Saturday, September 25, 2010

Sept. 5, 2010







































































































Hey! I'm doing way good! How are you?! It has been a way exciting fun week! I'm really sorry that it's taking me until now to write you. I bet you've been crying nonstop the last 2 days becuase you haven't gotten a letter from me. Haha just kidding ;) I have some good excuses for not writing though. First of all, on monday we went to Tivoli!!! Tivoli is basically the Disneyland of Denmark! It was so fun! So that is obviously why I didn't have time to write on monday when I usually do. And then yesterday we had to go to a specialized training with the mission president and the other missionaries in the zone. It took all day and it was way way boring. I was having trouble staying awake during the last half of it. Anyway, that is why I'm not writing you until now. (note from mom....I asked and yes, it is approved in the Denmark mission.)

Well like I said, this has been a big week, so I'll just get right into telling you about it. I'll start with The Nougat Challenge! First I need to give you a little background. So, here in Ballerup there is this challange that a lot of missionaries do called The Ballerup Run. It is a run from the mission office all the way to the Ballerup house. It's like a 10 mile run and a lot of missionaries try to do it so they can put their names on a sign. Well me and Elder Williamson thought that challenge sounded way too hard, so we decided to invent our own... The Nougat Challenge! There is a breakfast cereal here called Nougat Pillows that are way unhealthy and way delicious, and the challenge is eating an entire box of them in one sitting. It turns out that it's way harder than it sounds. Well, one day we had our district leader, Elder Roth, and his comp, Elder Larkin over for splits and we decided to all do the Nougat Challenge. So we each bought a box of Nougat Pillows and a liter of milk and began. A few minutes into it, we were already all completely sick, and over time we all wanted to give up and drop dead. Elder Larkin couldn't do it, he quit after half way. A bit later, Willy also chickened out. Elder Andersen got so close, but couldn't quite make it. But me and Elder Roth fought through, and we were able to finish the entire box!!! I was the first ever to complete the challenge! Although I felt way sick and completely terrible the rest of the day, and I honestly think that I will never eat Nougat Pillows again!
Work wise, we have been pretty busy. We were lucky enough to get all zone transportation cards, so we can go all over the place now. So we have been using them a lot to go to some of the places further away in our area. Oh one of them is a place called Ølstykke which means 'Beer Piece'. Oh Denmark... We've been trying to find some new investigators up there and there is a lot of potential becuase it's been so long since any missionaries have been up there. One day we were out on a beach and we found all these weird Jelly fish things washed up on the beach. Andersen said we can touch them and they won't hurt us, so we picked some up. They were way weird.
Here is a kinda funny story. We were walking down the street, and this muslim guy told us to come over to him, so we went in to his little flower shop that he was working at, and he basically just yelled at us for awhile about Muhammed and the Koran. We tried getting a few words of ours in there but it was tough. While we were talking with him, this crazy witch lady came in the flower shop and started smelling all the flowers, then she randomly sat down on the ground and just stayed there for a few minutes. Then she stood up, lit a cigarette and started smoking, looked at us and yelled ''Et slips på!'' Which means ''a tie on'' and then she left. It was so weird and random!
