Mom of a Missionary... E-mails from Mexico

I have to say I am so glad to be a Mom of a missionary in this age of e-mail.  I can't think of how hard it must have been to wait for mail to arrive from your missionary in the days before e-mail.  It really would have felt like a snail was bringing the mail.  I do pretty well each week with my son gone, until about a day or two before our e-mail day.  Then the days can not go by fast enough.  Is he safe?  Is he being treated kindly?  What adventures has he been on.... Here is our second e-mail from the mission field...
I've alread been robbed?! (Not Clickbait)
 

Hola, amigos! It's Elder Bowlby, here with a quick update.

Thank you all for your e-mails! I´m going to try and alternate between one big group e-mail one week, and then smaller, more personal e-mails with each of you the next! Hopefully that means I will be able to answer all of your questions, as I only have an hour here each friday to read and send e-mails.
(Clouds rolling off of my favorite mountain early in the morning. Tree didn´t exactly help out with the shot.)

But, in brief, the highlights of this week.
I´ve had a lot of classes to go to! A lot of learning spanish, a lot of learning how to better teach and serve the people, a lot of learning about (and by) the Holy Ghost. My companion Elder Curran and I are working out the issues in our companionship, but we learn a lot about each other each day.

(The CCM even has a cat that likes to lurk around. ¡Escalofriante!)

One day, we returned from our studies, and one of my roommates checked their wallet to find that they were missing 1500 pesos (Like, 50 bucks US). We all checked our wallets and, surprise! Somebody had picked the locks to our closet and secretly stolen our cash. I lost my only 100 dollar bill, which I was saving for emergencies (and sweets (and buying myself a christmas souvenir)). I still have some cash left, but a loss is a loss. I'm now keeping better track of all my valuables so I don't lose anything of huge value. Thank goodness nobody is in the mood to steal sketchbooks!

On the flip side, I made a new character because of this experience! I call him "Golpego". Check him out!
That´s all for the mass e-mail. Hopefully I´ll have enough time to mail you all individually, but if you don´t get one, please don´t think I have forgotten you! An hour isn´t a ton of time, sadly :(
I love you all! God Bless!

~Elder Bowlby

here is our personal letter...Hello, Hello!

Hello everybody at home! I´m glad to hear that you´re all keeping busy and that you´re all perservering with faith! I´ve been very busy as well, and I've had a lot of challenges recently!

If you haven´t gotten my snail mail yet (I sent it last week because I didn't have enough time to send it at all) then I won´t spoil it for you. Just do me a favor and don´t actually send me anything like I ask for in the letter. I don´t need that kind of temptation, as I´m already way too tempted to draw in class o_o

There´s no such thing as dandelions here at CCM. Every morning the lawn is carefully cut and cared for by a lot of workers. I kinda miss the vibrant yellow.

Every morning, I get up at 6:30 AM, shower, and then head off to an hour of personal study time from about 7:15 to 8:15. Breakfast is at 8:15, and then the following hours until Lunch at 1:15 are a mess of language study, practice investigators, Technology Assisted Language Learning, Gym, and planning time. It´s likewise in the hours from lunch to dinner at 6:30. After dinner, there´s an hour or so of just study time, and then at 9:00 we retire to our casa (where I spend most of my time drawing and doodling before bed.

There is in fact a store here on campus where you can buy things. Found out that I left my umbrella behind and that my exercise shorts were far too small, so I saved up some pesos (we get 100 per week we stay here) to get them. Truth be told, I´m also buying cookies and chocolate milk to comfort myself. The routine is not easy on me, that´s for sure.

We only leave the MTC on P-day to attend the temple. Today is actually our day to go! I´ll be going shortly after I finish e-mailing people.

Please feel free to open my door. Poor Amber must be beyond confused as to why I haven´t left it in forever.
And yes, I have had to do my own laundry! It´s pretty easy, and all you have to do here is buy those little soap pods at the tienda, and ta-da! Clean clothes.

I´m very glad that things have been going well for Dad. I´ve been keeping him in my prayers, and I´ll be sure to start praying for all of you as well! I have faith in you all, so have faith in the Lord and anything is possible!

Love you so much!

-Elder Bowlby

P.S: Thought you might get a laugh out of this, Dad. There are a lot of knockoff characters as mascots and on advertising here in México, so here´s a picture of Calcifer advising for his own demise on a fire extinguisher.

Also, showed this drawing to a Latino at dinner and he said that "It´s like Mexican Thomas!"




