November 30th E-mail

What is happening?!?! LOL! I'm glad that you got my pics! That's awesome. Lol "you shouldn't make a fat kid dance on a stripper pole!!!" :D He actually wasn't my companion. He was a kid in the ward. His name is Johnny Grow. He is freaking hilarious. I love that kid! But i forgot all about that video! LOL! So those are some pretty sweet dunks eh? I like em. I probably couldn't do them now... Tis the season (too much food)... So we had a pretty good week this week. Thanksgiving was awesome! We went to 2 families homes and really enjoyed ourselves! And well we really stuffed ourselves.. Well its good to know that my pics made it ok.. :D I would have been really sad if something happened to them.. Well we got our transfer calls last night and Elder Tueller is leaving me.. He is headed to Hayden and i am getting Elder Prosence.. I don't know much about him. He hasn't been out too long.. I think maybe only 2 transfers and the word on him that i have heard so far is that he only has 1 leg.. I know it sounds crazy but we will see.. But i am excited. This area is so freaking huge though that I'm going to miss Elder Tueller's GPS and i don't want to get one cause i think people become way too dependent on those things.. although they are nice if you took elder Tueller's away from him after him being here almost 5 months he couldn't find his way anywhere.. So i don't want to get one. But maybe my comp will have one who knows.. And if he is a rich kid ill just tell him he can get me one for Christmas :D lol. But i think i know my way around pretty good. But it will be interesting to see what happens these next 4 transfers.. Ive been trying to predict it but i dunno. My guess is that i will be with Elder Prosence for 2 transfers and then i will train again before my mortal frame is given up to its mother earth :D lol. We had 4 investigators at church this week! woot! Bruce and Laura Bassett came and this 16 year old girl named Tasyia came and then this 9 year old girl named Daija came and we are teaching her 8 year old sister named Jeda and on Wednesday we will be teaching another girl named Jeda.. so altogether we are teaching Tasyia, Daija, Jeda, and Jeda... crazy eh? So the whole district here is being changed. Every companionship is getting mixed up. So its going to be crazy. And well i don't know any of the elders coming in very well. But I'm sure it will be really cool. And at the first of the year we will be moving into an old guys house.. He is lonely.. and he has a huge house with no one in it.. :D So that will be nice. I should take pics of the place we are staying now.. You would laugh :D I cant believe chocolates took that long! I am going to have to speed up the process again.. Shannon will help next year.. no worries.. She might even be part of the family by then :D But i will help next year too. we will knock those chocolates out in no time :D And i can tell you all the crazy stories from my mission :D lol. So how is everyones BoM reading coming along?!?! are you going to finish it twice before may? :D So i look forward to getting the boots! That will be very nice. It was actually dry this week which was nice. But I'm sure it will hit us in no time.. So whats the weather been like in Utah? Anyways i will let you know when i get the boots. Well I'm glad that thanksgiving went well for you. Thanks for everything. I cant wait to get my chocolates! woot! I'm afraid I'm going to put on some weight this holiday season :D Oh and by the way thanks for the BYU update! That is awesome! I am so happy that they won! Utah fans are kinda retarded.. But i might marry one some day you never know :D But anyways i love ya! I look forward to talking to ya in a few weeks! Thanks for all that you do! I will definitely be praying for you! Thanks you for all of your prayers for me and my investigators! Don't forget that we are all called to spread the gospel.. not just the missionaries! woot! Its true! Love ya! Elder Penman

