February 27^th 2012

So first off I did get my inhaler finally. I was dying without it. So I am happy now. That is super exciting about David and Jamie. Honestly I thought I was going to have to be the first one to have a baby but now there is no rush. I am excited to be an uncle too. I love babies. Everyone here has babies. Especially in my last ward because there were so many young couples. The part that sucks is as missionaries we can't play with babies or kids too much. We can't pick them up, hold them, let them sit on our laps and stuff. So I just give them toys make funny faces and laugh and stuff. I pick them up to put them on the couch next to me and they like that so it’s good. So I am excited to come home and not after too long have a baby niece or nephew to play with. That’s cool. Congrats! I'm glad Ellie got the letter. I like writing her letters. So the truck. It is not the same one I had in Jackson. It is silver. Elder Stradling is up in the mountains but it’s a different area than the one I was in. So the trucks. They have each vehicle in the mission for either 3 years or 50,000 miles so the cars that are up in the mountains go through the miles faster because they have larger areas and the church wants all the cars that entered the mission the same time to mature in miles the same amount of time so they took all the trucks out of the mountains and brought them into low miles city areas so they can let the other cars catch up. So I got me a silver Chevy Colorado. 2011. So it’s good. But it doesn't have an aux port for an ipod so we have to listen to cds all day. And we don't have too many of them so we have listened to the same cd 20 times for 5 days now. But we like it so it’s all good. Rudy and his family... They still live up in Jackson. Well most of them do. Rudy and Dusty split up about a month after Dusty got baptized. She was fed up with having to provide for the family and to come home after working 2 jobs and have Rudy gang up on her with all the kids and give her crap. Rudy can't get a job because he is a convicted felon and has served 8 years in prison. So Dusty took off and then told Rudy he should leave so she could raise the kids and provide for them and he said ok so he left and she came back. So now Dusty and all the kids except eve still live there in Jackson. Eve is somewhere down here in Sac going to school for something. I don't know all the details because we can't really check up on them too much but that’s all what I have heard through the grape vine. Porter should take the sacrifice of having an A hour and do choir. I understand that he wants to do sports and I think he should as well as be in weight lifting but maybe not do the Spanish. Its good but I wish I would have done choir in high school. All my friends were there and I love singing and it really is something you can do for your whole life. So I think he should make the sacrifice and do the A hour. Our weather has been pretty nice here as well. This past week it was 70's most of the week but it cooled down to the low 60's and upper 50's. But it does feel good. It cools down and lot more in the evenings here than it does back at home which sucks but I just put my suit coat on and I’m fine. We haven't had too much rain this year so that’s good though the forecast shows a little for the week. Hopefully not too much. It said it was going to rain today but it is clear blue skies right now so hopefully they are wrong. This week was good. Elder Fitt is a real good guy. He is pretty weird and goofy like me but he tries to keep the cool appearance too so he goes in and out of it rather than I am just weird all the time until I need to be spiritual or dignified and even then it’s questionable. Elder Fitt and I get along pretty good though. He thinks I am pretty weird but he likes it. He is from a big family as well but his parents did it a little different. His oldest brother is 28 then it’s him and he’s 20 then his little sister is 18 then his parents had quadruplets! and there was 2 boys and 2 girls from that and they are all 14. So a little different but it’s a big family none the less. Things are going good. We are trying to find some more people to baptize but it’s been a struggle this week. Rose is doing good but she had her Free Mason stuff this week so we pushed her baptism back a week. Angela is doing good as well. We had a good Mission Leadership meeting with President Weston and that was awesome. Half way through he walked in and said he had just got off the phone with President Lewis and he has received clearance from the church doctors to come back on March 2nd so this Friday he will be back!!! So we are super stoked. Also we are having another one in a life time opportunity. Most missionaries go their whole mission without hearing from one apostle and next week on the 8th we have the opportunity to hear from a 2nd!!! Elder L. Tom Perry will be holding a mission conference for our mission along with half of the Roseville mission on March 8th. He will also be speaking to us with Elder Maynes from the new Presidency of the Seventy. So we are stoked!!!! So that will be exciting. I am grateful to email home today. I hope everyone is having a good week. Love you! Bye.

