1st BAPTISM!!

Hola familia!

Its great to hear that things are still going great. Things here are going great as well. We have been having pretty good success finding people to teach but the hard thing is they don't have enough faith to keep the commitments we ask them to keep. It's so hard to help others come unto Christ if they are not willing to keep commitments. We have been teaching a lot of single ladies, they seem to be the most receptive, well women in general. We also teach a lot of part member families too. That is what we want most anyways, to complete families and to get them to the temple. We have a baptism this Saturday with a 9 year old girl named Makayla. She is the only one in her family who wasnt baptized so it's good to have the whole family, now we just have to get them all active. It is really unbeliveable how many less active people there are here. Many people make the initial decison to follow Christ's example and be baptized, but they dont quite understand the enduring to the end part. The average day of a missionary.....hard but rewarding. We wake up at 6:30 everyday.Excerise for a half hour and then eat and get ready for the day. Then we have personal study from 8 to 9 and companionship study from 9 to 10 then its out to work. We have an hour for language study and an hour for lunch. Other than that its all talking to people. We usually have about 8 lessons everyday some of them with members and the rest with new or progressing investagators. We also teach less active and recent converts. It's really hard when we have an appointment with someone and they aren't home, then we usúally just contact around the area until our next lesson. Usually we find someone else who is willing to listen to us and it turns out ok, then we have to reschedule with the others. We walk so much here, its insáne. I am sure Im losing weight cause we usally just eat a large lunch and nothing but a small snack for breakfast and dinner. Hey...I'm not complaining cause other missionaries put on a lot of weight. I don't know if I told you but I went on a companionship change with our district leader and thát was fun. It was cool to be in a different area with a different comp but teáching the exact same stuff. Im sad to hear about the farm, but good thing we have the plan of salvation. That's crazy that the kid who hit our surburban was here. Well im glad all is going well at home and everyone is working hard. Keep sharing and serving all those around you, that's where the true happiness comes from. I love the mission field and the the blesssings my famíly and I are recieving because of this great work. Love you all and I will write some more letters today. Thanks for the support and sacrifices. Oh and you might want to get an international calling card for mothers day and or the other times I get to call home. Elder Stilwell said that thats the cheapest way to do it. I will give you more details next week.

Love Elder Bowden