Elder Tyler Lee

Nov. 16, 2011 The final email.

2011-11-16T06:51:00.000-08:00

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

2011-11-14T07:47:00.000-08:00

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

2011-11-07T06:58:00.000-08:00

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

2011-11-01T14:19:00.000-07:00

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

Oct. 23, 2011

2011-10-24T07:10:00.000-07:00

Hey Everybody!

I hope everyone is doing well! My week has been OK, but I've had better.. I've gotten kind of sick. :/ It's nothing with nausea, it's more of a headache, stuffy nose, sore throat and cough type thing. LAME. But other than that the week has been pretty good. Guess what! I have less than a month left now! :-O 4 weeks! That's so crazy!

That's cool that you got another car. I bet Jansen is pretty happy about that.

Thanks for including a passage from Landon's email. It sounds like he is pretty excited to get to work. I'm sure that he is gonna do a great job.

Hahaha that is way funny what happened with dad in Sacrament meeting. I didn't know that dad could make mistakes on organ. He plays very well. To bad that I wasn't there for that one.

After another day at church here I am starting to get to know the branch, and the people here are really funny and nice. I hope I can be one of those fun energetic happy old guys when I'm older, instead of one of those grumpy boring guys. There is one guy in the ward, (cool name) who is one of those grumpy old people. He made like 50 comments in priesthood class and they were pretty much all about how people don't read in the bible as much as they should. Oh by the way I held a talk yesterday at church.

It's crazy that Halloween is next week! It seems like I just barely had my Birthday, and now it's already almost been a month! I decided on an idea for my jackolantern. I hope it works. It's going to be really complicated but I'm gonna try to do a portrait of President m
Monson. I made a stencil for it just barely. We'll see how it turns out.

Well let me tell you a little more about the new area, and about my week. So our investigators are doing pretty good. Especially Leyla. We are going over there 2 times a week. She really likes meeting with us. This last time we were there we finally got her to pray. She wouldn't pray because she said she was scared to. And that she didn't feel worthy to. But we had a really good lesson about prayer, and at the end we challenged her to pray. She was still reluctant, so I said that I could say a prayer, and then Elder Nørgaard could say a prayer, and then she could try. And so that's what we did, and she said her first prayer in many many years. I then challenged her to make prayer a regular part of her life again and she said that she wants to do that. :) We are going over there again tomorrow and we are going to try to set a baptismal date with her. I'll let you know how it goes.

We also met with Elijah again. Elijah is way cool, and he is very smart and knows a lot about the bible. He asked a lot of questions, and we watched a conference talk with him. The one by Jeffery R Holland about the Book of Mormon. I think it's called Safety for the Soul. It made him want to start reading the BOM a little more.

I don't know if I told you last time that we have a blind investigator.. Well we do. She is an older lady named Lise and she can't see a thing. But she really likes the church and the BOM and we told her that we can get it to her on CD.

Elder Nørgaard's sister isn't an investigator, she is an inactive member. She is doing ok. We went there a couple nights ago, and she said she wants to know more about the church and make it a bigger part of her life. We were bummed when we got a text on Sunday saying that she was too tired to come to church.

The other day we went to zone conference and it was so weird for me. Because I looked around and out of the 30 something missionaries there, I was the oldest (mission wise) I've even been here longer than Pres Andersen. Then I realized that that was my very last zone conference. :O The next one is right after I go home, so I'm done! It was cool, at the zone conference I met my grandson! I got a picture of our whole family.

The other day I was in the right place at the right time. It was kinda funny, a guy was pushing an old lady on a wheelchair, and then he stopped her and went inside to grab something, and when he went inside the lady started rolling down towards the road (there was a slight hill) Right before she rolled over the curb into the street I reached out and stopped her. It was funny because I didn't even have to speed up to get to her in time. We just met up perfectly. Anyway, the guy ran back out, they thanked us and we continued on our way.

Oh guess what! I bought a new suit! It is the coolest suit I've ever worn. It's a grey European suit, originally 2500, but I got it for 1500 ($250ish) I tried it on and it fit perfectly, so I got it. I was going to take a picture and send it to you, but then I though instead that you can just see it in person in 4 weeks. :D

I have to admit, I am getting pretty good at accordion. haha. It's pretty hard, especially with the left hand because there are a million buttons and you can't see what you are doing, so I always get lost. I want to get one when I come home, but they are apparently pretty pricey.

I talked to Elder McCleary yesterday and got some bad news. The first bad news is that Annie has disappeared from the face of the earth. They can't get a hold of her at all. :/ And the other bad news is that Omar and Malin are still waiting for wedding papers. Since Omar is from Canada and he was married before, there is a bunch of crap that they need to sort out before they can get married. They are almost done but they need to wait a couple weeks for something, so it is looking like they are going to be getting married the Saturday AFTER I leave... What the heck?! Oh well, I guess what really matters is that they DO get married and she DOES get baptized. It's not so important that I'm there.

I have 2 pics for you today. The first is of me, My son Elder KLC, and his son, I think his name is Elder Dunshee. And then there is a picture of me and sister Andersen. She comes home I think in January or February.

I am excited to see you again in a few days! I miss you all! See ya!

Love Elder Tyler Lee

ps, about that school stuff. That is good that you have found someone that can help us with it, because I don't really know at all what we are supposed to do. I guess you can just take her advice and go with that writing 150 whatever. And I'll go with Biology. Thanks for staying on top of all that. :)

Oct. 17, 2011

2011-10-18T14:53:00.000-07:00

Hi there!

That makes 2 emails missed... You've been slacking a bit lately. Just kidding, no hard feelings.

How are you doing this week? How crazy is it that ín 5 weeks from today I'll be coming home! My paper chain is so short now! It's about as long as my arm!

Well I'm starting to get used to Skive I guess. I really miss Herning and Silkeborg already. I really wish that I could have just stayed there for the rest of the time. I guess I'll tell you what has happened so far since I've been here. Well first, on Tuesday, me and McCleary decided that we needed to end strong, so we went to Jensens Bøfhus, and bought all-you-can-eat ribs. It was way good, and we sure did eat all we could. I was so full, but very satisfied.

Transfers were on Wednesday. I finished getting packed, and we caught a train at 5. It was so dumb, because it should take only 45 minutes to get to skive from Herning, but I had to go with McCleary to meet some other missionaries, and I met up with Elder Nørgaard and headed back. It ended up being about 4 hours in all.

This is kinda funny, the very first appointment that I had here in Skive happened to be with Elder Nørgaard's sister. Haha. She lives in the area and is less active so we visit her.

We don't have a ton of investigators here but there are a couple of positive ones. There is a new investigator named Leyla we met with. She is cool, she let us in and we were there for a long time, because she had so many questions. She received a BOM the time before and she had read the first 16 chapters. And liked it. She also saw the movie The Testaments and thought it was really good. We talked to her about pretty much everything, and when we brought up baptism she said that she had actually considered that before and she thinks it's something that she would like for her and her 10 year old daughter. We didn't set a date but she said that it could be something that happens in the future.

Another investigator we have is Elijah. He is funny. He is a friendly little black man, probably about 5 feet tall if that. Our apt with him was very interesting. We went over to his place and he wasn't home, but about 10 other Africans were. His wife invited us in and while we were there another 10 Africans came in, and finally Elijah showed up too. So we were just sitting there in a room with like 20 Swahili speaking Africans. But it was actually pretty good. We ended up teaching like half of them. There were these 2 girls who were very interested and very believing. Problem is, they live in Norway and are just visiting.

Elder Nørgaard was sick for a couple days though so we weren't able to do much. I took advantage of that time though by playing a lot of accordion. Nørgaard has an accordion!! How cool is that? And I'm learning how to play it. In a couple weeks when I'm better at it I'll send a video of me playing it or something.

Church yesterday was actually really nice. I already like this little branch. There were about 20 people who showed up, and me and Elder Nørgaard were the only 2 under about 60... No joke. They are all nice and friendly and were very welcoming to me. After the meetings we had a potluck meal. That was a perfect opportunity for me to get to know some of the people in the branch.

Well so far the new companionship is going alright. The 2 of us have a lot of similar interests and things, but his personality is exactly opposite of mine. But we are getting along alright, and teaching well together.

Oh yeah, I forgot to tell you that I'm a grandpa now! Yup, my boy Elder Klc is now training. It seems like I was just barely training him.

Guess what. I have some pictures for you! The first one is me and McCleary after our all you can eat ribs day. Then there is me by a fountain in Skive. And then last of all, I made it to my final planner!! That is crazy. I went all out on this one and decorated 5 pages of it. What do you think??

Well that's all for today. I hope you have an amazing week! I'll talk to ya later, and see ya soon.

Love Elder Tyler Lee

Oh ok there it was. I wasn't expecting to get a letter from you on this email. I don't use this one very much. Well, thanks for the email! :)

With all that BYU stuff, I'm not really sure what the best way to go about it would be either. I'll get back to you on that next week. For the first semester I don't think it matters too much. Just the general classes I need, and I'd also like something with art/drawing.

And about leaving for Thanksgiving, I think that would be fun. It would be a good way to catch up with everyone in the family. But if that is the case, I hope it's ok with you if I sneak out real quick Tuesday evening to go say hi to some friends.

Thanks for the email, and the pics and everything. I'll talk to ya later!

Love Elder Tyler Lee

Oct. 10, 2011

2011-10-10T15:28:00.000-07:00

Hey everybody!!

How are you doing? First of all I should tell you the big news first. That is about transfers. As I predicted, I will be leaving. :( But the good news is that it isn't very far away. Tomorrow I will be transferring to a place called Skive (Ski-Vuh) It is about 40 kilometers north from Herning so not too far at all. That is awesome because now I should be able to come back to Malin's wedding/baptisms with no problem. Oh, my new companion will be elder Nørgaard. It will be kinda interesting, but it should be fun. He is Danish which is cool. He is also 26 years old, so that will be kinda weird. I don't know too much about him, but I've talked to him about art before. He is really good at art and piano. So we have some similarities. I hope it will be a fun final 6 weeks.

Anyway, I didn't think that it was possible to go to a smaller branch, but I am. Skive is one of the very smallest in Denmark. There are just a few old people in the ward and they are all way old. I'm excited though, I've heard that they are really nice. It's weird, I started my mission in one of the biggest wards in Denmark and every single transfer I've gone to a smaller ward.

The last few days have mostly been me trying to get ready, and going around to everybody to say goodbye. It's always pretty hard saying goodbye to an area. Especially when it's one that you really love and full of a lot of people that you love. It was tough saying goodbye to Omar and Malin and their family, and to Mia and some of the other members and investigators. When we said goodbye to Annie she said that she still wants to work towards getting baptized and she still wants me to baptize her.

Last night we went over to Mia's one last time to say goodbye and I decided to get her some presents to thank her for everything that she's done for me, so I got her a card game called Monopoly Deal, which is way fun, and we ended up playing it for like 3 hours. Also for my bday she gave me a sketchpad and art supplies so I used them to draw a picture of her from her baptism. She loved it, and when she opened it she started crying.

Other things we've done this week... We finally were able to play soccer golf!! Woohoo! And it ended up being way fun! It was perfect weather, and there was nobody else there so we had the course to ourselves. We ended up going through the course 3 times. And it was a lot harder than we expected. We had our own personal caddies. Well, ''Cat-ies'' There were these 2 cats that followed us around the entire time.

Wanna hear a funny story. The other day we were on the way to an appointment and we needed gas, (I told you we got a car right?) So Elder McCleary pulled over to get some gas. He drives because my license expired on my birthday. Anyway he starts gasing up and just as he was about done I looked back and noticed that he was putting Diesel Fuel in it. So he came back and I told him that I think he put Diesel, and he said yeah I think I did too. So we pulled off to the side and called into the mission office to see what we should do, and they told us not to start the car at all, and that we had to call and get it towed and pumped out. We were so lucky though, because we called Gene, the guy who the appointment was with and he is friends with a mechanic who was able to come and tow our car and pump it and fix it up for us for a ''cheap'' cost. 1000 kroner later we were back on the road. :)

Oh that reminds me of another funny story. We found out that the car is going to stay here in Herning. The funny part about it is that they took the car from Skive... Which happens to be where I'm going. :/ So I'm still on bikes. Oh well.

Guess what!! Today we went to Lego Land!! It was so awesome! Even though it was raining the whole time, and the coolest ride was shut down. I though it was way cool anyway. It is so crazy the things that they can make with legos. They said that some of the statues and things they make consist of over a million legos! By the way, Legos were started in Denmark. Lego is short for Leg Godt, which means ''play well'' Cool huh.

I wish I could tell you some more about that and everything else, but the library closes in less than 10 minutes so I gotta go. But guess what! I have a million pictures for you! I hope you like them. I won't explain them all to you because it would take forever. but you can figure it out and if you have any questions about them then just ask. ;)

Well I hope you have an amazing week and I can't wait to hear from you again, and I'm excited to see you all in 6 weeks! Miss ya!!

Love Elder Tyler Lee

Oct. 2, 2011

2011-10-04T15:27:00.000-07:00

Hey Y'all

Well, my birthday was actually really great this year. Waaaay better than last year. We had interviews that day. It was cool that we were able to meet with some of the other missionaries at interviews. Guess what. There was actually another missionary that has the same birthday as me. Elder Sandstrom. So we had to share.. I got the package there from Chelsey and opened it. There was a Birthday Boy badge I put on and wore it the rest of the day. After we were done with interviews we went to Silkeborg and some of the members in the branch threw a little party for me. It was so nice of them. They made a danish dish, Flæskesteg for us that is so good. I hadn't had it since Christmas so I was happy about that. They also had a cake for me and THREE other desserts. We ate so much but it was all delicious food. They also got me a little gift as well.

