January 21, 2013: Announcing Elder Bowles' Homecoming

**We are very excited to announce that Elder Bowles returns home February 5, 2013 at 10:30 in the morning.  His Homecoming will be Sunday February 10 at 1:00 in the afternoon.  We extend an invitation to all who would like to support Garrett on this exciting day!  Please come over to the house afterwards for a light lunch and to visit with him.

January 21, 2013: Elder Bowles

Dear Mom and Dad:

 

I go home in two weeks!!! aaaaa!!! Yesterday on Sunday I was just thinking and saying to myself wow I have two more Sundays after this, that is crazy.  Yea it has been wonderful weather 70-80 degrees.  It nice when we go down by the beach-- we see the ocean.  The next group of missionaries will come in February when I leave.  There are 30 coming in February and in March there are 43 coming.   We will get 100 new missionaries by June 1st 2013.  Crazy--Wow!  Everyone in the the mission will be training so I feel bad for all the missionaries. 

 

This week was good we were able to teach a little more people just less actives, we have no investigators at this time.  There is this one kid in our ward who is not a member of the church but goes to church every week and  has been going for 6 years.  He just got accepted to BYU Idaho and he might get baptized here.  The ward is working with them so we are just waiting for him to say yes to the lessons then we can get him down into the water.  So it will be exciting-- we are on a waiting game right now.

 

District meeting was good.  I was able to say a lot more things and we got a discusion going so I thought it was good.  The topicc could be like work effectivly every day, preach my gospel, or teach when you find find when you teach.  That is what i do-- I just give the instructions to my district.  The last one was good and I hope this one will be good too.

 

Not much to say, I'm going home in two weeks and I am excited for that wonderful accomplishment.

Thanks Mom and Dad.

 

Love Elder Bowles

January 14, 2013: Picture

Elder Bowles in front of the beautiful Long Beach coastline.

Monday January 14, 2013: Elder Bowles

 

Dear Mom and Dad:

 

It has been cold in Utah,  I am going to die in utah when I get off the plane and I am going to be like oh it is freezing here.  Last night it got to 50 degrees and it has been cold all week.  I wear my jacket and that helps a lot.  Right now in my area everyone has been getting sick.  Everyone is sick even my companion got sick last week.  It was Tuesday and in the morning he was feeling okay then in the afternoon he was like I don't feel good so we stayed inside for a bit.  Then like half an hour later he threw up.  He was sick for two days but I got to go out with another missionary on splits so we can get some work done.  Everything was good.  I went on exchanges with another missionary in his area.  The family heard we ate  baloot and wanted to see the video.  We showed it to them.

 

Something cool happened this week.   The Bishop got up and told some wonderful news.  There is a boy in the ward who has a kidney problem.  He is fine he is like a normal boy but a year ago the doctors found some tumors on his kidney and they got it out.  This year they found some more on his kidneys so the ward was asked to fast and pray for the boy that the surgery will go well and the tumors could be removed.  This week the boy went in for surgery to remove those tumors.  There were 7 doctrors working on him-- he is a special case.  When they docotrs were in the surgery room they found no tumors on his kidneys-- they were gone, disappeared.  The surgery was suppose to take 2 1/2 hours but they were out in less than an hour.  Amazing right?   God works in wonderful miracles.   The tumors are gone and they don't have to worry about it.  Fasting and faith and prayer-- wow that is a wonderful story.   Now they will get to share the rest of their lives together.

 

This week we are going to do a lot of service this week and someone is getting baptized this Saturday-- it is somone from our district so that will be exciting.  Good things will happen this week.  I have pictures I will send some to you.

 

Love,

Elder Bowles

Monday December 31, 2012: Elder Bowles--Happy New Year

Dear Mom,Dad, and Kristin:

Christmas was wonderful and it was great to see all of you on skype.  We had a breakfast with a member that morning, skype, then lunch at 2pm then a dinner at 5pm.  It was all very good with a full day of activities.   The next day after Christmas was the hardest. Everyone is with their families and no one wants to talk to missionaries.  We just didn't visit any members of the ward because we wanted them to enjoy their christmas.  So it was hard but the day went by fast which was weird.