Love,

Elder Tyler Pete Arnett

February 21^st 2012

Well this week was really good. We had a lot of good things happen and we worked very hard. So I am now completely over my sickness so I can get back to working out in the mornings and what not but... my inhaler ran out on Friday and we didn't have time to get into the pharmacy on Friday or Saturday and then of course everything is closed on Sundays doctor stuff wise and so I was excited to get it all done on Monday but of course it has to be Presidents day and so they weren't open then either. So bright and early this morning I went over to Walgreens and they didn't open till 8 at the pharmacy so I had to wait for that but they faxed Dr. Burrell and asked him to refill my prescription and so whenever that happens I can go in and buy my inhaler so hopefully I have money... So yeah that happened. So I am excited now to get back into working out and stuff. We have to go outside to do some of our work outs and stuff and its cold so it messes with my asthma so I need to puff my inhaler before I go out there but it was out. I could take a breathing treatment but they take 20 min. and I don't want to wake up 20 minutes early to be able to work out after a breathing treatment. So yeah that is good. We were able to have a good lesson on Monday with a lady named Jennifer and her son. They had attended the Gladys Knight event and requested missionaries. It turns out she has taken all the lessons before when she was younger. Her sister was baptized a while ago and she took the lessons with her but didn't want to get into religion. She said she was living a different life then but that she is now ready to get spiritual and to make changes in her life so that was exciting. We were also able to teach a lady name Angela who has been investigating the church for a while now. Her husband and son were baptized in September of last year and are waiting on her so they can all go to the temple and be sealed together. Well Angela hasn't wanted to set a date for a while but she had made the comment that she wanted her friends that she grew up with, that are LDS, to be there and so she is trying to figure that out. Well I had dealt with that before with Megan Hall and so we went over Monday night and told her to contact her friends and set a date. Well she hadn't by last night so we went by again last night and set April for the month she is getting baptized. We don't have a specific date yet but that's a start for how slow it was going before. We were able to teach Rose a few times this week. We talked with her mom about a date for her to be baptized. I don't remember if I told you about her or not. I probably didn't because the past few weeks I was telling you all my dreams and life ambitions. Well Rose is 11 years old and her two older sisters Felicia who is 16 and Kayla who is 15 along with her mom and dad are members. Rose is the nonmember. Well we have been working with her to be baptized but her mom said she needs to be more obedient to them and stuff because she is a problem child. So we were working on that and this week we brought it up and her mom said she isn't as good as she feels so we talked about it and about how if she is just shooting for nothing she will never get there but if we set a date she can work to be good by then. So we set the date for March 3rd for Rose to be baptized. Since that lesson her parents said she has been doing a lot better. I think it might also have to do with the fact that the day before they bought her a phone and said if she is bad they will take it away so that has been helping as well. So we have them preparing to be baptized soon. So not this past Sunday but the Sunday before we had our blitz and I went with Elder Kelley who is one of the Assistants to the Mission President or AP. Well he is going home this week so they would be needing a new one and they call the new AP a week early so he can be trained on all he needs to do. So I was with him when he made the call and guess who it is?! Elder Jones! So that was super exciting. He has been in our zone for about a week now and it has rocked. I love him and now I can finish my mission with him! It has helped a lot with the trunkyness. Well on Thursday at District meeting he told me some awesome news. Logan Ferguson was going to get baptized on that Saturday! I had worked with the Ferguson family, or as I might have called them the Inglis Family since my first transfer with Elder Manukaila. We were teaching one of the older sons Dominic and he wasn't progressing at all. Then Elder Jones came in and we started working with little ole Logan. He is 10 I think. So we taught him a lot but his Grandma Sis. Inglis would never come to church. She along with her son Roger are both members. Roger never came either because he was a truck driver and was on the road 20 days a month then home for 10. So it was hard for him to come on his day’s home because he had so much he had to get done. Well right before I left north Sac he had had a seizure while on the road across the country and had to come home. Well they didn't like that so his trucking license was revoked and he lost his job... Well because of that he was humbled a lot and decided he needed God to make it through so he returned back to church. Then he started bringing Logan and then Logan started going to scouts and then he wanted to get baptized! So it was awesome. Brother Call from North Sac came and picked us up from over here in Carmichael and took us over to the baptism. Elder Jones and I miss him so much. He said the ward misses us a lot too because the new guys aren't like us. So the baptism was good and I was able to see a lot of old friends. Some of them I told we would come by right before I left so I could introduce them to you. So that will be good. So Elder Jones is really good at singing so he sings at all the baptisms. Well another missionary had been asked to give a musical number so he asked elder Jones to sing with him and they were going to sing A Capella. Well Elder Jones knew I sang so he invited me to sing with them and so I did. We sang Abide with Me Tis Eventide. I never really listened to the lyrics but singing them I understood them and I love that song now. It was fun to sing again with some people that knew how to sing. The guy that plays the piano for all our baptisms in north Sac was in the military band and he plays like 5 different instruments. He said he has perfect pitch and said that none of us went off pitch the whole song so that was fun. Also it was fun because Brother Call said that was his favorite song and he loved it. He thought it was a shout out to him from us because he told us it was his favorite song but the other elder who had never met him before chose it. So it was good. So this week was a good week. I bet you all are wondering what is going on with Transfers? Well I am staying here in Carmichael! Hopefully to finish my mission or as we call it die. Elder Hatley is leaving to go be a zl in El Derado zone. It’s just like Jackson and Ione but it’s another part of the mission so that's exciting. It’s not a moment too soon either. Honestly we haven't gotten along all too well. Hopefully now with a new companion I can have an opinion again. Or at least an opinion that doesn't make me wrong or dumb because that's what I like. Apparently A1 sauce is for people who don't like good steak. But my new companion is going to be Elder Fitt. He was trained by my trainer as well, Elder Faka'i so that's cool. I am kind of nervous because he hasn't been too obedient his whole mission but he is an amazing missionary and he works very hard. They want me to mold him into the best leader possible so I hope I can overcome the bad. Good always does so this should be fun. He is a cool guy. He was an all-state QB in high school but has gained a lot of weight since then but he is still real athletic so I think we will have a good time. So yeah that’s what is going on right now. I wrote Ellie a letter for her birthday but I didn't send it till Friday so it should be getting there soon. Well I love you all and I hope you have a good week. Way to go Porter in winning City. You’re a beast. Love you!
Love,

