Nov. 16, 2011 The final email.

Heeeeeeyyyyy!!!!! We made it to the final email of my mission!! Can you believe that?!?! That went pretty fast! :D But at the same time it seems like it's been forever since I've seen you all!

I still think i is so weird that I'm actually coming home, and for some reason it still doesn't really feel real. I'm so so so excited, but at the same time it's kind of sad. I'm really gonna miss Denmark, and I really hope that I'll be able to come back soon. *hint hint*

Well, on Monday I'll be heading over to Copenhagen and spending the night at President's with the other departing missionaries. I'm actually not sure when I'll be leaving, or really much at all. I'm expecting that I'll get a call soon with more details. Then I'm leaving sometime Tuesday morning. Don't worry, I have some American cash in my wallet in case I need any. About 60 bucks saved up from birthday money and stuff. Thanks, I think I'm pretty good with money. I'm pretty much done with souvenir and gift shopping. There are just a couple things I'll pick up this week, but I'm pretty much set. And yes, I still have your cell phone number memorized by the way. :)

I'm pretty sure I'll be able to fit my stuff in my 2 suitcases. I'll be throwing out some stuff, and I've already given some things away. With that painting, I'm going to try to disassemble the frame and put it in my suitcase. If that fails I think I'll just leave it behind.

Well let me tell you about my week. Our investigators are doing good. We met with Lise and Leyla for the last time. We finally got the BOM cds for Lise and she is really excited to be able to listen to that. With Leyla we talked more about baptism and the things she would have to do to be ready. She still wants to, but still isn't ready to set a date. She really wants to stop smoking, but is reluctant about giving up drinking. We were really hoping that she would come to church but she texted and said that she won't be able to after all, but she wants to come in the future.

The African food with Elijah was interesting, but I was surprised with how good it actually was. I'm really excited for Friday because they are going to be making dinner again for us, since it's my last time with them. :)

Oh I can tell you about Rune. He is an inactive guy, 29 years old. He is pretty cool. We've been meeting with him a couple times, and we had a really good lesson with him last week, and later he called us and said that he is coming to church that week, and he wants to start reading in the scriptures again. He came and had a really good time there and said that he will come every other week (he visits his family the other weeks) So that is cool! It will be nice for the ward to have someone younger than 60.

Its so lame, a couple weeks ago the lights on my bike were stolen! (in Denmark you have to have lights on your bike after dark or you can get a ticket) And so I bought some new ones, and then guess what! They were stolen again the other day! How dumb is that?! It's not like they are expensive or anything, its just annoying. Anyway, I bought new lights one more time, and now I make sure I take them off and keep them with me when I park my bike.

Here's something I'm going to teach you! How to make Flettede Julehjerter! (Weaved Christmas Hearts) It's a fun Danish Tradition where they make these cool hearts that they hang on their Christmas trees. They are fun to make and they look really cool! I learned how to make them this last week!

Monday was way fun! We went on a little trip to Herning. It's a good thing that it is only 40 kilometers away! So we went there and first we looked around a few stores, at one of them we ran into Anitta, an investigator. She was so excited to see me. Haha, she is funny. And then later we went over to Mia's place! It was really fun seeing her again! Pia was there too, the one that looks like Jessie the Cowgirl. It was so awesome seeing them both. We had dinner with them, and with Elder McCleary and Sorensen. Mia made Fleskesteg which is one of my favorite Danish dishes. It was so good! I'm glad that I was able to go there one more time before leaving and say goodbye to some of my good friends there. We slept in Herning with the missionaries, and the next day we came home.

Oh yeah, yesterday we saw a real life Wonkavator! It's like an elevator but it can go sideways, and longways, and backways, and squareways, and frontways, and any other ways that you can think of! Actually I think it can only go sideways, but it was pretty cool! It went between two different buildings.

