had to postpone his baptism again to the 12 of April. I feel so bad for this guy, he is working his heart out trying to make ends meat. He is all alone, he has no family, no wife, no kids and he technically isn’t even home.  He is from Nigeria. You can honestly just tell by his stature that life has been hard on him so I am hoping that he will be able to kick the Word of Wisdom problem so we can baptize him. He really needs something sweet like that in his life. Well this week our whole district has seen a lot of miracles happen. Just like I said before, me and Elder Cottrell have been having to work a little harder but we have seen the fruits of our labors. Saturday was an awesome day. We had the day all planned out and it was going to be an awesome day but as the day went on we just kept having bounce after bounce after bounce but some how we were led to people that were ready to hear the gospel. After one particular bounce, we decided to go and see a man that we seen on Wednesday and when we got there he was so excited to see us. He told us that he had been waiting for us and that he even skipped out on going to the video club to watch the soccer game (which is huge around here) Then that night we were able to help one of members wife. His wife isn’t a member and we have been teaching her for the past couple of weeks. She knows that the church is true but is having a hard time leaving her church.  We were able to have a sweet lesson with her and really help her understand how she can get an answer to her prayer and to help her leave her church. Then that night we decided to go home a different way and invite a new contact to church on Sunday. We were able to invite him and then on the way home this guy stopped us wanting to know more so we walked with him and taught him about he restoration. It is crazy how much the lord helps us as missionarys. Sometimes I don’t even feel like I am doing anything because he is helping us so much. This Sunday we had district conference, it was so full that all the missionays were out side so I didn’t hear one word of it but I think it was good haha. It was sweet though we had about 1000 people there. This week I have really be enlightened on the importance of prayer. Usually I am the type of person who like to just do things by my self and don’t like to ask for help. I like to just do what I can. There was a few situations this week that I just stopped and thought, why don’t we pray about this and she what help we can get. We were tying to find a women this week who we had contacted. We had no idea where she lived and she wasn’t picking up her phone so me and Elder Cotrrell decided to pray for some help to be able to contact her some way. After about 5 minutes of looking for her having no luck I decieded to try her phone again (even though I had tried like 10 times) Well she awnsered and we were able to get in contact with her. The lord is just always willing to help us. I hope that I will be able always turn to the lord when I need help. Anyways, I am excited for this next week to go and see all of our new contacts. Should be a great week. Hope you all have a wonderful week. I love you all and don’t forget how much I love you.

Love Elder Bowring

Dear mom,and Dad.

Well this week was awesome. Things are just going swimmingly here. I still haven’t gotten your valentines package yet so still waiting on that thing. It will be sweet when I finally get it. I was wondering if you could do me a favor. You offered to send me some hair clippers before and I think I want to take you up on that in my next package. A missionary here has a pair and elder Cottrell  cut my hair this week like they would just be so sweet to have, so if you could do that, that would be awesome. I cant remember who I sent last week for the temple but here are a few more names. 

Derrick Nettey, Friday Deke, Nafisa Swarey, Lawrence Kezle, Alfred Tengbe, William Garnett.

Thanks for everything, I love you guys so much. I am always so glad to brag about my parents. I have had about 10 missionarys tell me that they want to come home and meet you guys.All I can do is agree with them J You guys are aweomse. Love you so much and miss you. Love Your favorite son ;)

Elder Bowring

Baptism of Emile Riddle

Elder Cottrell, Emile Riddle, Elder Bowring
Happy Day!!!