So what do you do when your child e-mails home that they have been robbed??  Do you freak out?  Do you try to get them to come home?  I actually felt peace with it.  You can be robbed anywhere really.  I had told my son when he was leaving to take only little bits of money with him and to hide his valuables.  Unfortuantely he did not listen to me and he lost some money.  But he learned a lesson, even when you feel you are in a safe place, things can happen.
I did e-mail back to him and said to be grateful that the person did not attack them to take their money, be thankful that you are all safe.  And I also told him that perhaps he should pray for the person who took the money.  Perhaps their life is hard, perhaps they had no other way to feed their family.  I also told him to pray that this persons life might change so they don't have to steal.  It is interesting how we are all growing and learning through this mission.  Each relying on The Lord to keep us safe.  And each sharing our perspectives and praying for each other.
Until the next e-mail.
G.G.

Mom of a Missionary...Waiting for news from my son....

Waiting for the first e-mail from my son while he began training at the Mexico City MTC was hard.  The whole first week of him being away was hard.  I began picking up items around the house that were his and putting them in his room and then just shutting the door.  The nice thing about working full time is that work keeps you from going crazy when you are waiting.
The above photo is of part of Mexico city.  But do you want to hear my story?  Probably not.  You want to read that first e-mail.  So here you go...Welcome to my son's adventure...
¡Felicidades! Guess who?

If you guessed Elder Bowlby, you´re right! HOOOOOOOOW´S IT GOING?

This is the middle of my second semana (week) at CCM (Centro de Capacitación misionero). So far, things have been quite good! Yo soy aprendieron mucho de la idioma español! (I´m learning a lot of the spanish language!)


Up here at Mexico City. we´re over 7000 feet above sea level. Sadly, no humidity yet. Did you know that La Ciudad de México is one of the biggest cities in the world? It´s because they don´t stop building! The houses are all like, connected! Check it out, I snapped a few "fotógrafos" of some houses on the mountain side! (I love the colors and diverse structures!)




My companion´s name is Elder Curran! He was actually one of the first Missionaries I met at the airport. Funny thing is, we were companions there, and now we´re companions here! He´s a huge brainiac (and in a good way). He knows tons of stuff about all kinds of stuff. He says he can construct, program, and adjust machines in his mind! Woah! He´s apparently done a lot of work with computer science, and he´s just all around cool. Here´s a picture of him in front of our "casa" (house).

This place was actually once a Highschool before it was a Missionary Training center. Escalofriante! (Spooky).

Uh oh! Looks like somebody decided to travel with me. Can´t seem to shake my irrational fears, it seems. This is what I drew on my first day, at the airport. Note the big AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA at the top.

And what might these be? I drew these just yesterday. I´ll let you guess~

​

Uh oh. Looks like I´m running out of space for pictures. No google drive = no more than 25GB file attachment space. Bummer.

I´d like to show you so much, but it looks like I´m going to have to be more conservative with the Photo´s I take and send. I´d send you a picture of some food (Which I admittedly almost got yelled at for taking because I was clogging up the line (oops)), but just know that if it´s hot food, Elder Bowlby is going to enjoy it! Strangest foods I´ve eaten so far: Cream of Potato soup (It´s like liquid potato! Surprisingly good?!), a few bizarre Mexican puddings and yogurts which I can't decide whether I like them or not... they even have fish for lunch sometimes! Fish! Wow!

If there´s anything else that I need to say, it´s that Friday is my Prep-Day, so I'll only be able to read your messages then. I've been learning a lot about El Evangelio Restaurado, and myself.

(Ack! No more photo space! Read the next e-mail!!)

This is just a photo dump at this point. See ya next time!


"Your doubts only have the power you give them". Go away, Krozj!

​More cool architecture! STEEP STREET!


​I´ll try to get a photo of this at night. It would make a beautiful desktop background, I say.







​Can you figure out what these are? We can see them from our casa. My companion and I call them "Giant Lego Hands". What do you think?

​​
Oh hey! Here's that picture of food I almost got yelled at for taking. It's pork. Tasty...

​Last picture, an unflattering shot of one of the mysterious green birds that fly around campus. They´re really cool.

Love you! I´ll see you next week.

~Elder Bowlby.

The only thing with the weekly email is you never get enough, you want to know more, and yet once the last email is sent you have to wait a whole week to get answers to questions and to just know your missionary is safe.   A week or so after my son left I had a dream that he had to come home, I can't remember why, but in the dream I was sad that he was home, I felt he needed to be in Mexico, and so that left me with comfort, that he is where he is supposed to be.  I keep thinking as soon as we get used to him not being here the two years will be over and he will be back.

G.G.

Mom of a Missionary....Waiting to hear from my son...The First e-mail.

We dropped my son off at the Airport and then the first thing I did was put his flight information into my phone, so I would know when the plane landed.  Then I waited, and waited to hear from someone that he arrived safely.  We did not know if we would hear from our son or from someone that ran the Missionary Training Center.