November 23rd E-mail

Well whats happening?!?! My poor crippled parents.. Mom I don't know if Jen thinks your too old to have blue streaks in your hair but if she doesn't... I do.. LOL! 64 is just a little much for blue streaks :D What is with all the crazy stuff that is happening around there? You guys are laying around all day broken and then Uncle Dave decided to join the party and have his heart stop or what? geez. I hope everything will settle down a little bit.. I pray for all of you! But I heard an old saying once that pain keeps you humble and close to the veil.. so i guess my family is just pretty darn spiritual! :D lol. But please keep me updated on how everyone is doing ok? Thanks. Well I cant believe its thanksgiving already! That means that in a month i get to call home :D hehe. That will be pretty cool. This thanksgiving is going to be miserable.. We have 2 dinners planned so far and i just know myself and food.. I'm not going to be able to walk.. Its going to suck :D But I'm sure i will survive.. Well all these close losses for the niners are a good thing.. that means maybe next year they will be good. and be able to pull it out on the close games.. who know? Wishful thinking? Well missionary work is going pretty well right now! The Bassett family came to church again for the 3rd time! I really think that they enjoy it and that they are starting to settle in.. Now if we could just get them to stop being to busy so that we could go have lessons with them then i think that they would join the church! Which would just be absolutely wonderful! This family is just awesome! We also had at church another investigator and a less-active family (of 5) that hasn't been forever and a single mother that hasn't been forever (like 4 years) came for the 3rd time in a row.. So we are doing some less-active work as well that is going nicely! I love seeing people come back into the church! Its fun! We met an interesting kid yesterday though.. He and his family joined the church 4 years ago.. A year later he went on a mission to Argentina and served an honorable full-time mission and then when he came home he started researching some of the crazy anti that one of his companions was telling him about.. (that he had hear throughout the course of his mission) and shortly after that he formally left the church (had his name removed) and now he is a messianic Jew... Yep Jews that accept Jesus Christ as their savior.. So that was an interesting conversation.. Because see in order to be a true Jew it has to come through your mother.. But he was saying it came through his father and that there were signs of it being in his mother line as well.. But hrrrrrrrp. They are pretty much mainstream Christians that believe in the trinity but claim they are all Jews.. so its kinda interesting but anyways.. We had a really good week this week. So its already dropped about 6 inches of snow here.. So i am definitely going to need some boots.. They just need to be black and polishable and waterproof and well even though it sounds weird (cause i wear a 15) not freaking huge.. If you know what i mean.. A conservative boot.. Not one that shows that i am wearing these huge boots.. now of course they are going to know that anyways.. so it doesn't really matter.. so whatever will really work.. but.. lol.. I dunno. But i don't have anywhere to buy them here unless i go to Spokane and well that isn't going to happen at least this week. So if you found some that would work that would be great just go ahead and ship em.. I will check my email next Monday before i go buy anything... to see if you sent some or if i get some in the mail this week then i will know i got some :D oh and i don't want them too high either.. i think like mid-high would be perfect.. i think its 6 inch... something like that.. but anyways i hope you will be able to find something.. But thank you for doing that! I love you guys! Happy thanksgiving! Take care of yourselves!

Elder Penman

Photos!

Brian Abbott's baptism!

My Posterity!

Yoga! Woot!

LOL!

There's grandma!

The Robison's!

The Last of Post Falls

Me and the deer getting a little friendly :)

Washington Spokane Mission! With Elder Bednar!