Well that is all. I also have some pictures for you from the week! I had some videos too of me playing accordion, but they aren't working on this computer so I'll just show you them in person! :)

The pictures are first of all a sculpture I made out of my gummi eraser, then there is a cool church that we saw. The next few are those Christmas hearts I was telling you about. I unfortunately didn't have better paper so I had to make due with what I had. Then last of all are a couple pictures of the Wonkavator. :)

Well, it has definitely been a good 2 years! Thanks for all of the emails, and the love and support, and the prayers and all that! See ya in 6 days!!!! :D

Love Elder Tyler Lee

Nov, 14, 2011

Hey Y'all!!!! Holy Cow, how crazy is it that I'm coming home next week?!?!?! I am SO excited to see you all in 8 DAYS!!!

I hate to tell you this again, but you are going to have to wait for my email. Sorry. We are actually in Herning today! Saying goodbye to some people here. We're going to Mia's house in a few minutes! But I don't have time to write you today. Not tomorrow either because we have a lot of appointments, but I will write you on Wednesday for sure! I hope you can wait that long!

I'll see you very very soon!!!! Have a great day!!! :DDD

Nov. 7, 2011

Hey everybody!

Well, only 2 weeks left!!! It is getting so close, and its so crazy that I'm going to be coming home in just a few days! So I was thinking about what I want to eat first when I come home and I was thinking Red Robin. :) How does that sound? I think that I'm going to be pretty tired that day when I come home, if it's going to be anything like when I arrived.. I remember when I first got here, we went to the mission presidents house and had dinner and a quick testimony meeting, and I fell asleep on the couch when President was sharing his testimony.. haha.

Yup, I just like living life on the edge. :) Just kidding. I'm really glad though that nothing serious happened with that crash. And no, I wasn't wearing my new suit. I don't work in that, are you crazy? I need to keep that one nice. Ya know, it actually says in my Patriarchal blessing that on my mission I'll be protected from all harm and danger. That's a cool promise. :D So basically as a missionary I am invincible. haha jk, I still try to be careful anyway.

That is awesome that Garrett is going on a mission! It must be hard for some of the people that wait a little while longer and then decide to go on a mission. That's cool that he'll be in the same mission as Aoi.

Don't worry mom, you know that I'll gladly play Settlers with you. That's one of my favorites. I've also learned a few card games here that I'll have to teach you all.

What? Are you kidding me? Two youth speakers? Well they will probably fill up 2 minutes each. Oh well I'll see what I can do. Maybe I should start preparing that talk pretty soon. I think that the idea of a continental breakfast is good. That would be great for that time of day.

Ha! You don't even know. Already it is getting dark here before 5, and it will continue to get earlier and earlier.

Thanks for getting my registration stuff figured out. That sounds like a good enough schedule. I don't really know what to expect but it should be fun.

Thanks, we are hoping that we can get a date with Leyla too. She is still doing really well. We watched the finding faith in Christ movie with her last time and she absolutely loved it.

Well let me explain about my week. It has actually been a little uneventful for the most part, so I don't really have too much too tell you. But here is one piece of news that is really exciting! Do you remember Mogens Pipper from Nykøbing? He was an old guy that me and Elder Poulsen found and taught so many times. It was always hard to get him to progress though, but eventually we were finally able to get him to pray and some other things. Well, Elder Shreeve who is serving there now called me up and said that he is getting baptized! Cool! I'll have to keep up on that and see how it goes. I really hope he goes through with it.

Our investigators are doing pretty good. We've met this week with Leyla, Lise, Elijah, and I've also met some other investigators. There is a guy from England named Paul who was really cool. He is an artist so he showed me a bunch of his work and I showed him some of mine. He wants to buy the gorilla picture from me, haha. There are also a couple other new ones I met.

The other day was annoying. Our washer is broken and has been for a few weeks, and we couldn't wait any longer for the landlord to get it fixed so we had to find a laundromat. The nearest one was like a mile away so we had to carry all of our dirty laundry over to it, and pay a bunch of money and wait for it to get done, and then carry it back. I don't want to have to do that again.

