Chicken Coop

March 10, 2009

Hola familia,

It sounds like you've all been pretty crazy busy this last week. With school, work, trying to have fun, and getting Amy ready to leave tomorrow on her mission. Time just flies by, doesn't it? The days, months, and years just keep on clicking by. And Matthew turns 17 in just a week and a little bit. Almost happy birthday Matthew!

I wish I could've heard your amazing talk Amy. I'm glad that I get to read most of it. It's exciting to talk about missionary work. Especially to get members excited about it. That's all we focus on during our dinner thoughts. We have a thing called invitation Sunday coming up that was an idea of President Belnap's. It's a special sacrament meeting with special talks. Also the whole meeting is explained by the bishop or branch president about everything that goes on so that a person who is not a member can understand what it is that we do. There was a lot of success the first time that they did it back in September. As a result there was 22 baptisms in the mission. So we're really excited for the one on this upcoming Sunday, the 15th.

We've had some crazy weather lately. It'll be in the 50's and then start hailing and snowing and then go back up to the 50's. It's made life a little bit more interesting.

I wish I could've eaten some of your waffles Amy. They sound amazing. Too bad that they wouldn't go through the mail very well. You'll just have to make me some in 2010.

Leonardo is amazing. He's come out with us on exchanges. He's also so much fun to be around. I wish that you could meet him. I would tell him to call you but he doesn't really speak any English. And I can't be there to translate for him. Oh well. You'll eventually get to meet him.

We helped somebody roof their chicken coop this last week. That was a lot of fun. It was especially fun to watch Elder Blomquist and Elder Malan try to catch the rooster. It was really fast. It took them a long time before they succeeded. We also helped build a support wall. It was really fun to get out of the every day routine and do some good service.

Our new finding people techniques aren't really so much new as a reminder to always be finding people. It was more of getting us to talk to every single person that we come into contact with. Which we've done a pretty good job of implementing. In the last couple of weeks we've tripled the size of our investigator pool. So we've had a lot more work to do lately with trying to teach all of these people. The best and most fun days is where you just go out and work hard and teach all day long. It's such an amazing feeling to share the gospel with somebody.

Well, I have to end this email up.

I love you all very super much

Elder Benjamin Arnold

P.S. Thanks for getting the scriptures. I can't wait to use them.