The Big Texan

Friends and family. Wow, lots has happened. 

Well thanks again for the birthday emails! I feel super popular... it's great. 

Another good week in amarillo...

On Tuesday, we spent some time at the church with the assistants and President Heap. They drove up to do interviews. It was a great time to meet with them. President is an inspiration to me. I firmly believe I was sent to Texas to learn from him... sometimes I wonder why he couldn't have been called to Argentina or somewhere neat, and the Lord could just have us meet up there, but Texas will do (: 

Wednesday, Elder Holtman drove us down to Lubbock to do exchanges with a different set of assistants. It was a horrible day. We worked the YSA ward there at Texas Tech, and there is NOBODY on campus or in the dorms for summer break. We spent most of the day knocking in the humid weather, and get very few answers. 

The next day we woke up, played some basketball with some of the Zone Leaders and Assistants down there, and then drove back to good ol' Amarillo. Thursday we only had one lesson... it was kind of a slow day. 

Friday we woke up early and drove out to the Lazy Arrow Ranch, owned by the Barton family in our ward. We worked some of his cattle. It was a blast. He had about 60 more cattle and maybe 15 calfs that we got to work. I mostly sorted and pushed calfs down the chute while the others castrated and clipped ears. It was a good day! Elder Holtman got plenty of cow poop on him, and he was a happy man. After, we ate lunch with the Bartons. 

We also stopped at the Big Texan to eat. It's a big tourist spot here. They offer a free 72 oz. steak if you can eat it all (and all of your fixins) in under an hour. I just went with a 12 oz haha. 

Saturday we got some good work done! Taught some lessons, and found four new investigators. We spent most of our time knocking and teaching. We knocked half of an apartment complex. I have come to love knocking! It's so much fun... it's like a roll of the dice, you never know who's going to be on the other side. We have no progressing investigators right now, but we're working with some sweet recent converts. One particularly sweet one is Brother Bob Priddy. He is the Grandpa of the Barton family, and just barely got the priesthood this Sunday. We have to drive a half an hour out to his ranch to teach him, but it's a beautiful drive. He's an old cowboy (in his 80's) and is one of my favorite people to teach. 

Things are good here in Amarillo! I miss home a lot sometimes tbh, but I'm also really happy here. I have a good comp, and a sweet ward. I feel that I've changed a lot. Situations come up that would have made me so angry and frustrated before, but I've learned a lot of self control, and sooo many other things... what an opportunity this has been. 

Love y'all!

Elder Johnson