November 16th E-mail

Well hello there fam! Well dad i hope you have had your fix for eye surgeries for a while.. that would be nice! I wish there was something i could do for ya.. I will continue praying for ya! So mom i guess you just felt a little left out with dad having all these surgeries that you decided to go get stuff done to your back eh? Its like trying to keep up with the Jones' in our family now isn't it... :D Its a good thing I'm not home or else i would have to think up something to mess up real bad so that i could have the worst problems in the house.. you know how competitive i can get :D lol no but i really am praying for both of you! no more old people symptoms until your at least 50... ok?! oh and by the way mom i am fine from the car accident.. i promise. but yes it really is a miracle! pretty crazy pictures huh? So how has the weather been in Utah? we got some snow here.. and boy i tell you what this place is so beautiful! I absolutely love it! Like even at the library where i am at right now out the window is just woods.. its awesome! and there is deer all over the place.. I haven't seen any elk but the deer are everywhere.. We see them everyday. In fact the other night we were driving and one of them hit the side of our car! it was just like what happened to me when i was in Shelly's little red car down by snow college! but no worries i think the deer lived... :D So this week we went and raked leaves for our ward mission leader at his house.. well he lives up at deer lake and he owns this resort up there and it is just absolutely beautiful! I couldn't believe it. He has all the docks too that go out into the lake and i wanted to go fish off them so bad! lol.. but we had to rake leaves otherwise he probably would have let me.. He is like 80 years old and he is the nicest guy in the world! But it was pretty fun. maybe when the lake freezes over he will let us go ice fishing off of his dock.. that would be perfect. Plus they have lots of cool fish in the lake he said.. So this week overall was pretty good. It feels as if we have a lot of work that is just kinda sitting on the fence and so we have been trying our best to shake the fence and just hoping and praying that they will fall on the right side :D But we will see what happens. The Bassett family is still doing pretty good. They didn't make it to church this week. And Bruce (the dad) well he is a history guy and he just loves history but because of that he went on google and typed in "Joseph Smith" and "Brigham Young" and so on and so forth and just read everything that he could find.... so he is a little upset because of it.. But the cool thing is that it makes no difference whatsoever what happened in the lives of those men regarding the restoration of the gospel when it comes to knowing whether or not Christ's church is back on the earth.. Satan just tries to make it about the prophets or (the men) when really it is about our savior Jesus Christ and what he has done for us right here right now! along with what he did for us 2000 years ago.. but that is the comforting part.. and we kind of explained that to him.. but we will see.. so please remember the Bassett Family (Bruce, Laura, Nick, and Elizabeth) in your prayers if you will! They are such a wonderful family and they know darn near everyone in the ward and didn't even know that they went to the church.. So that is a good thing so we are just going to try to get the ward more involved with them and see if we can help them progress in gaining testimonies! But we are excited for what work the Lord has given us right now! In the district we had 2 baptisms this week.. and so that is cool.. We are just plugging along.. Oh and mom about boots we are going to try to make it down to Spokane sometime soon and see what we can do about buying some boots.. so i will let you know about that.. But if you find some polishable WARM black boots just send the pic or link to me and i will check them out and tell you what i think.. :D I know we kind of did that last year but then i didn't really need them so now that i need them well i will put a little more into it :D Well interviews are tomorrow... and so I am looking forward to that! I love President Palmer! He is a wonderful man! Such a spiritual leader... its awesome! But I'm looking forward to hopefully getting a heads up about what is going to happen this transfer even though we still have 2 weeks to go.. But my guess is for me that i will be here the rest of my mission... But we will see what happens.. I cannot believe that Saturday was my 18 month mark.. WOW! that went by fast.. But anyways I love you guys so much! Thanks for all that you do for me! Get better both of you! Take care of yourselves!

Elder Penman

The First Snow and Car Wreck!