The next day is when we had my other BDay party thing. We went to Family Home Evening and we gave a lesson about the Iron Rod and had an activity where we blindfolded everybody and made a course through the church with yarn that they had to hold on to and it led them to the tree (and the treats) at the end. That was fun and everyone enjoyed it. After the activity they brought me more cake and sang to me. When we were done we went to Mia's house with her two friends, Pia, and Anne Marie, and they made one of my other favorite Danish meals, Tarteletter, and they gave me some presents. It was a couple of really fun days. :)

The rest of the week was also pretty packed. We had a lot of appointments and also Conference. We couldn't really meet with Annie because she has been pretty sick, but we did stop by one day to see how she's doing and let her know that we care, and she was happy for that. She said that she still wants to come to church and that she still wants to meet with us as much as she did before but she isn't going to be ready for baptism on the 8th. So that's a bummer, but hopefully we will still be able to get her in the water before I go home.

We met with Omar and Malin the other day and found out some really exciting news. Malin told us that she is pregnant again! She's expecting another baby in May! We went over there to give Lucas his bday card and present. He just turned 5 years old and he is very proud of that.

Saturday we went to Århus to see the first session of conference. I really enjoyed Conference. We saw the Saturday morning session that evening at 6, then we stayed the night in Århus, and the next morning we went back the the church, had a nice breakfast, and watched the priesthood session and then the Saturday afternoon session. After that we headed back to Herning and watched the Sunday morning session with Mia at her house. We weren't able to see the final session because they show it from 10 to midnight. That's just a bit late for us.. But I enjoyed the talks that I did see. I watched them all in English except for the Saturday afternoon. Some of my favorites were Elder Hollands talk in the Priesthood Session, and Elder Eyring on Sunday morning. Oh and of course President Monson is always good. :) It's so cool that they are making another Temple in Provo! That was exciting to hear that they are gonna rebuild the tabernacle as a temple.

So that is the update with me. Thanks for the update with you all! Congrats on the Marathon! You two are both crazy! But that's cool. I hope everyone had a fun weekend in St George.

Tillykke med fødselsdagen to Tia!! That is so weird for me to think that she will be going to young womens in a year! I hope she had a good Bday and that she will have a good Bday party on Friday!

No way! Colton is coming home after me? He must have extended for a long time! That's cool though, so I'm the next one to come home? That will be weird with me, Colton, and Jerry all coming home a week after the next.

I'm pretty sure that the UFO thing is mostly just for art. It is in a little town that has a big art museum near it. I also heard though that it is designed so that it gets struck by lightning a lot and that when it gets struck it reverberates and echoes over the entire area.

So transfers are coming up on the 12th. I'm sure I'll know what's gonna happen by next week. I'm 90 percent sure that I'm going to leave, which kinda sucks. I'm so sure because McCleary is gonna be training and so they will most likely have him train here where he knows what is going on. I wish I could stay here, but I'm not to worried about transfers because it will just be a few weeks than I'll be outta here anyway.

Duh how did I forget to tell you this big news?! We got a car finally! When we went to conference they gave us a car to come back in. So we will finally be able to visit some of the people that are farther away and get a lot done. That also means that we have one last chance to finally go play soccer golf. We are planning on going today, and we really hope it will finally work out!! Oh and then next week we are hoping on going to Lego Land! That would be so cool!

Well that's all I've got for today. Thanks for everything you do!! Have a great week and I'll see you next month!! :)

Love Elder Tyler Lee :)

Ps. Let me explain these pictures for you. The first 3 are from my first BDay with some members from silkeborg. The big fella across from me is Benny the branch president. Then there is me with my cake from Herning branch (it's nice having two branches, haha) Then in the next 2 there are people who were with to FHE. The girls in pic number 6 are the ones who threw me a party after. Mia is on the left. Then there is a picture from my party, and then lastly it's me with my presents I recieved. Let me tell you a little about the gifts. Mia gave me the coolest danish book ever. Its called ''Muldvarpen, der ville vide, hvem der havde lavet lort på dens hoved'' The translation is ''The mole that wanted to know who it was that took a crap on it's head'' It's such a funny book. I got toy story 3 from Pia. It was so funny when I opened it, because a few weeks ago I told her that she looks exactly like Jessie the cowgirl from toy story (because she does) so she got me that movie kind of as a joke. I also got a sketchpad with some nice pencils, a nice golden danish Christmas ornament, and some other little things. And then the best is the pass of all passes I got from Chelsey. :) It's a pass that lets me go to basically any place in Utah as much as I want all year. (seven peaks water park/ice arena, trafalga, sporting events, wolf mountain ski resort, and more) She got one for herself as well so now we have a whole bunch of fun things we can do when I come home.

K gotta go. See ya in 49 days!

Sept. 26, 2011

2011-09-26T07:47:00.000-07:00

Hey Everybody!!

Thank you for all the great emails and all of the birthday wishes!!!! :D I can't believe that tomorrow is my birthday! It feels so weird to be turning 21! I'm getting so old! I'm excited though. I should have a really great birthday. I won't really do to much tomorrow to celebrate because we are really busy, but the next day Mia is going to through me a little bday party. Isn't that nice of her? It will be nice to have a little something because last birthday was really lame.

Whoah!! I never thought about this. In just a few days I'll be able to say I'm coming home next month! Weird! We are down to 8 weeks now. That will be done before we know it. There are six missionaries that go home in 2 weeks, and then me and my group will be the oldest in the mission. See ya soon! ;)

It sounds like everybody is doing good and that the girls are having fun as always with their plays. That's cool that I'll actually be able to see this next one.

Well there has been a little change in plans... A roadblock has come with Annie. :/ This last little while we have been working really hard to help her understand tithing, but she has had a problem with it. She has nothing against giving money to the church but she says that she won't be able to pay 10%. Because she has a daughter and grandson in California and family in Africa that she has to send money to each month to help them, and she doesn't think that she has enough to pay 10%. She said that she would be able to spend 500 kr a month and if the church won't accept that then she won't be baptized. She doesn't understand that it isn't about the money, but about the obedience and sacrifice. Anyway, she called us today and said that we are going to have to put off the baptism for now. She still loves the church and wants to come, but now she is just having some problems and the baptism will hopefully come later.

But at least we will still have a baptism in a few weeks. There is nothing that will stop Malin from getting baptized. She is doing so great! Even though she is getting a lot of crap from her parents and family, she is not letting it stop her because she knows it's true. The only thing that is a bummer though is that it is after transfers so I will most likely miss out on their wedding and I'll have to pay to come back for the baptism. Oh well it will be worth it.

We also hope that Ryan will keep moving forward. We were a little bummed yesterday at church because he told us that he was going to come but he never showed up.

So yeah this week has had it's ups and downs, but for the most part it was pretty good. Here is an up. The other day I bought a chocolate milk flavored slushy thing. It was so good! It was like hot chocolate, but it was freezing cold! (so I guess it really wasn't like hot chocolate at all..) I want another one right now.

This week we also went on splits to Horsens. I was able to be companions with the bald missionary, Elder Peterson. Haha. It was a pretty good splits. And when I was with Elder Camp we just talked about going home the whole time. He is in the group that is going home in 2 weeks.

Saturday was pretty cool. First of all we were able to meet with our investigator, Isabella again finally. It had been forever!!! She is doing pretty good. And then after that was fun. Do you remember those pictures of me and McCleary by that weird giant UFO-lookin statue thingie? Well on Saturday they had an open house thing for it, and we were able to actually go down inside of it! It was pretty cool. It seems so much bigger when you go inside of it! Don't you worry, I have some pictures of it.

Sunday was a good day, even though neither Ryan or Annie came to church. It was someone's birthday so we all had a delicious meal together after church. They had so much cake too. And then after we were finished with that we went over to Omar and Malin's place and hung out with them a bit and shared a message with them. I just love that family! By the way, it is the little boy, Lucas's birthday on Wednesday, the day after mine. It was funny, I told him that my BDay is the day before his and he got way mad and kept denying it, because he wanted his birthday to be before everybody elses. haha. We got him a coloring/activity book for his bday that we are hoping can keep him occupied during sacrament meeting.

I'm excited for this week because first of all it's my birthday! And we also have interviews and General Conference! I'm excited for conference! It's always cool because when I'm watching it I think that you all are doing the exact same thing.

I have a ton of pictures for you! Let me just tell you a little bit about them. So the first five are of us in OnePieces. We found these awesome One piece jumpsuit things at a store and had to try them on. They were cool, and they zip up all the way over the head. The problem though is that they are 200 dollars!! The next 5 are some of our recent card house creations. We are getting pretty good. Then the next 7 are from that giant space ship thing. And finally the last one is a giant disgusting spider that snuck into our house! It scared me so bad! It was so creepy! At first we tried to kill it by throwing a handfull of poppers at it, but that didn't work, it just made it mad, and it started running towards it, and it was SO fast! So we started yelling and hurried and crushed it with a newspaper.

Well I hope you have a great week! Thanks again for everything! And thanks for the birthday wishes! I miss you too!! See ya in no time!!!! :D

Love Elder Tyler Lee

Sept. 19th, 2011

2011-09-19T10:30:00.000-07:00

Dear family.

Hey!! How's it going? I'm doing great! How crazy is it that we are down to single digits in weeks now! It is almost done!

Everybody is coming home from their missions now. So I guess the next is Colton right? And then me?

Congrats on your silver Anniversary! That is crazy! You are so old! Happy birthday to Tani! Yeah, it is kinda weird that she is 14. And also that I am nearly 21 years old. That is fine with me that you won't really be sending me much. That would kinda be a waste. It would be nice though to maybe get a little bit of money. I'd like to get a new euro suit before I come home, and also it would probably be nice if I could get a few odds and ends to bring back for people.

Well this has been another good week. They all seem to be good weeks lately. We have been so busy, it is hard to squeeze everything in that we need to.

I think it's awesome that Annie wants me to baptize her. And in the ocean! It is probably going to be freezing cold but hopefully we'll just be able to get in and out and hurry and dry off. Her baptism is in less than 3 weeks! I'm so excited, and I can tell that she is too. She is absolutely loving church, and really becoming friends with all of the members. They are also so happy to have her.

Tuesday was a great day. Tuesdays are always good because we usually meet with Annie, and Omar and Malin. We taught Annie about the Word of Wisdom, and she said that she likes drinking wine and coffee every once in awhile, but that she would stop. :)

Also on Tuesday we had an awesome appointment with the Pearse family. We talked a lot about faith and challenged Ryan to take a leap of faith by doing all of the necessary things to get a testimony and be baptized by December. He said that is something he wants and he'd do that. So, there is going to be another baptism in Silkeborg! :D We are going to set an actual date with him tomorrow. Probably the first or second week in December. So I won't be here, but oh well.

We went to Annita on Wednesday, and she was so happy to see us. She is so funny. And she is the nicest person ever. Bitten is also doing well. By the way, her name is pronounced just like its spelled.

Thursday we went to Århus for a special training thing. That was pretty cool. But other than those things, not much other exciting stuff happened this week. Hmm, I've been having really good weeks with awesome appointments and stuff, but there isn't really too much to write home about it.

Sunday was a very interesting day at church. We were in Herning branch this time, and I can honestly say that it was probably a good thing that no investigators came that day. It was kind of a disaster. First of all, David, the guy that plays the organ showed up late. He showed up right as we were starting singing the song, and he just ran in and shouted, I'm here! And then hurried over the the organ and started playing. Then during the second talk is when it got really interesting. It was Thomas giving the talk. You have to understand what Thomas is like to understand this.. He was baptized a little over a year ago. He's a way nice guy, just a little weird. Anyway, he was up giving his talk, but he apparently doesn't know how to give a talk. He was up there for about 30 minutes rambling on about random things that had nothing to do with anything. And he kept asking questions to the crowd and to the branch president. But nobody knew if they should actually answer so they just sat their quietly and he kept asking. Finally at one point the branch president stood up and told him that its his talk, he needs to just talk and stop asking questions. But he kept doing it anyway. And then finally when he was done he closed by saying something like,''I hope you all have a good day'' and then he sat down. It was pretty weird..

Anyway, the rest of the Sunday was actually really good. We had a potluck meal after the meetings that was really good, and then after that we rode back with a couple in the ward to their house. They live about an hour away from the church by car, but they come every week. They live on a farm out in the middle of nowhere outside of a tiny little village. So we went over there and got to know them better and they showed us around. they actually have a way awesome house that is way old and it has a ton of old furniture and stuff. The wife collects porcelain dolls and they were all over the house. We ate dinner with them and then we went home.

So that was my week. Today we are just gonna play some ping pong and maybe do a little shopping, and then we are gonna go over to Mia's and hang out there. Maybe play a board game or something.

I have 3 pictures today. They are just me making a house of cards. Nothing too exciting, but better than nothing at all, right? Thanks for the pictures you sent. Jansen is looking pretty snazzy.

Have a wonderful week. See ya!!

Love Elder Tyler Lee

Sept. 12, 2011

2011-09-12T07:44:00.000-07:00

Hey!!! Happy Monday!! :) Today I have exactly 10 weeks left! So after this email there are only 9 more. Isn't that crazy?!?! November 22 is coming up so fast!!

Well this has been another awesome week. Everything is going so good right now. Wanna hear some exciting news? We were over at Annie's house and we started getting plans ready for the baptism, and she chose me to baptize her!!! :) I'm way excited. It will be awesome to get in the water before I come home. And one of the cool things about it is that she is going to get baptized in the ocean! How awesome is that?? The date that she is getting baptized is the 8th of October, so the weekend after general conference. By the way, she is still doing great! She was in church yesterday and loved it again. The ward members are all become good friends with her already and she's already fitting in.

