Thursday, November 25, 2010

Elder Arnett's First Mission Thanksgiving

November 25th 2010
Man I could have sworn his name was Pete. Oh well. It sounds like today is going to be a lot of fun. I'm sad I am missing out on all the fun things that are going on. I truly wish I could go to the movies with you all... I miss movies. Every time there is a TV on in the house I am just glued to it until I realize that’s bad. But today should be fun. We have a couple of fun things going on so it should be a fine and dandy day. So I was completely wrong on where I was going to be transferred to. I am in the Jackson and Ione wards. Our area covers all of Amador County. The biggest town is Jackson but it doesn't have very many people in it. Then Ione is an ok size, but the rest of the towns have smaller populations than Mountain View. So it’s been fun getting used to the slowed down small town life style. On a side note, I'm having trouble typing right now because of the shivering from the cold. It has been in the forties all week and sometimes even drops down to the 30's at night. I think the highest it’s gotten since I have been here is like 52. So it’s been cold. We live in a small town called Sutter Creek, where I believe Sutter's Mill is and that’s where the California gold rush started! So it’s a fun place to be. We live in some pretty nice apartments but they are undergoing a lot on renovations because when they originally built them they paid of the inspector so nothing was up to code but now they got caught so they have to fix everything. A couple of weeks ago my companions had to stay in a hotel for 10 days so they could do something. We live on the third floor but its not bad walking up every day. The address is 1 Pine Woods Ln, I don't know the zip code but it is in Sutter Creek, CA. So when you picture California you definitely do not picture Amador County. There are cows everywhere. Oh and I was totally wrong with the Hills thing. So being from Arizona there really aren't hills. Its desert, city, or mountains. But out here there really are hills. It’s really pretty. And from parts of our area we can look out over pretty much the whole mission and can even see the sky scrapers in Sacramento. It’s real neat. The people up here are awesome. All the members are super nice. It’s a lot of fun being up here. It’s tough though cuz your completely isolated from the rest of the mission so you don't know what’s going on with things and it’s real easy to be disobedient, but President Jardine said he put me here because he knows I'm obedient so that was awesome to hear from him. He also said he put me here because work with the members is very important and you have to get to know them good and gain their trust so they want to work with you and he thinks that I am a people person and people like me anyways so that was also a nice thing to hear as well. I try to get people to like me so I guess its working. We had interviews yesterday and he told me to pray for help in getting to know the members because at the end of the transfer he wants to transfer one of my companions out, who has been here for 6 months, and make me a senior companion so I have to know what’s going down and stuff. So I am going to work hard to not disappoint him.

So my two companions... ones name is Elder Bowmon from upstate New York, we get a long pretty good. My other companion is Elder Brantley from North Carolina.

So it’s been a fun week. We are working with a lot of really cool people. We have a family who is working towards baptism and a couple of other people who are really nice and have a strong desire. It’s been sort of hard because being so close to thanksgiving everyone is extremely busy and they all have family in town but we have found things to do and people to see to keep working diligently.

Today we have a real exciting day. It’s an all day P-day because honestly who wants someone knocking on their door at six at night on Thanksgiving. I most certainly do not. So we get the whole night off as well. Today we have two families we’re eating with. One of them we will eat at one and the other we will go over and eat at two. So that will be fun and fattening. We will probably see a few members and just hang out with them with hopes of hitting maybe a third dinner. Our mission president limits us to only three dinners on Thanksgiving. Now you may be thinking, "how in the world could someone eat that much?!" but you have to understand that we have a lot of Polynesians in our mission and your always hungry as a missionary. So that will be a lot of fun. We also get to go shopping. We do have a Wal-mart in our area so that will be amazing because I love Wal-mart. So we will shop as well. Also today we have plans to go see a special investigator today. So normally we wouldn't go out and see people in the middle of p day but this guy is different. He is forty five and lives at home with his mom... and I will tell you why. About five months ago he fell off of a two story scaffolding and landed on his head. He broke his neck and back and it’s a miracle that he's even alive. The bigger miracle is that he is not paralyzed. He took a lot of brain damage so he has had to re-learn how to walk and use his hands and stuff. He has a tube in his throat still making it so he can breathe and he is eating through a feeding tube in his stomach but he can sit up and move around and stuff so he has progressed amazingly. Now he is just working on getting his double vision fixed and also learning how to swallow again. That’s been the toughest part for him. His mom is a member and she is taking care of him and he has recently shown interest in the church so we go over and teach him. He is all there inside his head but he is still trying to re-learn how to speak and since the tube is in his throat and he doesn't know how to use his vocal chords he has to breathe out real hard and make shapes with his mouth to form words and sounds so it’s been sort of hard to communicate but it’s been an amazing blessing to meet him. He has strengthened my testimony so much. Well since he has the tube in his throat he can get sick from people real easy so his mom will not allow anyone to come over but doctors and us. And she won't leave him so she isn't going anywhere. And since he can't eat she doesn't want to cook a bunch of food so we are going to go over today with a nice get well card and we will probably watch a church movie. So all three of us are excited for that today.

So we have a nice full busy Thanksgiving day. It will be a lot of fun. I'm real sad I can't play football. I mean we are allowed to but we don't know of any games going on and we got so much going on we don't have time to go play. We haven't got any snow where we are at but in parts of our area people are snowed in. Half the ward missed church because of the snow. We drove up and saw a little while trying to get in contact with a Less Active, but we dared not to go any farther because we haven't got chains yet from the Car Coordinator. That was the Adams job but now a new guy is over it so things go a little slower. But we do need them because we have people we’re working with up in the north snowy parts. My bike just sits in our apartment. Once they finish the work on our apartment I'll put it out on the balcony. I learned how to solve a rubics cube last night and this morning. It makes sense.

I failed at life and didn't write in my journal the whole month of October but I have been getting better this past week and am setting goals to be better at it. The Book of Mormon is awesome! I just finished it my second time since being out and I’m transforming my normal blue copy into an awesome master copy with marking it up and writing notes in it and stuff. It’s just grand. So that was fun. I took my picture last night for my Christmas Cards so I will be making those today and will send them out hopefully soon. Well I think I have written a substantial amount so I think I will bring this thing to a close. We do get P-day on Monday so it won't be too long till next time. I hope everyone has an amazing Thanksgiving and I'm thankful for all that you have done for me. I am thankful for Jesus too.

Love Elder Tyler Pete Arnett

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