Iowa to Romania

Hey everybody, just a little email about this past week. Nothing huge happened as I prepped to go home and leave the mission world. Packing was fun, definitely forgot a few things, but all was well when I went from Pitesti to Bucuresti. I had a fun day with my boys in Bucuresti before having my last meetings with President and Sister Hettinger and my fellow departing missionaries. Then it was time to go and let me tell you it was a pretty interesting trip from Bucuresti to Iowa. I traveled alone from Amsterdam to Minneapolis because the rest of the missionaries went straight to Salt Lake City, leaving this Iowa boy alone for 8 hours on cross Atlantic flight. But flying went well and I made it home safe and sound! Now I'm back here in America and life has been good. I had Olive Garden as my first meal, Incredibles 2 as my first movie, and then had a fun open house where I could see most of my friends and loved ones. I also got to see a baptism my first day back so the work is ...

In 2018 Elder Bowen’s dad started asking a set of questions.   First it was “What is an interesting word or phrase you have learned in Romanian?”   Later, was added, “How have you seed God’s hand in your life or the life of your friends?”   Lastly, the question, “What is something interesting you have learned about Romania?”.   These are all compiled below. 6/25/2018 A freca menta - literally means rub the mint but it's a phrase that means to waste time 7/2/2018 Mi-am dat seama – I realized 7/16/2018 A supraviețui – to survive I have definitely seen God's hand in my life every time I study in the morning, because it seems like every time I do it, it leads to something that I really needed to study for the rest of the day. 7/23/2018 A infaptui – to accomplish I saw God's hand when he touched our man Felix at church. He told me he really enjoyed church and I can tell he is really progressing. He's read up to Alma 50!!!!! 7/30/2018 a ...

Hello all you people! For those playing at home, this is my final email that I will send as a missionary. So this email will definitely be a good one! We had a solid week here in Pitesti. We had a really good lesson with Tata Sandu where we read from Alma 7, which testifies of Jesus Christ and the importance of faith and repentance and being baptized. His health keeps him from coming to church, but he really is interested and wants to hear our message. It seems that right when we arrive, he wants to read from the Book of Mormon, which is a sign of eagerness to learn and feast upon the words of Christ. Hopefully Elder Rawhouser can continue to help his desire grow and maybe help him enter the waters of baptism. We made it a priority this week to work with members, especially to strenghten up Mihai the recent convert. This week we focused on temples on watched some videos on what goes on in the temple and what all of it means. He liked it and now we want that to be his goal to go...

Hey everyone, this one a pretty good week for us in Pitesti! First off, we had a super awesome lesson with Erika, a returning member, and her boyfriend Peli. We've been pushing for something like this for a while and we finally got it! We taught the Restoration and Peli really liked it. He agreed to read the Book of Mormon and seems like a really sincere guy. And it also helped out Erika to have a greater desire to come back to church, especially since she'll be the example for Peli. I really think this is the best way for people to come unto the church and i think we'll see some huge success with this couple! We also had a really cool lesson with Amber! We've been following up with her about reading the Book of Mormon and we finally had a Restoration lesson. It was really cool to teach her and ask questions because she answered them in such simple ways that the Spirit was helping testify of everything! We also watched the Restoration video and just to sit and w...

Hey everyone, it was a pretty interesting week for me over here! First off, thank you all for the birthday wishes! Entering a new decade is weird but it's going to be a fun one! It was definitely a wild week for us here in Pitesti. We had a really good start to the week with meeting with Dragos and Zone Conference, but something happened in the middle of the week that caused the good start to end roughly. Dragos stopped responding to calls and texts, even though he was reading them just fine. In the end, he didn't get baptized and didn't come to church. But we might have some hope because he texted this morning saying that he was in the hospital again and didn't have access to his telephone. Apparently his mother had his phone the entire time he was in the hospital. We're not 100% sure if that's the truth so we are going to try and meet with him and figure out what's going on. It's kinda sad but we are working hard to try and get him back. But at the...