Yesterday after church we had a branch counsel meeting and we talked about Annie's baptism and also Omar and Malin's wedding/ baptism, and the ward is so excited for all of it. It has literally been years since they have had a baptism, and now they are having two in one month! Oh btw Omar and Malin had to push their wedding back 2 weeks because it was too soon and they couldn't get it all figured out. They are waiting on some papers to arrive from Canada for Omar. So they are getting married on the 22nd and she's getting baptized on the 29th. You are welcome for that picture of them. They are such an awesome little family.

Let me tell you about the Bednar fireside! It was so awesome!!! So, we woke up early and traveled down to Copenhagen on Wednesday. When we got there we ate lunch and chatted with each other and all that fun stuff, then at 2 o'clock Elder Bednar came. The first thing that I thought when he walked in was, Wow he is a lot shorter in real life. Ha ha. We all took a group picture (they will send it to me). And then from there is was us missionaries and him for about 3 and a half hours! It was so cool, because he didn't come with anything specific he wanted to talk about. He just talked to us and we asked him questions and he'd go from there. those 3 and a half hours went by so fast! The theme of the day ended up being about how we should be an 'Agent' who acts and not an 'Object' that is acted upon. His testimony was so strong. And then when we were done with that meeting, we traveled over to the stake center and there we had another fireside with Elder Bednar. This one was open to anybody, and there were so many people there! It was a similar settup (questions and answers) So in all we were with Elder Bednar for close to 6 hours. It was a way awesome experience! It was awesome to see that he is a regular person too with a sense of humor. At the first of our meeting with him he had us all stand up and say our name and where we are from, and he was joking with us. Like, there was this sister missionary who said she went to Davis high, and Elder Bednar was like, ''So you are a Davis Dart, eh? That is the dumbest name ever!'' Ha ha We had some good laughs that day. Well that was that. It was way cool that he was able to come.

Also at the fireside I saw a bunch of familiar faces. I talked with Jennifer and her mom, Maria Engbjerg (from EFY) And also the Olsen family from Ballerup. They are some of my favorite people ever. They have a son on a mission in Portugal that I became really good friends with while I was serving in Ballerup.

After that we went to the Ballerup house to sleep. It was the last time that that will happen because they are getting rid of the house and the missionaries are moving. We also got a new bike for McCleary, so we don't have to walk around with blister feet anymore.

Let me tell you about a couple of our other investigators. Things are finally picking up in Herning. Two investigators that we found a few weeks ago are doing way well. We met with Anitta and had an awesome lesson with her. We gave her a Book of Mormon and she was so excited. It was funny, she wouldn't stop thanking us for it. She promised us that she would read it and pray about it. And she also would like to come to church some day with her 16 year old daughter Anja.

We also met with our investigator Bitten and had a similar experience. We taught her about the book of mormon and she said that she thinks it sounds way interesting and that she would go to the library and rent it. She couldn't believe it when we said that we have one with that she could have for free. She said though that she is excited to read in it and that she would try praying. She's never really tried praying because she doesn't really believe in God. So we asked to try and pray and ask if there is a God and if he is there. We hope that these two keep moving forward. Oh yeah, and Bitten has a pet squirrel named Henning. Cool huh?!

Oh, we caught another frog a couple days ago. It is huge!! I think it's the biggest one I've ever caught. I have to pictures of it for you, and also a video. :)

That's it for my week. It was a good one. :)

That's cool that Camron and Rurika have now moved into a little place of their own. It doesn't sound very luxurious but it'll do.

That's crazy that it's been 10 years since the 9-11 attacks. Yeah I remember that very well. I haven't really seen or heard too much about it hear in Denmark, but that is probably just because I don't really follow much with the news as a missionary. I did read a little bit about it in a newspaper.

You asked a couple questions about the mission. First, no I don't think that me and Elder McCleary with be together for the rest of my mission. Because he was told by President that he will be training at the next transfer (Early/mid October) So I assume that he will stay and get a noobie, and I'll move one more place for about a month and a half. That will be kind of annoying to move once more for a short time, but oh well. Also you asked about Sister Andersen. I am pretty sure that she will come home about 2 months after me.

So I'm scheduled to speak on the 27th eh? Alrighty. That is ok I guess. If I'm not too lazy I'll try to get a talk figured out while I'm hear so I don't have to worry about it during thanksgiving. Do you know If I have an assigned topic? Probably not yet.

Well I gotta bounce. I hope you are doing well and that you have a great week!

See ya!!

Love Elder Tyler Lee

Sep. 4, 2011

2011-09-07T11:30:00.000-07:00

Hey there!

Thanks for the email! Want to hear something crazy?? Today I have 77 days left! That's 11 weeks! And that means that we will only have 10 more emails on my mission! Crazy huh?
First of all, thank you very much for all of the pictures from the wedding! It was fun seeing those. Everybody is looking pretty nice in their suits and dresses. Tia is getting tall! Rurika's dress is very pretty, and the cake looks delicious. Too bad I'm not in any of the pictures.. oh well. I'm excited to see the professional pics as well.
It sounds like everything is going great, and that is awesome that there is a new little cousin that's been born!
It's been another awesome week here in DK! It's true, everything seems to be falling into place. Here is another example. We are wanting to introduce Omar's family to the Pearce family because their families are so similar, and the other day we found out that they already know each other! Omar and Ryan are in the same Danish class! We are hoping that they will all become great friends.
Alright so let me tell you about the news and updates from the week. Last Monday we had a district meeting here in Hammerum, and then after that we all had a sports day together. That was really fun. We played ping pong, basketball, and handball (a very popular sport in Denmark) We didn't know the rules so we kind of made up our own version.
Annie is still doing awesome! She told us that she reads in the book of mormon every single night and it helps her sleep. The other day she said that she was reading until 3 am because she couldn't stop!! We are going over to see her again tomorrow. Omar and Malin are doing great too! They have been working on getting their marriage ready and have come up with an official date now. They are getting married on Oct. 8 and Malin will get baptized the week after! :) I'll try to get some good pictures of both. It's cool how excited they are about it now! Before it kinda seemed like it wasn't so important to do right away, but now that they are moving on it, they are both so excited! Speaking of that family, it is cool seeing how much Melissa has grown. When I first came she was just barely starting walking, and now she is running all over the place and now she talks too.
Well I think that is the update with our most positive investigators. Hmm what else have we done this week? On Friday we found out that the church was having an open house thing and they told us to come, so we did but nobody showed up. So me and McCleary ended up playing close-your-eyes pictionary for an hour. That was fun. After we were done there we caught a train to Århus to go there for splits. In Århus me and Elder Feil went to the church to translate some meeting they were having there and there were a few people at the meeting from Aalborg. It was fun talking to them and catching up with them. We came back Saturday evening.
Sunday was fast Sunday again. Only 2 more left. I'm always surprised with the little branches in Denmark with how they are able to fill up all the time with their testimonies. I was waiting for a pause so I could go up but it never came. After church we went over to Mia's place and spent some time with her and a couple of her friends. We played a quiz game and it was so hard because it was in Danish. But it was way funny because it seemed like the only questions I was getting right were the ones about Denmark. Mia was very surprised that I knew those answers. It was funny she was like, I'm danish and I don't even know those answers! It was mostly luck..
This next week is going to be good too. If you don't remember, this is the week that Elder Bednar is coming to speak with us!! We are going to Copenhagen on Wednesday and he is going to talk to us missionaries for 3 hours! I'm way excited! I will for sure tell you all about that. Oh we are also excited for it because Elder McCleary is going to get a new bike while we are over there so we don't have to walk around everywhere anymore (I've gotten blisters on my feet)

Well have an incredible week and have fun in St George! I miss you a whole bunch! See ya soon!

Love Elder Tyler Lee

Aug. 28, 2011

2011-09-07T11:25:00.000-07:00

Hey everyone!!

It was so great hearing from you like always!!! :) Thanks! Whoah!!!! Camron is married!!!! This has been one of the best weeks ever! So much good stuff is happening now!! It's like the best is being saved for the last of my mission! I have to tell you about the week right away. It started out lame, because last p day we were so set on going to play soccer golf. The weather was perfect, but then we looked up a travel plan of how we would get there on bus, and it said, take bus number whatever to Sunds, and then walk for an hour! It turns out that the course is out in the boonies, so if we have any chance of going we are going to have to get a hold of a car. We are running out of time though, the weather is getting colder and the days are getting shorter. Later in the day we went over to Mia's place and had dinner and played settlers of catan, and then we went back out side to grab our bikes and ride home and guess what!!! McCleary's bike had been stolen!! Ya serious, someone jacked it! So the rest of the week we've been on foot and bus. The mission office is getting us a new one, but we have to wait another week or so before we can get it. Tuesday was a Silkeborg day. We met with Annie, and Omar and Malin. Wednesday was fun, we went to Århus for a zone conference. Those are always fun. It seemed like it had been awhile since we have met with other missionaries. Oh at the end of the meeting they gave each companionship portable dvd players. Cool huh. For watching a preach my gospel dvd and other church stuff.
Thursday we did a little bit of service with Inge. I don't know how that never gets done. Oh yeah that reminds me, a few weeks ago we were doing service over there and Inge's little niece and nephew were over. (they speak english) At first they were way shy but by the end they were so crazy. We ended up having a big battle with them, and Inge got a lot of it on film and put it on Youtube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYg6STPoBHE http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-UGbkpFvzf0&NR=1 It's kind of long, but now you can see a little bit of what it is we've been working on (we've come a lot further) And also some cute little kids. The girl's name is Blue. How cool is that??
Friday we were working in Herning and we got a few lessons in. One with our new investigator Anitta. She seems way cool. She is actually good friends with Mia! She saw my VDR ring and I told her what it stands for and she thought it is way cool and is going to order one online.
Saturday was a Silkeborg work day. We had a good lesson with the Pierce family. Ryan the Dad said that he'd like to come to church again, and then we invited the whole family and asked if they would like to come. they said they would think about it, and later we got a text saying that they think its a good idea and they want to come. They can't come this next week but they want to come the week after.
Then Sunday is when it gets really good. It started out by us going to the Silkeborg church and finding out that there had been a bunch of water damage downstairs so we went down there to help clean up a bit and saw that the carpet was soaking and there were like 5 frogs hopping around! Hahahaha. so we started church by catching frogs and releasing them back into the wild. We were bummed when church started because there were no investigators, and we were hoping that there would be 4. but after a couple minutes, Bruno walked in and sat down, and then a few minutes after that, Omar and Malin came in with their family. So we were able to have a guest class and Omar could translate for Bruno. (If you don't remember, Bruno pretty much only speaks French, and Omar is fluent in French) Bruno really liked the lesson and he wants a french BOM and for us to teach him and his fam. Unfortunately we found out that they are planning on living here for only about 2 months. So we will have to work fast. Then at the end of the lesson was the highlight of the week. We said something about testimony and the Malan was like, ''I got mine the other day!!'' And then she told us a story about how a couple days before she was praying about a wedding date but couldn't feel anything, so she decided to pray about something that she believed, the book of mormon. And then she said that she was filled with so much joy and warmth and was overwhelmed and started to cry. She said that now she knows without a doubt and needs to be baptized. that got us to discussing the wedding date and we made a goal for being married in September. Omar was a little reluctant but said that they actually have a free weekend on the 17th. So we said we could do it then, and that Malan could be baptized on the 24th. I could just see that she was so excited. Omar was like, hmm that's a little quick. And then Malan was like, ''well you better hurry because I'm getting baptized on the 24th!'' Whooo! So we have another baptismal date!!! They agreed to that and are starting working on the wedding plans!
After church we went over to Annie's house and ate more food. We had a great lesson with her and I was so happy to hear that she had been reading in the book of mormon every night and that it has been helping her sleep calmly. She is rock solid. She will get baptized for sure. We will probably have to bump her baptism though to the 8th of October because conference is on the 1st.
So that was the super exciting Sunday and awesome week!

Whoah!!! My brother is married!! That is so weird! Thanks for telling me all about the whole thing! It sounds like everything turned out very well. I'm sad that I had to miss it but I'm glad that they got married. It's cool that I now have a new sister.
Oh the other day my memory card got messed up! I put it in my camera and it says, ''reinsert the memory stick'' So I do but it doesn't help! It's all screwed up! I'm lucky though because I have almost all of the pictures backed up on my harddrive (all except like 10ish) and I also have been emailing most of them. It is way annoying though because I'm gonna have to buy a new memory card. :/

Thanks again for everything! Especially for supporting me through my whole mission! Have a fantastic week! I'll see ya soon!!! :D

Love Elder Tyler Lee

Aug. 21, 2011

2011-09-07T11:22:00.000-07:00

Hey!!!

