2 WEEKS & 3 DAYS TO GO!!!

April 30^th 2012

Well Jamie just emailed me the Gender of the Baby! I shared the Dr. Quote with the zone and they loved it. So this week was slightly better than last week. It was hard to push through working hard because i go home so soon and it would be hard to work hard without seeing success all that time but i did stick it out this far and now it seems a lot easier to work hard for only two weeks. I mean football camp was a whole week and i could work hard all that time so yeah its going to be good. We have a lot of work that needs to be done. On monday evening we went and said bye to Jason. He left for I think Georgia tuesday morning but had to be in a Hotel by 10 on monday night. So we went by their house to say bye. It was really sad to see a Dad have to leave his wife and 3 little boys. The oldest is like 4 and then 2 and barely born. But in six months they will fly his family out to North Carolina where he will be stationed and they will live there for like two years. So now i have a good collection of people i will know in North Carolina so i will have to go out there and visit everyone. Tuesday was good. We had interviews with President Lewis. It was really good. We just talked about being a good Model for the Zone as a zone leader. He said even if we aren't seeing success we still need to work hard so others will when they aren't seeing success. They set up my Departing Interview and it will be on May 8th so a little bit before i go home but it will be good. They gave me a Return Home Plan worksheet to fill out before that interview. It wanted me to write down what i want for my life in Family, School, Career and Church then to set goals and make plans to achieve the goals. It was pretty hard actually and i started having a similar feeling i had in the MTC when i was staring at 2 years in front of me and i was scared and overwhelmed. Its going to be scary starting my life and family and career and it was overwhelming filling it out. But i did remember an awesome experience my second day in the MTC. I was feeling super overwhelmed of the task ahead and it was making the day really hard to focus and what not. So i prayed and asked God to help me feel comfort and to not think about how long and hard it will be but to just focus on whats happening now and do what i need to do now to produce my future goals. I didn't even notice that my prayer was answered until the end of the day when i realized that since that prayer i was so distracted with things to learn and practice that i was no longer sad and down. It lifted me right up and so i gained a big testimony of prayer and answers to prayers my second day in the MTC. I even wrote that experience down in my journal and i have gone back and read it a couple of times. So as i started the worksheet for going home and i began to get those feelings i knelt down and asked God to comfort me and help me Focus on the now and in minutes i was able to focus on the worksheet and write everything down with faith and excitement. I didn't feel overwhelmed at all through it. I do still feel it a little bit when i think about my future life but its all good. But yeah so we had interviews this week and it was good. We had to go down to the building thats next to the temple for our interviews. So we got there a few minutes early and we walked around the temple. It was pretty warm out but it was a nice walk. I love the Sacramento Temple. Its pretty. You should come check it out when you come here. We saw a lot people all day and we were able to teach someone so that was good. We switched up for exchanges at night. I went with Elder Wyatt in his area. It was fun. He goes home the same time as me. I told him he can meet you guys. He is super cool and i like hanging out with him. We stayed up a little late talking. The next day we were on bikes cuz their area is a bike area and it rained all morning then stopped till dinner then from like 6 till whenever it stopped in the middle of the night it rained again. So it was fun. Its a lot easier to go out and bike all day in the rain knowing that you don't have to do it the next day and if you did it would only be for three more weeks. So we had a good time. Thursday we had District Meeting. It was really good and we enjoyed it. We don't do anything anymore so its fun receiving trainings again. We had a couple of appointments but they all fell through. So we had a member with us name Brother Paugh. Its said Paw. Hes white but his wife is phillipeno. So he was with us so we went and saw Delores. She is an older lady.h She tells us the craziest stories about how everyone is out to get her. She told us one once and it was awesome so i went home and wrote it down. I doctored it up a little to make it more intense but it was pretty good already. I'll have to tell you all my stories i've thought up out here. I think they're pretty good. But we taught her and she wants to get baptized but she needs to come to church. Shes in the hospital a lot because she is old and frail. So she didn't come this week cuz she had Kidney stones but hopefully next week. Friday we had weekly planning which was pretty cool. We planned for the week. During lunch i have been working out a little so i can be in better shape when i get home. Things are going good. I was doing really good on my diet but when i was with Elder Wyatt we went to Godfather pizza buffet. So it backed me up a couple of days but as of today i am at an all time low! So yeah. I'm not going to make it as far as i wanted but i think i'll hit my original goal. So thats good. We saw a lot of people again on friday. We didn't see much from it but we did work hard and we set up a couple of return appointments with people. Saturday was pretty good. We helped our mormon hands on over to Ancel Hoffman park which is a golf course/nature reserve. The nature reserve is called Effie Yeaw. It was cool. All the California was doing Mormon Helping Hands last weekend and the weekend before that. Thats why i said we helped our mormon hands over there. Just in case you didn't get that. The Elder Quorum in our ward was in charge of re-roofing a big huge bird house so we helped with that. I have never done a roof but i learned a lot. I learned how to cut wood. Use a hammer. Use a nail gun. Not fall off a roof. Balance. and put all the crap on that a roof needs. It was fun. It took a while but it was fun. We had to redo like everything. We had to make the trusses and stuff. It was fun though. They had a guy there that was filming with a camera. Someone said he made video of it and they said i was in it a lot. So the guys said he'll email it to me but you won't see it till i come home or else it will expose my weight loss to you. So yeah the roof was cool. I got a little bit of a sunburn but its almost gone now. We did some other cool stuff so that was awesome. Sunday was good. We went to church. I liked it. Someone signed up to feed me on my birthday. Its the Plenerts. They are super cool so i am excited. My birthdays on wednesday just incase you forgot... So yeah that was my week. I hope everyone is doing good. I am getting excited for my friday fun when i get home. I should probably start sending some stuff home... cuz i don't know if it will all fit in my bags. Or... you can just have extra space in your bags that i can put it in... Let me know. I am going to get my blue suit dry cleaned this week so i can wear it when i get my black suit dry cleaned next week. I want to wear my black home on the plane but i want it to be nice. So i'm getting dry cleaned and i'm not wearing it till the day i go home. So yeah its exciting. I love you! bye...
--
Love, Elder Tyler Pete Arnett

