July 15, 2013

Hey Momma!!

So, we have a new companion!! It's Hermana Mellor. She's from Manti, and she's awesome. She's super hilarious, and also a great missionary. But she makes missionary work really fun too :-) Hermana Canova went to a neighboring area, so she's just in the other ward that meets in the same building. So I still see her a lot :-) haha I'll try and attach a few pictures...let me know if it works...

It actually hasn't been too rainy...it's pretty overcast right now, but nothing has come down really. But it is a little cooler, which is nice. No...I don't use a rain coat. Umbrella - Yes. It's a little too hot to put on another layer...and muggy. But I still love this weather :-) It's wonderful!! Sounds like you have a great week planned!! I'm only slightly jealous ;-) haha Just give everyone big hugs from me!!

What a great week. Really, fantastic though. We had a baptism yesterday!! It was for Luis Gutierrez, our 14 year old. He finally made it to the baptismal font. And what a wonderful night. He's been taught for about 7 months now, and it wasn't until recently that he actually started taking it seriously, and he showed more effort on his part, which has been so amazing to see. I think the best part of it all, however, was that his whole family came!! His mother, and his aunt, who are very inactive members, his grandma, his other aunt (who is pretty active) and her whole family - it was so great. I was really worried at first because the baptism had started and only his aunt had showed up. But after 5 minutes, the finally arrived, and it was great to finally see her being interested in her son's baptism. It was so great. We plan on following up with them this week, and seeing if we can commit them to come to his confirmation as well.

I just love our new companionship. I really do. Hermana Mellor (our new companion) is so fantastic, and she has brought so many great ideas to help us work this area. I think before we were just in such a routine that it was getting hard to find new investigators and to not fall back into the same old habits. But now, we're trying out some new finding ideas, and it's working! For example, we teach this English class everyWednesday at the library. The people we teach know that we're missionaries, but none of them have really shown interest in learning more about what we teach. But, we were knocking on a street the other day, and we were about to walk back to our car when we saw one of our students! We ran over really quick and said hi. She was with her husband and her daughter, and they were about to go have a picnic in the park. We asked them if the had a few minutes and if we could share something with them, and they accepted. We got a return appointment with them for this next week as well!

This week I'm continuing to work on charity. Reading the section in Preach My Gospel, it really talks a lot about service. So, as a companionship, we decided that we want to serve people more, and specifically the ward members. We're trying to build more of a trust relationship with them, and so we decided that our commitments to them when we have dinner this week are going to be about service. Asking them what we can do to serve them, and then asking them to pass it along

Anyways, I hope you have a fantastic week!! I love you mucho!!

Hermana Bowerman

June 24, 2013

This week has been a major improvement from the last. I'm not quite sure what happened last week, but our companionship unity was out of balance. But now we are back on track and ready to work. I think the zone conference really helped us to center our focus on the same things. I really liked the broadcast from last night as well. It really helped to motivate me to work even harder, especially after seeing the success in other missions in the world. One of the things that really stood out to me was how everything comes back to the bishop and the ward mission leader. Right now, we are struggling with both of those people. The bishop is still really sick. Our Stake President did come to our ward yesterday and gave the ward a challenge to pray for him as a ward. He promised us that if we have the faith, then our bishop will be healed. I sincerely hope that our ward follows through with this because if they do, then it will be a great blessing. I think it will help with ward unity, especially if they see how when they all come together they can bring to pass miracles. I'm not quite sure when we will start using the technology that they mentioned...we'll have to see! Our mission president sent us a letter this morning saying that he knows as much as we do at this point, but he thinks it will be soon.