Hey! How are you doing this fine day? I'm going to get to telling you about my week right away, because it's been a really good and exciting week! First of all let me tell you about the update with Annie! So, we've been over there 2 more times this week and both the appointments were way good. We gave her a baptismal calender and she said that she is still excited about being baptized on the first of October. This last appointment we had, we brought the Bowlers with us. they are an older couple missionary pair, and we invited them so Annie would have someone she's knows when she went to church for the first time, because we were in Herning on Sunday. Anyway, she became great friends with them. She told us at one point in the lesson that she has committed to baptism and she is not going to back out. She also told us that we always bring such a good spirit with us and that is why she loves meeting with us. Well yesterday was her first day in church... And she absolutely loved it! She already got to know the members and invited some of them home to her place after church. She's excited to keep coming to church and the ward is happy to have her. Oh yeah, she had a concern about tithing, but we explained it to her and she said that it wouldn't be a problem at all. So she will get baptized for sure, there is a good chance that it is before October 1st.
Here is another little miracle that happened in Silkeborg yesterday. A guy named Bruno just walked in and is waaay interested in the church! He is also from Africa, which helped Annie feel more comfortable. And he has a wife and 3 kids. He speaks French which is perfect because Omar is from Canada and speaks French! It seems like everything is working out just perfectly!
Things are also picking up in Herning. This week we had the zone leaders over on splits and we found 3 new investigators. 2 of them seem pretty positive. Mia said that she wants to come with us to teach them, because they are around her same age. And then in Church we had a lot of people there. Michael Kjær, the guy whose roof we helped fix, and his family came and enjoyed it, and our investigator, Gene showed up as well. We had a total of 3 investigators in church, and 2 less actives.
So that is the update with the missionary work. Here are some of the other things we have done this week. I hit my 21 month mark for one! 3 more to go.
There is a member named Thomas, who noticed we didn't have helmets, so he bought us some helmets. Thing is, he got us girl helmets. A pink one, and a light blue one with flowers. What the heck?
Oh here is something cool we did. We caught a fly, tied it to a leash, named it Fredrik, and kept it as our pet for a day. Haha. How you ask? Well you catch a fly in a cup, slide a paper under, and put it in the freezer for 5-7 minutes. The fly freezes and looks like it's dead. Then get a long hair and tie a slip knot and slide it over one of the fly's legs and tighten it. Put the fly on you hand, or somewhere warm and it will slowly thaw out and come back to life and even start flying around on its little leash. It's a pretty cool trick. Fredrik ended up escaping, so we crushed him with a magazine.
Yesterday after church we went over to Mia's place for lunch, and she also asked for a Priesthood blessing, so I got another opportunity to give a blessing in Danish. That was cool.
I think that is about all that has happened with me. I think that today is finally the day that we will be able to play soccer golf. the weather is finally cooperating!
I'm glad that you have had a good week and that wedding planning is going well, although you've had some annoying and stressful days I'm sure. It's so crazy that they are getting married on Saturday! That came up so fast! I can't believe I'm gonna have a new sister in 5 days! It sounds like you have been having a ton of fun with her mom and family. They sound pretty fun.
I have one picture. Well, I did. But the computer is being dumb and not letting me open it. So I guess that will have to wait.
Hope you have an amazing week!! See ya very soon! :D Bye!!

Love Elder Tyler Lee

Aug. 13, 2011

2011-09-07T11:18:00.000-07:00

Hey Y'all!!

Hey, How are you? Don't worry at all about not getting an email to me last week. I'm sure you took it harder than me. And don't worry Mom, there was another email waiting for me so I had something to read. :) I also understand that you have all been really busy with wedding planning. That is understandable. I'm so excited to get pictures from their wedding. It is so close, less than 2 weeks! Oh yeah, I received their wedding announcement the other day. I can't believe he is getting married! I'm sure it's gonna be fun for you to have a house full of guests for the next couple weeks. By the way, Elder McCleary's bro got married on Saturday!
Well I'm really glad that you enjoyed all those pictures. It's weird how some weeks there is just so much to take pictures of, but then other weeks there is absolutely nothing.
That campout that you went on sounds really fun! Ya you are right, Me and Chelsey did go on that hike to Stewart Falls one time. It is a nice little hike. Not to tough, and the waterfalls at the end are really cool.
Well There is some big news from this week that I need to tell you about. Remember that African lady, Annie that I told you about? Well let me tell you about our last appointment with her. It was last Tuesday, we went over there and this time we didn't eat beforehand because we expected her to have food for us again. She did. And again we had to eat soooo much. It tasted good though. Anyway during the meal we were talking and she made fun of McCleary's acne, and told me that my brother's marriage won't last.. What the heck? But then, we started teaching her, and from there on out, everything changed and went way well. We taught her about the holy ghost, and after she asked us for a priesthood blessing. So we gave her one of course, and after that she seemed so excited. She then told us that it is time that she gets baptized! She told us that she wants to set a goal to be baptized before the two of us leave, so we set a date for October 1st! Woohoo! She seemed so excited for that! We are going over there tomorrow to tell her more about what she needs to do before she is able to be baptized.
We've also discussed with Omar and Malan about when they are going to get married. At first they told us that it would probably be in December, because that is when they have vacation. So I said; well it's up to you two, but I go home in November and I would love to be there, if that can changes anything. And they said; Ya know, actually we could get married as soon as possible, and then have a big reception later so family and friends could be there. So that is the plan. They will get married soon. And Malan can be baptized shortly after.
Those are the 2 biggest highlights of the week. We didn't really do to much other exciting things.
On Saturday we had a cooking day with Mia. It was way fun, and delicious. :) She taught us how to make 4 different danish dishes! Frikadeller, Farsbrød, Boller i Karry, and Karbonader. And the best thing about it is they are really easy to make. I'll have to make it for you and teach you to some day.
Oh yeah there was also this cool band that we saw. We were riding down the street and we heard some music so we went towards it and found a free concert. So we watched for a few minutes. It was funny, they have a keyboardist that really gets into the music. I actually really liked their music. They are called Ole Frimer Band, You should look this up. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AK_AQZcOfDE&feature=related. or this one if you want to see the crazy keyboardist. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6oFqWq7upA&feature=related His solo starts about at 3 minutes. Its so funny. But he is actually way good.
Hmm, well I don't think that I have anything to report today. So I'll finish this up. I have a couple pictures for you. First is a picture of my VDR ring. I figured out a cool new technique for coloring it, where I use crayons and fire. And then is my new Dyne cover! Isn't it awesome?!
Have a wonderful week!!!! I miss you! Bye for now!

Love Elder Tyler Lee

July 31, 2011

2011-09-07T11:14:00.000-07:00

Hey everyone!

That was weird. I went to the computer today, and there wasn't an email from you. That is definitely a first. But it's ok. You are probably pretty busy with wedding plans and all.
Well let me tell you a little about my week. The nice weather didn't last long. The rain is back! grrrr. It always ruins our plans. You heard about my last pday already. it was so cool. After we emailed we walked around and shopped a bit. I got a couple of sweet ties. They are flat on the bottom.
Tuesday I had to eat soooo much. We had an appointment with an African lady named Annie at 12:30, so we ate lunch right before. Well, then she decided to surprise us with lunch. And she is the type of person who insists that we eat more and more until it is all gone. I was already full before we started and I had to eat like 3 plates. I wanted her to leave the room or something so I could take the rest of the food on my plate and throw it over the fence. Haha.
We've also had appointments with a lot of our other investigators. We've spent a lot of time in Silkeborg, and those days are always good. On Thursday we had dinner with Omar and Malan and there kids, and also Omar's mom was there from Spain. It was one of the funnest appointments I've had. Their kids are so fun. Lukas brought out all these toy instruments and had us practice with him in a band, and then after dinner we put on a concert for the others.
We had splits with the district leader. Elder hardy and Årsnes came over and we had some fun and got some work done.
Hmm, this really hasn't been the most exciting week. Mia got home from Sweden. She had been there for 2 weeks to a Mormon party like efy but for 18-30 year olds. She is so excited for the church! She said it was the best party she has ever been to. It's cool seeing how much the church changes her life, and how happy she is becoming.
Oh yeah I thought of something else. On Saturday we had a big church cleanup work day. The church building was being attacked by trees and bushes. You couldn't even read the sign in front because it was covered by a tree. So we helped cutting down trees, cleaning the church, and painting a shed. The church is looking so much better now.
Hmm, well that is all that I can think of. I have those pictures from Himmelbjerg for you today. It's only letting me attach 10 at once, so I'll send a couple more right after.
Have a great week!! See ya soon! Bye!

Love Elder Tyler Lee

July 24th, 2011

2011-09-07T11:08:00.000-07:00

Hey there! :)

First of all, Hey Tani, Thanks for the email!!! I'm glad that you are so excited and have been having such a great time!! That camp of yours sounds like a blast. I always enjoyed scout camps and things like that. I'm excited to see you in a few months! It's gonna be weird to see how much you and Tia have changed.

I am doing great!! I hope you are doing good too. I've been thinking a lot about coming home, and I'm so soo excited, but I'm also sad. I've been hear so long that it is gonna be hard to leave. I'm really gonna miss so many people, and also the danish food. :) But it is going to be so great to see everybody again! I can't wait!
I know, it's crazy what happened in Norway?? There was a bombing and also a shooting a little ways away. There were a lot of people who were killed. It's so terrible what some people chose to do. It is really shocking to everyone hear in Denmark, because that kind of thing never happens here, and Norway is so close and so similar to them. Today everyone in Scandinavia had a moment of silence at noon to respect the people who were killed.
We have been really busy lately. We always have so much going on, but that is always a good thing. it's a bummer because we can never play soccer golf. We keep planning on doing it every pday, but it is always crummy weather, its ridiculous. We are in July and I've had to wear a coat for the past 3 weeks! It seriously has been raining every single day. I don't know if I told you about this or not, a week or so ago there was a ton of major flooding in the Copenhagen area because of all the rain. Everyone's basements were flooded and the streets and railroads were too. It caused millions of dollars in damage. It would've been interesting to be serving over there. The missionaries apartments were flooded too. Anyway, I'm ready for some sunshine and good weather! Until then we will just be playing a lot of ping pong for pdays. That's always fun too.
I know! I'm so excited for Elder Bednar! It's gonna be so cool. He has always been one of my favorites to listen to, and it's going to be awesome to be able to be so upclose and personal with him. I'll let you know all about it. I didn't know that he came and visited Camrons mission when he was there!
I'm so happy for Jennifer's mom too! Baptisms are always so great! It's so awesome when someone you know accepts the church and the gospel and is changed and blessed by it. It always makes all the hard work worth it. They are planning on visiting utah sometime in the future and also stopping by to visit me perhaps. That would be way fun! I told her that my mom is always happy for guests, and that we could take her around to some of the sights in the area.
Whoah, Rurika and Camron are having their wedding in one month! It's coming so fast! I'm excited to hear about how it goes. Hey here is something interesting. Elder McCleary has an older brother who is getting married next month too.
Well, ya wanna hear a bit more about my week? Well, last pday we didn't really do much other than email and play ping pong and relax a bit. Then on tuesday we worked over at Inge's on our big project. We thought we were gonna finish and we probably could have, but we ran out of stinkin bricks! So know we have to wait to get some more. Oh guess what! While we were working there I got stung by a bee! }:-( Dumb bee. It got all swollen up and then later itched way bad.
Wednesday was Interviews. Those are always fun, because its a good chance to talk one on one with president, but it's also a good chance to just hang out with the other missionaries while president is interviewing the others.
Thursday was a Silkeborg day, and those are always good. We met with the pearce family, and they said that they are going to be coming to church next week to hear our talks. We also met again with Omar and Malan and their family. This is awesome because this is really the first time on my mission that I've been able to teach families! And those are always the best. Omar and Malan have promised to actually set a date for their marriage within the next couple weeks, and then we will actually be able to set a baptismal date as well.
Friday and Saturday I can't really think of any noteworthy things that happened. Oh except for the crazy drunk guy that squirted invisible ink on my shirt. He saw us and ran over to us and they squirted all this stuff on my white shirt and started laughing and we kept walking. Then he ran and caught us and was like, it's fake it's fake, see... haha
Then Sunday was talk day number one. Get this, I had to prepare the sacrament, bless the sacrament, give a talk, and translate the other talk. We get called on for a lot... But the talks went well. It was just me and McCleary who were speaking. He took about 13 minutes on his and then I was left with like 25 minutes.. I was able to take up 20 of them and we ended a minute or two early. Now we are all warmed up for next week in Silkeborg.
We were invited over to dinner yesterday by some members and they gave us some chocolate cake that they made, it was way good. They gave us the extra to take home. Ya know what's way good? Have you ever tried cake in milk? You put the cake in a bowl and poor some milk over it. It is one of the best things ever! It's definitely the best way to eat cake. I think I learned that from Landon.
Hmm, well that is all. I don't have any pictures of me, but it has been another 6 weeks, and that means that I decorated a new planner! Woohoo! I really like this one. Let me know what you think. I also have a short video of Melissa. :)
I hope you have a super amazing week! See ya so soon!

Love Elder Tyler Lee.

July 17th, 2011

2011-08-25T07:24:00.000-07:00

Hello!

How are you? I'm doing good. Thanks for another email! Hey guess what today is... It's my 20 month mark! o_O How the heck have I been on my mission for 20 months?!?!

I'm glad that you've had a good week. Yup we have been keeping busy lately. This last week was really busy too, but in a different way. We were out of our area for like half the week. Let me tell you all about it.

So last pday we didn't actually end up going to soccer golf. We all got way too competitive in ping pong and played for too long, and that threw off the schedule and we wouldn't have had time to go there. But oh well, we will just have to do it another day. I have to say, I am getting pretty good at ping pong. We were playing some more this morning.

Tuesday was one of the only days that we had to really work in our area. We had 4 appointments, but it was dumb because 2 of them canceled and 1 burned us. So the day didn't turn out like we were hoping. Then that evening we packed our stuff and hopped on a train to Frederica where we spent the night. We went there because the next day was zone conference.

So in the morning on Wednesday we woke up early and caught another train over to Copenhagen. It was an awesome meeting. At the end, they said that there was a surprise for us and president went out to get it. And then he came in with a hoodie on, acting all gangster. It was the funniest thing ever. Anyway, they got mission hoodies for all of us!! Isn't that cool? Also at the zone conference we found out about some way awesome news! On September 7th we are going to have a special guest for a zone conference... It's going to be Elder Bednar!! They said that it would pretty much be 3 hours of question and answer. Anyway, we are all way excited for that! How cool is that?!?