So for those of you that haven’t seen facebook, Jamie and David found out today that they are having a boy!  We are all so excited.  The doctor’s quote that Tyler refers to in his letter is that when Dr. Holmes first started doing the ultra-sound, he commented immediately that he already knew what it was.  He then started doing measurements and making sure of everything and this was his quote:  “There is no doubt, something is sticking out!”  So a boy it is.  Also for those of you that don’t know it is only 2 weeks and 3 days left until Elder Arnett returns.  We again are so thrilled and can’t wait.

Marilyn

3 weeks & 3 days left to go!!!!

April 23^rd 2012

Well even though everyone’s life is boring it is nice to have some variety in reading. It was good to hear about everyone. It started to actually get hot this week. It was high 80's at the beginning of the week then it got up to the high 90's in the end of the week. It felt a lot worse than it was because we went from 65-70 all the way up to 99 in like two weeks. But it’s been good. I don't have to sleep with my blanket on anymore. I just use it to hold on to ha. With the warm weather everything started growing again... which results in allergies... which was not fun. Saturday was the hottest day and we were out all day walking a lot trying to find people and my allergies were killing me. At some doors my eyes would just start watering so bad that it looked like i was completely crying. My nose was super itchy and runny as well. Luckily we meet with our Bishop every Saturday and go over the progress of the work in the ward. He is a Doctor and he noticed how bad my allergies were and asked if i was taking anything for them. I said yeah i took Benadryl which doesn't make me tired anymore cuz i take it every day with a Claritin. He said that it makes people constipated so he said i should get a nasal spray. Well i tried that road before and it screwed me over cuz you can only use it for three days or your symptoms get worse if you stop using it. So i told him that and he said, not the kind a Dr. prescribes. So he went and looked and he just so happened to have a sample kind of the nasonex nasal spray. He said it’s not habit forming and after taking it for about a week it works pretty good. I read the little leaflet and it said it should kick in about 11 hours after you first use it and then it will be in full force after a week or two. Well it is already working and i feel so much better. But i still can't sleep with the air on. Luckily i grew up in Arizona where i became accustomed to sweating in my sleep. So that’s been fun. This week was pretty rough honestly. After having those meetings last week we decided to make all the necessary changes in our planning in our area so we could baptize more. Every night our plans look amazing and it looks like something great is going to happen but then we go out and do them and after a little while nothing happens and no one is home or interested so we continue on with faith and believing that something is going to work out in the later evening. Well each day we ended and felt like nothing has happened. And we go back into planning at night and we plan out a new day doing everything we have been counseled to do and making changes on the previous day that might not have been too effective and then the next day nothing happens again. We don't think it’s a lack of faith because every day we expect to see miracles and expect our plans to work out. We have been trying to be as obedient as possible and we are working our butts off. This last Saturday we worked so hard. I was dead by the end of the day. I had nothing left. I can think of one day that i have worked harder on my mission and it was with Elder Manukailea and we were on bike, i didn't have an inhaler and we tracted for 3 hours straight. So we don't know what’s going on. We think it could just be a trial and testing period but we really do desire to baptize right now. I don't have much time left and i just want to baptize people! Is that an unrighteous desire? To want to baptize as many people as possible in the short time i have left? To work my hardest and see the fruits of my labors? I mean I’m still going to work hard till the end no matter what, success or not. But i would like it better if we saw something from it. We do a self-evaluation and look at our area each night and try to figure out what we’re doing wrong but it’s getting to the point that we can't see anything... So we will just keep working hard and doing all we can to baptize and whether we baptize people or not i will know i finished to the end. So yeah that’s what has been going on this week. That’s cool that i get some time before my home coming talk. I was thinking about trying to find out the topic out here so i could prepare but now I’ll have plenty of time when i get home to prepare. And i like the idea of getting released right away. About Andrew and Hudson being engaged... Man that is insane. I could find some new guy friends to hang out with but i think I’ll just get married too... Honestly i have been thinking about my future back home and what i want to do and stuff with working and school and stuff but i can't seem to think of anything to do with friends other than trying to find a wife. I don't know if it will be the first girl i date or not or if it will be as fast as theirs but if i find her i don't see the point in waiting... You’re probably going to freak out about me not caring about how long it takes. But oh well. I don't want to wait to get my life started. But Hudson and Andrew both knew those girls really well. I can't think of any girls i knew that are 1 available or 2 that i would date. Not that they aren't pretty and cool but i just don't think of some girls as my wife. Who knows, maybe that will change when i get home and get to know some of them again. But yeah. It’s all good. If you think about it, Andrew and Marianne being engaged already isn't that crazy. He's been home for 3 months. Jamie and David only dated for like 3 months and they didn't even know each other before. Andrew and Marianne have known each other for a little while now. So it’s not that crazy. And Hudson knew Kyleigh and they had a thing before the mission so that’s not that crazy even though it was super-fast. So yeah. Work, School, and Marriage. That’s my objective when i get home. So yeah have a good day. Love ya! --
Love, Elder Tyler Pete Arnett