Yesterday was a good day. We had church for one, and there were a lot of guests. A family came from Ballerup that I knew so it was fun to see them again. And then later on in the day we met with Elijah. It was a way awesome, yet strange appointment. We showed up but nobody was home, so we waited a couple minutes and his son arrived and let us in. He said his dad is on the way. But then he said that he was leaving and we could just wait. So we were sitting there all alone in our investigator's house worrying that he was gonna freak out when he arrived. But they told us that it was African culture and wasn't weird at all. So he showed up and thought it was just fine that we were there in his house, and we had a good lesson. And after that, the wife surprised us by making dinner, and we got to experience the African Culture even more. It's weird because in Africa they eat with their hands. We had this weird corn bread dough type stuff that looked liked mashed potatoes, and we rip some off with our hands, mash it around in our hand and then dip it in some sauce. There was also some scary looking fish, that was the entire fish including head. I was worried about that, but everything turned out to be way good. I thought it was delicious. There was also a pepper that is the hottest thing ever! They told us to just take a tiny bit, so I tried a tiny tiny piece and it was so spicy! I really like the African culture, but it was pretty weird eating that stuff with my hands.

Hey well that is all I have for today. I'm glad that you liked my pictures last time. That place has some really awesome scenery. I'm sorry to tell you but I don't have any pictures today. :/

Thank you though for the picture of Camron's pumpkins. That is pretty good!I'm gonna get going, but I hope you know I miss you so much and am so excited to see you all in 2 weeks!!! See ya soon!!! :)

Love Ældste Tyler Lee

Oct. 31, 2011/I will add pics soon

Hey!!

How's it going?? Guess what!!! I'm coming home THIS MONTH!!! In 3 weeks!!! That is insane!!! I am excited to see you all! :D You know what? This is really weird. Now that I am actually going to be coming home and continuing my life, it is still hard to believe that this is actually happening. My mission has been my life and sometimes it has seemed like that is how it always would be. These last few days and weeks have been full of a lot of different emotions, and my head is just so packed full of thoughts and everything. I'm still doing my best to do missionary work, because well, it's my job, but I am also so ready to come home.

Enough with that, this has actually been a really eventful week. Its had a lot of goods, and a few not so goods. I'll start from the beginning. Here is a fun story that happened on Tuesday. You are going to love this one, Mom! I crashed on my bike... But don't worry too much, I'm fine. I'm actually amazed that I'm fine. So, we were biking down a hill and so we were going really fast, and then out of nowhere an old lady started walking across the bike path with her walker. Don't worry I didn't hit her, but my bike has bad brakes, they always loosen, so they brake OK, but I can't really make fast stops if I'm moving too fast. So I pulled my brakes but wasn't stopping fast enough, so I reached my hand down by the front wheel to pull the brakes by hand, (it had worked several times before) But this time, the bike stopped immediately and I flew right over the handlebars. This is where it got cool, because at that point everything moved in slow motion for a moment and I was able to react and roll my body so I landed on my shoulder on my coat. I layed on the ground for a couple seconds and stood up, and I was surprised that I was in no pain at all, and the first thing I was worried about was if I had ripped up my coat or pants, but they were not damaged one bit. I looked around more, but I was not hurt at all, no skin was even broken. So I adjusted my seat back into place and continued on my way. :)

Later that day we went to Leyla, and we had a really good lesson. We challenged her to baptism and guess what she said.. She said yes! She said that she wants to be baptized and she wants her daughter Sarah to be baptized, but she wasn't ready to set a date. That's exciting though, we will be working with those two to make sure they can be ready to get baptized as soon as possible.

On Friday we had splits with the district leader. They came and we had a lot of success. We were able to teach 6 lessons, and we found 4 new investigators! We were excited about that. :) Oh, ha ha it was funny, on the way back we were waiting at the train station and there was this weird guy dressed in a baggy one piece jumpsuit thing and he had a metal pole that he was spinning around behind his back and under his legs and everything, and he was balancing it on his chin. It was weird, yet entertaining. I wanted to get a video of him but didn't dare.