This was one of the coolest zone conferences ever because when we were done we went to the temple for a session. It was so cool! I'm glad that I was able to go there another time. It's a bummer that I'm not able to go to the temple very often as a missionary.

After that we had some dinner and then me and McCleary and 4 other missionaries went to the mission home to sleep. It was cool because we were able to just talk to president in a different situation and see more of his personality come out and really get to know him and his family better. Sister Andersen was also really nice and baked us some cake.

The next day we went to the Fredriksborg Castle as a zone. That was way cool. It's the one that I had been to one time before that has those paintings by Carl Bloch. It was fun being there with so many other missionaries.

Well that was the end of our big road trip. After the castle we has some lunch and then headed back home. It was a fun trip. We were only home for one day, Friday, and then we were off again. On Saturday we went to Randers because there was a baptism. It was a guy named Søren that Elder McCleary had taught. He is a way old, tiny man. Elder Oakey who baptized him was so scared about how he was going to dunk him in the water and get him up again without killing him. Haha, but it went well.

And someone else got baptized on Saturday! Malene Christophersen!!! Jeniffer's Mom! I was really bummed that I couldn't get permission to go to it. Especially since they wanted me to help them out with a musical number. But I was told that it went really well, and that they were so happy.

Then we ended the week with a good day at church. David, the organist wasn't there, so I played. There was a family of like 9 Germans that showed up, so both me and McCleary had to translate.

So anyway it was an excellent week. A lot of good stuff happened.

Tomorrow we will go work on our project at Inge's, and hopefully we will be able to finish it. It is really close, and there really isn't too much left to do.

I think that Ausra will continue to progress. The mission office is working on finding the missionaries that will be responsible for her and then we will get that info to her. So she was in Denmark for studies, and now she is done with that and decided to go back home. Wanna hear something cool? So this week and next week she is in Bornholm on vacation where she used to live and 2 days ago she ran into the missionaries there! She talked with them and asked if they know me and McCleary. They said yeah and talked with her and invited her to a church activity they are having this week and she is gonna come. Elder Nørgaard on Bornholm called me and told that story.

I know! I still can't believe how soon I'm coming home! I'm glad you are excited. Haha. I haven't received any papers or anything about it. I don't know why they send it to you but not us. I know for sure that Elder Shreeve will be on the same flight as me. He has a layover in Salt Lake for a couple hours before he flies the rest the way to Arizona. And Van Nevel travels the same day but he lives in Florida so I doubt he'd be on the same flight to SLC. Elder Hansen is most likely extending. But there is also a sister missionary, Sister Reshke who will probably be on the flight. She lives in Washington I think.

You asked about how they have all been doing. They have all been doing great and enjoying their missions. Elder Van Nevel was the one without much family support, but he has been a great missionary. I am really jealous of him because he has been serving in Aalborg for nearly 8 months now. He's been one of my best mission friends. Elder Shreeve and Hansen are both doing good too. It was fun seeing them all the other day.

Oh yeah, I have to talk next week in sacrament meeting in Herning, and then the week after that in Silkeborg! Ugh... Oh well.

I'm glad that Jansen is recovering and everyone is doing well. That is awesome that Hannah McKinnon got married. I had no idea that her and McKell had stopped dating. They had been dating as long as I've known them pretty much.

Thanks for the picture of Tani and her hand made skirt. that is way cool! I didn't know she was in to that. Did she take a class in school that taught her that or what?

I have a few pics for you today. The first 3 are from the Fredriksborg castle. The first is me with my favorite painting in the castle. Some kid with a rifle. hahaha. Oh you can also see the Danish Mission Hoodie that I got. The 2nd is a painting from the castle that looked to me like a guy praying about the Book of Mormon. And the 3rd is me and some weird little creature. Then the last one is me and the other missionaries that were at Søren's baptism. That big fella next to me is Elder Horrocks. He makes me feel so tiny. Haha.

Well that's all I can think about for today, so I'll get going. Miss ya! And I hope you have a wonderful week! See ya!!! :D

Love Elder Tyler Lee

A few additional pics!

2011-07-12T10:38:00.000-07:00

Hey I just received an email from the Bowlers.

We had an inspection on our apartment and we passed. Big time. it is the Bowlers who are there with us and they took us out to eat and we saw some sights. There is this cool big statue thing that looks like an alien spaceship.

July 11, 2011

2011-07-12T10:30:00.000-07:00

Hey everybody!!

Thanks for the email! :) How are you doing this week? It sounds like you have had a pretty fun week, Except maybe for Jansen. That looks pretty painful! Is he doing alright?

I'm glad you were ok with me writing you a day late again. We got a lot done with Inge this past week. The project is almost done! We have poured so much sand and layed so many bricks. So if you ever need to lay some bricks, I'm a pro by now. ;) I'm going to have to get some pictures of the backyard when it is all finished. I wish I had some before pictures. Maybe Inge has some that I could get.

This has actually been a really good week again. Everyone seems to be really impressed with our work because we get so many member present lessons each week. We've been leading the mission all month! The thing is, most of them just come to us. We have some really awesome members in the little branches here. We have had so many busy days lately. Which is a good thing. I always prefer having lessons scheduled over knocking on doors all day. On Wednesday and Sunday we had Silkeborg days, and got 4 lessons there each of those days. We are also going back tomorrow and have 4 more planned. Silkeborg is awesome and that is where most of our positive work is taking place.

Malin and Omar and their family are doing so awesome! They came to church again yesterday and we gave them a lesson about the priesthood. Omar said that it is important to actually use the priesthood that he has, and is now working on being able to baptize Malin. He was also called in to an interview with the branch president and I think he might have been given a calling. Cool! The other day we were also at there house and I got some pictures of Melissa. I'm sure you would like to see her.

Well we emailed on Tuesday, but we weren't able to take the rest of our pday until Thursday! But it was a fun day. first we went to the mall and I wasn't planning on buying anything, but then I saw some cool shoes that were way cheap. (150 kr) (25ish dollars) and so I bought them. We also bought some ping pong paddles and balls, because at the sports hall they have a ping pong table, then we went there and played for over 3 hours!!! Crazy huh? But it was so much fun. Its cool because me and McCleary both had tables at our houses and we are like exactly evenly matched.

Friday we woke up early to go to a district meeting in Horsens. We were told the night before at like 9 that we were supposed to do a 15 minute training.. But it turned out pretty good. After the meeting we hung out a little with the missionaries there and we all went out to eat some delicious steak and fries. When we came home we had an appointment with Ausra. We also had another one with her two days later, on Sunday. She is doing so good! At the one yesterday we had Mia with and it was so good. We challenged her to baptism, and she said she can't answer that now but she could maybe see it in the future, and then Mia told all about her conversion story, how she told the missionaries that she would never ever become a Mormon. But that changed. The spirit was really strong and Ausra had a lot of sincere questions about how she could experience what Mia did. It was sad because it was also the last time that we met with her, because she moves in 2 days. We exchanged emails and stuff and she is excited to meet some missionaries in Lithuania.

Umm well those are the highlights of last week. Our pday has been really fun so far. Oakey and Horocks came down from Skive to have Pday with us. We played a bunch of card games last night and this morning, and then we went and played ping pong for like 2 hours. We started out taking turns and having a tournament but then we decided to play 4 player. We had teams and you have to pass the paddle after every single hit. It was crazy but so much fun. Me and Horocks were the grand champions. After we are done emailing we are planning on going to play soccer golf. Yeah that's right, soccer golf. Just imaging golf, but with giant holes and a soccer ball. They have a whole course and we scored some free tickets.

So I got a call from Elder Shreeve. He said that he got an email from his dad and his dad said that he had received his travel plans. So I assumed that you had received mine as well. I was excited to see if you wrote anything about it, but there was nothing in your email. So I had to check on facebook just in case and I saw that you had written about getting them. So yup, I guess I got my travel plans! So now it is certain! It is going to be a looooong day, but I think it's cool that I'm arriving at 2 something. So we will have a few hours to do something before I collapse of exhaustion.

Your 4th of July sounds really fun! I heard that they legalized more fireworks in Utah! That's cool. Now maybe it is more like a Danish New Year. Its cool when everyone is launching them all at once. My 4th of July this year was really dumb. We did nothing to celebrate. ha ha
I have some pictures for you! Two of Melissa and two of my new shoes.
I hope everything is going great! I miss you all and can't wait to see you on November 22! :D
Bye!

Love Elder Tyler Lee

2011-07-10T15:22:00.000-07:00

Hey there!!! :) I'm glad that you are doing good! Sorry again that I made you wait another day. There are sometimes just so many things that come up, but I always feel bad when I'm not able to email you on Monday.
Yesterday was a crazy day. We were helping Inge and her sister with some work. We have spent a lot of time over there helping them because they have a huge project going on in there backyard. They are laying bricks over the yard, so we have been helping with removing the old ones, laying a ton of sand, leveling out the sand, and now finally laying the bricks in. It has come a long ways and it is looking really good. I'm excited to see the final result. Inge is always nice to reward us with a good meal. Well this has been another good week for the most part. Last Pday we went to the city mall and looked around and explored. I didn't get anything that time. Then we went back to that Gymnastic Hall that I told you about and we went to the gym planning on playing some basketball, but they had all this gymnastic stuff set up in the gym. It was cool, they had trampolines and pads and a huge foam pit, so we did some flips off of the trampoline. That was way fun. But I did so many flips that by the end I was starting to feel nauseous. Tuesday was a Silkeborg day and those days are always some of the best. We had 3 appointments there that day and they went well. The last appointment was with Omar and Malin. It was so awesome because this time there 2 kids were awake and we were playing with them a bit. They have a 3 year old boy named Lukas, and a little 1 year old girl named Melissa. I told you about her. She is the little cutie with thick long brown hair. It was funny, she was so shy at first and would just hide behind her mom, but by the end she was so active and playful. They had a play doctor set and were doing check ups on us. Omar and Malin are doing so good though. They came to church this week and really enjoy when they come. We are going over there tomorrow. :) Alright I need to tell you about our new investigator, she is so awesome! A couple weeks ago we knocked on this girls door and she let us in. Her name is Ausra and she is in her mid 20s and from Lithuania. She had met the missionaries before and she was excited to see us. She is believing in God, but not so much into organized religion. But she has a lot of curiosity and wants to learn more about out church. We came a second time, last Wednesday and talked about the book of mormon and Joseph Smith. We gave her a BOM in Lithuanian and marked 3 chapters that she could read, and she said she would. Then we came again yesterday, and she had read all 3 chapters that we suggested. She said she liked it but it was kinda confusing and she wants to start from the beginning so she can follow along with the story, so she is going to start on that. We also taught her the plan of salvation and she was really interested in that. So she is doing way good and we have high hopes for her, but you wanna hear the down side? She is moving back to Lithuania in 2 weeks.. :/ We are trying to get a foundation planted in her and hopefully there will be some missionaries in Lithuania that can take over. Thursday was interesting. We got on the train with our bikes to go into town like we had done many times before, but for the first time someone came by to check our tickets. So we showed them our passes and she said, ok that's good but where are your bike tickets? We were like, uh what?... Anyway, apparently ya have to have bike tickets to have bikes with, and so she gave us a ticket. She was nice enough to only give us one ticket and told us not to do it again. So we called into the office and told them the story, and he was nice, he said to send it in and he would take care of it. So now we had to add another expense to our area to buy some bike tickets, and we are thinking that all of this might change presidents mind about taking our car away. Friday we helped a member in the ward move. His name is Thomas Søgaard and I was actually at his baptism over a year ago. Crazy. Anyway he was moving closer into the town and needed some help. Then Saturday was an even bigger service day. We had our district leader and his comp come over for splits and we all 4 went over to Inge's to lay the sand. It was nice having so many there, Inge's son Patrik was also there. It was nice because it was Elder Hardy's (District Leader) birthday the next day so Inge had a big dinner with some way good cake. It was fun, in the evening while they were with us we played a couple games of Settlers of Catan. That is always a fun one. And finally, Sunday. Sunday was another fast Sunday. I was surprised that the ward was actually able to fill up the entire hour with their testimonies. There were only like 15 people there, but they took up all the time. I was just waiting for a pause so I could go up there but it never came. Oh yeah also on Saturday morning, we had a surprise come knocking on the door. It was Elder Christensen and his brother Erik! It was kinda weird seeing Christensen not as a missionary. It was cool though. They couldn't stay long because they were on their way to Copenhagen, but they wanted to stop by and say hi and leave behind a bag of reese's. :) Well that is what happened with me this week. I'm glad you had a fun week too. :) Thats cool that Jansen went to EFY. That's good that he had a fun time. Did he come back with a girlfriend? It sounds like you have had a lot of fun St George time! You are making good use of those condos. I'm excited to get to spend a little time there as well. That's cool that you were able to go to the stadium of fire. I remember that one year we went and it was fun, even though it was a lame country band that performed. It really is ridiculous trying to get out of that place. Haha I assumed that you would want to hear my release date. :) Isn't that just crazy?!? I have like 4 and a half months left! At some points it seemed like it would never get here and I would always be a missionary, but now having a date makes it seem more real. And it is not very far away at all! I'll be going home at the same time as the other 3 elders in my group but we all live in different states so we will get split up on the way. I am so excited to see you all! :D haha I'm glad you liked my planking pictures. I think that is pretty funny. It's so pointless and stupid, but it's funny. I have some pictures for you too! First of all it is me and Christensen when he came by. Then there is my VDR ring. I customized it for the 4th of July. It looks better in person, the picture didn't work too well. The 3rd picture is one of me when McCleary stole my camera. And then I have 2 videos of me flipping. That's all for today. Have a fantastic week! Love Elder Tyler Lee Oh yeah, that you for sharing the story from Scotty's email. That is crazy! I have had some crazy stuff happen to me, but I think he has me beat on that one. I'll have to write him sometime and ask him about that.