4 weeks and 3 days to go!

April 16^th 2012

You know mom it’s kind of funny that you should mention the Ghana thing. There is a guy in my ward, Brother Cobbinah who taught our Sunday school class one week and he is from Ghana. He was there when all of that happened. He is in a book that the church used to make that talks about it. He was the second person in Ghana that got a book of Mormon for the group. He said on the first day the church came there 82 people got baptized. They had full on branches and stuff before the church even got there. So that is pretty cool. It was there family that we had Easter Dinner with. They are a super cool family, maybe I’ll introduce you to them when you come here. They always make me sing my Phantom of the Opera. So about the dinner thing. It is against the rules unless i get permission for it which probably won't happen. When the Reidheads came i just didn't ask but i am trying to be obedient till the end so i don't think it would work out. And i don't think they would let you take Elder Stradling and Elder Jones out, but you will get to meet Elder Jones. So that is a bummer but we are blessed for our obedience. Elder Heaton does just about anything anyone could think of. He played Football in high school as a running back and he did other sports. But he is also a fitness and health fanatic. He is from Idaho Falls, Idaho. So yeah thats that. This week was great! A lot of things have changed in the mission over this past week which i am totally stoked about because now i can work a ton harder! Also Elder Heaton and I made some new awesome friends. Last Monday night we had dinner with the Pinnegar family. Now there are like fifty billion Pinnegar families in our ward. The parents who are kind of old. Then they have three married sons who all live in the ward and they all live on the same street... So it’s pretty confusing. We had dinner with Jason and Anita which is what i will now refer to them as from here on out. So they had signed up on our calendar and in talking to them we realized that they were actually pretty cool. So that was cool. Towards the end of dinner they said they would take us for dinner that Wednesday because we didn't have a dinner so that was real cool. On Tuesday we worked our butts off. We were told sometime in the morning that someone from the MTC was visiting and was giving a training to President Lewis and his assistants and one of them wanted to come out with Elder Heaton and i to teach people and then to come home with us and plan at night so we cleaned our apartment during lunch. Well they said that President Lewis was the one that would come with us so we met a couple of people that day and set up some appointments for that evening and they were really good. The first was Tina who had taken the lessons from the missionaries before but she couldn't quit smoking so she stopped taking the lessons. We had a good lesson with her but she canceled our return visit later in the week and said she wasn't ready yet. Then we taught Larry who was a guy we had knocked into. When we had first met him he was super great and asked a lot of good questions and was excited for us to come back but when we came back he didn't want to meet but he let us in any ways and the first thing he said was that he would say no but he wanted to know why we thought he should join our church. Well we went in and started talking and found out he didn't believe in God so we talked about that and he started asking some more questions again. He asked why we do what we do and what incentive there is for us and we told him why we were there and what we believe and he was amazed. The lesson was good but when we offered to come back again he said no and that he didn't want us knocking on his door anymore but we persisted and finally got him to let us come back just to say hi. Well when we went back later in the week he warmed right back up to us and invited us in and we had a great conversation on repentance and forgiveness of sin. At the end of that lesson he told us we could come by anytime so things sure changed. I think the spirit worked on him. We had our District Meeting on Wednesday which was good. Elder Heaton prepared a cool training so it was fun. When we went to dinner Wednesday night Jason and Anita said that they were going to cover for his parents who were supposed to feed us on Saturday but couldn't so they were asking what we wanted to eat and we asked what was an option and they said well our breeding rabbit outside is infertile so we are going to eat him soon so you want to have that. Well Elder Heaton has killed and eaten a lot of Rabbits so he said he would love to and i have never had rabbit so i said of course as well. Well they had never butchered a rabbit so Elder Heaton offered to teach them how so we went back on Friday and had a hay day. I actually killed it... We stuck a bar behind its head and i grabbed it by the back legs and pulled it real hard and it broke its neck. Then Elder Heaton taught them how to do everything else. So that was fun. Don't worry, i got a lot of pictures. We had it for dinner on Saturday and it tasted amazing! It was like a really good moist turkey. So i like Rabbit and they said it’s the most lean meat. Well in being around Jason and Anita so much this week we realized that they are super cool people and they are now our friends! We love them. But Jason is leaving on the 26th or 28th i can't remember. He is in the military and he has a 6 month training in i think Georgia so that’s a bummer but we still have some time left with him. So they are now some of our best friends. On Thursday the MTC guys gave a training for all the District and Zone Leaders. It was awesome. They were freaking hilarious and super bold with us. They said our mission is having a lot of pointless meetings which is true. They said they noticed that we even had some meetings to plan for other meetings that we weren't even supposed to be having. So they cut out a lot of our meetings. They said our leaders were doing way too much administering rather than ministering. They told us what our new role as Zone Leaders is. Basically they said just be the best missionaries in the mission. They said our first focus is to baptize in our area. Then to bring other missionaries into our area and show them how to baptize. We don't do anymore trainings at District Meeting. We actually don't even meet as a zone anymore except to play sports on pday. They want us to rotate each week going to the districts district meeting. So it’s pretty cool. They took away a lot of Managing responsibilities and are just having us lead by example. They also told us to stop focusing on baptismal invites which is funny cuz i just talked about it last week. They just want us to baptize people. They want our mission to double our baptisms and i am going to do everything i can to do it in my area till i go home. I asked President Lewis if i could stay and he said he wanted me to but i couldn't. So I’ll be coming home the same time. So yeah that was basically our week. We are super excited to work hard and baptize more people. So yeah. I love how all of the previous email talked about Porter. He sounds like a stud but i would like to hear about other people. I now i am coming home soon but i like knowing what’s going on. So yeah. I love you! Bye!

