May 27, 2014

Hey :)

So yeah Mike helped out. I will be needing some help shipping stuff home... Sorry. But yeah. I ditched the winter coat. It's trash and I'll never wear it so maybe another missionary out here will. And we have a Gabriel Brothers here so if you could help out get some short sleeve shirts. Doing it here will be way cheaper cause 40 dollar shirts are only like 10. It's like the stuff that had slight mishaps (like missing a button or doesn't fold right etc.) So it's super cool. Recently not much has happened here. Kinda the same old stuff. Lot of biking. It's getting really muggy and yeah that tornado thing was crazy! I've never seen the clouds to that before! We were on our bikes right before the rain came. But the clouds were swirling like crazy! It was cool. So since we've been here the A/C has been busted. And it stays about 10 degrees hotter and like 30% more humid in our apartment than it is outside.... Holy crap it's miserable cause we never stop sweating and never escape the heat! haha I've never missed the dry desert as bad as I do now! I would totally take 108 back home than 80 here. But it's pretty good. It's weird being on a bike again. I swear I put more weight on here cause I feel like I can just eat whatever I want..... -__-  It's ok though cause we work out more here.. My comp is sweet. We get along super well. He's really quiet and I can't read him sometimes but he has some sweet stuff up his sleeve! Like apparently he used to be sponsored for BMX and this potential investigator we found (he's 15) had one and E. Bullock throws down a flat 360 on it! I'm like "where the crap did that come from??!" So that was cool. It's a little slow here and little things seem to throw us off our groove but we're getting the hang of it. We did find someone last week. So hopefully something goes somewhere with that. He's looking for a church he can just go and sit and be "fed" cause he's always in the band at church doing something (he's pentacostal. He's also named Doug) but he's cool. So he knows he wants his new church to be Pentacostal without a shadow of a doubt. But we'll see. We showed him Mountains to Climb cause he's going through a bit of a tough time. But it'll be good. So yeah. Things are going pretty decent here. It's hard but ya just gotta keep trucking and doing the best you can with what you're given. I'm just hoping and praying that I'm doing what God needs me to do. There have been a couple times where I just don't feel like I'm doing anything for anyone here anymore. So it's sometimes just kinda like dragging around doing the same old same old. But hopefully things will change there! I really wanna finish my mission strong. Beavercreek is definitely going to be a time of growth where I step out of my comfort zone (That's the thing about a mission is you kinda signed over your choice to be comfortable or not cause God is always trying to help you grow out here and you don't have too much agency on who you're around and where you end up) But it's cool cause it's inspired. We're also teaching some of the members (Active and Less-Active) the lessons 

 to help strengthen. Is part of the Rolling 15 (where 15 names are inspired to pick out and invited to take the lessons and the promise is that the work will explode and families will become stronger) So we've done that with a couple families. Some worked out well. Others not too focuses. But the EQ President and his family are taking them cause their daughter is getting baptized soon and they have 3 cute little girls and they can be impatient of course. So I decided to try something new. Have everyone draw what they think was happening when I recited the First Vision. And being over 20 months out the spirit never fails to come when that experience is recounted. It was a cool experience cause it helped me strengthen my own testimony. Oh yeah! and totally witnessed some domestic violence haha first time I've ever seen someone choked out. Drugs man. It'll tear ya apart. So yeah now that I killed it all with that :P haha I love you all. That's it for this week!!

Love,
Elder Derrek Bowler

our apartment how we got it and then after the ward helped us. and me when I fell asleep after closing the plan we set haha.... Always soo tired.. and then the two of us :) I got more but I'll catch up later!