July 26^th 2011

Yes I do eat a lot here. And thank goodness, cuz I’m hungry! The other day I ate something that before my mission would fill me up but I was sitting there feeling hungry still so I know my appetite has gotten bigger. Hopefully I can shrink it along with my belly before I come home. Monday was pretty good. We went and visited with Malachi for a little bit. He is doing great. He was supposed to get baptized on Tuesday but the bishop wanted to talk to his less active mom to make sure she understood the commitment she was making in letting him be baptized. After him we just tracted most of the night. Tuesday morning I had a good leadership meeting. We talked about the zone needs and what we would be training on for district meeting. Afterwards we had a few appointments and went to see some potentials. My ward is pretty big so there are a lot of people we can go see in it. A lot of our appointments fell through this week but we tried our hardest to use our time wisely. It was Malachi's birthday on Tuesday so we went to the pharmacy, cuz I needed more allergy medicine, and we also got some candy for him. We took it over and boy was he happy. He got a lot of candy for his birthday but what we got were all his favorites. We tracted quite a bit on Tuesday it was fun. I love tracting because you get to talk to your companion and just talk. I love talking. All my companions can attest to that. We have this lady we have been trying to work with named Marium. She is an alcoholic. She always wants to hug us. She loves Elder Moss and always tells us how good looking he is. He is a good looking kid but its weird cuz she is like 45. Wednesday our morning appointment fell through again... so we tracted a lot. We had lunch then went and visited a guy who claims to be a less active member but we think he is a nonmember. He watched Lakeview on TV but said he was baptized as a Mormon in Houston when he was five... hmm didn't know they did that down there. It was good though. He is kind of weird but is very very nice. We went and visited with Malachi to go over the baptismal program with him. He wants Elder Moss to baptize him so that’s real cool. I have to give the talk on baptism. We had a few appointments that day that didn't fall through so that was great. Wednesday we had dinner with somebody. I made Elder Moss write down our calendar so I don't remember who it was and what we had... sorry. But I am sure it was good. The rest of the night was kind of dead cuz no one was home... Thursday we had a great district meeting. I trained on getting people to church. The hows and what’s about it. We role played for a bit so it was fun. Our zone leaders have done this twice now. One plays the uke (a baritone like mine) and the other one sings and they sing these songs that a Polynesian wrote and it rocks! They did one this week and I recorded it for everyone to enjoy. It was grand. We had a delicious lunch afterwards of taco bell. I got the xxl burrito. I wasn't a fan of the sauce in it but it was ok. Next time I’ll stick with my beefy five layer burrito. Afterwards we went home and started working on things for the blitz we would be having on Sunday. We had to write down all the potentials and less actives we wanted to see and map them out from where they live so we could have people go see them and use their time effectively seeing people all in the same general area. So did that for an hour on Thursday Friday and Saturday. It paid off too. We had a few appointments on Thursday then in the evening we met with the bishop at the church. He was going to sit down with Malachi and his mom but she couldn't make it so we ended up just talking about the work in the ward and then we went over the ward list of people he wanted us to go see in the ward that he didn't know anything about. That ended up being the night. Friday we did a swell weekly planning in the morning. We had an appointment with Bro. Meisner to go out to eat at a pizza place. Usually he pays for us but he didn't have any money and so since he takes us out so often we decided to treat him to it. Boy was he excited about that. I think we made his day. We saw a few people we have been trying to get in contact with. Mainly people we had been working with or whom missionaries have worked with in the past. A lot of them aren't home ever, or they moved. It’s a more ghetto area so a lot more people move in and out pretty quick. We tracted for a while then had dinner with the Durants. They are a very nice young couple. We had stir fry and almost ate it all but there wasn't that much so we felt bad and held back. After dinner we tracted some more and then did our blitz stuff. Saturday we went to see someone and they weren't home and on the way over there I realized I had forgotten to comb my hair... so we had to go back home and do that... then we went all the way down to the Elk Grove Park ward to Elk Grove Park and went to the pioneer day lunch the stake was putting on. There are more people at our ward events than their stake events. It’s kind of sad. But the fried chicken was good along with the potato salad that has made me irregular I’m sure for the past three days. It was a pretty late lunch so we just saw some people and tracted till dinner. We had it at home... I can't remember what we had. We were supposed to be doing a temple tour with the whole zone but the person we set up for it wasn't going to make it so we didn't go. Instead we just went and visited Malachi and set up his appointment with the bishop for Sunday morning. Sunday morning Malachi and his mom met with the bishop. He gave us the ok to baptize him this weekend!!! So that will be just great. We had church then dinner. At night we had our blitz. We had good participation from the ward which we are thankful for. We had great success on the blitz. We had like 4 appointments yesterday from it, most of which flaked, but nonetheless it was still great. Yesterday was transfer Monday. We went out and worked all day. It was great. Like I said a lot of our appointments were flaky so we had some good backups. We got our calls about 8 o clock at night from President Lewis. He is a great guy. He is very loving and you can feel it when he talks to you. As well he is very spiritual and calm. So it’s great. I am leaving the area I am sad to say. I love serving here with Elder Moss. I will be going up to the North Sacramento zone and I will be a Zone Leader with Elder Manukailea who was one of my zone leaders in Lodi and I went on exchanges with him. He is a great missionary. He served in the Florin ward as well and baptized like 13 people while there. He is from Long Beach Cali and is Polynesian. I assume Tongan by the k in his name and no f's. I am excited. He is a hard worker and the zone is an awesome baptizing zone so let’s hope I don't mess it up too much. I'll tell you more about him next week. I am nervous to be a Zone Leader but I believe this experience will help me to grow and become a better servant of the Lord. So mom, the next time you send me a package, idk when, can you send me some Claritin and Benadryl. It seems like I run out too fast. It’s the only stuff that keeps me well out here. So this past week I have been trying to remember my dreams more so I can use them to my advantage. I want to learn how to realize I'm in my dream so I can tap into my subconscious mind and create more in depth stories, but every time I realize I'm dreaming in my dream my eyes open and I wake up. So that will be cool to get down. Also I was thinking this week; I might want to be a seminary teacher when I come home. Of course I would have to go to school and I hear it’s super hard to become one but I think it would be fun. I could also write books on the side of that if I so desired. Book writing is my goal but I need a profession that will bring in steady income while writing a book. Why not a seminary teacher? I'll think it over some more and talk to my old seminary teachers that I had in high school to see if it’s a good idea. Well that’s it for this week. I hope you all have fun.

Love,

Elder Tyler Pete Arnett