It is almost 2013 --crazy right?  So I only have one month or 35 days-- don't worry I am not counting the days but it is crazy that I am going home soon.  Some of the ward members know that I only have 6 weeks left.  They are like wow, you are almost done with your mission wow!!.  I was like yep 6 weeks left!!

I feel bad that you had to clean up all the cheese in the kitchen it sounds pretty funny ha ha.   Did Harley start going to the kitchen and help you clean some up?   Good thing we have new years eve on Pday so we don't bug the people in the neighborhoods and they will say-- ah the missionaries-- hide!!  New Years day will be a tough one because it's like another Christmas.

Right now we are just on a waiting game because there are 2 nonmembers who come to church all the time and we are just waiting for them to say yes to the discussions so we can baptize them in a week.  I am pretty confident that we will get a baptism before I leave just lots of faith and prayer.   It will be awesome if we can get a baptism--that will start the ward off to a great new year--whoo  hoo!  I am excited for this last month as a missionary I will work hard.

I took some pictures on the new camera but forgot to bring the cord from the apartment.  Sorry--I'll send them to you next week.  It's going to be a great day.  We are going to have fun on this new year's eve night.  We will see if people are interested-- maybe.

aaa --it has been snowing in Utah.  Man, I am definitely going skiing when I get back.  With all that fresh snow, yes I am going skiing.  Well I heard it's going to snow more this week because it has rained and been very cold here in California.  When we exercise in the mornings I can see my breath so it is cold.  Then in the day it is not that bad but when the night comes I always wear my jacket.

Well I hope you have a wonderful new year's eve and a happy new year.  I can't wait to see what 2013 brings!

Love,  Elder Bowles

Friday December 28, 2012: Hermana Bowles

Kristin's Mission Homecoming Talk is this Sunday December 30.  Our building is located at 670 East 800 North, Orem, Utah.  Sacrament Meeting begins at 11:00 am.   Come by the house after  for some food and a visit with Kristin.  We are very excited she is home!

December 24, 2012: Elder Bowles

Dear Mom and Dad:

 

Wow that is crazy that kristin didn't arrive till 8:00pm at night.  Before I forget, I got my travel flight plans.  I will leave on February 5th at the Long Beach airport.  I will fly out at 7:30am.   It says I get there at 10:30am utah time so I will be there early in the morning.

 

Of course missionary work is slow during this christmas holiday.  On Thursday we had our Christmas zone meeting.  It's another Reunion with all the missionaries and it was good, the food was good and we played the white elephant game.  I got the strangest gift-- it was a picture of christ and the last supper.  The missionaries found it by the dumpster and it was a really old painting.  It was cool but what am I going to do with it?   One of the sister missionaries was like cool, do you want to trade my gift?   So we traded and it was good.  A good day, then after the testimony of christ.  It was good.

 

I saw this one house with christmas lights and did get a picture of it.  Man, this house had every square inch filled with Christmas lights.  I almost went to the house and asked them how long it took them to put up these lights.  It was definitely a bright house and it was really cool. Other than that we went by the people in the ward seeing if there is anything we can help them with during this Christmas holiday.  We were able to see some less actives and hope to brighten up their day.  It was busy this week so that was good. 

 

I got your package on Thursday.   Thanks for the camera-- I was not expecting it to be that nice.  Don't worry I have not opened the rest of the packages yet-- I have to wait till christmas day.  On Tuesday last week I was thinking all day about how Kristin is coming home.  I can't believe it-- she got home before I do.  So lucky!!  We are just trying to look for people to teach and offer lot's of service during this Christmas season. I skype to you tomorrow between 1:00 and 2:00--  that way we will have lots to talk about.  I am grateful to be a missionary. I have 6 more weeks, the countdown begins.

 

Love ya all!

Elder Bowles