I set up our count down clock, and waited some more.  I think that is the hard part of every week.  Getting to the day before you are to hear from your missionary.  You want that day over, you want to have that e-mail...you want your weekly connection.... here is our first e-mail...That was it for a whole week all I knew was that my son arrived safely and that he was safe and I would hear from him in a week.... But really that is a blessing.  We are blessed to have e-mail.  How long would we have had to wait had there only been snail mail.
Hola!

I've arrived safely. I can't talk a lot right now, but I assure you, I am alright.

Preparation days start next week. Fridays are my P-days, just so you know.

I love you! Try not to be too sad, okay?

~Elder Bowlby

Do you have any missionary memories to share?  
G.G.

Called To Serve Him....The Last Goodbye, and the Sad Airport Farewell.....

When Suitcases come out what do the family pets think?.  I'm not sure what our little cat thought of all the packing up of our sons clothing.  But while she was good company and help to me, I don't think she really wanted to be in the suit case when it left.  She has flown across the country and I don't think she liked it one bit...

The night before our son left on his mission was spent packing everything into the allotted amount of suitcases.  Doesn't seem like enough for a two year journey.  The our Bishop and Stake President came over and we all talked about our son and gave him some last spiritual thoughts.  Good thing we had lots of tissues.   And then They set my son apart as a Missionary for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.  Once set apart as a missionary you have to always have a companion with you.  So for the first night as a missionary we got to be my son's companions.  That I think was a wonderful thing for us.  Our son would say I need to run something over to one of the neighbors and we would say, you have to take one of us with you.  There was a wonderful spirit about our house.

Early the next morning we were off to the airport.  Don't expect there to be many good photos.  I realize now that my son was trying very hard to put on a brave face.  And to not cry.  I think we were all trying not to cry. We did not succeed in the not crying...I think that was the hardest, seeing my son crying before he left.

The Airport in Salt Lake City is used to this missionary drop off ritual... Some Missionaries come with their parents because they are going to Missionary Training Centers in different countries.  Other Missionaries come on a bus, having been trained at the MTC in  Utah.  They may also be going to a different country, but had their training in Utah.  Our son was going straight to his new country.  In some ways we were lucky as this made it possible for us to have a long goodbye.  If you go to the MTC in Utah, you just get dropped off at the curb...no long goodbye.   We were not alone in our hugs, and tears.  It was nice that someone stopped and took a photo of us all together.  Somehow our son was able to find the courage to move on and get on a plane and go take an adventure he dreamed of for a long time.  The rest of us went back home, ate breakfast.  My Husband then went off to work, my daughter to school, and I went where I find God...

To the garden.  And He spoke peace and comfort to me.
G.G.

Called To Serve Him...The Farewell Talk...

The Sunday before my son left on his mission he was assigned to give a talk in church.  The farewell talk.  After his talk we had a farewell party for him.  This is the cake that we had made for him.

Here is his talk from that Sunday....
     For those of you who haven't heard, I'm leaving on my mission in two days.  I am going to be serving in Mexico, Spanish speaking.  It is my pleasure to address you today before I leave.
     Today being Easter Sunday, we remember the great sacrifice and Resurrection of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.  What a better day to talk about Christ's great sacrifice for us, namely, the Atonement.  This brings us to my topic today, specifically, what is the atonement?
     On the surface this is a simple, yet broad question.  There are a lot of sources to read and gather information from, so I turned to the Bible dictionary to gather some information to start with.

Let's start with some Old Testament symbolism.  With the Old Testament Prophets and law of Moses, animal sacrifices were God's way of setting the way for Christ's ultimate sacrifice.  Animal sacrifices were to be made with young lambs, pure, and free of sickness and disease.  Symbolic of Christ, pure and clean, without blemish.  As the lambs were sacrificed by the faith of Christ's followers, in a similar fashion, the Son of God would be sacrificed for all mankind.  These sacrifices were made in similitude of Christ, preparing the wold for his holy ministry and his great work.
     What is the Atonement of Christ?  The actual act of the atonement is the suffering of Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane, his hanging on the cross, and his resurrection.  The Savior sweat drops of blood from every pore as he took the bitter cup, eventually being crucified for us and willingly giving up his spirit, to rise from the tomb three days later.  What makes this act so profound is that Jesus Christ, being the Son of God, was the only sinless person to live on this Earth.  His suffering made for a perfect atonement that covers all of mankind.  Christ stood in our place and suffered the penalty for all of our sins, and because of this, he is able to plead in our behalf to the Father and help us receive mercy.
     Something I find amazing is that because of Christ's atonement, all mankind will be able to receive a restored body of flesh and bone and be resurrected.  To quote 1st Corinthians chapter 15 verses 20-22 : " But now is Christ risen from the dead, and became the first fruits of them that slept.  for since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead.  For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive."  This is a free gift to all who walked, walk, and will walk this earth.
     At a glance, the Atonement of Christ could be simply defined by just the act, but there is a lot more to the Atonement of Christ.  There is not only the act, but the power of the Atonement, and it's application in our daily lives and modern times.
     To quote the Bible Dictionary: "The word describes the setting " at one" of those who have been estranged, and denotes the reconciliation of man to God.  Sin is the cause of the estrangement, and therefore the purpose of the Atonement is to correct or overcome the consequence of sin."......