--
Love, Elder Tyler Pete Arnett

5 weeks 3 days to go!

April 9^th 2012

This week sounded eventful. Well not really actually. But it sounded like everyone had fun. Our week was pretty good. We worked our freaking butt's off. Since Elder Fitt was being transferred, we spent the rest of the night after dinner to get him all packed up and what not. On Wednesday morning we went to the mission office bright and early to wait for my new companion Elder Heaton. He got there about nine and we hung around with some of the missionaries that were going home the next day. A lot of them are my good friends so i wanted to say bye to them. We were able to be in the meeting where the new missionaries get their trainers. I love that meeting, especially having seen it from all sides. Being the new missionary, being the trainer, and just being a bystander. Its fun to watch and it’s exciting to see the missionaries. There was a HUGE kid from Samoa there that played football for UofA before he came out. The kid is giant! But he seems nice and is going to the Tongan ward. We went out to lunch with Jake Larson. He was the son of the people that Elder Jones and I had thanksgiving with. The mom called Jackie to tell her i could skype. I love their family. Elder Heaton was in their ward for 6 months so they love him as well. We went to Chipotle which i love! We had a good leadership meeting after lunch and our District Leaders are awesome! One of them is a brand new District Leader. He was in North Sac when i was there and he has grown so much and is a great leader. Elder Heaton and I don't have very many people to teach so we have been visiting a lot of people. We tract a butt load all day and see random people that are potential investigators and less active and part member families. It’s so nice to work hard again! We want to find a lot of people and one of the things we are asked to do as missionaries is to invite people to be baptized the way its outlined in Preach My Gospel. We call them invites and we record them as numbers that we keep track of. We are asked to get 3 per missionary per day which is 42 in a week for a companionship. Invites are probably the easiest things to do but no one does them. They don't think that it will lead to anything. I don't know if any of you have read 7 Habits of Highly Effective people. I have earlier in my mission which i was supposed to but i took a butt load of notes on it and i use them for training and stuff. Well in the book they talk about the Circles of Concern and Influence. Everything we are concerned about that we worry or think about is in our circle of concern but only those things we can directly control are in our circle of influence. Well the more you concentrate on your circle of influence the more it encompasses things in your circle of concern, like baptisms. So we decided a long time ago when i was in North Sac that invites are the easiest thing in our circle of influence to control. We just have to get them. Well when we do we baptize and when we don't get them we don't baptize. So Elder Heaton and I instead of getting the 42 this week we got 91 which is a butt load and it means we had to talk to 91 people long enough for them to understand our message and to decide whether they want to be baptized or not after us inviting them of course. So that was insane and it took a lot of hard work and sacrifice. Our goal for this week is 150 which will stretch us a bunch. My record is 106 when i was with Elder Manukailea. We worked super hard for that one. So yeah thats basically what Elder Heaton and I did all week. We tracted a butt load of houses. Apartments, neighborhoods, random people in parking lots. Everyone. It was fun. We had a Mission Leaders Council on Friday morning. It was fun. I love getting together with all the leaders in the mission because most of them are my friends. So yeah this week was great. I love Elder Heaton. I couldn't have asked for a better companion to finish my mission with. I'm still trying to figure out what i did to deserve this. Its so nice to have someone that is not only willing but pushing for obedience and hard work the same as you are. And he loves having fun and telling stories. He will probably be my second favorite companion after Elder Jones. Elder Heaton though is huge into fitness and stuff. He has me on a new Low Carb. diet. Its great and i feel so healthy and I’m losing weight again after my plateau. And he helps me on what work outs i should do to get the results. He is super skinny, like 165 lbs. but he is ripped out of his mind. So its fun as well. We get along so good and we love a lot of the same things. So yeah i am being extremely blessed right now. Well yeah that was my week. I hope everyone is having a good time in sunny AZ. Its warming up a little here. Finally. But its still only in the 70's. I love it though. Well i love you. Bye!