Elder Lee with Dane and Eric Christensen

2011-07-10T15:17:00.001-07:00

Look who Whe saw as we drove through! He is doing well. He seems to have a good
relationship with his companion (my grandson) Elder McClearey

Dane Christensen

June 27, 2011

2011-06-27T11:44:00.000-07:00

Hey there!! I'm doing great! How are you this week? I hope you have had an awesome week. Hey just so you know, President told me my release date, but you probably don't really want to hear that... :P Anyway, things are still going really great here. They have a good train system here and it is easy to get around also with our bikes.
We were able to see that family a little bit again. We were hoping that they would come to church, because they usually do, but we were bummed when they didn't show up. We decided to stop by them afterwords. It turns out that they wanted to come but Malin had a way bad migraine headache. She gets them every once in awhile. Omar was thinking about taking the kids with and coming anyway, but it was too tough at the time. So they said they were sorry and they are looking forward to coming next time. We have a meeting with them tomorrow though and that will be fun for sure.
Speaking of church, we went to the Silkeborg ward yesterday for the first time. There were about 10 people there and like 8 of them were over 70. Haha. But they are really nice. I told them that I can play piano and they were so excited and happy about that. After the meeting they all came up to me and thanked me for playing and said that it has been over 2 years since they have had music. They have just been singing a capella. It was kinda funny, in our Sunday school meeting it started out being about a conference talk but ended up just being all the old people telling pointless stories of the olden days.
We haven't had a chance to go back to Ikast where that guy Ashley lives. We have been pretty busy, but we will try this week hopefully and we are hoping that we can run into him.
We have gotten in contact with another former investigator. Her name is Isabella and she is a 70 year old lady from Scotland. So we speak English with her. She was such a nice old lady. Just your basic grandma. Her house was covered in tons of pictures and trinkets and all that, and she was always telling us stories about her grandkids and her childhood and everything. She is so cool though and so positive. She absolutely loves the church. She loves the people and the doctrines and everything. She told us that she wants to be a Mormon and that she would be if it wasn't for Joseph Smith. She doesn't believe that he was a prophet and that the book of Mormon is true. So that is what we will help her with.
On Wednesday we had Specialized Training in Århus. That was good. We watched a little movie about being a ''Go-getter''. And for lunch we ate some huge sandwiches. They were way good! Yup McCleary is a good guy. It is another Williamson-like companionship, meaning that we just do a bunch of random pointless childlike things, that just make things more exciting and fun. The other day we were in Silkeborg and we did some planking pictures. I'm sure you've seen some of those pictures before. It's when you just lay down flat on something and take a picture of it. It is just way funny for some reason. Oh and yesterday we had a lunch opera. When preparing, eating, and cleaning up, we sang everything we said.
And those are the highlights of this week. I guess I will stop teasing you and let you know my release date. Are you ready?? President said that it still can change if something happens, but this is my expected release date anyway. It is November 22nd! So just before Thanksgiving. And a little less than 5 months.
Glad you liked my pictures and video. Those roof pictures where actually where an investigator lives. I have a lot of pictures for you today! Lucky you! :D The first few are from Silkeborg, there was a lake with some cool fountains. Then there are some of those planking pictures that I told you about. It was pretty dang hard to lay on that little sign like that. The last one is me holding hands with a weird pig man. Enjoy. :D Oh yeah, I bought a new jacket as you can see in these pictures. Me and McCleary actually bought matching jackets. I saw it first and dibs it, but McCleary got the same one anyway. It was a good price, just 200 kr. (Like 35 bucks) So what do you think of it?
Thats cool that Tani and Tia did their play. I am sure they did an awesome job. Chelsey told me she went and that she really liked it.
That's cool that you could go see those youtube guys. So they started with youtube videos and now they have a show they do or what? I liked those sombrero mustache pictures. haha
I hope Jansen has a good time at EFY. That is good that he is going.
What the heck? Elder Christensen couldn't handle being away from Denmark and he is already back? He is probably spending most of the time in Odense I'd assume, but that would be cool if I ran into him. I'll keep my eye out. Well I hope you have an incredible week! I miss you a ton! Love Elder Tyler Lee

June 19, 2011

2011-06-27T11:22:00.000-07:00

Hey Y'all :D How are you?!?! Yeah transfers were a little too crazy if you ask me, but it's been good. I'm just glad that it is over and we have everything situated now in our new area. It probably would have been easier to wait the two hours for the next train, but we were already getting home late as it is. I think we got home at like 10:30.
Things are going really good here in Herning/Silkeborg. Its kinda lame that we don't have a car but I think it is funner on bikes anyway. We also got our train passes now, and we can take our bikes on the train so that is nice.
We have now gotten a hold of some of the former investigators and they seem nice. I have to tell you more about that one family in Silkeborg. We met with them last Wednesday and they are so awesome! The guy's name is Omar and he was less active but has now returned to the church, and the lady's name is Malan (I think its spelled like that). She isn't baptized yet, but she wants to. They have a goal to get married by the end of the year and when they do that, she will get baptized. It was such a great lesson, they are just so golden. They also have two little kids. A boy who is 5, and I can't remember his name, and a girl who is 2 named Melissa. She is probably the cutest little kid ever. She is only two but she has long dark hair, and she sure is a cutie. We arranged with them that we will come by every Wednesday evening to share a little message with them. Another noteworthy lesson was one with a guy named Ashley. Yeah I said a guy named Ashley. He is probably the coolest guy I have ever met. He is from Australia and he has come to Denmark to play badmitton for the highest ranked team in the world. He can hit the birdie at 340 km/h! Crazy! He is also a musician and plays guitar and sings. We had a nice lesson with him and he seemed intrigued and interested, but he said that he wants us to respect him and have faith in him that he will do something with what we gave him, and so he said that if he finds out it is something for him then he will contact us. He said also that if he ever runs into us then he would be more than happy to talk with us. Our plan is to knock a lot around the place he lives and try to run into him. Things with me and McCleary are going way well. We have a lot of fun, but also work hard and get a lot done. By the way, he is from Layton, Utah. Our new thing we have been working on is juggling. Haha. We are trying to do the cool 2 person juggling where we juggle to each other. We are getting pretty good. I will for sure tell you all about Jennifer's Mom, Malene's baptism. They are both so excited, and I am too. But ya, it was a good week. Other than the lessons I told you earlier, we have also met again with Inge and also with Mia. They both love the missionaries. They are really nice and I think they will also be really helpful for missionary work. We went over to Mia's place to help her proof read a paper that she was doing for school, because it was in English. Yesterday was cool. There was a special broadcast for Scandinavia. We met in Århus with a bunch of other missionaries and members and watched it. There were 4 speakers who spoke. I can't remember the first guy's name, but second it was the Relief Society General President, and then Elder Bednar, and Elder Eyring went last. It was like a bonus little conference session. It was cool, at the conference I ran into a girl named Sofie Mølholt. And I might have told you about her way back when I was in the MTC. She was a sister missionary from Denmark going to Norway and she was in the MTC at the same time as me. Well now she is done and back home!!! How crazy is that?! It was fun talking to her again. And she seemed to be really impressed with my improvement with danish. I'm kinda rushed right now. We are going to do some service in a bit, so I can't say everything I wanted to. Congrats though to you and dad with your relay. Yeah I remember that race you do. And congrats also to Tani and Tia for their parts in the play. I know they will do a great job. I have a couple pictures for you and also a video. I hope it works. The first picture is from the other day when it was raining so hard!!! The picture doesn't do it justice. Then there are a couple pictures from up on a roof. And then 2 pictures of me stacking juggling balls on my head. The second one was falling right when the pictures was taken. And the video is of me and Elder McCleary juggling. I like your pictures you sent me. :) I miss you!! Have a fun week! Love Elder Tyler Lee

June 13, 2011

2011-06-14T08:45:00.000-07:00

Yo!! :D

So do you want to hear about my new area and my new companion and all of the crazy new stuff that is going on?! Well let me tell you about the process of actually getting here first of all. It was one of the most stressful things ever. Mostly due to terrible planning by the AP's.

So first of all they wanted us to go Tuesday instead of Wednesday and that messed up all of our plans. But anyway, on Tuesday evening I took all my stuff to the train station and we went to Copenhagen. There, I said goodbye to Elder Tolman and he headed back with Elder Tolbert. I met up with Willy and that is when things got really difficult. Try to imagine the two of us with all of both of our luggage trying to get situated in a train that is completely packed. There was not an available seat on the whole train. Luckily we had gotten reserved seats and were able to sit there, but that didn't solve the problem of what we should do with our luggage. So we packed as much of it as possible in the overhead compartment, and stacked some other stuff around our feet. There were still 2 suitcases that we just had to leave kind of in the aisle behind us. They were in a place where Williamson could see them if he reaches his head around. He looked back and just checked on them every once in awhile. It was funny, there was one time he looked back, and then he turned to me and was like, ''dude, your bag is gone.'' I was just like, yeah whatever man. But he kept going with it, he was like, ''I'm serious, it is not there!'' So I jumped up and went over there and my bag was right where I left it. Hahaha. I just went back and started punching Williamson in the arm. Anyway, after awhile on the train a lot of people got off and we were able to get situated better and play some cards. The rest the ride was fun.

We arrived in Frederacia that evening and slept there, and then the next day was even more difficult and stressful than the one before. Now would be the time to tell you that we do NOT have a car here anymore! They took the car from this area and gave it to a couple of old people missionaries! Everyone in the mission thinks it is stupid and that we need a car here. And I agree, we really do. This area is huge! It actually covers two areas. Herning and Silkeborg. And they are a 30 minute drive apart. And also our apartment is in a little town that is 5 kilometers away from Herning. So they took away our car and gave us bikes. We were kind of bummed about that but I like riding bikes and it has been good so far.

So back to the story. Now this time we had to get on another train. It was me, McCleary, and all of both of our luggage, my guitar, AND 2 bikes!! And we each only have 2 hands. I don't know how they expected us to be able to handle this. The worst part happened when we had to switch trains half way, because the train didn't go all the way to our place, so the train arrived at a station and we had 2 minutes before the next one left. And it was over on another platform. If we missed it the next one didn't leave for 2 hours. So we piled our stuff on the train and ran to the elevator, went down, McCleary took the bikes and ran up the stairs, and I went to the other elevator... It was out of order! I was like, are you kidding me! So at this point the train was supposed to leave in 60 seconds, so I took a piece of luggage in each hand and ran up the stairs, then McCleary ran in onto the train. I ran back down and grabbed the next thing and ran back up. We continued that I think 4 times, and the last one was of course the biggest and heaviest thing of them all. And I carried it half way up the stairs and my body was pretty much like, nope we are done here. My legs like shut down. McCleary who had been at the top the whole time ran down and took it the rest the way, and I wobbled over to the train. It was weird, my legs felt so crazy. I don't know if you have ever tried carrying hundreds of pounds of luggage up the stairs in 60 seconds, but it is not easy. But we made it, and we finally made it home that night and were able to relax. But dang, that was way annoying.

Well we are finally settled in. We've been here in the new area for a few days now and we are started to get the hang of things. Elder McCleary is way cool. We are already having a really good time. For example, the other day we were playing some giant card games with my huge cards, and then we randomly started having a random noise contest. We were basically just making really loud and annoying sounds. We were making these weird noises and then 3 girls walked past the window that happened to be open and they started laughing and then came over and talked to us through the window and ran away giggling.

Herning has been great so far. It is annoying because we have to bike for a half hour just to get to the city, but we have met a lot of people and they are all really great. We've been calling all of the former investigators and trying to see if they are still interested. We've set up a few appointments and met a couple of our investigators. I'm excited for tomorrow because we are going to go to silkeborg to meet with an awesome family. We haven't met them yet, but the husband is a member that was less active but not anymore, and the wife is a non member, but she is going to get baptized they said! Her name is Milan, and the only thing that is holding her back at the moment is that they aren't actually married yet. They are working on getting married so she can get baptized as soon as possible. Guess what! On Sunday they missed the bus to church so they walked 45 minutes with their 2 little children just to make it there. So there are already some awesome things going on here! We have also started finding our own new investigators too. We were out contacting the other day in our little town, and we found this girl named Anja. She seems really interested and said that she would like to talk to us more about it. And we gave here a Book of Mormon.

The ward members are way cool too! It is actually another little tiny branch like Nykøbing. I'd say it is the same size. We are over two tiny little branches, and we have only met the Herning one so far. I have to tell you about 2 specific members. The first one is Inge. She is actually inactive but she loves the missionaries, and she invited us over our second day. She is really fun and so is her 14 year old son Patrick. There is also a girl named Mia in the ward. She was baptized just like 2 months ago and she is way awesome! Her story is pretty cool. She is so into the church and is always sharing it with her friends and inviting them to church. Already we have been over to two meals at her place with one two different friends of hers invited over.

I'm thinking this is gonna be a loooooong email... I have so much stuff to say.

Lets go back in time a little bit. Back in Nykøbing right before I left we weren't able to figure anything out with Mie Louise. That was a bummer, but we were able to say goodbye to most of the others. Like Henrietta and Isabella. I'll miss that little girl. We also had one more appointment with that guy Dalsgaard, and he is doing way good. He had read even more in the BOM and is really liking it. He said he made it to where Nephi broke his bow and make a new one.