My Son's talk was really long, and sorry to leave you with just the beginning, but at some point soon I will break into his computer, figure out the codes, save the talk on a flash drive and then copy and paste it into a new blog post... I have an issue with my right arm and typing the amount that it would take to put the whole talk on here was more than I could do in one sitting, and then the printed out copy of the talk went missing.  I've yet to crack the computer code, and decided I need to move on in this blogging.  The above photo is of my son and some of his friends on the Sunday before he left.  It was nice to see all these young men come out and support a friend before he left on a life changing event.

This was a good, goodbye day for us.  Not too many sad faces to be seen.  I'm always amazed at the faith of my children.  Their love of other people, and willingness to help others.
G.G.

Called To Serve Him...The last weeks before he left on his mission...

The last few weeks before my son left on his mission were packed with Goodbyes.  My parents came out to visit us and took us on a trip to Zion National park and Bryce.

When my children were little we spent a couple of weeks every summer with my parents, camping and hiking.  So it was fun to go hiking with them again.  And it was their chance to say goodbye.  My children, my husband and I are the only members of the church.  So everyone in our family is watching my son as he serves his mission.  

It was a great mini vacation!  Thanks Mom and Dad.

I took a lot of time off from work the week before my son left.  We had a lot of little things to finish up.  The Friday before he left on his mission we let my daughter skip school and we spent the day together.  The first thing we did was go to Kneaders for breakfast.  This is my son's favorite breakfast, their french toast.

In the afternoon we went to downtown Salt Lake City and walked around Temple Square and then walked around the City.  We ended up having one of the best, but most expensive dinners ever.  At dinner my son said, this is what makes life great, being with your family.  That is part of the Gospel message, families are forever.  My son will go out and talk to other people about how Heavenly Father loves them and that being with your family forever is part of the plan. 

G.G.

Called To Serve Him... All the things we had to do to send my son on his mission...

Once my son received his mission call there was a lot of work to do.  Thankfully we had about 5 months to do everything.

This is a photo of the front cover of the book that is sent to the future Missionary.  Inside are all the instructions on what needs to be done to be ready to leave on your mission. I left the reading of the book to my son and husband. I wanted my son to be responsible for the preparations that needed to be done.  I did enjoy taking him places and helping him, but he was in charge of knowing what needed to be done and organizing it.
 The fist thing we had to do was get him a passport.  Which should have been easy, but because he never liked driving and did not take his driving test it was a bit of a problem.  You have to have a non temporary form of identification to get a passport, so his learners permit was not accepted.  So we had to go to the DMV and have him take the driving test and get his license before he could apply for his passport.  Thankfully it all worked out.  Once he had his passport he then had to get a travel visa.  These two items caused us a bit of stress, but of course it all worked out.

When you travel to certain countries you sometimes have to get special immunizations.  My son had to get immunizations for Typhoid.  You can't go to your doctor for this, you have to go to the state health department.  They gave him this box of pills which he had to take every other day for a week.

Missionaries are only allowed to wear certain types of clothing.  So there was a lot of clothing that we had to buy.

 My husband is not enthused about my wanting to take photos at the clothing store.  I think I annoyed everyone during the last few months with my wanting one more photo...

My son's favorite color is purple, so he got all purple ties for his mission.  While he is away I carry a purple pen in my work uniform so that I can think of him.

My husband is glad to see Skinny Ties are back in style...  It was fun and expensive to buy all the clothes my son needed.  We also had to buy suitcases to pack everything in...

The last few weeks before my son left I kept asking, do you need to pack suntan lotion, allergy medicine??  He kept saying I don't think so...Then finally opened the book of instructions and there was this list of things to buy.  We spent about 4 hours one day buying all the last minute items.  My son got a very generous tip at his work which paid for all of it.  I won't say how much the tip was or where he worked, but if you know him you will know where he worked and getting a tip usually never happens.  He felt very blessed by it all.  Heavenly Father provided for us in so many ways while preparing for this mission.  It was a very lovely and spiritual thing to live through.

When my son was in 7th grade he told all his friends he would someday serve a mission.  They all thought he meant he was going to be a spy and go on some top secret mission for the government.  While that is not the case, it seemed some days like that, with packages coming in the mail, and instructions on where he was going.  A few days before leaving he received this book to start practicing speaking Spanish... It seemed very much like he was leaving on some secret mission...
Looking back it seemed like the first few months went really slow, but the last month it flew by a little too fast for all of us.
G.G.