--
Love, Elder Tyler Pete Arnett

6 WEEKS 2 DAYS LEFT & COUNTING!

April 3^rd 2012

So to start off before i forget, i need to get a new inhaler so yeah just a heads up. I should be good on my breathing treatment medicine. I did get sick so i was taking them more frequently but i still have like 60 vials and i don't have more than 60 days left so i should be good. Well it sounds like some exciting things are going on back at home. You don't know how jealous i am that you all have seen Hunger Games and i haven't and that the Avengers will come out before i come home. How did Grandmas song go "Jealousy your eye balls are popping out" or something about the color green or something? That’s all i can remember. But yeah my eye balls are popping out. That was super cool that Porter hit a home run! Way to go man! Keep it up. And that’s great about Ellie and all the kids in the ward. We represent! The three little pigs all look so different! And the chain is classic and it would be Jamie who made it. Her and those paper chains. I loved the story about Dad meeting Elder Allen. I am going to find him when i get home and take him out to lunch. That would be super cool. I'll take Hudson and Jackson with me when i do it too. But yeah that’s awesome. So this week was good. Honestly i can't remember a thing we did. We did help the ward finish up some home teaching. They had been challenged to reach 100%. They did it back in December but the following months, January and February they only got like 11% done and the Stake President didn't like it so he challenged the whole Stake to get it in March because Elder Koelliker from the Seventy is coming to our Stake Conference this month and they want to show off to him and show that 100% is possible. Now that i have a little different of a perspective of life and God and the church i look back and see how crappy i was. The people we go see with the Elders Quorum are mean to us and Less Active and don't want us to be there at all but we still do it because we’re asked to. Back at home we had some of the easiest families to home teach. Not only were they active but they wanted us over there and they were great amazing people that were fun to visit with. I wish i had done more. But we did get everybody visited and stuff. It was good. So as you all know we did have transfers. We thought for sure Elder Fitt and I would stay together and he would send me home and then go home 6 weeks later. It made sense and we were excited. But that’s not what happened. I am staying here in Carmichael to finish out and Elder Fitt is being transferred to the Sacramento Zone to be with a newer zone leader as well. It’s going to be best for him. When i was with Elder Manukailea it was hard for me to learn a whole bunch because he did everything and didn't need my help and i couldn't see where i could help so i just kind of went along for the ride and had a good time working hard and baptizing. Well it’s a similar situation with Elder Fitt and I. When we have to do trainings and stuff i like to prepare for them well in advance so that i can work out things. A lot of times he just sits down and listens with everyone else so being with someone that is pretty new themselves should help him grow and become a better leader. I am ecstatic about my new transfer though! Elder Heaton is coming in to be my companion. He will be a brand new zone leader after only being a District Leader for one transfer which isn't too common. He was in the North Sacramento zone with me for three of the 4 transfers i was there and we got to know each other pretty well. He was just kind of puttering along but Elder Jones and I saw a lot of potential in him and he really has stepped it up and is an awesome, hardworking missionary. I really have had the strongest desire to finish strong. I think about my feelings quite often and i think about how i will feel after certain events take place and I just do not want to live the rest of my life regretting the last few months and weeks of my mission. It’s kind of funny that you shared that analogy with me because Sister Jardine would use the same one but as i have gotten into leadership and had more challenging things i have realized that it really is like running. Except it’s not on a track or even on flat land. It’s like running up a mountain and at first your kind of jogging real slow and it’s pretty flat but then something comes and you have to start picking up the pace with the mountain slowly becoming steeper. The steeper the mountain gets, the Faster your expected to run. That’s how i have felt as i have been a Zone Leader. I felt like my responsibilities have grown but they expect me to produce more. And then more and more things come up and it gets harder but you still have to run fast and you get real tired. But then you get to the point where you realize two things. 1. I can just sit here and kind of putter along and be average and just ride out the rest of my mission because it’s such short amount of a time that not too much could happen and then feel like crap the rest of my life or 2. Work my butt of till the end because like the running analogy so clearly implies, you'll be done running in just a little while and while yes it is hard, you'll be able to rest up some when it’s over and then you will feel great that you served God to the end. And then you have to choose one. You can't choose both. There is no middle ground. Either your Great or you’re not. I didn't want to leave here. Elder Heaton works very hard and is a great missionary. And he is a fitness freak! He is insanely ripped and works out a butt load and is always on some diet plan so he will help me with this last stretch of mine. Elder Fitt and I wanted to go on a diet. We would always say that we would start the diet "tomorrow". It’s like Professor Harold Hill said, "If you keep pushing things off till tomorrow, you'll end up with a lot of yesterdays". I don't think that’s an exact direct quote but i can't look it up. I think President Monson actually quoted that once so it’s cool. So i am super excited that now we can get things rockin here! I have had a lot of thoughts on my leadership style and stuff and i don't think it was super effective. So i am revamping things this transfer. I was always trying to find the next quick fix thing that the zone could do to baptize more and be better but it’s not working. So my goal this transfer is to instill in everyone a more long term perspective that will help us all be more effective and everyone will baptize. That’s what i want to leave the zone with. So hopefully it all works out good. I was able to write down a lot of my thoughts and ideas to make more sense with scriptures and stuff so it should be good. Conference was amazing! I love President Monson. My favorite talks though were by Elder Halstrom and Elder Bednar. They were great and i can't wait to go back and read them. I loved conference though. Elder Fitt and I were thinking though, Conference makes us think about home a lot. Especially priesthood conference because we would go with our dads and then go out to eat with our families. It’s not a bad thing but it can be bad if we sit there and think about it too much. Honestly i have been doing pretty good. I usually don't think about going home till night time when I’m tired and going to sleep and i don't have as much control over my mind. But it’s all good because we’re going to work our butts off these next six weeks and baptize! We have a lot of great new additions to the zone coming this week with transfers and i really think everyone will work hard and we'll start seeing more success. I hope everything is going great! I can't forget about Jackie. She looked like she had a blast in Boston! She should tell me how it went and how she likes her new job. Oh and as for working at the bank. I would love to work at a bank especially if i had a schedule like David has had where i can work a lot and go to School a lot. Well yeah. Things are going great here! Hopefully our weather gets good and things start rocking. Everyone have a good week. Love you! bye.
Elder Tyler Pete Arnett