Things in our area are going really well. We taught quite a few lessons this week, and we really put our faith into it. One of my favorite examples was when we passed by to see an investigator. She wasn't home, but we decided not to get back into our car until we taught a lesson. We knew of a less active that lived across the street, so we decided to knock on her door. She didn't answer, so we just decided to knock on her neighbor's doors. Nobody really answered, but then we saw the husband and daughter of our less active come home. So, we decided to go up and ask him if he needed help taking in their groceries. He said no, but told us that his wife was home. So, we went in and saw her. We were able to teach a really great lesson about the Restoration. The Spirit was so strong in that lesson - something we have been lacking in previous lessons with her. It was such a miracle that we were able to be there at the right time to see her. We also went by and saw our recent convert Jaime. (Pronounced Hi-may, just in case you were wondering...) we weren't quite sure what we wanted to teach him when we went into the lesson. All we had in mind was talking about agency. So, we went in and started, and the Spirit really took over. It ended up kind of being a mini testimony meeting (we had a member with us, and he kind of initiated it) and it was so great. Jaime has such a strong testimony, and he has seen so many blessings since he joined the church. One of those blessings includes a better relationship with his family. He went and visited his dad for the first time in a long time on Father's day, which was super great. He has a better relationship with his daughter, and even his ex-wife ( just as the mother of his daughter) and he went on and on about tons of other blessings that he has seen. I know that this gospel blesses families.

Something that I am personally working on this week is being a bigger part of the teaching process. Whether it be contacting, How to begin teaching lessons, or other lessons, I decided to not be afraid to speak Spanish and just go for it. I've noticed that when we teach in English, it is so much easier for me to speak through the spirit, but when it's in Spanish I usually get really afraid and back off a little bit. But I really took the promise in D&C 100 to heart. I've really noticed a difference. I still stumble a lot and I'm pretty sure I sound like a caveman when I speak Spanish, but I am able to get my point across. I really like the story told by Brigham Young about the man who could do no more than bear a simple testimony, but that testimony was so strong in his eyes. Right now, all I have is a simple testimony. So I am going to be better about sharing it more frequently.

Sorry for the lack of pictures...for some reason it never seems to work, but I'll try and figure something out. I'll get something to you soon!! Something that I am going to start doing though is a video journal. Sometimes it's kind of  hard to sit down and write about everything in my journal, but lots of times, we get stuck waiting for trains, so it's the perfect time to do a quick video :-) haha I'm going to try it soon...I'll let you know how it goes. (This was an idea from another missionary) 

There's nothing super exciting going on this week...just the norm, but we are getting close to transfers! It'll be interesting to see if I stay or go...I've heard that there are 9 new hermanas coming in, so that will be interesting. I hope everything is going well back home!! I love you dearly and I hope you have a fantastic week!!

Love,

Hermana Bowerman

June 18

Well...this past week. To be honest, probably one of the hardest yet. We just didn't have the most successful week ever, and that was really hard for me. We didn't get to see a lot of people, and I kind of took it personally, I just kept wondering what I was doing wrong, and what I needed to change. Also, sometimes my companions don't get along too well (They're super similar, and so they annoy each other a lot) So I usually end up being in the middle of it all. But yesterday we had a zone conference with Elder Christoffel Golden Jr. (Not sure if you guys remember him from conference...) But the conference really helped change my perspective. Elder Golden talked a lot about faith. He said faith = personal righteousness. I really liked that analogy because in the end, I can't change my companions. I can't change our investigator's minds, But I can have personal righteousness and increase my own faith by doing that. He also talked a lot about Faith, Hope, and Charity as well. He showed us how faith and hope really just go in a cycle, but in the middle of that cycle is charity. When we have charity for every one, we have the pure love of Christ, and we can increase our personal righteousness, thereby increasing our faith, and that goes into the cycle of faith and hope.

It was really just such a great conference. Something else that helped a whole lot, was we had exchanges this past week as well. Hermana Canova went to a different area for a day and Hermana Pitts, another Hermana close by, came here. We had such a wonderful day. There were so many miracles that happened. We saw tons of people that we haven't been able to see for weeks. Also, super random miracle that happened, we were walking up to an investigator's home when this guy who was driving by in a car called out to us. He said, "where's the other one?" We turned around, super confused, and he repeated his question.  We realized that he was talking about Hermana Canova, and so we explained that she was in a different area for the day (Mind you, we had no idea who this guy was) And so, we just talked to the guy for a minute, and he told us that we had come by like 2 weeks earlier and said we would come back, but we never did ( we kind of assumed he talked to Jehovah's Witness or something...). So, we set up another appointment with him for this week! Super random. We'll see how that one turns out.