We've had a ton of eating appointments lately. There are 2 especially that I want to tell you about. The first one was a way fun eating appointment with an awesome family, The Ringheims. They have two little kids, ages 5 and 3, and the 5 year old, Mads is so funny. He always says way funny things to me, like ''Er der nogen hjemme i dit hoved?'' ''Is there anyone home in your head?'' And ''Du taler som du har en kartoffel i munden.'' You talk like you have a potatoe in your mouth'' I was laughing way hard when he told me that.
Well we had another eating appointment a couple days later, and I have to say, It was literally the worst day of my entire mission so far. I was so ticked! Here's the story. The whole day, we had planned a big barbeque. We bought some chicken and some briquettes and we were gonna have a delicious bbq chicken dinner. Finally the time for the bbq came and we got everything ready. We made some mashed potatoes, some garlic bread, and the chicken was about halfway done getting cooked, when a little old lady in the ward calls us up. She asks us if we are coming, and says that the food is ready... Then I hear Elder Andersen just say ''Shoot!'' It turns out that this lady made an eating appointment with Elder Andersen on Sunday, and for some reason he forgot to tell us about it or even write it down in his planner. So of course he forgot about it. Anyway, we tell the lady that we can come but it would take at least an hour to get there. She says that's ok. So, we have to put all of our barbeque food away, and we walk to the bus stop, which is a 6 or 7 minute walk. When we are almost to the bus stop we see the bus driving away. So becuase we missed that bus that meant that we had to go the the main station by foot. The walk to the station takes 30 minutes, we had to catch a bus there in 14 minutes... So we ran to the bus station, and made it right on time to see our bus driving away!!! But we chased it down, and the bus driver was kind enough to stop for us. So we were on the bus, all of us just tired and grumpy, I was thinkin how could this get any worse.. We finally arrive at the little old lady's house, and to top everything else off, she serves us lasagna! Don't get me wrong, I like lasagna, but for some strange reason that I don't understand, I get lasagna so much at eating appointments and I'm tired of it! I've seriously eaten lasagna at half of my eating appointments on my mission! Anyway, I was pretty mad at Andersen that night.. The moral of this story is, if you ever have missionaries over for an eating appointment, don't give them lasagna.
Well, on to a better topic, PDay! Tivoli!! It was so dang fun! It is a big amusement park in Copenhagen. We got in really cheap to, because Elder Andersen's mom has a pass or something, so instead of paying around 300 crowns it only cost us 120, which is like 20 bucks or so. Since it was a monday afternoon, everyone was in school or at work so we pretty much had the entire park to ourselves! So we were able to go on ride after ride without even having to wait in a line! They have some pretty wild rides. The craziest was this one airplane ride. It spins in a big loop way fast. They say you experience 5 Gs. It was way crazy cause they asked us how wild we wanted it, and we told them as wild as possible, and all 4 of us that went on it blacked out! We didn't go unconcious, but our eyes went dark. It that even legal to have a ride like that?!?! Check it out. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-BSsrJwmnQ&feature=related . Anyway, it was a way fun day, but I was feeling pretty sick after that. I think it is a good think to wait in lines at amusement parks to give yourself a little rest.
Well, I think that is about it. Oh yeah, there was that boring training that we had yesterday, but that's not worth writing about.
Since it was a big week, I have quite a few pictures for you this time. The first ones are of the Nougat Challenge. There is before the challenge, then later is my final bite, and when I completed it. There there are pictures of some critters I've encountered this week. A jelly fish, a little frog, and some ducks. Oh yeah, I forgot to say, there was a Coldstone at Tivoli, so we got some delicious icecream there. There's a pic of that too. And then, there are a couple of pics of Willy and I riding a giraffe.

