Transfers are now over for me! So I have made it to Fianarantsoa and yes it is very hot here... sike its freezing! So a little about the trip. So we left last Sunday after church to drive to Tana. Mahajanga to Tana was around 10 hours. It was way fun getting to travel with the Footes talking about movies and things before our missions. So we arrived at night and the streets were way crowded due to the national holiday. Then Monday i just chilled with the Aps at the office. Then Tuesday morning the journey began. So we got picked up around 6am tuesday morning. they had a driver from the mission come and get us since there were three of us. So it was me, this one elder coming home from his mission, and a sister with the driver. He drove us about three hours down to Antsirabe, where we went to drop off the sister. Sadly she got sick during the ride and we had to pull over a couple of times... but we went and he dropped me and the elder off in Antsirabe where we were to get on a bus to Fianarantsoa. So we got everything all set and tickets bought by around 10. then we waited. 11 rolled around and we got into our bus, which was basically a mini van with too many seats thrown in there. Nice and cozy! Then we started driving and the driver pulled over and stopped. We ended up waiting an hour for some other people that missed the bus... so then they got on and we started going. We drove for quite a while and then pulled over to get some food. Then the long part of the drive came. So the road to Fianarantsoa is infamous for being the worst road in Madagascar, and it lived up to that reputation. It was a long time of curves and pot holes where we had to slow down to almost a stop to get through. Then to top it off we had a young child that got sick... so yeah that happened a lot and we had to pull over a lot and after hours of that I arrived in the freezing Fianarantsoa at around 8:30pm. So if we do the math for how long Elder Bowen was traveling your answer will be a very very long time. But I arrived and things are great here. Elder Nelson is great and he saved me with making me dinner the night i arrived. Way nice. The apartment is nice and there are four of us in it. By the way, this is a bike area so now I will be riding a bikes all over these hills. The bikes are currently broken so we are waiting for them to get fixed. Should be way fun biking.
But besides that the work is good here. The members are awesome. There are just two branches here right now but there is a lot of potential. There were 80 people at church the first Sunday I was here. There are a lot of recent converts here so that has been a large chunk of our lessons this past week.
So this week Elder Nelson and I have been studying about true conversion, and mainly the story in the Book of Mormon about Ammon and King Lamoni. We continue to study Ammon's great example of faith and missionary work but also King Lamoni's faith and how he had a true conversion. Then coming with that he went to share what he had learned with others to bring that light into their lives. So that is a spiritual thought we have been focusing on this past week.
So even though I was way sad to leave my old area I am happy and exited to be at this new one. I love my mission and it seems like i just get to keep moving around from area to area but it is just many opportunities to meet many great people. I hope that everyone has a great week!
Elder Bowen
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