Hey here is a way exciting piece of news! Jennifer's Mom, Maline finally has a baptismal date!! She is getting baptized on the 16th of July! I'm so excited for her, and me and Elder Williamson are planning on going over there for the baptism.

Sunday, we went to the ward here in Herning for the first time. There were like 15 people there that day. They are all really nice, and they even have one who can play piano, so I don't have to worry about that any more. I helped bless the sacrament and McCleary said a prayer. We each also were called up to share our testimony. I have a feeling that they are gonna be calling on us a lot while we are here.

Sunday night, some other missionaries came over. It was Elder Oakey and his brand new missionary, Elder Horrocks. They came over because it was Elder Oakey's 21st Bday and they wanted to celebrate it with us. So we played some games together that night. We borrowed Settlers of Catan from that lady Inge. The next morning we went over to a gym and played basketball for awhile. That was fun. There is this way awesome rec-center right by our house and it is completely free for us. They have basketball, racquetball, ping pong and a bunch of other stuff. So we plan on spending a lot of time over there on pdays. Later on in the day we went to Jensen's Bøfhus for lunch, and then had a little party with them, Mia, and Inge. (Elder Oakey is the one who baptized Mia so they are good friends) That lasted most of the rest the day, and when we went back home we played some more cards and went to bed. And now we are to today, and I am writing you an email. :)

Well that is the update with me. If you have any questions about my new area or anything else, just ask. :)

I have to finish this up, we have an appointment in a bit, so sorry I don't really have time to respond to what you wrote. I have some pictures for you. The first one is me and Elder Meyer. He is going home soon and that was most likely the last time I saw him for a long time. Oh and Willy decided to jump in on it. Yeah then there is one of Oakey (birthday boy), Willy, Tolman, and Me. Then a better one of me and Meyer, then a last pic of Tolman and I. And then I thought you might like to see what Elder McCleary looks like. He wasn't ready on the first one..

Have a super day!!!

Love Elder Tyler Lee

June 5, 2011

2011-06-07T08:16:00.000-07:00

Hey there!!! :D

How’s it going?? Yeah I am really excited! It’s always fun experiencing something new, so transferring to Herning should be good. I’m kind of nervous going into an area that has been shut down and reopening it. Because there probably won’t be many investigators and we’ll have to start from scratch. But I guess that is how it was here when I first came. It has been closed because we had a shortage of missionaries. I’m way excited for McCleary. We are gonna have a ton of fun. :) I don’t think I’m DL in this new area. And the trip to Bornholm is a no go. President never got around to it, so that it a bummer.
It was sad saying goodbye to people
Yesterday we went to Annizette to say goodbye to her. I’m really going to miss her. She is a way funny girl. We ended up just talking about food and movies, and a little bit about God. We are hoping that it will work out to see Mie Louise one more time. We set up an appointment with her for Tuesday evening, but then the APs decided that we are moving Tuesday instead of Wednesday. So we are trying to figure something else out with her. We will probably go there later today. Oh I don’t think I told you. Elder Tolman is staying here and he is getting a missionary named Elder Tolbert. Haha, so that is going to be a little confusing for the people here.
I’m sure it has been fun and maybe also a little stressful starting to get ready for that wedding. That would be really cool if you could go to Chelsey to get Rurika’s hair done. Chelsey has been doing a lot of hair for weddings the past couple months so she is pretty good at it.
Haha you mention the June bugs, I don’t miss them at all. Denmark doesn’t have any annoying bugs like that that I’ve noticed. They have the giant slugs and snails that come out in the rain but they aren’t too bad. This time of year has been pretty annoying though because my allergies have been pretty bad. And it is also so hot at night. So between those two things I haven’t been getting too much sleep lately.
This week was a good, and also interesting week. On Tuesday we found 2 new investigators, but one of them is kind of insane.. We were walking down the street and this guy came up to us and was like, ‘’Hey you must be latter day saints. I’m Michael… The Archangel.’’ He said God revealed to him that he is Michael, and that in his second life he was Noah.. He gave us his address and I guess it is up to the Tolman and Tolbert if they want to visit him. But we also found another person who is normal, and it was a cool story how we found her. We were going to stop by Jesper, remember him? And we said, alright this is the last time we’ll try him because he hasn’t been home for like 2 months. So we walk over there and knock on the door. He doesn’t answer, but right at that moment a lady walked by, and said we are wasting our time with him, he is insane and he is in the crazy house. But then she started staring at our tags and was very interested. We talked to her a bit there, and she gave us her phone number and address. :) It was one of those stories about being in the right place at the right time.
Oh I broke a string this week on my guitar.. :/ It was the first time I’ve done that on my mission. But I bought some new strings and put them on. It was probably a good thing, because those strings were way old and the new ones sound much better.
We had a cool apt. with Dalsgaard. I think I might’ve mentioned him once. If not, he is a new investigator we have. We went over to an appointment, and he had read the first 8 chapters of the Book of Mormon. And not only did he read, but he actually remembered what he read, thought it was interesting, and he liked it. Oh yeah. We taught him about Joseph Smith and more about what the BOM is all about and how we got it. He also had a ton of questions because he had looked up about our church online. He really liked our temples, and he sounded excited when I said there is one in Copenhagen. Anyway, we have another apt with him tomorrow right before I leave.
On Saturday we had my last appointment with Ronnie. And he invited Else over again too. We had his homemade pizza, and it was really tasty. He was really sad to hear that I would be leaving. Oh yeah, one of our bikes is getting fixed, AGAIN! So we took the bus out to Ronnies place, but it was 32 kr. Which was more than we wanted to pay, so we just walked home afterwards. It was like 8 kilometers and took us an hour and a half.
Yesterday was my last day in church So I said goodbye to the ward and they seemed sad to be losing their piano player. Haha. But luckily Elder Tolman plays a little bit and he can figure them out.
Last night I started packing and getting ready to go. I hate packing! I always put it off. I hope I’ll have room for all my stuff. I’ve gained a lot of stuff while I’ve been here.
So the plan for tomorrow is after our apt with Dalsgaard, we will go get on a train around 4 to Copenhagen. From there I will get on another train with Elder Williamson and the two of us will head over to Jylland. That will be fun. It is only us two who are moving from Sjælland to Jylland. We’ll spend the night in Frederacia and then I’ll meet up with McCleary and we will go to Herning. Oh did I tell you we get a car? Other than that I don’t really know much about the area.
I’ll finish this up. I have a few pictures for you, the first 3 are my new planner. Can you believe another 6 weeks has gone by?? It always goes so fast! Be careful, the second one has some blood and gore. Then the next picture.. Tolman wanted to decorate his own planner and this is what happened. Then there are some comparison pictures for how much shorter my paper chain is getting. And the last one is one last picture of me with Ronnie and Else.
Thanks for the pictures you sent. That dog of C and R’s looks fun.
I can’t wait to hear from you again next week!
Love Elder Tyler Lee

Surprise email! ;D

2011-06-07T08:05:00.001-07:00

Hey! Surprise email! ;D

So last night we found out about transfers and I just want to tell you real quick what's happening. Are you ready?? I'm moving! I'll be going to a place called Herning. It's actually been shut down for awhile and me and Elder McCleary will be re-opening it. So that will be exciting. Also probably kinda tough. Yeah, so I'll be getting Elder McCleary and I am way excited for that! He is awesome and I think we will have a lot of fun. He's been on his mission for 10 months now. I don't know too much about Herning, but I know they have a really small branch like here in Nykøbing. I will tell you all about it when I get over there. Transfers are on Wednesday so the next few days will be spent getting ready and telling everyone goodbye.

I can't wait to here from you on Monday!

Love Elder Tyler Lee

May 29, 2011

2011-06-07T07:59:00.000-07:00

Hey Dad and Mom and Everyone!! :)

Whoah, Dad you are also a great letter writer. It’s not just mom. Thanks.
That is way exciting about Camron and Rurika! August 27^th eh? The day after Mom’s Bday.

Dad our investigator is named Barbl, not Barbie. Haha.

Yeah I thought that tree was pretty cool. It is actually right out our window, and one day I was just sitting there, I looked outside, and was like, Holy Cow, it looks like Jylland! So I took a picture. It is crazy how similar it is.

It sounds like everyone has been having a fun summer vacation already. Scandinavian days are always fun. Yeah I think I will have a new respect for it when I come home and go there again. It’s nice you were able to have a lot of fun family time and fun time.

I haven’t heard anything about transfers yet, nothing from interviews but it will be soon. I will most likely move, and I actually want to stay here a little longer because of Mie Louise. She is doing awesome and it seems like as soon as I leave an area that is always when they suddenly get baptisms.

But on that note, let me tell you about our lesson with Mie Louise. It went way well! We went over there and she had invited a friend over named David who was a member at one point. He was excommunicated 15 years ago. At first I was thinking, ugh why is this guy here? He is just sitting there smoking and swearing and talking about pointless stuff. But then when we actually started teaching the lesson it was really good that he was there. I found out that he still believes that the church is true and still considers it as his church, and he had a ton of knowledge about what we were teaching. We taught Mie Louise the plan of salvation, and she was really involved the whole time with questions and comments. She likes the plan and thinks it makes sense but doesn’t understand it all completely. She kept asking though about how she can get her own confirming answer and so of course we told her. She seemed committed to try, and she is also excited for our next meeting. We are going to watch the finding faith in Christ movie.

Let me tell you a little bit more about my week. Tuesday was a really great day. We got so much done and President was really impressed when I told him about it at interviews. We had 7 lessons, 2 of them member present lessons, and we also got a new investigator. One of those lessons was also the Mie Louise lesson I told you about. Like I said we also had interviews with president. I didn’t get my release date out of him yet, but we did talk about it a little bit. And I told him that I would really like to go home before thanksgiving. He said that he will mail it out soon and then I can call him and discuss it. I’ll let you know more as soon as I find out. We also had a combined district meeting with Elder Williamson’s district. I don’t know if I told you that Willy is district leader now too. That was fun, the two of us did a combined training, and it was fun teaching with him again like the old days.

That was most of the excitement for the week. The rest of the week up until Sunday there didn’t happen very much. Sunday was kind of weird though. Before church started we were pulled into another room by the branch president along with a couple ward members. And I guess it was some kind of apology meeting. I am still confused about the whole thing. I guess a couple weeks ago in our missionary coordination meeting, sister Ravn said something mean about Sister Korgaard and she found out and was really offended. She was saying, ‘all my life I have never been treated this bad, I don’t trust sister Ravn and I can’t forgive her right now’ They were acting like kids. I still don’t know why they even got us missionaries involved.
I think I’ve made it through the boring part of the bible and now it is pretty exciting. I just finished judges and there were a lot of cool stories there. Like with Samson and all those other judges.

That’s pretty much it for this time. By next time I will know if I’m transferring or not and if I get a new companion.

I have some bad news. I haven’t taken any new pictures this week. Some weeks I have so many, but other weeks there is just nothing worth taking a picture of. So sorry about that. All I have for you is a movie of Tolman trying to juggle. He’s been practicing for a month.
Have a super week and I can’t wait to hear from you again next week! Miss you! :)

Love Elder Tyler Lee :D

Oh yeah, I almost forgot to say that yesterday we also thought primary at church. In other words we taught the 2 youngest Johansen kids. It was fun and it went really well. We talked about different stories in the scriptures about when they were commanded to build a ship and they were able to do it because of their faith. And we focused the lesson on faith in god. Then after we made our own origami ships out of paper and floated them on some water. It was fun!.

May 22, 2011

2011-06-07T07:40:00.000-07:00

Hi!! Thank you for the email!
It doesn't matter if you almost forget, as long as you don't completely forget. :)