March 17, 2014

Dear family,

This week was a sweet week. Last week on Monday for P-day we went in town with Elder Cottrells MTC brothers like Zaugg, Guymon and them to celebrate there one year on mission. There is a new bakery place that opened up that sales pizza there (rare in Liberia) so we went and got some pizza and they also had a good ice cream machine (also rare in Liberia) So we totally enjoyed last Monday, cost me a ton but it was definitely worth it JJ After that we were already in town so me and Elder Cottrell went and decided to go and check out this old run down hotel. The  hotel was a nice hotel back in the day but it was destroyed during the war, and after that the whole building has just been picked apart for everything its worth. All the windows, all the wires inside, literally everything has been stolen from there but we were able to take a tour and go on the very top and you could literally see all of Liberia, it was so sweet, I have some pictures I will send when I have a chance. Tuesday I went on an exchange with one of our Zone leaders in his area so that was pretty sweet. His name is Elder Lamont and is from Oregon, he has been on mission for over a year now but it was really sweet. I love seeing other peoples area and stuff. Wensday we took a trip out to the beach, we have a bunch of LA members out there and it really made me realize the importance of making sure that people feel loved. We have a member out there who had gotten sick and had missed church and never got visited or got called by anyone from the branch so he thought that nobody cared about him and has stopped coming to church. He is bitter towards the church. He told us how can this be the true church when the members don’t even live to what they teach and that really struck me pretty hard. It is true, we need to always show love to people who are in need and need to always practice what we preach. People definitely notice the things we do and in this guys case, it had a terrible effect. I feel so bad and we are really trying to work with this guy to get him back strong into the church. Luckily we had our branch mission leader with us so he was able to apologize for not coming out and apologize for the branch but he still didn’t come to church this week. We will keep working on him. On Thursday I had 2 more Baptismal interviews, I am getting to the point that I am getting used to doing them now and feel like I do a good job. (Atleast I hope so). On Saturday this week we had an awesome baptism. We baptized three people. We baptized a father and a son whose names are Cadarous Zuah and his sons name is Mark. This guy is so sweet, how we met him was one day we were teaching a lesson to one of our investigators and he saw us so he sat down in on the lesson. We invited him to church and he said he would come. Well he didn’t come for like 2 weeks so we just thought he was just another guy who was willing to listen to us but just wasn’t serious (happens all the time) but then one Sunday he called us and asked us where the church was and he came and since then he Hasn’t missed a Sunday. The next guy we baptized was Emile Riddle, he is our dread lock friend and is seriously the sweetest guy ever. We were able to hold the Baptism to our own branch and have our branch be involved and give talks and everything (which is huge). Everything was pretty hectic trying to get things together. We had to have a water truck come in and pump water to our outside font because the water from our well is like red, our branch mission leader hadn’t assigned anybody to talk yet so we had to assign some people at the last second to give talks but it all ended up working and we had a great spiritual baptism. After the baptism, they gave the investigators a chance to bear there testimony and when it was Emile’s turn he went up there and said “I don’t really know what to say, im pretty confused right now so ya” and then just walked off hahaha. I was a bit worried, wondering if he was like having second thoughts and what not but after the baptism we talked to him and he said that he just didn’t know what to say because he was so happy haha it was awesome. He is such a sweet guy. Saturday night was pretty rough, my stomach was kind of bugging me all day and that night I ended up puking 3 times through the night so that was pretty miz. It was coming out both ends to haha just not a fun night but I am feeling better now so its all good. Saturday night we got transfer news to and I am staying and I am still with Elder Cottrell, I am pumped. We are just strait doing work here in banjor haha. We also received Elder Humphrey’s into our apartment to so I am pumped about that. We are going to have a great time and a lot of fun. Its going to be a great transfer uphead. Well that was basically my week. We are having so many baptisms lately I got to take a break ;) My arms are getting tired from dunking people into the water haha jk. It is going to be a couple of weeks until our next baptism though but its totally cool. I hope you all have a good week and I pray that you all love one another and always make sure you are taking care of one another. Really does go a long ways. Anyways love ya all. Till next week.

Elder Bowring.

Dear Mom and Dad,

Nothing to out of the ordinary happened this week that I got to share with you haha. I still haven’t gotten your valentines package so I am still anxiously waiting for that thang to come. I did come up with a list of investigators that could really use some divine help by putting there names into the temple so here they are.

