I know I've only been out for about a month and a half in New Mexico, but the time still has gone fast, I can hardly keep up with the date and time! Just a fair warning, I did not have the opportunity to take very many photos this week, so I do apologize for that, but hopefully I can get some more in this coming week.
My week was pretty busy.
Tuesday: Elder Ward and I went to Amarillo for district counsel. Dawn had to get her baptismal date moved which was something we discussed a little bit, alongside the fact that elder ward and I had to have a drop lesson with one of our investigators. His name is Gasper, and he is a botanist. We invited him many times to read and pray about the book of Mormon but he was too busy, so we dropped him last week. One thing I forgot to mention is that me and Elder Ward are the only Elders in our district. The rest are all sisters. We are also the only missionaries in Tucumcari. After district counsel we went shopping for our weekly groceries and went back home. The trip to Amarillo always is a little bit confusing because new Mexico and Texas are separated by time zones, so every time we cross the border, we have to skip ahead one hour or back an hour depending on where we are coming from. Elder Wards truck is always set on Amarillo time so that we don't have to switch as often. We got home, and we taught dawn another lesson (I think it was on the commandments). She accepted the invitation to keep the commandments, and we promised her blessings for that.
Wednesday: That morning we went to a members home and helped prune a tree that was well over 50 feet tall. It was pretty interesting, because the kids were running around under the place where the dad was cutting off the branches, and the dad was yelling at the kids to go somewhere else. I couldn't touch the kids and Elder Ward couldn't either, so we were just along for the ride. Some of the branches were so big I had to saw the ends of them so that they would have firewood for the winter. Later that day we went finding, and we didn't find anyone to teach, which was ok. We went and visited another member (Her name is Tifani) and we caught her right as she was getting in her car to go camping, so we didn't meet for too long but we were able to ask her how she was doing and how her book of Mormon reading was.
She's been doing pretty good in that aspect.
Now Elder Ward is a district leader, and every night he has to call the sisters to see how they are doing. There are three different groups: Tradewind, Windsor, and Tascosa. That night Elder Ward called the Tascosa Sisters.
Thursday: we went and did some service at the ministry of hope again, doing the same routine of salvaging bottles that haven't exploded yet and putting them in boxes. I talked with a man named Larry, and he is a very funny guy. His brother is in the hospital because he fell off his front porch and broke a few of his ribs along with a punctured lung. We went and visited him a few weeks earlier, and he is in good shape, well on his way to getting back home. When I was putting trash in the dumpster, a few wasps flew out of the dumpster and chased me around for a while, which was apparently very amusing to a few people watching including elder ward because I ran away flailing my arms around to try and shoo the wasps away. Elder Ward and I went to Logan to stop by at a member home to see how they were doing, but no one was there. We were walking away when a lady walked out of her house and asked who we were. We said "We are missionaries spreading a message about Jesus Christ", and when we said that, she loosened up and she started saying how she loves Jesus and how she is a Baptist but she's not sure if that's the church she thinks is true. We answered some of her questions, we gave her a pamphlet to read, and we asked if we could meet with her again. She said yes, and she gave us her address. After that, we went around Logan trying to track down some members, but since Logan is a really small abandoned town, like 3/4s of the town is ghost town so a lot of the member records are outdated by 20 or 30 years or so. We cleaned up the member records and then we went home. We had another lesson with Dawn after lunch, and went out to a restaurant with a member for dinner. This was the day we had the drop lesson with Gasper. It was a little sad to see him drift away from what we had taught him, but you gotta respect agency.
Friday: Elder Ward and I went to Logan again to visit with a recent convert. His name is Tony, and he is such a great learner. He loves the gospel and is very anxious to share it with everyone he meets. He got his patriarchal blessing in the mail when were visiting with him, and he shared a little bit with us (because he felt inclined to do so). We talked with him about Adam and Eve.
While we were travelling to Logan, the mission office called us, and informed me and Elder Ward about my visa. She said she called someone from salt lake city (mission travel) and she said that I should expect to stay here for an additional 1 to 2 transfers in Texas. This was a real moment of faith testing right there, and it is still something I struggle with. She also said that the visa could come this week, but that is less likely. So, I guess I could be staying here for another 3 months or so, because that is where the Lord needs me right now. I just need to worry about the people I teach and interact with, and not about something I cannot control.
Saturday: Elder Ward and I went finding again and on the last door we knocked on, we taught a lady named Kenya about the restoration. We have a return lesson scheduled for tomorrow.
Now, once every year, Tucumcari holds a festival called Fired Up, and it's basically just like frontier days except it's more like a frontier days with a huge farmers market. Elder Ward and I used this as an opportunity to find some people. Unfortunately, we couldn't find anyone to talk to. We met up with a lot of members, though. During that event, we helped the ministry of hope inflate a bouncy house for little kids to come and play in. A really cool thing about Fired Up is the car show. There were a lot of funny looking tow-mater trucks there that were different colors like teal and pink. I couldn't take any pictures of them because I was proselyting.
Yesterday: I gave a special musical number in sacrament meeting, and it was the same "come thou fount" I gave in the MTC. Everyone loved it, and a lot of people were asking for my email so that they could have that arrangement of come thou fount. There were more people than usual, because a member of our ward recently died of cancer, and her family members were coming to comfort the husband and to help prepare for her funeral. Her funeral is on Friday, and I would only ask of you that you could all pray for Mickey truesdale, that he can be comforted and that he will be able to press forward with faith. After church, we went finding some more and didn't find anyone. We went and cleaned up some of the members records. We had a lesson with a member named Bryan. He was sick a couple weeks ago, and me and Elder Ward gave him a blessing. He got better, which was really good.
Well, that's pretty much all that happened all last week. I finished the book of Mormon for the first time in my life on Wednesday, and I can now say I have learned for myself that the book of Mormon is the true word of God, and that it is the most correct book on this planet. I know that the book of Mormon is true, and that everyone that wrote in that book were prophets of God. I know that this is the restored gospel and it is spreading across the face of the earth. I know these things to be true, and I stand to this day as a humble fervent witness of Jesus Christ and his infinite atonement. I know without the slightest fleeting moment of skepticism that Jesus is the Christ and that he is the good shepherd of Israel. I know we are his sheep, and he has sheep that are not of this fold. I know that he lives, and loves us to the end.
I hope you all can have a good rest of your week, and I will keep you all posted on the visa.
~Elder Johnson~
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