Ya know whats weird? We are in the month of September now! I turn 20 in 2 and a half weeks! That is crazy!
Scotty enters the MTC today! I'm so excited for him! That's fun that you could all spend some time together before he heads out. He was set apart that long before his mission? That must've been kinda weird for him. Well, I'm excited for him, and he's gonna do great! Is there a mtc address that I could write to him sometime?

I'm glad you like hearing about our investigators! Oh, how could I have forgotten to tell you, remember Jennifer that I told you about last time? Well there is some big news with her! I don't remember if I told you this, she isn't actually in our area, she has just been coming to our church because her friend is in the ward, so we had to refer her to the other missionaries. Well, on their very first appointment with her they challenged her to baptism and she said yes! So she decided to fast and pray about a date this last sunday, and she decided to get baptized on this Friday!!! Holy Cow! So there is gonna be a baptism in 2 days!

Thanks for the pictures of everyone! It's fun seeing them. It's weird, the kids have already changed a lot! And I'm not even half way done! I gotta say, I'm really diggin' Tia's style! So how are the kids liking school so far?

Well, I gotta get going. We're gonna eat some lunch and then we're going on splits with that kid Morten again. By the way, he's going to Portugal! Have a great week! Oh, and have fun with Aoi!

Love Elder Tyler Lee

Aug. 29th, 2010





























































































Hey!!!
How's it going?! It really is crazy how fast the weeks go by and how quickly another pday rolls along!
Yeah dad, it is kinda hard sometimes having 3 missionaries. It makes it weird and awkward sometimes. That is why we usually split up when contacting. We go 2 and 1 so it is less weird. Also we try to go on splits every once in awhile when we get the chance. I guess we should just use this opportunity with 3 missionaries to our benefit. But yeah, Andersen is a good tool to have. He helps us a ton with Danish.
Well mom, first of all, you are welcome for the little present. It wasn't much, but I'm glad you enjoyed it. So, you asked me a ton of questions, I'll try my best to answer them all.
Yeah there are a lot of people who speak english. Especially the younger generation. They all know English. But for the most part we speak danish with everyone if they can. We have like 4 or 5 investigators who are foreigners and only know english, but the rest are in danish. Yeah, It's helping my danish a lot I think to have a danish companion as well as a danish mission pres. We write a letter every week to the president and give him a little update of the week and I do that in Danish too. The main change that has happened with the new pres is that we hold all our meeting in Danish now, and p days are monday (which I don't like by the way) Other than that, not a ton has changed. Oh yeah, now we also have zone conference and interviews only one time every other month instead of every month. So that's a bit of a bummer. I haven't been in a temple for over 7 months. :( I haven't had a chance to go yet, cuz for most of my mission I've been to far away from the temple. But we are planning a temple trip soon, so that will be great!

Well, I guess I'll get to what's happened this week with me! This has been a good enough week! We did some fun things and got a lot done. Last p day we didn't really do anything too exciting. Well, that's not completely true. We went to a genbrug, which is a little store kinda like the DI. And guess what we bought there!!!! Snake skin ties! :-O Haha! I bought a green one, and Willy bought a red one! They are way ugly, but they only cost 2 and a half crowns! Which is like 40 cents. How could we say no to that?!
I cut both Elder Williamson's and Elder Andersen's hair the other day. I'm basically a pro at it by now. There is this kid, Morten, He is way awesome! He's in the ward, and he is going on his mission next month. He leaves on my birthday actually. Anyway, he came with us to practice for his mission. So we split up, I went with him, and the other two left and did there own thing. It was a cool going with him for most of the day showing him what it is like to be a missionary. He is way excited, and he had a lot of questions about mission life.
On Saturday we did a ton of service for an older couple. It was the same people that had the american kids over. They told us that it would probably take around an hour to 2 hours, but we ended up being there for like 5 hours! It was fun though. They are probably my favorite people in the ward so far! They're way fun and always just joking around.
Hmm what else? Oh, you asked about our investigators. I actually was planning on giving you a little update about some of them today. Now I've been here for a little while and I've gotten to know a lot of them. I'll start with peter, I told you a little bit about him before. He is the alcoholic guy who we set up a baptismal date with. Well he was supposed to be baptized on sept 11, but that's not gonna work. He hasn't been able to stop drinking yet. So we had to push the date back... a lot. We decided that he'll get baptized next year. So he has some time to make sure that he's off alcohol for good. Of course if he's ready before that he can get baptized sooner.
Next we have Alain. He is way awesome! He told us that he feels peace when he reads in the BOM and when he meets with us. Now we just need to get him to church.
Irene, she is kinda in the same situation as Alain. She loves meeting with us, and she reads in the BOM almost every single day and really likes it! But she is just really stressed right now, and really busy with school, work, divorcing her husband, and handling her little 2 year old wild boy. She says it's just too hard for her to come to church right now.
We are also working with a man named Finn, and his girlfriend, Pernille. Finn is a member, but less active, and Pernille isn't a member... Yet ;) We've been trying to help them come to church, and yesterday they both came for the first time in several months! And they told us that they'll come next week too!
The last one I want to tell you about is Jennifer! She is definitely a golden investigator! She was invited to church by a member in the ward, and she came! Then, she got a book of mormon, and has read all the way through 1st and 2nd nephi. She came to church 5 weeks in a row, and loves it! She's already made a ton of friends in the church, and knows a lot about the doctrine already. We taught her the main lessons, and now she has said yes to baptism! That is how missionary work should be!
Well that the update with investigators. Hopefully they all continue to progress towards baptism!
I have a lot of pictures for you again. I'll tell you a bit about them right now. The first one is just me and Willy and the bustop, I don't know what we are looking at or why we are laughing. Then the next few pictures are from last pday. We tried on some ugly hats and glasses. The next one is a typical danish scene. Beer, beer, and more beer. Then the next three are our ugly, yet awesome, snake skin ties. Then there are some pictures from our service day. I wasn't expecting that picture of me when he took it. And then the last one is kinda random. I took this cool picture. I hope you enjoy!
Well, I hope you have a great week! See ya!

Love Elder Tyler Lee

Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Aug. 26, 2010 Happy Birthday Mom!