Levi and Merci

Peter Blamo & Minstress Blamo

Nafisa and Richard Swarey

Kelfalla (you have his last name from last week dad)

Lawrence Kezle

I will probably send some different ones everyweek but these ones could use it everyweek, some of them we have been working with for a while and really need some help from our heavenly father. Thank you so much for doing that, it means a lot to me that you guys care so much about the people I am teaching. I hope you guys had an awesome spring break and I cant wait to read about it J Love you both so much. Your son

Elder Bowring

March 10, 2014

Dear family, this week was a great week. I went on another exchange to start the week off. The Elders name is Elder Osanebi, he is from Nigeria and actually Elder Guymon trained him. He is such a sweet guy and he is funny. We had a good exchange though, he had a really cool conversion story. I guess his mom was really high up in her church and was about to become a Pastor and then they met the missionarys so she decided to try it out and she said that she felt something at the church that she had never felt at her church and long story short there whole family is now members of the church and are super strong. It was really cool and he told his conversion story to one of our investigators whose husband is a member and who knows that the church is true but is having a hard time leaving her church, so it was awesome.  Thursday we went and did a service project for some people in Elder Morrisons and Elder Osanebi’s area. It was a good service project, we just cleared some grass and some brush for them. The only thing that sucked was that we had to used nothing but hoes to get rid of the grass because they wanted to plant where we were clearing so we had to clear it all the way out. Hoes take forever to clear out a huge area. We worked probably a solid 3 or 4 hours and it didn’t even seem like we did to much haha but it was good. My back was definitely sore afterwards. I am never going to complain about doing yard work again back home with all the tillers and lawn mowers and everything because that is straight up luxury right there haha. Well this week me and Elder Cottrell focused a ton on our Seirra Leonne guys and another guy named Cadarius that we are preparing to be baptized this week. It is so amazing how fast a person can change just from the gospel. I have seen it especially with our Seirra Leonne guys, we have only been seeing them a couple of weeks now but they have totally changed there hearts and are just so willing to do what needs to be done and it is making them so happy. They are just doing complete 180’s in there life right now. We taught them the word of wisdom and every single one of them smoked weed (not to surprised there haha) but by the end of this week, they have stopped already. For one guy , Emile, he stopped like 2 weeks ago when we first started coming around with out us even talking to him about it. It is just so amazing what the gospel can do to people. Unfortunetly we are only going to be able to baptize 1 of them this week though. Kelfallah (kelo) has some major unresolved things with his past gangster life that he needs to take care of and another guy broke the law of chastity last week before we taught him so we have to give him some time but it is seriously a miracle of how fast these guys have progressed. We did have a baptism on Saturday. Our original plan was to have the baptism to our own branch and do everything as a branch (which we haven’t done yet, we usually all just go to one church with a bunch of branches to do it). It would have been the best thing ever and we had everything all prepared. Me and Elder Cottrell had to go and clean the outside font Saturday morning to get everything all ready. Well after we finished cleaning the font and was about ready to get to baptism set up, we got a call from the water people who were supposed to haul the water in to fill up the font and the truck we were supposed to use broke down that morning. So we had no way to fill up the font so at the last minute we had to call all of our branch members who were planning on coming and call our investigators and tell them that it was being switched to the district center. Miraculously, everything worked our perfect. All of our members were able to come and help with the baptism and our Investigators showed up and had a wonderful experience. We baptized a man, Richard Zeogar, his soon to be wife is our Relief Society president so that was sweet. We also baptized Cynthia Tarplah and her Husband Samuel was able to do the baptism, it was so awesome. We had to like force him to do the baptism but we finally got him to agree to it. It was one of the best baptisms I have been a part of. The branch here is doing so good and is getting so strong, this week in sacrament meeting we had to use about every chair in the building so everyone could sit. There was honestly like no more room there. It was so awesome. Anyways, that was about my week for this week. This week is the end of the transfer so it could be possible that there will be a change next week when I email you. I pray that I stay and that me and Elder Cottrell stay together atleast one more transfer. We are having so much success and I am just loving working with him. He is easy to get along with and we just have a good time together. It was crazy, Elder Cottrell hit his one year mark on Saturday along with Elder Zaugg and Guymon, so we are going to go and celebrate in town today so that will be sweet. Well I love you all and I hope you are all enjoying life to the fullest. 