Just a little note about the Elder Allen that Tyler mentioned. There was the elder in Tyler’s mission that when Tyler first arrived that looked a lot like his best friend Hudson. So he went up to him and introduced himself. Long story short which we have told you about is that the elder was from the same island as Hudson and Jackson Halm and he told Tyler that he had a brother that was adopted to a family in Mesa, Az when he was a baby. He said that he had prayed and prayed that the Lord would help him find his brother and that he would be able to meet him. Tyler set him up with the Halm’s who did think they knew the family that had adopted the baby. They had since moved to Washington but they put the two in contact with each other and it did turn out to be the elder’s brother. Sometime during the summer, the Allen kid received a mission call to Arizona. Then he was able to go and serve a day with his brother in the Sacramento California mission and they were able to meet and enjoy each other. Well on Tuesday, March 27^th Max had gone to the Temple early in the morning with Shawn Allen. As they were dressing to get ready for a session, Max noticed that there were missionaries there also getting dressed for a session. A couple of them looked Tongan and Max mentioned to Shawn “what are the chances of one of those Elder’s being the brother to the elder that was in Tyler’s mission?” Shawn told him to ask. So Max asked one of the missionaries if there was an Elder Allen there with them. The missionary commented “yes, right over there!” And pointed to a missionary. So Max went up to the young man and asked “are you Elder Allen?” He looked at Max strangely like how did you know my name and then said “yes.” Max asked him then “are you from Washington?” Another puzzled look and another yes answer. Then Max told him “my son is Elder Arnett serving a mission in the California Sacramento Mission.” At first he looked puzzled and then Max said “my son introduced your brother to the Halm’s.” His face lit up and he said “your Elder Arnett’s dad? And you know the Halm’s?” He was so happy to meet Max and Max was thrilled to meet him. He told him that if he was ever in the Mesa area to contact us because we have so much family and friends that would love to feed him. He is currently serving in Paradise Valley. It was amazing and so fun for Max to meet him. He went to shake Max’s hand and Max told him “no this deserves a hug!” And then gave him a big hug. Are there coincidences? I think not!

