June 6, 2011

Hey everyone! How is it going? I hope you all had a great week! Congratulations to Zac on his mission call! That's so awesome! We had a pretty good week here. Nothing too exciting. I think I might lose some weight serving here in this area. It's a diet that I call the YSA dinner calendar diet. haha. No they actually feed us pretty well here for a YSA ward. Unfortunately we still don't have any investigators. Did I tell you last week about the guy named Steven who just walked into the church while we were there last week? Then we had to pass him off to the sisters in our district because he was 31. Well they taught him on Wednesday and he's probably going to be baptized. This Wednesday, we actually went on exchanges so I wasn't here for it, but we had a lesson with this man from Africa that one of our ward missionaries asked to come listen to us, but when they went there with the member he didn't show up. There was this man from Iraq that lived in one of the wards here that came in to talk to the bishop and he brought a non member friend into the church with him. The two of them started to talk about the differences between this church and the Catholics and Elder Hepworth and Kuettel asked if they could teach him about this church and he said sure so they did. He took it really well and accepted to be baptized on the 18th! Guess what... he was like 40 so we gave him to the elders in our district... well we are still looking for the miracle that we will have that ends in US actually having a new investigator, but it will happen eventually.

The other highlight of the week would probably be from Friday. We went branding. Yes, branding again. But I have to say that this one was a little more exciting. I had told them that I had done it before and how I did it and they said that we would be doing it the more efficient and a more manly way... OK... so I get there and what we did is this. They would let a bunch of calves into a corral and then there were like thirty people there and we paired up and then one of us grabbed the back right foot of a calf and the other grabbed the head and then we dragged it into an open area of the corral and then wrestled it to the ground. yea. I wrestled a bunch of cows. It was sweet. Then the guy on the back would hold down the back legs and the guy up front would kneel on the cows neck and hold the front legs as there were a bunch of people with branding irons and vaccines and knives (for castrating and horn cutting) and we would hold the cow down until everyone had come around. It was pretty sweet. Then repeat a lot. It really was a lot of fun and a lot more efficient. We did over 300 cows in about an hour and a half. It was sweet, but then we had mud/manure/cow blood covered clothes. haha. It was pretty nasty and my legs are covered in huge bruises where I got stepped on while I was holding another cow down. It was awesome. At the end I felt like a man and I was exhausted. If anyone needs help doing that when I am back home let me know! I would love to! haha.

That was pretty much my week though. Sadly, Ii didn't get any pictures this week. I will get some of branding soon though. There was a girl there that took a bunch of pictures. That's right there were even YSA girls there! I was impressed they did it, but they loved it! Some of them took a little convincing before they would do it though. haha. Well, I hope you all have a great week this week! I hope I can do the same. Thanks for everything! I love you all!

Love
Elder Townsend