Elder Tyler Pete Arnett

February 13^th 2012

OK maybe not Anderson Cooper but someone else that gets to do cool things and is on TV a lot. Oh well. So yeah that is what is going down. So with both Hudson and Andrew getting home it makes me trunky to hear all about their cool things and their homecoming talks and what not. Also a kid in our ward gave his homecoming talk this week so yeah that’s what has been going on. You should remind Hudson and Andrew to write me and to give me some advice to help me sprint to the finish. I feel like I’m doing pretty good but I do think about home a lot and I need to be focused on baptizing. But I did have a crazy dream last night that did help out. I have some pretty vivid dreams a lot and this one seemed kind of like a vision or something crazy to teach me a life lesson. I'll tell you two dreams I’ve had since being on my mission that taught me some good lessons. So this most recent one being last night... So in my dreams for some odd reason I was allowed to come home for one day. I flew in in the morning and had to be on the airplane by 7:00 pm on my way back to Sacramento. So of course the beginning of the dream I spent some time with the family and everyone cried and we all had a good time just enjoying each others company but around lunch time I started to get antsy and I decided I need to leave and that I need to talk to Andrew. So I left and I was walking around for a long time. I would see people every once in a while that I knew and they would walk down the streets with me and we would talk for a little while but then they would kind of tail off. Around three I started to get really nervous because I knew I had to be on my way to the airport by 5 or I wouldn't make it on time for my 7 o clock flight. So after walking for a few hours Andrew and Hudson walk up from behind me and Andrew said "Hey Pete, what did you want to talk to me for?" We just started casually talking about random things for a little while and then it was getting time for me to leave to the airport so I asked Andrew and Hudson "Being just barely home from your missions experiencing where I am at with three months left what would be your advice for me to continue on strong for the rest of my mission when I get back, I'll remind you at this time that yesterday was the 12th which was exactly 21 months since I came on my mission which is the same night I am having this dream... So Hudson responded by saying that they had talked about it and that Andrew would say what he was going to say so I looked to Andrew and asked him the question and he told me about his last three months and how he was just trying to make sure he was as obedient as possible and working as hard as possible focusing on his mission. He said that that’s what I need to do. I needed to be as obedient as I could because it will get easy to have the mindset that I’m going home soon and it won't matter if I’m obedient or not because not much can be affected in that short time. (Honestly that thought has entered my head but I have taken it as from Satan and have been trying to be as obedient as I can) He also said it would be very easy to get preoccupied with getting things ready to go home, packing, writing people, and other things that would take up time that would be good things to do but things that I could do last minute and on down time such as at night. He made sure I understood how fast the time goes and how important it was that I just kept working hard. Then we parted and I woke up as I was driving back to the airport. I woke up and thought, man that was a trunky dream but then I started thinking about what happened in it and I was like man that was crazy. So it felt like God was letting me go home and experience a little bit of it now and to ask some of the questions to returned missionary friends I have wanted to ask about the end so that I could learn and apply it. So that was pretty cool. It’s kind of like Lehi's vision but with no fruit and no trees... So yeah I liked it. The other dream I had was like 5 months ago when I was with Elder Manukailea. In my dream I was in a room and there was a really pretty Blonde girl there that was really cool and super nice