September 26^th 2011

Well all the girls got the Toro sign down, what’s up with the boys?! So I can't email this week. We went to Coloma which is where the members of the Mormon battalion continued on to and they found gold there. We saw some sights, played horse shoes and even panned for gold. Me and a couple of other elders got in belly button deep before Pres. Lewis told us to come back in closer. They have every missionary go before they go home and this group was the last one until June so we got to go a little early in our mission but it was fun. I will have more next week I promise. I'd write more but i still have to shower and get dressed and we have an appointment in an hour so I hope everyone is doing well. Love you!

Love, Elder Tyler Pete Arnett

So I have a few extra minutes tonight to email. So this week was good. We worked real hard, and still are, so we can see success. Tuesday we went on exchanges. I went with Elder Mortensen in his area. He is very tall. He's six foot eight! It was fun. We biked a lot especially to come to our leadership meeting at the church. It was at least five miles away. But we had a good time seeing people even though we weren't able to teach anyone the whole day. Wednesday we had a wonderful district meeting. President and Sister Lewis came to watch it and they said it was one of the best ones they have seen since being here. I'm sure they say that to everyone but it sounded like it came from the heart so it made me feel really happy. Then we had zone lunch. After lunch we had Zone training with President Lewis and it was really good. We have a goal of 101 baptisms in the month of December for another "White Christmas". Its 101 to emphasize the one soul that comes into salvation one at a time. So he talked a lot about that. It was really good and got us excited. He also trained on the "Standard of Excellence" for our mission. Before President Jardine left, us as leaders revised the old one to be more broad in some areas and more specific in others. It basically includes, and this is not all of them because I can't remember everything in this world, spiritually creating your days and weeks in planning, working with the ward members to find new people, to teach five member present lessons a week, to have three people to church every week with at least one person having a date to be baptized at all times and those should lead to 1 baptism a month. That's not even half of it but it’s all I could remember. On Thursday we went on exchanges again. I was with Elder Buttars in my area. It was the first time we have ever proselyted together, ever! It was fun. We stayed up way too late talking and I was dead the whole day. In fact I went to sleep at 10 like 4 nights in a row to make up for my lack of sleep that night. Friday we had weekly planning then a bunch of appointments. We tracted a bit and it was a good day. Saturday was CRAZY! So we have a Native American lady we’re working with named Georgina and her daughter is Dominic. Well they have huge opposition from their family. Not because they don't like the church but because they are super super GHETTO and have ghetto problems and crap. So we show up on Saturday to get them set up for church and a butt load of police cars had just left in front of an ambulance which was headed to the hospital. So Georgina owns a duplex, both sides, and rents one out to her friend who she’s known for a while. Well the night before her friend’s son hit her daughter Dominic because he was drunk. Well Dominic has some black people that want to get with her, that's how it works, and they heard about it so they showed up at 2 in the afternoon, when everyone was drunk ( Who's drunk at 2 anyways?!) and they beat the freaking crap out of this Mexican kid that hit Dominic. The kids mom (BTW the kids over 20) came in while they were beating him and they got scared and ran out and left the kid lying in his own pool of blood. So they called 911 and dragged him out to the front, cuz the duplex is behind another house, yeah its ghetto. So when we got there, there was blood everywhere and Georgina was cleaning it up so me and Elder Manukailea helped her clean it up outside. She said there was twice as much inside than there was outside and let me tell you, i didn't know someone had that much blood in them from what I saw outside. So we didn't get them set up for church too good. That night the neighbors whose son got beat up was drunk again and tried to fight Dominic and had a knife and cut her good on the arm. Dominic is a small girl and the lady is big and her boyfriend got a hit or two in as well. So they didn't come to church on Sunday. Georgina is actually in her interview for baptism right now but Dominic is at home and afterwards we will probably go give her a blessing. So that's what happened this week. I am in no danger so don't freak out. Plus me and Elder Manukailea are big guys and can hold our own and we can run fast ha. But really we haven't seen anything happen really. So I have to go now. Glen got his interview on Saturday and came to church Sunday so he will be getting baptized on Saturday between sessions of conference. Man what a memorable day that will be for me. I love conference and baptisms so it will rock. He truly is a miracle find. Lamar is scared to get married to Antonisha so were still working on that but the 40 bucks is still there when he mans up and puts some pants on, that is the pants of their relationship. So yeah that's it. I hope this one was entertaining to read. I thought it was a good story. And really I am in no danger at all.
Love, Elder Tyler Pete Arnett