Nothing else super eventful has happened this week...We did set a baptismal date with our 14 year old investigator, so we'll see if he can get there in time. We weren't able to see Karina and Reynaldo this week because Reynaldo was traveling, and when we went by Karina, she was sick. So that didn't work out too well...hopefully this week we can go by and see them.

Anyways. I hope everything is going well back there!! I love you so very much, and I hope you have a fantastic week!!

Hermana Bowerman

***

One more quick story...

Funny experience that we had last week though...we got this referral from some English elders for a lady named Gladys. We went by, and met her, went in and had a quick lesson with her. She's a baker, and she LOVES to talk. And she talks very fast. So we had the lesson, and then afterwards we asked her if we could leave with a prayer, she says of course, and she stands up. We decided to pray her way this time then teach her our way the next. So we stand up, hold hands, and ask who she would like to offer the prayer. She was kind of confused at first, so we asked if she would like to say it, or us. She said, " Oh, me of course, I'm the host here!" And so we bow our heads and wait for her to start. And we wait. And wait. And waited some more. About 20 minutes later, she lifts up her head and says okay. And that was it. Holy. cow. The most bizarre thing ever. That whole time I kept checking my watch ( mind you it was almost curfew...) and we had absolutely no idea what to do. So we just stood there. Hahaha So hilarious. Anyways. She seems super promising though, we have a return appointment with her this next week.

June 10

Hey there!! Sounds like a great Stake Conference. That's kind of cool that both the old and the new Stake President's were part of my setting apart :-) haha I'm so excited to hear about the piano!! When you get it you should take a video and send it to me. I miss that piano so much!! I love the new chair though!! Super pretty. Is that in the craft room or in the living room? There really hasn't been anything super eventful this week. We've been really focusing on getting new investigators though because our pool was dwindling a little bit. Our most eventful lesson was with the couple that we are teaching, Karina and Reynaldo. We have extended a baptismal invitation before, and they do really want to be baptized, but they wouldn't accept a date. Their previous answer was that there were a lot of things they still needed to work out. We knew that they weren't married, but we weren't sure what else still was a problem. Turns out, Reynaldo is still not divorced from his ex-wife. He is, however, headed to Georgia this week to see his kids and her, so hopefully they can get it worked out. They have such a strong desire to be baptized. They can see the changes the gospel has made in their lives already, and they are practically members. They come to church every week, participate in the activities, buy plates for the Boy Scout fundraisers, and everything. They just need to baptized now! Our recent convert is doing well also. He still doesn't have the priesthood because there have been a lot of problems with our bishop being sick, and so he hasn't been there for a while. He's supposed to come back this next Sunday hopefully, so then Jaime can get the priesthood and start exercising it. There are a lot of problems with the leadership in our ward though. A lot of people either don't show up on Sundays, or only show up for part of it. And a lot of the times those people are the leaders, like the bishop, Young Men's, Primary, etc. We have never had a ward council since we've been here, and a lot of the presidents don't have councilors either, so if they don't show up, then there's nobody there to help out. It's kind of a problem. We're teaching a 14 year old boy right now, and we've been teaching him for a long time, and I don't think he's ever met the Young Men's president. Mom - I got the package on Wednesday. Super fast!! And I LOVE all the clothes :-) They fit perfectly!! And the rolls were super delicious :-) Thank you so much for everything!!! You're the best :-) I love you so very much!! Con mucho amor, Hermana Bowerman