Love Elder Bowring

March 3, 2014

Dear family,

This week was a sweet week and strait up flew by but I guess all weeks fly by haha. Anyways this week was good. I went on an exchange with one of our district members this week, Elder Morrison. He is from Ghana and he is the one that is like 27 haha. Kind of weird but everything was good. He is a sweet Elder and I think that I am starting to get a hang of this whole District leader thing. Atleast I hope that I am. On our exchange we had a ton of FM’s (Free meals). They always get them in there area, I don’t understand haha. Its probably a good thing that me and Elder Cottrell don’t get as many though or else we would just get fat. Anyways in one of the FM’s we had, the meat inside the stew was Armadillo meat.  It was freakin good. They just dried it and threw it in the stew so I can tack that onto the list of things I have eaten here. Friday Me and Elder Cottrell just basically walked all day haha. We only had 2 lessons (which totally sucks) because we had so many bounces and the next appointment would be like a 30 min. walk away so we would walk to the next appointment and it would bounce and all of our back ups would bounce so we got a good leg work out on the Friday. I wish I would of know how far we walked because it was a lot.  This week was another awesome week with Dennis, Kelo, and Emile. They all three came to church again and everytime we go to there house to teach them, they are just so excited to learn more. They always read the assignments that we give them and understand what they read, which is rare here in Liberia. These guys are honestly like the sweetest investigators I have had on my mission so far. All they want to do is give there life to chirst and start living a good life.  It is just a testimony to me that any body can change their, no matter what circumstances they have been in the past.  We are planning to baptize these guys in like 2 weeks just because they are already so ready and willing. Well Saturday was awesome. We were planning on having a Baptism but we decided to postpone it until next week so that we and the branch could just focus on the Tarplahs wedding. Well the wedding was sweet. IT was supposed to start at 10 on Saturday morning so me and Elder Cottrell showed up at like 9:50 and when we got there, no body else was there and there was nothing set up yet. Well about 10:10 our Branch President showed up to the chapel with just a big smile on his face like we were just running on time and everything haha so we helped set up chairs and what not and people started coming. Well the Tarplahs didn’t end up showing up until like 11:30. They were an hour and a half late to there own wedding. I honestly just don’t understand Liberians sometimes haha. It is going to be so weird coming home and actually have things start and go as planned because Liberians absolutely don’t respect time. Well the actual wedding ceremony was pretty dull and boring, not going to lie to you there haha I was dosing off. But the reception afterwards was sweet. At receptions here, the couple sits up front and then people of honor sit behind them and then the congregation is all facing them. The people of honor are usually just like the Branch and district president and just the leaders in the church. Well me and Elder Cottrell were just chilling in the back talking with some of the members and some body came and grabbed us and drug us up front where they had two seats for us to sit with the honorary people haha. It was like akward sitting up there but it was sweet. Then Samuel Tarplah stood up, and gave like a speech and he had me and Elder Cottrell stand up and he told everyone that we were the instruments in making this wedding happen and like had everyone clap for us. Once again that was pretty akward haha but it was cool to be a part of that. It was so awesome to see them have that faith to get married so that we can baptize Cynthia and so they can start preparing for the temple.  WE are planning on baptizing Cynthia this week along with the other guy, Bro. Zeogar. It is going to be awesome. Then if everything turns out how we have planned it we are going to have about 6 baptisms the next week. How sweet would that be. Well anyways that was about it for my week. Things here are great and I am just loving my area and the missionarys that I am with. I hope I can stay in this branch for a while longer because I absolutely just love them. Plus I need to give a shout out to Brother Paul, he is a member of my branch and he found my blog and always reads my weekly letters home so this is my shout out to you Bro. Paul when ever you read this hahah BRAPPPP. Ok anyways love you guys and I hope you all have an awesome super week. Love

Elder Bowring