and funny and had a great personality and then there was an attractive super good looking brunette girl who was like the most pretty girl in the world. And I was getting married in the dream. But I wasn't marrying the blonde girl. I was marrying the attractive Brunette and I didn't really feel happy about it. As I was standing there I had three things in my arms. One was a bad a starburst, the kind that are big and have a lot in them but there were no star bursts in it, instead it was full of a bunch of money, both Cash and Change. The second item was a box of raisin bran and the third was a tub cylinder thingy of oatmeal, but the great value Wal-Mart brand kind. And while I was standing there a couple of men came and picked me up and took me away in a van. I wasn't scared or anything. I really had no feeling. After we had been driving for a while they open the sliding door and throw me out on the street. I don't get hurt or anything and nothing spills anywhere or anything. I get up and I am next to a huge field and I start walking in the direction I know home was in. So as I was walking this Older Lady just appears in front of me and stops me. She points a finger at my face and asks "What did you learn today?!" I replied with, "I learned that my wife needs to have a good personality or I won't be happy in life. I'll still have the things I need in life and stuff and I’ll be able to provide but I won't be happy and life won't mean as much if my wife doesn't have a good personality." The old lady again pointed at me and said "That is exactly what you were supposed to learn!" Then she disappeared and I immediately woke up. So that was a crazy dream too. The Blonde girl was still very pretty and stuff but the brunette was just amazingly gorgeous. The weird thing is I had another dream later on in my mission with the same blonde girl and I was getting married to her and I loved her. It was a feeling that I have never had before and I can bring it back to my chest and memory when I think about that dream but nothing else has made me feel that way in my chest. So that is cool. Maybe she is my future wife...? Oh well. So those were the two dreams that I had randomly that I learned some good lessons in. So yeah that was cool. So this week not a whole lot went on. I got sick on Tuesday and was not feeling good at all. I only slept for like 3 hours that night and when I woke up I felt horrible and I have gotten the mission medical people so scared of my asthma and pneumonia that they assume the worst every time I get sick which I think is a good thing. So when I called her she called the regional dr. over all of California and he said it didn't sound too bad but with my history I need to have an antibiotic so I had to get amoxicillin from Walgreens and I have been on that. I have also been on Sudafed and mucinex because I already had the mucinex and it was just the cough kind to get the mucus out and I needed a nasal decongestant so I got the Sudafed. I have been taking breathing treatments every four hours since Tuesday and I think I have beaten it this time. All day Wednesday and Thursday I was in sleeping. I had to get up and walk around every hour so I didn't get pneumonia so that sucked but I do feel a lot better by today. I just have to get my lungs back into activity mode cuz I get tired easy now. I was getting close to a fever the whole time in the 99's so I was taking ibuprofen and I never went too high so I am glad he got me the antibiotic because I might have had an ear infection. I just want them to take my ears off when I get home. I'd rather be deaf then get an ear infection everything 4 months. So yeah I was basically getting better all week so we didn't do too much. I was able to read a butt load of ensigns which was fun cuz I love reading them. I read February and it was really good. I also read September and august and the august one had stories about mentally challenged kids and that stuff always make me cry. It’s about the only thing that makes me cry so I had a good couple of ones. I have always had a feeling that I will have a special needs child but we will see. Well I have to go. I love you all and I hope you all have a good week.

