October 25th 2010

October 25th 2010
Man, what are you trying to do to me mom? Make me homesick...? Mexican Food, and fried chicken with the white gravy?! Two things I miss most out here! There are seriously no good authentic Mexican food restaurants here. They have some fast food crap that is sort of authentic but it is like taking a step down from taco bell... so that is one thing that has been a bummer not being in Arizona. I miss Matta's and Filibertos. I just want good food. I'd even settle for some, man I can't remember that place. It’s by sonic and we went there after priesthood conference all the time. But I guess I can just wait 18 and a half more months. It’s not too bad. But I have heard of that Mexican backyard. Adam Krummenacher used to talk about it a lot at work. I hear its real good. You got me with all the talk about the fried chicken this week too. I sure do like fried chicken and the white gravy. It is delicious. The best part is eating the left over’s from the fridge.
I got a little homesick when you told me about making the Halloween decorations. I miss just talking to everyone. Whenever you guys would have a project going on on the table I wouldn't really help but I did like to sit there and talk. It was fun. That’s something I miss this transfer. Talking. Me and Elder Holyoak talked all the time! It was awesome. But now I don't want to talk to my companion so I just read Jesus the Christ or the Book of Mormon. Also I have a lot more time to write letters because I'm not spending every moment of p-day talking about random crap. But its good. I like it. It’s nice having four of us in our apartment because then there is always someone who I can just chill with.
So this week was a weird week. I can't really remember much of what went on in it but it was good I think. Monday after I emailed we went to this big park and played football. It was a lot of fun. We played the senior companions against the junior companions and we pounded them hard core. It was a lot of fun except for the first drive down the field I was running a route and I looked over my shoulder to catch the ball and kind of jumped and then the next thing I know I'm on my hands and knees with a bloody nose. It hurt but my nose isn't broken so that’s good. We were playing two hand touch but one Elder was super intense and he knocked over a couple of us. Then the rest of the day I just kind of hung out in our apartment. We did a little bit of cleaning. I took a fatty nap because I didn't drink enough water playing football. I wrote Andrew a letter and also sent the one I wrote Marianne the week before. For some reason it takes me a week from actually writing the letter to get it in an envelope and then to send it out. I don't know why. But that was good. Then we had a couple of appointments that night. On Tuesday Elder Roberts came out with me and Elder Cannon cuz his companion had a leadership meeting. That was a lot of fun. We biked 22 miles that day. It was a lot for how small my area is. Then on Wednesday we had a great district meeting. We learned on why it was important for our investigators to come to church. Then we went out and saw a bunch of people. We had a pretty cool thing happen as well on Thursday. So on Wednesday night we were planning for what we were going to be doing the next day and we had a couple of people we wanted to go see and I was looking through all of our former investigators and we saw this girl who was taught a year ago but would technically be YSA now because she’s 18 so we weren't sure if we should go see her or just pass her off to the Zone Leaders. Well on Thursday we ended up going to her house and she came to the door and was kind of laughing and we talked for a little while. She said she was meeting with our bishop that night because her best friend, who is at BYU, convinced her she should go as well. So she said she was planning on going to young woman’s and then was going to talk to the bishop to get an interview. So that was cool. She also said that she was laughing because when she heard someone knock on the door she thought to herself, wouldn't that be funny if it was the Mormon missionaries again? And guess what? It was! So it was super cool. We also found out that a couple of members had also contacted her at that time a little before we did and we just getting in contact with her to see how she was and if she was at all interested in the church anymore. So I definitely think the whole thing was inspired it was awesome. The Bishop said the meeting with her went great and so that was great. Thursday was kind of a boring day, during the day. We just went and saw a bunch of random people and tracted for a while. We had an appointment with our investigator JT at 8 so at 7 we decided to go see a potential who said we could come by sometime. Well we were expecting to just set something to when we could come over and teach him but he invited us in right there. We taught him our basic message about Jesus' church that he set up when he was on the earth and how it was lost then about Joseph Smith and how he was called to be a prophet and to bring that church back. We could tell he wasn't way interested but he was polite and answered our questions and listened. So as the lesson went on we introduced the Book of Mormon. We used the Introduction, which is freaking amazing for missionary work, and immediately in the first paragraph we could see a huge change in his interest level. He was intrigued by the statement our church makes that the native Americans are the lamenites in the Book of Mormon and he was kind of skeptical about that so we asked him what he thought he should do to know if it was true or not and he told us that he would read it and that should let him know whether or not it’s true. So we read the last two paragraphs with him and you could definitely see the wheels turning in his head. It was awesome. He committed to read and then pray about whether the Book of Mormon is true and then we set up a return appointment for this Friday so I'll let you know how that goes. So it was pretty cool to see a miracle happen when we were just expecting a normal event to take place.
Friday was a day and a half. Man. So we had weekly planning on Friday and we finished early so we rearranged our apartment. ( Last night I took a video of my apartment which I commentated, be excited) Then we went out and started seeing some people. Luckily we looked up the forecast before we left and discovered it was going to rain so I wore my rain coat out. It didn't start raining till like 3 but it still sucked. I hate the rain. I just tell myself that after this winter I will only have one more to put up with so it’s not so bad. I got wet cuz I didn't wear the rain pants I found in my apartment. It was gay. Then at 5 we went over to the church cuz they needed our help setting up chairs and tables for our ward Halloween party. It was good. My companion was mad because I wouldn’t switch name tags with him. I just wore some glasses that I popped the lenses out of, like the ones I wore back at home. It was a good party. They had a Chili cook off and we got to help judge. It was a close one between two chili’s. I should have got recipes for you mom. One had chunks of marinated steak in it and it was super super good. The other one was a white one. It had green chilies in it and chicken with some beans. It was soooo good. The steak one won though. So remember those peoples. Then they wanted our help in the haunted house. It was a lot of fun to scare all the little kids. I wore my big rain coat and talked like Satan.
On Saturday we had exchanges and it rained the whole freakin day. I was dead by the end of the day. The rain just drained me. Then yesterday we had stake conference. It was real good but I like ours back at home a lot better.

Well my time is about up. I hope you all receive some sort of enjoyment from reading this week’s letter.

Love,
Elder Tyler Pete Arnett

P.S.- I got your email last week mom. no letters in the mail though. I might need a new inhaler soon. They have me taking a steroid one morning and night but I still use the other one.