June 3

This week has been really good. We had really good numbers for seeing less actives/recent converts this week, and it showed in church attendance! We had a lot of our less actives come. We also had the confirmation of Jaime who got baptized last week. It was super great, and he was the talk of the ward for the rest of the classes and such. Everyone was asking him how he felt and everything, it was pretty funny. But it was super great. We also extended a baptismal invitation to another couple, who have been consistently coming to church for about 5 weeks now. They didn't give a definite yes or no to the invitation (we've given it several times...) but they did go on and on about how they can already see how much this church has blessed their lives. They communicate with each other better, they feel more peace in their home, they have more patience with their kids, it was so awesome to hear them talk about their blessings. We gave them a goal of July 7, and they said they will try to prepare, so we'll see how these next few weeks go. Oh, and they also love us so much, that they signed up on the ward list to feed us this Saturday :-) haha Super great. We talked as a companionship a lot this week about charity. We made it one of our goals to have more charity for everyone. Another goal is to see everyone as being someone with potential. We tend to play favorites with our investigators sometimes, and so we put a little more thought into their lessons or whatnot, but if we can see everyone as having that potential of being baptized, then we'll want to put just as much effort into their lessons as someone with a baptismal date. Personally this week in my reading, I read a lot about the Atonement. It was interesting to me to see that even people like Alma, and the sons of Mosiah, and all of these great people that we read about in the Book of Mormon, they all had a past. Before Alma was struck down, he went about destroying the church. It was just comforting to know that even though we all make mistakes, we can all also be forgiven completely. We can all turn our lives around, start over, and become the person that Heavenly Father wants us to become. All of our investigators are doing well...still trying to figure out how to help a lot of them go from being just an investigator to progressing to having a baptismal date. Some of them are just frustrating. Quick question though...is there more than one church building in Katy? We met a guy from there and he asked where it was...I could only remember the one down in Old Katy...is there one on Fry? He said he thought he saw one there right across from Walmart? I'm not quite sure. But it was kind of cool to be able to remember the streets over there a little bit :-) Anyways. This week is going to be a great one!! I hope yours is as well :-) Love always, Hermana Bowerman

May 27, 2013

Hi momma...Thank you so much!!! Wearing the same thing every single day gets kind of monotonous...and if you find any skirts too, feel free to send them my way :-) haha Where does Pam Steenhoek live? Still in Katy? Or did they move? Our ward is trying to be bilingual...they do the Sacrament prayers in English and Spanish, and we sing our intermediate hymn in English. And this past Sunday, we had an English speaker with a translator. It's pretty windy here today as well...not really sure if there's a storm coming or not...we'll find out!! I still go play tennis every morning though :-) We have a racketball racket too, so sometimes one of my companions comes and plays with me :-) haha Normally to email we go to a nearby college, but they were closed, and we're on bikes today, so we came to the Library. The library just has very limited hours, so we can't always come here. Biking is good :-) haha we haven't riden in a while, because my bike tire popped (again) so we had to wait to get a new tire before we could go again. But I got it fixed up, and back in working order!! Dad would be so proud. Especially since the whole tire kind of fell off when I was putting the new tire on, so I had to put it back on the chain and everything. I felt like a pro. haha :-) But it is quite hot today...about 90 I think is the forecast. We have a weather service we call in the mornings for our forecast :-) And not to mention, we have the occasional "splash and dash" as our weather man called it, or a few quick showers here and there. Dinner calendar...it's usually pretty full. They pass one around for each coming week because there are 3 companionships in our ward, and having 3 separate calendars would get kind of hectic. But usually it's not too bad. We have I think 4 appointments for the rest of the week. The food is almost always delicious...I think I've decided hispanic food is just my favorite. A member took us to a buffet this past week, and what did I first choose to eat? Mexican food. Geez. (See pictures in dad's email...) So, the first picture is of our baptism that we had on Sunday!! All went according to plan, and it was so perfect. Well, almost according to plan at least...there was supposed to be another girl getting baptized as well, but she backed out at the last minute, which also meant that her family wasn't coming either. So we had to make a quick emergency stop at Walmart the night before to get some refreshments for all the other people that came...haha good thing we did, because a lot of people came. Manuel, the guy who baptized Jaime, brought his entire family. So we probably had about 30 people come to support Jaime. Super awesome. Jaime cried, and the Spirit was so strong. It was just perfect!! The other picture is our district...minus 2 more sisters. Their area is really far away from ours, however, so they couldn't make it for our picture. Our district leader was Elder McConnell, the brown haired one. He was super great, but he just got made a zone leader for this next transfer, so he's leaving our district now. Can you believe I've already been here for a transfer?? Craziness. This past week we also had zone conference. It was really great, and we learned a whole lot about how to teach the Book of Mormon effectively. We did a lot of role plays :-) And then, after we came back from lunch, President Crawford asked me to sing a solo in front of everyone!! Holy cow. So nerve racking. He asked me like 2 minutes before I got up and did it too. I sang Savior Redeemer of my soul...don't know if you know that song or not...but it was fun. Believe it or not. Haha AND...I was talking to one of the assistants, and he was just asking me what I was studying in college...talked about flute...and he asked me to do a musical number this transfer for a conference that we are going to have with one of the people who came to conference...Christoffel somebody I think...But yeah. So I told him if he could find me a flute, I'd be happy to :-) haha I really do love sharing my talents. So, besides that, nothing new has happened. We are still teaching all of our investigators, and they're doing great. This past Sunday the theme of the day was Temples I guess, so everyone was talking about that, and I think (hope) it kind of hit home for some of our investigators. Especially Karina and Reynaldo. They know it's true, and they really want to make this change in their lives, but they're hesitating for some reason. But they really want to get involved with the ward, which is so great. I guess our ward goes to the peanut butter factory (remember that??) like every other week or something, and Karina and Reynaldo went!! We didn't even know about it. They just told us that they went, and they loved it!! They didn't know a whole lot of people, but we're working on that. Anyways. So what else is going on back there? Are you getting more moved in? Space wise, how is looking? Better than Katy, I hope :-) haha How are my siblings? I haven't heard from them in a while...and the puppies?? I hope all is well. I love you all and miss you dearly!! Have a fantastic week, Hermana Bowerman

