Called of God

  Hello everybody! I'm glad that this week things have calmed down a little bit. I've mostly been fixing fence and shoveling gravel. We have had a higher-than-normal amount of cows breaking out, hence the fence fixing. The weather this week has been absolutely gorgeous! It has been sunny with barely any clouds. I love it here! I've been able to meet a lot of new people this week. A man named Kerry, who works for the Church, has come to help us plant barley for the cows to eat. He goes to lots of church ranches and farms to do similar things. Another man named Mike comes to volunteer here all throughout the summer. He has done this since the 1950s and is 87! He is very handy, and very awesome. I'm so grateful that my mission has led to me meeting so many unique and awesome people. I've been making beans lately. And bacon-wrapped jalapeños. They're really good. I've also been experimenting more with making cheese. This weekend, the Z's daughter and their s...

  I have been set apart as a missionary of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for exactly one year. Neat. This last week was branding week. It was one of the busiest weeks of my life. We did lots of breeding stuff on the side, which really stacked up. I mostly did ear clipping and wrestling calves. I was much better at the first job than the other, but I was really lucky that I didn't get my teeth kicked out. I got to meet a lot of really cool and nice people during branding. I also got to work with my uncle Tabor, which was very nice. Today was probably one of the hardest days for me on the ranch. We had to start working on breeding at 5:30 am and we kept working until 5:20 pm with only a 20 minute lunch break. I was in charge of loading the cows into the chute and had my foot stepped on 3 times and got kicked in the knee (although it only grazed me and didn't even hurt). One cow managed to go all the way back through the chute 3 times after it had gotten to be fi...

  Hello everyone! I hope you've had a good week. I can't tell if it was fast or slow for me. Maybe it was a bit fast? Branding starts for us this week, so we've been getting ready for that. I've done a lot of work with the cows in the squeeze shoot. Working with the cattle prod was my favorite! As always, I'm moving my handline. Also as always, there's something going wrong with it. But I do enjoy it when I fix a problem. We got to have dinner with the Davis family twice this week for Breck's and Cade's birthdays. I got to try watermelon with lime. It's so good! On the way back from my handline one day, I yoinked a bull snake on our driveway. I've caught a few so far. I named this one Jacob. I wish I'd gotten a picture! Also, Happy Mother's Day! Especially to my own mom who has loved and supported me throughout my mission and my whole life! I had a really cool experience on Friday. The morning went by pretty smoothly, but the afternoon wa...

  Hello everyone! I hope that you've been well. This week has kinda been run-of-the-mill, but there are still some new things. My handline is a pain. It feels like something new breaks almost every single day. Either that, or something gives me trouble on the line. These next two weeks, Elder Enrico and I are going to be taking care of Elder and Sister Z's cats. It's been fun so far! I've never dealt with cat litter before, so I think that's kinda gross, but oh well. We've worked a bit this week on putting stays on the new fence. They're these twisted pieces of wire that go in-between t-posts and hold the wire equidistant from each other. We ran out by Tuesday, so we got more in town yesterday. With wd-40, they go in super easily and it looks cool. Dragging is just about done for now because the only fields that need it now have cows in them. I'm kind of sad about that, because I like working with the tractor; but it is nice to do other things. Yesterday...