Week 33 - Turkey Time

Hey hey hey:]

Thanksgiving? gonzo. How did that even come and go so fast?? So this past week was just another roller coaster of the life of a missionary. 

So our stake decided to team up with a bunch of different faiths and do an "interfaith Thanksgiving message" right? Well that night our dinner canceled and we honestly didn't have a whole lot going on, so we teamed up with some other sisters and decided we would check it out. As we're about to get to this jewish synagogue Sister Tusa says oh crap. Guys we're not in the mission anymore.. HAHAHA we park the car and start debating if we should just drive back or go inside, it was decided that we had already driven clear out here we might as well just stay. so we go in and the program starts in the middle of it Tusa tapped my shoulder and whispered look! I look to my right and ahhh crap. An elderly couple that serves with President Pingree had walked in. My jaw drops and i just start whispering we're dead, we're dead, we're dead. haha it was just awful. WE HAD LEFT THE MISSION! yes, it was a complete accident heck, i've been on a bike 96% of my mission how would i know? but man that was definitely an awkward situation to be in. I think the worst part was that i could not stop laughing, haha of course i would roam out of the mission into a jewish synagogue and of course someone would be there to catch me in the act. ahh my life:] but hey it's fine. 

Me and Combs decided to go around and show appreciation to some of the ward members that have really put in an effort to help us out so we cut out little hand turkey's and put them all over people's doors. We got caught less than we didn't so i was happy with it.

 As we were out walking a car pulled over and 3 guys got out and started walking towards us. I turned to combs and said mmm you talk to them please! but before i knew it one was walking straight at me with his hand out to shake. Turns out he had just gotten home from his mission to argentina 2 days before and he when he saw us walking he wanted to show his 2 friends what he had done for 2 years! it was a really neat experience and i hope that those two boys can see the difference in their friend!

mmm Thanksgiving. haha ok so i'll be honest, i've been pretty sick this past week i've had strep and a fever and as a missionary that can make things pretty miserable. I think for the first time i really missed home, i missed you guys and being able to be my funny weird self. and straight up dance has been on my mind soo much. So i've been pretty frustrated but ya know i really just wanted to make the best of it. We got to our first dinner appointment and it was SO awesome! The family made us feel super welcome and i may or may not have been able to watch some football, which made me feel like a normal person for a second:] Cool thing though, so one of the daughters has a talk radio show and as we got talking she asked if me and combs would be willing to come on and talk a little bit about missions and why we decided to do this. no biggie, just living the dream and talking on the radio! We're doing that next week so i actually am pretty excited about it:] and yes i did get permission!  The second dinner... oooh. well first of all Ricardo, had decided to just invite himself to come eat with us so that was kinda weird. I asked him why he didn't want to eat with his family and he didn't really have an answer. But the most awkward situation of the night was the fact that the member had invited their brother to kinda set us up... aahhh i'm a missionary dang it! haha i just felt super awkward so we got outta there pretty quickly after the pie was handed out. woof.

We've been trying to get pretty dang creative in our own finding efforts so we decided that we would go to this outdoor mall in our area and hand stuff out.. Well let me just say real quick that the people in our area are l.o.a.d.e.d. so most of them were just ignoring us. But then combs got this idea to wrap our books of mormon like presents and see if people would be more willing to take them. haha we walked around where santa and a big christmas tree was and we were actually able to hand all of them out:] whether the people were happy when they opened them or not i don't really know! but i think we are all pretty aware that i suck at wrapping presents haha so i was just happy that people took them.

We were also able to get some really cool teaching moments in this past week. We went over to see a lady named willie whose father passed away and he was a member and that is kinda what sparked her interest. We walked over to her house but nobody was home so as we were walking away i saw her walk inside from around the corner to her house. We waited like 5 minutes and then rang her doorbell, she answered and was happy to let us inside! She is excited to read the book of mormon and sees it as "just another missing piece to the puzzle" she's awesome and i'm excited to go back this coming week:] We also finally met a Less active lady who is married to a nonmember. We were able to finally catch her and when she was actually home alone. We sat down around the table and before she knew it she was opening up to us about how she has a severely autistic child and a little bit about her history. It ended up being awesome and at the end when i got to bear a little bit of my testimony to her she started crying and said how glad she was that we stopped by. As we were leaving her family got home and we were able to meet all of them. I know that as me and combs keep striving to find all the misplaced people in this 

ward we'll be able to see some great change here:]

I just want to leave this little bit of my testimony this week. I truly am so grateful to be out serving a mission. I can say now more than ever that i know our Savior and i know Heavenly Father personally. The longer i have served and diligently been seeking Him the more i have come to realize that He really does know what is best for us. I'm grateful for the trust that He has in me. I can feel my faith grow and grow with each week and each new experience. I love this work for i know that not only is it to change the world, but it's to change each of us one at a time:]

I love you all so much! Have a good week and stay warm:]

Love, Sister Bowden