May 20, 2013

Haha that's so great that you had such a good time with your sisters. I'm glad that everything was able to work out!! And pretty sure based on that picture that your hair is way longer than mine now...haha :-) Let's see what happened this past week...We are teaching a lot of people, but we have also lost a couple this week. One was Margarita...she let us in only because I think she thought that we were just sharing a message about Jesus Christ, but she didn't ever really want to hear about the Book of Mormon or anything like that. It makes me so sad when people say they don't want to even try to read it, because I have gained such a great love for this book. The other people we lost actually happened last night. We were teaching Julio and Marta ( Son and mother) They've been taught for a while actually, by other missionaries, so we tried to just have a first lesson with them last night again. They were never really paying attention, and then at the end when we asked Marta to pray and see if what we were teaching was true, she just refused to even try. So unfortunately we have to drop them as well. But we are teaching a lot of other people, and always looking for new investigators. Our most promising investigators right now are Lupita y Leslie...a part member family ( her husband and son are members, but super inactive) But she is actually progressing and I think she has a desire to learn more and eventually be baptized. She does have a problem with coming to church because she works every Sunday, but hopefully if we can get her husband to start coming, then that will give her motivation to start coming as well. Also we are teaching Juaquin, who is from Cuba. He really loves learning about the gospel. He reads the Book of Mormon, prays, goes to church, but he is still hung up on learning everything. He also has a girlfriend in San Antonio that he goes to see every weekend now, so he doesn't come to church with us, but he did start going there, which is super great. We're still teaching Jaime, and he is getting baptized this Sunday!! So exciting. He is definitely one of those people who has been prepared, and he even recognizes that. He knows that people have been placed in his life for a reason, and that this is the path that he is supposed to take. I am so excited for his baptism!!! Also we are still teaching Karina y Reynaldo. They are such a cute couple. They also both know that the Libro de Mormon is the word of God, that this is the true church, that Joseph Smith was a prophet and everything. However, when we tried to give them a specific date to be baptized, they said no because they didn't feel ready. We're slightly confused by that, but they are starting to open up to us way more, which is super awesome. Karina doesn't really have any friends in this area, which is really awesome, because we're going to introduce her to a lot of people in the church, which will be even more motivation for them to come, and so it's going to be awesome. One of the other problems that we find a lot here is that people like going to Lakewood, which I don't know if you guys have heard of it before, but it's that giant "church" service they have at Reliant Stadium here. I think the teacher person is named Joel Olsteen or something like that? Not sure. But a lot of people here like going to that. I think it's just more of a motivational speaker kind of thing, instead of an actual church though...not super sure. Anyways. Those are some of the investigators that we're teaching right now :-) I will keep you updated!! I hope everything is going well with you guys...Miss you muchisimo!! Con Amor, Hermana Bowerman