March 26^th 2012

I might just have to buy me some Kiwi! I'm not a huge fan of it but it’s OK and if it helps my asthma it sure tastes a lot better than my inhaler. But it’s OK. I did get a little sick this weekend and i hope to kick it off today. I thought it was very minor so i bought some stuff and then i got worse so i broke down and bought my mucinex and i take my sudafed now too. They are the extremes but they work the best so i am now on them and hopefully i can get this crap out of my chest and be back to normal. Elder Fitt and i decided we'd start running but since we made that decision i have been getting sick so i need to get better. I plateaued on my diet and weight loss and still want to lose some more so running it is. This week was pretty good. We weren't able to teach as much as we would have liked but it was still good none the less. So Matthew was baptized! It was the hardest easy baptism I've ever had. He was super super solid and he had an amazing strong testimony so we didn't have to do any convincing or much teaching. He already knew everything so we just had to go through the lessons and prepare him for his interview. After he had his interview we realized he lived in another ward's boundaries so that was a bummer but much of his fellowship was in our ward and we had already started putting the program together. Well we hadn't had everything filled out by last Sunday so we told him we would sit down with him for a few minutes in the week to figure some things out. Well he didn't know when he could sit down so we told him we would call him but he didn't want us to call his house because his parents would get mad so we would have to call his friend and she would call him and give him our number and then he would call us. So we had to do that a couple of times and then he decided he didn't have time to meet with us so we tried to figure everything out over the phone but he didn't have anything done like who he wanted to speak and what not so we told him we would take care of it. We found this all out on Thursday so it was a rush to get everything together. But we did get it all done and it turned out a lot better then we thought it would. He asked me to baptize him and so that was good. President and Sister Lewis came to the baptism and that was great. There was a lot of people there. Most the people from our ward that knew him were there and then the bishop and the young mens president and a few young men came from the ward he is supposed to be in came to support him as well. It was great. Then he was confirmed in the ward he is supposed to be in so we went to their sacrament meeting and Elder Fitt confirmed him. It was fast Sunday here because of conference next week so they had testimonies. Matthew got up and bore his and it was awesome! It was probably the best recent convert testimony i have ever heard. He talked about not doubting what you know to be true especially when you’re sharing it with others and he talked about how he shared a Book of Mormon with one of his friends before he was even baptized! So that was pretty cool. We had a great Zone Conference this last Friday. Everyone that spoke in it did a very good job. I had to speak like a billion times though. President Lewis asked everyone in the mission to prepare a 5 min talk on the Atonement and to make a copy of it to give to him and then he would call on a few people to give their talks. Well i didn't think i would have to give mine because i would be participating in the program a couple of times. At your last Zone Conference they ask you to share your departing testimonies and since we only have Zone Conference every other transfer and if anyone has been keeping track i only have one transfer left i was asked, ahead of time, to share my departing testimony. Also they asked each Zone Leader companionship to give a 20 min training to all the missionaries and they would break everyone up into four groups and rotate them so we had to train 4 times for 20 min on Companionship Planning. It went pretty good. But since i was going to be doing those two things i thought for sure i would not be called on to give my Atonement talk but i was wrong. I was one of the two people who were asked to give their talk so when i said everyone that spoke did a good job i was joking because i spoke the most. But i felt like i did ok and it was pretty good. I was able to share a lot of my feelings and thoughts with everyone so it was fun. The whole Zone Conference was good and i was able to see a lot of missionaries that I’m friends with. But there are a butt load of missionaries i don't know because they are all new! Hudson did email me and told me he is Engaged. That's insane. But i know Hudson and Kyleigh pretty well and I’m sure they love each other. That's cool though. Jackson also emailed me some pictures of him and his family. His little girls are soo cute and they look just like him! It’s crazy he has such a big family already! But yeah it’s cool. About Rose. Her whole family is all members of the church. They are just super less active. Elder Hatley and his companion before me ran into them tracting and then recognized their name on the ward list. Rose just turned 12 this week so she is a little older. The older sisters are smart and do a lot of cool good things like sports and stuff so she just wants attention. I hope things are going good. Those two temples are pretty cool. I finally wrote Christiaan a letter because i haven't since he's been out. I emailed him but he doesn't have time to email much back because of the fact that he's in Africa! It’s crazy that he is there. Well i love you! Have a good week.
Love,