The past couple days were really fun. On Sunday after church we went to Fredrikshavn because we were having a district meeting/activity the next day and we live far away. It is way annoying because we live about 2 hours away by car, but we have to take the trains and there isn't a direct one from skive to Fredrikshavn. We actually had to switch trains 3 times to get there, and so it took like 4 and a half hours. But it's ok because we had a lot of fun there. Elder Williamson is in Fredrikshavn so me and him stayed up late jamming and talking. The next day we met with the rest of my district. We have a pretty cool district. My boy Klc and his son Dunshee are also there.

We all went up to Skagen where the two seas meet, and there we had a district meeting up on an old Nazi bunker. It was kinda cold but it was way cool. Also at Skagen we had a special ''ceremony'' for Elder Williamson. I don't know if I told you about how his girlfriend got engaged to another guy. Well before he left, she gave him a notebook full of memories and her writing about how much she loves him and can't wait for him to come home so they can be together and all that, so he decided that it was time to dispose of that notebook in the coolest way possible. So he wrapped it up, tied a rock to it, walked out into the water and through the notebook into the water where the two seas meet. It was pretty funny.

Well that was my week. Also, I am feeling better, I'm not sick anymore so that is good. I am sore though, because in Fredrikshavn in the morning we did P90X Ab Ripper, so my stomach is way sore.

Oh yeah, and in Fredrikshavn we were supposed to carve pumpkins but we weren't able to for 2 reasons. one, because we didn't have time, and two, because Denmark is lame and doesn't celebrate Halloween and it was impossible to even find pumpkins. So my Thomas Monson pumpkin is going to have to wait until I come home. Hopefully I can still find a pumpkin at the end of November.

Question, do you know about when I'll be getting released or anything when I get home?

Sounds like you had a pretty fun Halloween! I like everyone's costumes! Where did Jansen come up with that costume?? Tani did a really good job with her gorey makeup, and Tia's costume is.. interesting.. haha. I like it.

So with byu stuff. I guess I forgot to say this, but I think it will be best for the first semester to live at home. The main reason is that everybody I know is on a mission and I don't really want to live with a bunch a people I don't know at all. But later when Williamson, and Scotty come home it would be really fun to try to find a place with them. And that is too bad that the drawing class would have to be in the evening. I don't really want to have to deal with classes too late for now. I want to do other stuff in the evenings.

Oh I just remembered something pretty funny. The other day me and Elder Nørgaard spent most of the day together with his family! How weird is that? It's because his sister was moving back home, and we were helping her move. So I met his Mom, Dad, sister and brother. And also on the way home from fredrikshavn we stopped in Randers, his home town, to switch trains. He said that his house was a ten minute walk away. I just have to say that I am glad that all of you are on the other side of the world. That would be to weird as a missionary.

Sorry to hear about the little car accident. That is just a difficult place to back out of. I bet Jansen was scared to come in and tell you about that one. He hasn't been as bad a stuffbreaker as he used to be has he?

Well I'll just get on to explaining some pictures for you, because I have a lot of pictures for you today! The first one is just me on a train. And then the rest are pretty much from Skagen. There are some of us on the beach, and then there are a couple of pretty graphic pictures, so I apoligize for that, there was a giant dead blue jellyfish on the beach, and a poor dead seal. The seal was really gross.. Then there is Williamson with his notebook. I didn't get him throwing it, because I was filming a video of it. Then there are a couple pics of me on the Nazi bunker. I was experimenting with different camera settings. And then some goodbye pictures with Williamson and Klc and Dunshee. That was the last time I'll see them until their homecomings.

Well, I hope you've had a good day. Sorry again that you had to wait a whole extra day! I hope you survived!! ;) I miss you a bunch and can't wait to see you in 3 weeks!!

Love Elder Tyler Lee