Hi Mom! Happy Birthday! Today is your birthday, so you get a little birthday surprise from me! I don't want to take much time, so I'll just send you this little movie, and say that I love you! Thank you so much for everything, Mom!

Tillykke!

Love Ældste Tyler Lee

Aug. 22, 2010

For some reason the pictures Tyler sends can only be loaded small and some of them don't copy over at all. : (

























Hey There!

How's it going everyone?! It was good hearing from you, as always!
Wow, so you have been experiencing the same thing I have (weather wise) That's crazy how much it's been raining! It's been flooding certain areas of Denmark too! I've never experienced this much rain! The rain wasn't as bad this week. It is actually a really warm sunny day today. No we don't have a car here. We just take busses and trains everywhere. And walk...
It's good to hear that camrons surgery went according to plan. Hopefully he will be back to his self before too long. Well, I guess to his new and improved self. That video was way funny! Hahaha! That's weird that he was having a hard time speaking english and that it was easier for him to speak japanese.

Well, I guess I'll get to my week. Here's what happened, starting with last pday after we were done emailing! So, we went to Copenhagen as planned and walked around for a bit. We did a little bit of shopping, and I did buy something. I'm sick and tired of all of my baggy american dress pants, so I bought a pair of nicer fitted dress pants that I will use to work in sometimes, so I don't look like an idiot with my american parachute pants. Elder Williamson got a pretty good buy too. He bought an awesome Danish suit! Well, after that, we just looked around at a few more stores and then bought some yummy icecream! And then we went to a place in Copenhagen that is a way big tourist attraction. You might've seen some pictures of it before. I sent some pictures from when we were there. After that we just went home.
Then the next couple days was all of that confusing companion exchange stuff that I told you about. I didn't go to the training. Elder Roth did, so I had to go with his companion. I went to Roskilde with Elder Larkin for 3 days, and we worked there together. It was pretty good. Larkin is completely new, so he just followed me around and did whatever I said. It was kinda funny. It was also fun hearing his danish. I remember when I was like that. Oh and speaking of crappy danish, I was looking through my stuff, and I found that tape that I recorded when I was in the MTC. Anyway, I went back and listened to what I recorded, and there was some danish that I recorded on there, and it sucked so bad! Haha, I thought I was good back then but it was terrible! So many mistakes, and awful pronounciation!
Well, after I was done in Roskilde I came back to Ballerup, and now we have our third companion, Elder Andersen.. He is really fun sometimes. We play a lot of games and stuff. Oh, I don't know if I told you this or not, it's kinda lame and nerdy, but Pokemon is way big in the mission. There are a lot of missionaries who are kinda obsessed with it, and Elder Andersen is more into it than the rest of the mission combined. So we have been playing a lot of pokemon in the evenings. Haha. Oh, and Andersen is so messy! He came, and as soon as he opened his suitcases it just exploded, and in like 5 minutes the place was a mess! He had clothes and pokemon cards and stuff everywhere! But luckily we got it all cleaned up. We had to because the mission president came to our house yesterday! So we had a deep cleaning day. I think Elder Andersen is gonna help my danish a ton. He is like our walking dictionary.
Willy and I have been writing more songs and just jammin a lot! It's way fun! Get this! So as missionaries we have to do a ton of planning, and every week we do a big 2 hour weekly planning session, anyway, yesterday for weekly planning we sang the entire time! Haha! We played some chords on our instruments, and just sang everything we planned.
Oh, a few nights ago we had an eating appointment with a family with a bunch of way fun american kids! It was one of the best eating appointments that I've had! The kids loved us and wanted to show us all of their stuff and all the things they could do. They were just like, ''Missionairies! Come here! I wanna show you this! Missionaires! Watch what I can do!'' So we just ran around and played with them for awhile. It was way fun!
Well, that was what happened this week.

Sorry I didn't have many pics last time. But don't worry, I have a lot today! A lot of them are completly random, so I'll explain them. The first 3 are from that site in Copenhagen. I can't remember what the place is called, but it was pretty. Then when we went home that day some idiot had parked a tractor in our yard! What the heck?! So we decided to take some pics inside it. Thats what the next 2 pics are. You can see our house in the background. The next 2 pictures are of our cell phone, my game of Snake. I destroyed the high score! The next is me and Willy on tire swings, and then there are a couple of HUGE snails that I found! The last one is pretty funny, I'll just let you read it.
Well I guess that's it for today. Have a great week!

Love Elder Tyler Lee

Aug. 15th, 2010







Hey there!

