{week 9}

This week has been a pretty solid week overall! On Thursday, I had exchanges with a guy named Elder Corless and he is from Oklahoma and he loves country music and he is totally a redneck so we got along great! He is a pretty fun guy and its so nice to interact with other missionaries for a day to see what a good companion can be like and me not having to do all the talking! haha Usually about twice a month, we have dinner with a family named the Ottisons and they are so great and so funny. Their family is a lot like ours because they all have so much fun together and are total goofs and i love it! Eating with them makes me feel right at home! On friday, I had my first real "bible bash" haha. My  companion is very very smart in the scriptures; like he knows most of the bible, book of mormon, doctrine and covenants and pearl of great price. He doesnt have much social skills but he is very smart and we had an appointment with a jehovahs witness and they kept trying to tell us how wrong our religion was and that was the first time on my whole mission i was so fired up! I told him at the end, "we can argue all we want but until you read the book of mormon sincerely, you will never know if it is true or not and i know that if you do read it with a sincere heart, god will reveal to you that it is true." and he shut up after that hahaha. In my book of mormon reading, i am in Alma chapter 44. Ive been reading quite a bit lately! Scripture study in the morning is seriously the best way to start your day! SO much knowledge comes from the scriptures! Then on saturday, me and elder barnes were having a pretty good day until about 8 that night because we didnt know who else to go and visit so we talked about it and then went to a few more places but by 830, we were out of ideas. I suggested tracting but elder barnes decided it was a better idea to just ride around the block to waste time like what the heck!!! I was so mad. He said he thought he dropped something over there and he was going to look for it but still who does that?! Anyways, on a better note... This sunday was honestly the most spiritual day of church ive had in probably my whole life! In our first ward we go to there was a missionary farewell and he was going to australia for his mission ( i was jealous) haha but anyways, he gave such a great talk about how even though studying the scriptures seems like its so boring and seems like were just reading the same things over and over... It pays off to practice because practice makes perfect and by reading the scriptures, our testimonies are strengthened every time we read and if we keep feeding our testimony, it will just grow and grow and grow until satan will have no power over us! Then in our second ward, The stake presidency all gave talks and they were all super great and there was a special musical number with 5 people playing 2 violins, 1 cello, 1 piano, and a flute. It was the most beautiful song ive ever heard played at a sacrament meeting! The work is kind of slow right now unfortunately... we are struggling to find new investigators right now but i know that through hard work, we will find one soon!! Im still staying really positive about everything and really learning to appreciate the little things and to be so happy that it makes others happy because nobody is going to want to hear this gospel if we arent happy to share it. Elder barnes and i have been getting along much better. we talk about basketball most of the day because he loves the orlando magic and i love the lakers. He hates dwight howard too haha. He thinks the magic are better than the lakers... yeah right!! haha Oh and i almost forgot, WERE GETTING IPADS THIS WEEK!! Hope youre all doing great! Keep up the book of mormon reading! Love, Elder Bowler