May 23^rd 2011

So this week was swell except for the rain, which soaked me from Monday through Wednesday morning. Monday night was an ok night. My companion wanted to leave an hour early so he could get his eye brows waxed. So the place turned out to be closed on Mondays so we biked out into the rain and hour early for no reason. I didn't think it was going to rain so I didn't even wear my rain pants over my normal pants. After we got some Panda Express. Then we went home. Tuesday was a nice day, except for the rain. I swear rain will be the death of me. We went to an appointment; they weren't home, so we went and visited Nancy. She was doing good. She hasn't drank for like a whole week so once we get the guyout it will all be good to go for her to get baptized. After that we went and saw Sandy. She was a lady that we met because some random black lady told us to go see her. She is nice. Her whole family is LDS but she has been too busy taking care of her husband with cancer to do anything. So when we got there on Tuesday she was outside crying. Her husband had passed away on Saturday. She wasn't taking it too good. She said it wasn't the fact that he died it was the way it happened. I guess he suffered all day Saturday then passed away at night. We shared a short message and prayed for her. We have another appointment with her this Thursday. Hopefully things work out for her cuz the gospel could really bless her life. Then we went home and had lunch. We had to rush to the other side of our area to make it to an appointment. The lady was asleep and not feeling well so we went to see our backups. It poured so hard for like 20 min. then completely stopped and the sun came out. It was super weird. We talked to a lot of interesting people on Tuesday but it was fun. Wednesday I went with the Zone Leaders and two other District leaders in the zone and we all drove down to Lodi at 8 for a leadership training meeting. It was awesome! It was funny cuz President and Sister Jardine were way more into business and hard core mode because we were all leaders and so we could all mostly understand what was happening and how important it was. It was an awesome meeting. I got to see some good friends from the mission. Elder Byrum took me to lunch and we hung out for a little bit. He is a cool chill guy. After the meeting I met Elder Garcia at a lady’s house. He was in a lesson with another missionary there. It was good and we will be going back on Wednesday. The lady is a Jehovah witness. She is confused. We had a great Japanese dinner at the Hahn’s. They were the ones who let us call home at their house. They both grew up in Hawaii and have a Ukulele but no one knows how to play it so they let me mess around with it sometimes. After dinner we had correlation then we went and talked to a guy who told us the Pope is the beast that is going to usher in the second coming. He was nice though. Thursday we had district meeting in the morning. I trained on what President Jardine trained us on. Getting people to church. It was good. I also trained on contacting people on the streets and getting return appointments with them. Afterwards we had a couple of appointments that fell through so we tracted for a good long while. It was good. We later went and saw some nice Referrals we had received. We had Sam’s Club pizza at home for dinner. A member dropped it off and me and Elder Garcia ate the whole Pepperoni one and left the combination to Elder Pelfrey and Elder Bevridge. He didn't give us a drink though. I guess he thought Elder Bevridge had that one taken care of... just kidding. I like his name... After dinner we went out with a member to see a few people we had appointments with. They all fell through so we went and saw a less active lady. It was fun. He did a good job calming her down though. He is awesome. Him and his family will be getting sealed this weekend after him just being baptized a year ago! It’s awesome. Friday we had weekly planning. Then we went out to go to an appointment we had. The guy wasn't home but there was a girl outside next door to his house so we went over and talked to her. She had met with missionaries in the past but she got a new number so they couldn't get in contact with her anymore. She was real cool. We taught her and it was awesome. She will be YSA though. We again tracted a lot. It was fun. I enjoy tracting. At the beginning of my mission I loved it but then I stopped liking it but now I like it again. It’s fun. We had dinner at a Meinh person’s house. It was a really good soup they make. It had different kinds of meat in it as well as cow stomach. Elder Garcia told us he wouldn't eat anything weird so we told him they were noodles then revealed the truth afterwards. Cow stomach is actually called Tripe which isn't bad at all. We went to see Dave and Heidi afterwards. No suits and ties... They told us to call next time because they are going through some crap and don't want us to see it. As if we haven’t seen it already. Saturday the world was supposed to end! According to a preacher in Oakland. I don't know if reached all over the United States but this guy said he calculated it and Saturday at six p.m. in each time zone the apocalypse was going to start. Well it didn't. We went and saw a lot of people in the morning. We tracted a lot then we saw some people we are trying to get working with. We had dinner with a lady named Sister Reeder. We went and had a nice visit with Clair. She is trying to get out of the place she’s living in because some shady crap is going on there. Afterwards we went home to call people to set them up for church. Sunday... Sundays used to be my favorite day of the week as a missionary but now it’s the most stressful! Church was good. Mrs. Kelley came again and also had to leave after sacrament meeting because she is old and her back was hurting. Nancy came as well. She doesn't have any medicine for her mental disorder so she was all scared and stuff. We calmed her down enough to come to sacrament meeting then she had to go home because she was shaking too much. After church we had dinner. It was some good Meinh food. They cook a bunch of different Asian vegetables in different meats and it tastes real good over some sticky rice. Then we went and talked to a few people. We were trying to get as many people to President Jardines last Cottage meeting in Elk Grove. A cottage meeting is just President Jardine teaching basically the first lesson at the stake center. He rocks it though. Being a lawyer he can really talk in front of large crowds. We tried to get some people there but Nancy was too scared. Mrs. Kelley was too tired Clair had a seizure about an hour before so she couldn't go so we were banking on a less active lady and her three un baptized kids. They said they would come when we called them at 6. So we went and was waiting for them. The meeting started at 7:30 and they called us at 8 to tell us they weren't going to come. It was a good meeting though. Then we went home and planned then went to sleep. Today we aren't going to do much. One of our Zone leaders is going to Coloma which is an old history site where President Jardine takes all the missionaries that are about to go home. The other zone leader loves rock climbing so he was trying to get everyone to go to this place that cost 12 bucks to rock climb. I'm not exactly what people call light or skinny so it’s not fun for me. Only like 5 people are going. Everyone else is just going to do their own thing. We are going to write a bunch of letters. I don't get a lot so I decided I'm going to write a butt load of people, even if I've already written them without a response and hopefully it will result in more letters in the future. I guess I’m getting to the point where after a year no one remembers why they liked you and were friends with you so they don't care to correspond thinking if they liked you before they will later either way. I really don't think that but it sounds good. Well this is definitely one of my longer emails. It was fun to hear about everything going on back at home. Don't worry mom, in 51 weeks I’ll be home to relieve some of your chauffeuring duties. It’s exciting to hear about the boys and their sports. What position is Braden going to play? And that’s fun that porter can be a good pitcher. I hope everyone else is doing good. I love you guys a lot. This work is so awesome and so true. I have been taking a step back a lot lately during lessons and I like to picture what’s going on and even though it’s been a whole year it still seems so crazy that I'm actually a missionary. It feels so right to be doing missionary work. It’s a natural thing and its awesome doing what God wants you to do. Keep up the good work.

Love,

Elder Tyler Pete Arnett