As always, it is great to hear from you! I always look forward to email day!
Haha, yeah the weather has been crazy! It still just rains and rains every day! And it is way heavy rain. It's like standing in the shower when we walk outside! I don't understand how much water could possibly be up there! I like the rain! But just not when I'm trying to do missionary work.. Luckily last week the rain held up enough for us to play soccer. And it's not raining today, so it hopefully won't mess with our pday.
It really is a cool church! It is just way weird! And the ward really is so awesome! I'm glad that I'm serving in a mission where I can get to now and love the ward members so much. like you said about the missionaries in Spanish Fork are over 35 different wards! And each ward has a ton of people, so they aren't able to get to know them at all. I'm really glad that I am here. Here in Denmark I'm just over one ward and there are like 80 people, so I can really know them and I grow to love them a ton! This ward helps us a lot with missionary work, and they feed us a ton.. :/ We have so many eating appointments. Which I don't like by the way. Sometimes eating appointments are really fun, and the food is usually pretty good, but I hate being forced basically to eat so much.
Yup, I'm a pretty good cook apparently. I've never been into cooking at all until I was comps with Elder Williamson, but now I think its pretty fun, and delicious of course. We've been experimenting a lot and have made some really great meals.
I'm not exactly sure whose idea it was with those chess pieces... We just pulled them out, and one of the horses was missing it's head, so we're like, that head would look pretty funny on that dude. So we did it. Haha! Hey, missionaries get pretty bored sometimes! We have to find ways to have fun! I think my favorite is horse face!
Here's another thing that we have started doing to have fun. Another way weird pointless thing. There is a door at our house that has a bunch of random pictures of missionaries, and we decided to reenact them all.. So we have been going to the exact same locations all over and doing the exact same poses and everything. It's completly stupid, but it has been so fun, and its so funny looking at our pictures with the originals!

Well, my week was ok. It wasn't the most exciting week. We actually didn't do anything really. It was just a basic week. We did find out some pretty exciting news though! There is a missionary going home in like 2 days, so there is going to be a missionary in need of a companion. So... We are getting a third companion! Cool huh? He is gonna come here tomorrow. His name is Elder Andersen and get this, he's a Dane! So hopefully he will be able to help me out a lot with my Danish. He's probably pretty good at Danish. ;) So yeah, he'll be serving here in Ballerup with us. I'm excited, but I'm also kinda bummed, cuz me and Williamson have it really good how it is now. The next 4 days I won't even be in Ballerup though. That's some other news. President Andersen is gonna do a 4 day training thing with some of the missionaries, and so I'm gonna go to Roskilde for the next 4 days and serve with Elder Larkin. He is completely new. He's been here for only 2 and a half weeks. Anyway, that was all pretty confusing for you, but that is what's happening.
This P-day should be pretty fun. Earlier today we kicked a soccer ball around for a little while, and now we are just here at the library emailing. Then after we are done here we're gonna get some lunch and head over to Copenhagen. We'll do a bit of shopping or something, and just walk around the big city. Then tonight we have yet another eating appointment.
Well like I said, it was a pretty uneventful week, so I don't have anything else to report.

So Camron is gonna get a surgery?! Ok! Yeah that's something that he's always had, it'll be good for him to be able to breathe. That sounds like a fun 2 weeks he and Rurika had. I want to take a class where we go on 2 week high adventure camp outs! That's scary what happened to Rurika, but thats good that it wasn't worse! So whats going on with those two? Are they pretty serious? They've dated for a long time now!
Well thanks for sending me some pictures! It was fun seeing tani and tia! It is weird how much different they both already look. Especially Tia! She's way different! With those glasses, and when did her hair get so dark?!?! I have a few pics for you. Not to many this week, but here ya go. The first is a picture of me in the pouring rain. That's what it's been like for the past couple weeks! Then the next one is a picture of me, but the real reason we took this picture is for the lady in the background. The one wearing the green. She is absolutely nuts! She is always sitting at that same bus stop, and she just yells things at people when they walk by. She's always wearing the same clothes too. The first time I saw her, before I knew she was insane I went up to her and contacted her.. Well, I found out pretty quickly that she is crazy. She basically just screamed and shrieked at us... Anyway, the last picture is just a big scary spider. Enjoy!
Well, I guess thats it for this week! Have a super week! Bye for know!

Love Elder Tyler Lee