November 9, 2009 E-mail

Whats happenin?!?!?! So highland got stomped eh? that's no good. Oh well there is always next year... At least you made it to the playoffs.. So dad what is the deal with your eye? this is absolutely crazy! Let me know how it goes! You will definitely be in my prayers and thoughts! Which eye even is it? hopefully its not your shooting eye... cause we are going killing, not hunting, killing when i get home :D It just pure torture to serve in an area where everyone goes hunting and has a love for hunting and yet i cant go.. lol. but its ok. there will be plenty of elk slaughtering for me to do when i get home! Well we had an awesome week this week. I went on an exchange to Mead. And i was with Elder Johnson and his comp came up here to be with Elder Tueller for the day.. I go on about 1 exchange a week usually. But anyways i was on exchanges and a year ago when i was in River Ridge the Mead elders were in our district and so i had gone on exchanges there plenty of times before. Well we went and talked to this native American lady named penny and turns out i had taught her a year ago when i was a greenie. And here we are teaching her again and so she shows us a picture of her husbands side of the family (her husband is white) and there is a family that is in my ward right now here in Clayton.. so i was like oh hey i know them! and anyways it was pretty fun cause we taught her about how the BoM is her history and i committed her to find out where she came from.. like where Indians came from.. and so we will see what happens.. but she was telling us how her tribe doesn't have like written records of anything.. all their history gets passed down from their elders. and i was like well your history is written down right here.. and held up the BoM. lol... so i was just trying to get her out of the grove from learning about religion and about what other people believe to actually taking a personal liking to the BoM. but its just interesting how the Lord works ya know? Everything definitely happens for a reason. Elder Johnson's companion Elder Stewart is seriously just like Hammy the Squirrel off of the movie Over the Hedge.. seriously its like he is on speed all the time! he definitely wants to work hard and that's a good thing.. he is just a super spaz. Like Elder Tueller told me that they were tracting and Elder Stewart walked up to this lady and said hey how are ya? and the lady said good and he said have to ever heard of the golden plates? and she goes ya i have... does the church still have those? and he said Nope we don't know what happened to them! LOL! so he just gets so excited that he says really stupid things.. but oh well. He has only been out 2 months.. what do ya expect. At least he is talking to people.. So we had a really good turnout at church this week. A family of 4 came! Bruce and Laura and her kids Nick and Elizabeth and they are 12 and 10 years old. And the kids had friends at church that they didn't know went there and this is the parents second week in a row coming to church! I think that they are really liking it! I am hoping so anyways! But its funny cause their first to looks at the Mormon church are testimony meeting and then this week they had the primary program! so i was like hrrrrrp! I told them 3rd time would be a charm for them.. lol! But i got to teach the gospel principles class this week and it was on the Atonement! man i love teaching that class! I hope that's the calling they give me when i come home! Its a fun one to teach! Plus i wouldn't go crazy and teach a bunch of deep doctrine to peoples investigators.. anyways.. It was just fun. So i bought me another 4GB SD card for my camera this morning and so i will probably send my other one home soon.. Which will be cool cause there are a lot of videos on there that you could see. :D especially of my throwing down! woot! dunks like mad! :D Well i hope everything goes well with you guys! Take care of yourselves! I love you guys so much! Its almost thanksgiving can you believe it?!?! crazy! time is flying! but i love ya and i look forward to hearing back from ya! take care!

Elder Penman

November 2nd E-mail

Whats going on?!! things are absolutely crazy here! I wasn't going to but i will go ahead and tell you. lol. So this week was an absolute miracle I was on exchanges with the Deerpark missionaries... I was with Elder Holtom who is a great missionary. We were in his area and he was driving. We were headed to a members home to tell them some good news about a place that we found for this family they knew to live in and their driveway (along with everyone else's driveway in deerpark and the surrounding areas) was like a mile long. It was a dirt road so we were driving at a pretty fast speed.. (way too fast) and we took a few corners...well we had one corner that turned to the right and not only that but it was a blind corner. It was wet and there were leaves everywhere... well we took the corner and our back tires slid and when the back left tire slid over the bank the car bottomed out and FLIPPED! Next thing i know we are hanging upside down in our seat belts! I know for a fact that we are and were watched over! We are both fine now! That car is totalled but we literally walked away. Elder Holtom had some scratches on his wrist from crawling out of the car with all the broken glass everywhere and i had a bump on my head from where the roof caved in and drilled me :D but that is it! Our backs were both a little stiff the next 2 days but seriously we are fine... its a miracle! We are seriously so thankful to be alive right now. But trust me when i say we are ok.. mom don't freak out and call the mission pres... and don't worry... :D But talk about crazy! I will send some pics... so you will see what happened but it was absolutely nuts! We are so grateful! So lesson learned! Don't drive fast on dirt roads and definitely don't take the corners! Other good news is that we had 3 investigators at church! Two of them are a new couple and it was their first time at church! and it was perfect because the wife (their names are Bruce and Laura) and Laura had her dad pass away and she didn't deal with it too well.. well one of the guys at church who just lost his wife this week got up and bore his testimony about eternal families and he was smiling and he did a very good job it was amazing! as Bro. Barns was bearing his testimony the spirit was so strong! I couldn't believe it! How could a man get up the week of his wife's death that he had been married to for 56 years and be so at ease? That is the peace that only the gospel can bring into a persons life! That is a true testimony of this gospel! Well I am running out of time! i got 1 minute left! So i will just say that i love you guys so much! I am fine! Please don't worry about me! But that was a pretty darn cool story! I will forever be known as part of the coolest car crash in the mission! woot! lol! I love you guys! take care!

Elder Penman