Elder Tyler Pete Arnett

March 19^th 2012

I'm sorry for not emailing too much last week. We were meeting up with two other zones to play football and we had a good long drive to meet at the turf fields we were playing at and we didn't want to be late being the zone leaders of one of the zones and all. I am glad we were on time too because the zone leaders from one of the other zones showed up like 30 min. late and everyone was griping about them. It was fun though playing football. One of the zones was really big so we played our zone and another vs. the big zone which happened to be North Sac, where i just came from. They had probably 8 more players than us and we were killing them. Elder Fitt is really good at QB and we were getting a lot of interceptions so we all decided to split up into four teams and have a tournament. We won our first game and lost the second. But it was still pretty fun. So that’s why i was so rushed to email fast. After the sports we didn't have time to email more cuz we wouldn't be near the computers and stuff. So yeah that’s the reason why. It sounds like everyone enjoyed their break. I think it was spring break for a couple of schools around here but it sure was a crappy one if that’s the case. It rained all week long. We got plastered on Friday and Saturday and it was on and off pretty good yesterday. We did stay pretty dry and i held out pretty good until today. Elder Fitt starts getting sick if the heater is running and i start getting sick if it’s too cold while I’m sleeping so we switch on and off each night but the past two nights it was freezing and we forgot to turn it on so we woke up to like 55 degrees in our apartment. So i got up at 4 this morning and turned it on. Believe you me i won't forget to turn it on tonight. But i am not sick, I’m just congested. Like you know the area behind the nose and mouth where the two meet? Well that’s where it’s sore which usually means I’m starting to get sick but i can catch it with this much notice. Also, luckily the forecast shows for no rain so far this week and it will be getting up into the mid to upper 60's so that’s good. My temperature tolerance has changed quite a bit. Back home i would put a sweater on if it was in the 60's now i where my short sleeved shirt if it’s 63 or more! So hopefully i don't become a wimp to the Arizona heat. But yeah so i have wanted to say this for a few weeks but i keep forgetting. My new camera broke... i took a picture of me and another missionary and the strap was around my finger and when he took it to look at the picture my finger yanked it out of his hand and it fell to the ground on the open lens and then it wouldn't work because it said it had a lens error. That probably could have been fixed pretty easy but i tried to fix it myself with force and now there is a bad lens error... So i don't know if it had a warranty or anything? It should be less than a year old depending on when you bought it so maybe it can be replaced. I figured out how to get my old camera to take pictures pretty good but the new one is clearer still. So yeah i have forgotten to say that for like a month. Also mom, we have been going to Safeway because it is close to our apartment and i use your Safeway club card and you now have 3 gas rewards saved up which means you get 30 cents off a gallon! If you fill about 15 gallons that’s like 4.50! So yeah you have that. You probably knew and stuff but i just wanted to make sure it doesn't go to waste. So there’s that. So Elder Perry and Elder Maynes did visit us last week. I totally forgot to even mention it in my email last Monday. It was pretty dang cool! Elder Maynes had a really good talk and so did Elder Perry. Elder Perry talked about some things they are going to be working on with the wards and they want our help. They want the ward to rescue 10 less active families with a priesthood holder in the home and they want the missionaries to teach the people. They said we are the best teachers they have and a lot of these families have unbaptized children. So that’s going to be cool. He talked to us about the church and how it has been set up and organized since the beginning of time. He also talked about the international recognition the church has been getting because Mitt Romney is running for president. He said we are going to be getting asked a lot more questions about what we believe and that if we stick to the doctrines in the scriptures rather than things we might have heard from someone then we will never go wrong and never be confounded. So that was really cool. One of the coolest things though was when i saw an old friend there! The whole Sacramento mission was there as well as half of the Roseville mission. Well when i was walking through the chapel filled with around 300-400 missionaries i heard someone yell out "Petey?!" which i don't hear too often and i turned around and one of my friends i hung out with a lot my Junior year with Jordan Banner was standing there! His name is Dexter Van Lueven. I don't know if that’s how you spell his last name. But he is in Aaron Allen’s ward. Honestly i didn't even know he was on a mission! He had to wait a little while but he is out! He has been out 17 months so yeah that was cool. He thought i had finished but i haven't but it was super cool to see him. It was like the stories in the Book of Mormon when Alma the Younger and the Sons of Mosiah meet up and they are super excited because they are all still in the faith so strong. That’s how it felt. He came to my Farewell but i haven't heard from him since then. So it was pretty cool. It was fun to see him and to know he is out here. So that was super exciting. This week was good though. We found out that Matthew the miracle find lived in a different ward so we talked to him yesterday about it and he knew so he won't be getting baptized into our ward but he will be getting baptized this Saturday. So that was a bummer but it’s still great that he is getting baptized. Rose is being bad. She is super disobedient and she is rude. She loves talking back to her parents and she doesn't do what they say so they said it will be awhile till she gets baptized. So that was lame. She is so close but so far. We weren't able to meet with Angela at this week which was a bummer. But we will visit her this week so we can get her prepared for her baptism on April 21st. We were able to add a new investigator this week too which was really cool. Last December the stake president challenged the stake to get 100% home teaching well our ward did it so he has extended the challenge once again. So our ward has been working hard at that. One of the guys in our ward named Cody Hill was visiting one of his ladies and she wasn't home but in the retirement home was another lady who worked there and she asked what he was doing and they had about a 45 min. conversation and she was pretty interested and has a lot of questions so he set up an appointment for us to go over with him to teach her. So we did and it was great. Her name is Debbie and he mom was a member but her dad didn't want anything to do with the church so the kids were raised Baptist or something. We gave her a Book of Mormon and she was pretty excited. So yeah that was cool too. I love when members do the finding for us! So this week was really good. Hopefully the rain stays away for a good time and that it warms up soon. I hate rain. So yeah that’s it. I love you. Have a good week.
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Love, Elder Tyler Pete Arnett