Love,

Elder Tyler Pete Arnett

February 6^th 2012

Man are those boys little trouble makers. Luckily I was the perfect child and never had any problems with the police or anything. Or I haven't that you know about ha. Just kidding, I told you everything I did. Well mom I have been thinking about my future life for a little bit now and I think I have it all planned out. I'll say sorry now because eventually it requires me to leave the state for school for a little while. But I will come back and be the best at what I do. I guess I will just tell you what my plan is... So when I get home I will try to begin immediately going to school and working. I plan on going to MCC because that is the cheap alternative. I want to go to school for News Broadcasting. I want Anderson Coopers job and I will get it! So I will go there and for the two years I am there I plan on working my butt off so I can have one of the highest GPA's. Then I will transfer over to ASU and continue on there. Somewhere in this whole scheme I plan on getting married. Hopefully while still at MCC. I will start trying to find my wife right when I get home. I mean why wait to continue on with the rest of my life. So after I work really hard at ASU and graduate I plan on going to Harvard for Graduate School. You might laugh at me but I really feel like if I want to, I can do anything I want! I just have to put my mind to it and rely on the Lord's strength to help me through it all. Plus I feel like I am doing it for a righteous desire. So I will go to Harvard for Graduate School and so we will have to move there. We will probably have a child by then. So you'll have to fly out and visit us mom and dad. Then when I graduate from Harvard people will be asking me to work for them. You always tell me mom that I need to go to school and I do plan on that but you have also told me that I should go for something that is in high demand which I think would be a good idea but I don't know if I would like my job very much. I really want to do something that I love doing. So I love telling stories. I have always known that. But in the recent months I have realized that I love wearing my suit. It makes me feel good to look nice. And I love talking in front of people. If I am prepared enough it is super fun to convey my point of view and idea or just a story. It is pretty fun. And a saying I have heard is "There is Always room at the Top" so I figure if I am going to do something that I love and want to make money doing it then I should try and be the best there is. And if I go to Harvard I think I will be the best and people that go to Harvard can get jobs. And Harvard doesn't just take a simple plain smart person. They take people who have a personality and people who when they graduate from there will be listened to when they say, Hey I went to Harvard and I am the best so yeah. But Harvard is a very hard school to get into, but I am convinced that if I would have tried being smart in High School I could have. I just went with the flow and got the grades that were a lot of times better than my effort level. So when I go to college from the very beginning I will work hard to be the smartest in the world! OK maybe just school. And if I go to school for News Broadcasting I can become Anderson Cooper and I can just sit there and talk and have a gay old time. So that is my plan for my career when I get home. I have high ambitions and it is going to take lots of work. But why not. Really if this is what God wants for me then I can do it. So yeah. That is my plan. And I will get to wear a suit every day I want to. And then I can write books if I want to cuz I will have the know how from school and the name to do it. So it all works out for the better. So that is how it is going to go. That's my plan. So this week was good. We did some cool stuff. I will tell you about some of the High Lights. We taught Howard many times this week. We prepared him for his baptism on Saturday and then... He got baptized!!! So we have already seen the Lord's blessings as we have been working diligently and have been obedient. It feels good to do all you can do then just fall over and rely on God to take over the work. Cuz then you know you will succeed. You know you will not fail. I won't back down, I will not lose, cuz you can't win... that’s a song elder jones wrote... So that was super awesome to see Howard get baptized and to see the fruits of our labors. It was the first baptism in this ward for almost 5 months! And we hope to have many more in the months to come. I received a nice compliment from President Weston this week. We had our Stake Correlation meeting with the Stake Presidency, the High Councilor over missionary work, and someone from the Mission Presidency, which is President Weston for all the northern Zones. So this was my first time meeting the Stake Presidency and when I introduced myself at the beginning of the meeting he added that I am a baptizing missionary. I just laughed and said well that’s our goal and he told them how I just came from North Sac where we led the mission in baptisms for the year as a zone and that I was there for about 6 months of that year. Now I don't take credit for all those baptisms. Elder Manukailea is the best missionary I have known. Elder Jones was my better half when we were together. And we had some amazing baptizing missionaries in the zone who would just take our council and advice and run with it and baptize. So yeah that's why North Sac was so good. I was just privileged to experience it all! But I do want to be a baptizing missionary and I want this zone to be a baptizing zone and we will be! On Saturday morning we had a really good meeting with all the Zone Leaders. President Weston and President Martinez, who is the first councilor in the mission presidency as well as Elder Seamons, the executive secretary were there and they all did amazing training's for us to take back to our zones and to teach them on. I can really see how we are going to see more success as we do these things. President Martinez and Elder Seamons both trained on Unity and they were amazing training's. Then President Weston trained on planning and prioritizing. He told us how we need to be in front of nonmembers as much as possible all throughout the day. He said we can always find something organizational and administrative to do that would be good. He also said that some other things we do would be even better, but the Best thing to do would be to be out with Non Members and Investigators as much as possible so the spirit can influence them. And if we are working with 100 people some of them have to get baptized sooner or later. So both those things will be helpful in helping our zone baptize more people. This week was pretty good overall. We reached most of our goals and saw a lot of success with teaching people. We are still trying to find more people cuz we can see the people we are working with getting baptized so we need more after them! So that is what we are going to do! We are going to baptize! That's all I want to do lately. I baptize people. I wish I had this urgency at the beginning and earlier in my mission. I would have seen so much more success. Well yeah that is it. I have just been rambling on and on about random things and this has probably been the most unorganized email I have written but oh well! I can't wait to see Andrew and Hudson again. Tell them both to write or email me soon! Well I love you all. Have a good week.

Love,

Elder Tyler Pete Arnett