Tooele Week 2: Snow with a Side of Christmas

Dear Family and Friends,

Merry Christmas!! Christmas has come and gone again! This Christmas was amazing! We had a HUGE snow storm come in on Christmas Eve and dropped well over a foot of snow all over Tooele and we were walking in it, well up past our knees!! It's great though and it was defiantly a very white Christmas! A few missionaries gathered together at 6 to open our presents and such and it was awesome! I got a lot of cool winter gear and a ton of rad socks!! haha!! Thank you to everyone that sent me stuff for Christmas. It was awesome! I love you guys so much!

We went caroling with the youth in one of our wards (congregation) and went by a few families in need in the area and dropped off some goodies for them which was pretty cool to be a part of. It was just really cold!! Haha! We also had a lesson with someone new this week. It was a family that are less actives and they have an 11 year old daughter and 9 year old son that want to be baptized. So we got to know them and the dad said the daughter had to wait till she was 12. :/ But it's alright, we are gonna keep working with the family and see if we help them out and such. A lot of our investigators are out of town so we weren't able to do too much last week.

But, the best part of my week was being able to Skype home on Christmas after Church which was awesome!! It was so cool to see everyone and to talk about the last 6 months together!  And I didn't cry at all (just kidding haha) but it was great. The next time I get to call home will be on Mothers Day!

I love you all and I can't wait to hear how all y'all’s Christmases went!

Elder Bowie
Tooele North Stake
Salt Lake City West Mission

Skyping Home

my family’s view

my view

Tooele Week 1: Winter Wonderland

Dear Family and Friends,

My first week here in Tooele has simply been one of the best weeks on my mission. This is a great town that is about 45 minutes west of Salt Lake and and I am in the Tooele North Stake. The area is about twice the size of my last place in Kearns. We cover from Vine Street all the way to about 2500 N around Main street if y'all want to look at online. It's basically all the north part of Tooele and the Stake is great. There is a lot of less active work here which is good. We have two people that we put on date for January. So we should have some baptisms this transfer which will be fantastic!

My new companion, Elder Lester, is great. He is from Fayetteville, Georgia which is south of Atlanta. He is a baller and he doing a lot better than I did my first week for sure! Haha! My District leader is Elder Quinnelly who is, for those who remember six months ago, was my original MTC companion!! Now were in the same district which is awesome!! We went out to lunch and we were able to see each other again which was awesome and he seems to be doing pretty good. So far, Elder Quinnelly has been in the Tooele area his whole mission, so he knows the area pretty good. Elder Lester’s MTC companion is here in the district, too. So it's pretty good. We have a fairly young district, and we only have one other Elder that's been out longer then me.

Elder Kozakevitch was moved from Kearns to Tooele as well and he is my new Zone Leader along with Elder Blatter. We had Zone Training last Friday and he is doing really well. He was super nervous about being Zone Leader, but he is doing a ballin job!

We have already had a blizzard come through our area. So it's been very very cold here and snowy!! They says the winters here in Tooele are worse than the ones in Salt Lake, so it look's like I'm in for a treat! Haha! Well, I hope y'all have a Merry Christmas. Just remember your freezing Elder. haha! (just kidding, mom)

Love,
Elder Bowie

Kearns Week 23: Christmas in Tooele

Good Morning! I have some very exciting news for everyone! So transfers will be this Tuesday! They are finally moving me out of Kearns sadly! I'm going to miss everyone here, but I'm super excited for my next area! So I'll be heading off to Tooele for Christmas! It's a small town just west of Salt Lake City on the other side of the mountains! So I'll be sure to let everyone know my new address next week when I'm there! My new companion will be Elder Lester and he will be coming right out of the MTC, the Missionary Training Center, and I'll be his trainer!! So, I'm super excited! Of course this means I'll be white washing, which means I'll be going in blind to my area since we're both new. So it's gonna be great! It's suppose to be colder in Tooele since it's higher up then the city. So it's gonna be freezing this Christmas haha!

Other then packing all my stuff again, this week has been really great! I have been saying good bye to some people and had a lot of great last lessons with some people! I'll probably come back when some of them get baptized, because I just have befriended a lot of people here! 

It's been great and I'm super excited now for Christmas! It's one of my favorite holidays. We had a mission devotional last night, and it was super great. We brought one of our investigators to it, and it was awesome for him! 

Elder Bowie
Salt Lake City West Mission

Kearns Week 22: It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas.

It's another chilly morning here in Utah!! It's been a great and quick week here in Kearns and I'm super excited because it's just been about six months since I started my mission! It's crazy how time flies!! We had a lot of recent success here in Kearns and we had two new investigators come to Church last Sunday and one of them bore their testimonies in Fast and Testimony meeting!! It was so awesome! It's crazy that it's already almost Christmas and that was the last Fast Sunday of the year!!

I hope everyone has been doing well back home and staying warm since it's starting to get cold. Here in Utah their seems to always be snow on the ground now haha. We're suppose to have even MORE later this week, so hopefully I'm not a popsicle by Christmas!

We recently had the Christmas Devotional that the Church does every year which was great to hear and I really appreciated Elder Craig C. Christensen comments because he said, "There is no Christmas without Easter". Which is so true, because without realizing the Atonement in Christmas their is really no point to it. So, It was very inspiring to me!

We also had an another devotional from the whole missions and Elder Rasband of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostle came to speak to us. He was very inspired and I was able to shake his hand which was a huge honor! He talked about being a Light to the World. He shared a Scripture from the New Testament in Matthew 5:14-16 which says, "Ye are the Light of the World...". His words meant a lot to me and he gave us a challenge: To go to the Index of our scriptures and go to Jesus Christ and to from now till Christmas to use all the references it has to Him and to study it every morning to get to know the Savior and that by doing so we can be more successful as missionaries. "That the more you know Him the more you will love Him and the more you love Him the more greater desire you'll have to serve Him.", is what he said.

I hope all y'all week has been great! I love each and every one of you guys! Thank you for your support and love! I hope you all have a great Christmas season! Also transfers are just around the corner, so we should see next week if I'll be here in Kearns from Christmas! I'm crossing my fingers!! Love y'all!

Elder Bowie
Salt Lake City West Mission