August 1^st 2011

Well it sounds like things are just moving along at home nicely. Boy is it sure different being a Zone Leader. I have been so busy this week it’s been crazy. The crazier thing is I'm not as tired as I should be. We wake up at 6 every morning to run on the treadmills. I ran a mile for the first time in a while on Saturday. I was surprised because my asthma did great. I am just way out of shape. But I have lost like 5 lbs. since Wednesday. We skip a lot of meals. My companion Elder Manukailea is a very very hard worker. It’s great. He baptizes a lot as well. In fact I came into the area with two baptisms this past weekend. It was great. He is from Long Beach Cali. He is Tongan and went to a Tongan ward growing up. He is real cool. He reminds me a lot of Elder Faka'i, who I heard was going to school in Utah. He also reminds me a lot of Hudson. But he is a lot more outgoing than Elder Faka'i and more bold with people. A lot of people in the mission are actually scared of him because he doesn't have a problem putting them in their place. It’s weird being a Zone leader though. There are a few missionaries in our zone that have been out longer than me so it’s weird to be up their talking to them a lot. I won't go into huge detail about this week. We basically taught the two people who got baptized on Saturday. One was named Ian Thrasher and he shot himself in the head a year ago after getting totally wasted drunk after hearing his brother died in Iraq. He lived but is messed up from it. He does good though. The other guy’s name is Robert Pellerin. He is blind and got married at seven on Saturday and baptized at seven thirty. It was amazing to see. So I probably won't be talking a whole lot about food in my emails anymore. We skip a lot of meals because we are so busy all the time. It takes a lot of effort to baptize and we want to do a lot of that. We have two more people set up for this month and a few others who are close, we just need to get in contact with them. So this week we gave talks in sacrament meeting. We were the only speakers so we both gave about 12 min talks. I thought we did pretty good. I used the joke at the beginning about asking my companion and the bishop for jokes to tell and now having two jokes I can't tell in sacrament meeting. I think people liked it. My talk was on member missionary work. I quoted the general authorities a lot and I think I got my point across. Elder Manu talked about missionary work and the atonement. It was pretty good. He compared missionary work to a sauna. You don't just walk into a sauna and say man it’s hot in here. That’s expected. So it is with missionary work. It’s going to be hard. Expect it. I thought he did great. I'll attach the copy of my talk with this email because I wrote it on this computer. So I am in North Sacramento. It’s in the Natomas and Del Paso Heights areas of city. Natomas is very nice and rich and Del Paso Heights is very Ghetto. So we got the best of both worlds. The ward is really cool and the people are super nice. There are also a lot of pretty girls in this ward. It’s the largest ward I've served in as well. The area is large and well as members who come to church. The closest to our home ward since I’ve been out. Our area used to be a bike area but since we’re zone leaders we get a car. It’s a large bike area too though. We didn't get fed by the members very much at all this week. We mostly just ate Ramen at home. It’s pretty good. We live with another set of missionaries. They speak Hmong which is another Asian language. They are pretty cool as well. So yeah that’s pretty much all we did this week. I hope I can continue to lose weight and learn what it is I am exactly supposed to do as a zone leader because right now I have no idea what I am doing. I just follow Elder Manu around and do what he tells me to do. He is an amazing missionary. He has turned a lot of zones into high baptizing zones and President Lewis told him he wants him to transfer everything he knows to me so I can continue that on in the mission. Elder Manu goes home in October so his time is limited. But me I’ve still got over 9 months which if you think about it is not that long at all. I have been able to remember my dreams a lot more though. Oh yeah. last Tuesday we went to Texas Roadhouse, a member took us there, and I got a 22 oz. steak and it was amazing! I ate the whole thing and was still hungry even with the salad and two rolls I had before. Our waitress was gorgeous. I told her she was very nice and deserved something good in life and gave her a Jesus Card with Mormon.org on the back. I was nervous to do so but I figured if I am going to find a wife within the next year and half I better learn how to be outgoing with those kind of things. The members got a kick out of it ha. So that is what’s going on. Oh yeah to answer a couple of your questions mom, Elder Moss did stay in Elk Grove. I did not go back for Malachi's baptism though he did get baptized, we were just too busy up here. The mission is pretty big, I think. From the mission office which is at the top of the mission down to the lowest area of the mission which is Tracy it would probably take around 2 hrs. to drive it maybe 2 and a half hrs. I'm not sure. You could probably look it up on the internet. We have Fair Oaks at the top, Eldorado hills to the side and it goes all the way down to Manteca and Tracy. It’s pretty big I guess, but I don't have anything to compare it to. Oh yeah this week we also had a mission leaders council. It was fun being in the zone leader portion of it. They put a lot of trust in us as zone leaders and we have a lot of responsibility. Well that’s it. Love you.

Love, Elder Tyler Pete Arnett