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