It was a rough day! I am still a little sore, but it could have been worse...

The last to weeks have been pretty crazy! Well two weeks ago we had stake conference and half of my zone are in the outskirts of the mission, Paracuru and Itapipoca, which are like 2 hours away from us. President said that they could go to stake conference but they had to work during church.... and because of this, they didn't get to confirm a baptism they would have..... and so moral of the story, we got punished because President didn't let the sisters go to church..... but no one is perfect, everyone makes mistakes....

So this week we had interviews with President. As we were arriving at the train station, one of the missionaries realized that he forgot his plaque, so I ran with him all the way back to the apartment then back to the train. We made it just in time to realize that it wasn't working for the holiday...... Then we took a bus but couldn't find our companions when we got there. After 30 minutes they arrived and said they had lots of problems with the assistants who told them they had to get off the bus, that they had already paid for, and go back to the house to pick up the area books (because the assistants forgot to tell us to bring them and they were scared to tell President that they forgot to tell us so they just caused more problems).... but anyway, we got there and the interview was strange. I asked why the sisters couldn't go to church and he said he didn't feel it was necessary that they went to the stake conference.... but I found a way to try and motivate the zone! ...with a zone P-day! But after the interviews, we realized that no one had money except for me, and I didn't have enough for everyone for the normal bus.... so we had to go looking for the smaller, cheaper buses. It ended up not working, because no one really knew where we could find one, everyone just guessed and acted like they knew what they were saying, so we ended up walking around looking for it for 2 hours.... We gave up and looked for a bank and everyone started guessing where the bank was and we got lost again, until we found two guys, who had member friends, and they guided us to the bank. When we got to where the normal buses were, I saw one that I thought passed through our area. I asked a missionary to check on it before we got on but he just said "I have fé (faith)" and we got on. It took us to our zone, but way far from our area, so we started walking again for another hour until we got to where we could pick up another bus to our area... When we saw one approaching, a member pulled up in front of us and the bus passed us.......  but luckily the member offered us a ride. The only down side was the van was already full and we had to cram like sardines.. but we finally got to our area and ate lunch at like 4:00! It was a rough day! I am still a little sore, but it could have been worse...

This Sunday was really good! Josuel brought his wife and she liked the church a lot and wants to be baptized next week! Hopefully Josuel will get a chance to baptize her, that would be awesome!!! Another RC(recent convert), David, brought his sister in law to church and she wants to be baptized!!! So hopefully we will have a great week!!! We are gonna work real hard!

Oh let me know the name of the elder who is serving in Fortaleza East and I'll take a photo with him next week!!!! Oh and I should come home the last part of November. It's crazy, the sisters who started their missions with me are going home in 2 weeks!!!! haha but I have a lot of time to work, so I am not worried :)

Thanks!!! love ya lots!!
Elder Bowden

 

Photo of Josuel, Andrea, Maria, Irismar 

Elder Correa, Elder Fiejoo and me