I know! It is so exciting that those two are finally getting married! Haha I was thinking, they have waited so long, they might as well wait a couple more months, but I guess it's best that they get married as soon as possible. :) You just better get a ton of good pictures, that's all I can say.
Congrats with the 5k and the success of your students! I don't know if you have told me about that program. If you have I might've forgotten. Is it like a class you do? Do you get paid for it, or just for fun?
Yeah I was just thinking this week that school should be getting out soon. That's exciting! Oh and happy birthday to Jansen! Too bad to hear about his ticket.. What did he do wrong?
I'm glad that Shane has found an apartment and he is able to be moving on with his life now.
I haven't heard anything else about my release date yet but I assume we will talk about it at interviews. Interviews are on Wednesday.
Well, transfers are in like 2 weeks, and needless to say, I am excited.
This is way annoying, this computer is being stupid and won't type all the letters I'm typing so I have to keep backspacing and respelling like every other word.
I want to tell you a little about one of those potential investigators from last week. Her name is Mia Louise. She is awesome. Well, she has like 5 piercings in each ear and a ring in her lip, but you can't be fooled by her appearance. She has actually really thought a lot about religion. We stopped by and she let us in, and we were there for over an hour! She asked us a bunch of good questions and luckily I had some answers. I also asked her, 'What if it is true? What will that mean to you?'' She said if she finds that out then she will change her ways, and be baptized in our church. She was really curious about our beliefs about the Plan of Salvation and we have an appointment with her on Tuesday to go more in depth about it. She also received a BOM and seemed excited to read in it. Then yesterday we were walking down the street and we passed her, and she was with a friend. She smiled at us and waved excitedly and said, 'see ya Tuesday!'' Which to us was a really good sign, that even though she was with a friend she was happy to see us, and meet with us. I'll let you know more how it goes with her.
It was a bummer though, because I think we lost our investigator, Barble yesterday. I called to set up an apt. and asked if it was Barble. She said, no this isn't her. So I asked if I had a wrong number, and she said, I couldn't tell you. And then she hung up. But it was obviously her because she has a heavy accent. She seemed so positive last time. I think what happened is what has happened to me in the past. When someone is actually interested, they look it up, or talk to someone about it, and they just hear a bunch of anti Mormon fake junk. We will try to stop by sometime and see whats up.
Oh, there is someone else I need to tell you about! Remember Jennifer? The girl we baptized? Well her mom is going to get baptized soon! :D She knows it is true and all, but was trying to find a cheaper apartment so she could pay tithing. She has found one so it's just a matter of time! I will definitely make sure I go to that. She is an awesome fun woman.
Friday was really cool! We had a mission conference with a member of the quorum of the 70, Elder Fingerle! So the entire mission met together for that, and it was really good. Him and president Andersen had some really great stuff to say to us. Oh I also performed a musical number on guitar. It was a little nerve wracking playing for the whole mission and for Elder Fingerle, but it went really well. I played Jesus the Very Thought of Thee.
It was fun seeing Elder Christensen there for a last time before he goes home. It's crazy, when we were comps he hit his year mark, and he said, ''When I go home, you will only have 6 months left.'' I was thinking, yeah that will never get here, but it did! I remember you said you would like to go to his homecoming if possible. I asked him about it and he said it is on June 12. He gave me his home number and his moms number so you can find out more about it. Where it is and all.
Well that is my news for you, we also had a big storm last night with thunder and lightning. It was pretty cool!
Like I said earlier, we have interviews scheduled for Wednesday, but they might have to be cancelled, because President is in Iceland, and while he was there that volcano erupted and flights are cancelled for now. So he might be stuck there! It makes me wonder if it affected an Elder who was supposed to be going home from Iceland. I don't know if it was before or after the volcano but he might be sticking around a little longer.
There are 2 pictures today. The first is me and Elder Christensen from the mission conference. And then a picture of a tree I saw today that looked a ton like Jylland. (the peninsula part of Denmark) So I took a picture of it. It's even got the dripping nose.
Thanks for everything!!! I miss you! Have a wonderful week! :D

Love Elder Tyler Lee

Oh ps. Thanks for the pictures too!! Tia is such a goof.

May 15th, 2011

2011-06-07T07:32:00.000-07:00

Hey everyone!!
It was great hearing from you as always!
How's it going?? I hope you are having an awesome day!
First of all I want to say that I got an email from Camron today. He had some pretty exciting news!!! That is so cool that he finally proposed!! Him and Rurika are getting married!!! :D Holy Cow!!! He said the ceremony would probably be a little bit before I come home. :T lame, can't they wait an extra couple of months? Jk. That's way exciting though!
Whoah, so the mirror just fell down completely on it's own? That's weird. It's a good thing that nobody was in the way.
Thanks for the pics of Jansen and his date. That white tux he had is pretty snazzy. Thats cool they got a limo! I hope he had a fun time. I remember him telling me that he didn't really have anything planned out.
Tell Grandma and Grandpa hi! And sorry that I haven't written in awhile. I received their letter a week or two ago and I'll try to write back this week.
I have had a really good week. And it went by really fast it seems like. I'm always glad when Mondays get here quickly. It usually drags on. Being District Leader is going well. I haven't had too much extra responsibility. We had a lot of spits this week though. First on Tuesday we had the Zone leaders come over, and we got a lot of good work done. In just that one day we cranked out 7 lessons (which is pretty dang good) And we handed out 3 Book of Mormons, and got 4 potential investigators. So that was our Zone Leader splits. Wednesday we biked out to a city and we made a stop by the yellow fields! They have bloomed! They are so cool! We also went back to that pink church and were able to go inside it. We found out that the church was made in the 1100's! Crazy huh?! It had some really weird paintings all over the ceiling.
On Thursday we went to Slagelse for splits and also to say goodbye to Elder Roth. He is going home tomorrow! It was fun. We got some good work done and we also ate some GIANT burgers!! They were way good and way huge!
On Saturday we had an appointment with Ronnie. It was raining way hard and we had to bike a half hour in the pouring rain to get there. But it was a nice appointment. He invited his friend Else over as well and now she is a new investigator. She already knows a lot about the church because of Ronnie. So although he is no longer a member, he is doing some great missionary work.
Yesterday evening we had an eating appointment with our mission leader and his wife. Finn Korgaard.
Well those are the highlights of my week. Wanna see some pics? The first few are from the yellow fields of course then there are some from the Tingsted Church. I took some pictures of the weirdest paintings. There are some guys stabbing children and babies for some reason, and then some more baby stabbing, I think that one is a circumcision.. I think the pictures are kinda funny just how nobody has any emotion in any of the pictures. There is also a blasphemic picture of me preaching from the stand. Then after those pictures there is another I Love Mom graffiti we found. This one is Osama and his mommy.. Then there are our giant burgers. Mine was 650 grams, and Tolman went all out and got the 930 gram burger. Yes we finished it all.. The final picture is me, Ronnie, and Else. Notice the big thing of ice cream on her shirt.. haha.
I'll talk to you again next week! I hope you have a wonderful week!

Love Elder Tyler Lee

May 8th, 2011

2011-05-31T19:22:00.000-07:00

Hey y'all!!! :D

Happy Monday!! ;) And again, Happy Mother's day yesterday! It was great talking to you all and seeing you, even though there were more problems with skype and I didn't really know what to say, haha. It is so weird how much everyone is changing! It seems like all the kids have changed a lot! Glad you all are doing good! I'm also doing really good! It has been a really awesome week that ended in an awesome way.
But yeah I've had a good week! It started off great with some bowling! Unfortunately I didn't reach my goal of 200 this time. I wasn't as on fire as last time, although I still did pretty good I guess. My scores were; 153, 161, 144, 127, and 109 (And I was spinning the ball on this game).
On tuesday we had the APs on splits (Assistants to President) That went really really well, I told you a bit yesterday about Mogens and Barble. Elder Baily finally got him to pray! He had to write down a simple prayer on a piece of paper and Mogens just read it, but it was better than nothing, and it was a big step. We also went and visited Barbl that day. We had a good lesson that went for about an hour. It's kind of hard to control the lesson because she talks a ton about all sorts of random things, but it went well. We gave her a BOM in German and she was excited and said that she would start reading it that night. She also said that she wants to come to church! I'm excited to see what happens with her.
Friday and Saturday were really fun because we went camping! haha the ward invited us on their father/son's camp. We went friday at 5ish and had some really good dinner there, and then played some Football. American football and European football. It was fun. Then we went out in the forest with the kids and found some good sticks for roasting marshmallows. We started a campfire and sat around it roasting mallows. Then we went to bed and the next morning we woke up, ate breakfast, and headed home. I'm glad we were able to go.
We fixed Tolmans bike, but then it broke again! That stupid bike! But yesterday we gave it to Bro Johansen. He is really good at fixing everything, and he said he'd take care of it. We can always count on the Johansens! Oh don't worry I make sure to thank them a ton for all the stuff they do for us.
Then of course it ended with us going over to the Johansens and having a nice chat with the family.
Well that was my exciting week!
Since it was such a eventful week I have a lot of pictures for you! Woohoo! The first one is at the bowling alle. The second one is of an awesome girl that we saw on the street! She was a rainbow! Then I got thirsty so I got some water with a big bear. The next 2 are of a cool pink church that we saw! It was the first time I've seen a pink church so I had to get a picture of it. It looked really pretty against the nice blue background. The rest are from the campout. There was dinner, then a wild ninja, roasting mallows, and the last 3 are when Jakob stole my camera and started taking pictures. There is me and Peter, then one where I have no idea what I am doing or what Jakob was doing taking that picture, and finally there is just a picture of me.
I'm glad that you were able to have a nice mother's day with a lot of family members over to visit! That sounds exciting! How big is that Bosco now days? Too bad Rui is such a punk and can never get along with any other animals!
Whoah, that is crazy that the Lakers got swept in the second round! How did that happen? Who was it that beat them?
Um well that is all I have for today. Have a great week!

Love Elder Tyler Lee.

May 1, 2011

2011-05-09T13:26:00.000-07:00

Hey everyone!!!

How's it going?! This week seemed to go by way fast! Thanks for the email and pictures!!!
I'm excited for next week! I think we have it mostly figured out for how I will call you. Simon Johansen said that we can borrow his laptop, so we could use it for skype whenever we want! We just need to find out if we would be able to get some wifi. 12:30 for you guys will work fine for me/us. We'll just make a skype account that we can use. What is your skype account again? Tell me before sunday, and we can get it worked out. If all else fails, I can call you with the calling card and you can call back for free. We have unlimited minutes on the phones.
Haha you need to try the smoked eel sometime! It really was delicious. I'm sure you would have gagged if you tried it. But that is not really how I ate it, just take a big bite out of the whole thing. We put slices of it on some bread with eggs.
It's sounds like you and G & G have been really busy with the condo. I still can't believe that my family bought 2 condo's while I've been in Denmark and also gone on a cruise and went to Disneyland! Gosh! Haha, I'm excited though that we will be able to have a lot of fun times in St George!
Hahaha I think that is funny that you got snow AGAIN! Utah is so weird! That's kinda scary that they are worried about flooding when it warms up. I hope it's not bad!
The last couple days have been cold here too. :/ The sun is shining but there is a stupid wind that is freezing cold!
That is crazy that Osama was found and killed! He stayed hidden for a long time! I was surprised when I heard about that.
Congrats to Camron and Rurika! That is awesome that they have graduated! And that now they are moving on to the next stage. Hmm, when I first started my mish I was thinking that I might have a new sister by the time I got back, but now I'm getting close to the end and nothings happened yet..

Whoah what the heck?! I wasn't expecting to hear anything from you, Jansen! Thanks for telling me what's up though. I'm glad to hear that you haven't died in a biking or backflipping accident. That is cool that you have been working with JJ so much. You said you are looking for another job. I'd recommend JC Penney! That job was great! Not.. Never ever work there! I would really recommend the movie theater though. That was a way fun job. Not the very best pay, but it has a lot of benifits and it was actually really fun for the most part. There are also a bunch of cool people that work there. Good luck with that.
I'm surprised that you didn't fail English, seeing that great grammer of yours. ''I know I aint wrote you a lot. But that don't mean that I don't care.'' Just kiddin. So you are gonna be a senior soon, eh? How's that? My sophmore and junior years weren't my favorite but I really enjoyed my Senior year. Well I guess I'll talk to you more on Sunday aight? Peace!

Hey Dad, Thanks for the little message! Thanks, It's been cool being DL. It's fun traveling around every once in awhile and of course having the extra glory of being a leader. (not that thats so important) ;) At this point of your message I was expecting a missionary story that relates in some way to my current situation but it didn't come. Instead it was just compliments, thanks.
It is sometimes tough to stay motivated when there isn't very much success, but it is all worth it when somebody actually does accept it and you see it change their life! Hopefully there will be a few (or a lot) more of those cases in the next 6 and a half months!

I've had a pretty good week. Awhile back President Andersen gave us a challenge to read the Book of Mormon in 3 months in Danish, and to focus on how much it witnesses on the Saviour. And this last week I finished it. :) I was also reading D&C in Danish at the same time, and I finished it the next day, and so I started the Pearl of Great price and also finished that. So it has been a pretty productive week study wise I'd say. Now I'm reading the old testement in Danish. It's the first time I've ever read the bible, and I have to admit, it's not my favorite. The book of mormon is much better. I've obviously been reading a lot lately.
This week we have been doing a lot of bike riding. It has been fun, but not when there are stupid bike problems!!! Elder Tolmans pedel broke. It kept falling off, and after a ton of time we were able to finally rig something that holds it on. They seem to be working fine now. On saturday we biked over to a city like 20 minutes away and we found 2 people who seem interested. One is a girl, 20ish. And the other is an older woman. They both seem really cool. The bike ride is really awesome because we bike through the woods for a lot of the time and it is really pretty.
The other day Elder Tolman went down to the church to practice the piano, and he locked the keys in the church. We had to call around to some people in the ward and have someone come unlock it for us. Also that same day, we were walking down the street and we found an iphone! It was just sitting on the ground. So we picked it up, and I looked through the contacts and was able to find the guys wife. I called them and they were excited. I told them my name was lee, and gave them our address. They came over and he brought a big tough guy with him with a macho goatee. It turns out that they found out that the guy who stole his iphone was named Jackson Lee, and so he was scared that I was some punk guy that stole his iphone. They were relieved when they saw that I was just a friendly missionary. And he was really happy to get his iphone back.
Yesterday in church was pretty good. It was a holiday which is the same as labor day for us. But in Danish it's called ''Arbejdernes internationale kampdag'' Labor day is a lot easier to say.. We were in church and right as we were about to start we heard this loud music and we went to the door, and there was a random marching band marching down the street right in front of the church. It was way random. Oh during our sunday school class our mission leader, Bro Korgård's phone went off, and his ringtone was Barbie Girl! Haha. He was so embarassed.
The Johansens invited us over to another eating appointment yesterday. We are up to 2 appointments a week with them! After we ate we went over on their couch and the youngest kid, Peter fell asleep on my arm. And then randomly he started saying, ''ow ow ow ow ow ow'' I was thinking, what the heck happened. I guess he was just having a dream and he got hurt in his dream or something. We all started laughing at him.
Well thats it. I'm excited for today. Hopefully I'm on fire again when we go bowling. I'm also excited for next week! Sorry to tell you I don't really have many pictures for you, I just sent you a picture of my paper countdown. There is the original when I first started, and where it is now. I've made it into the 100's! There are around 198 days to go.
Have a wonderful week! And I'll talk to ya soon!
Love Elder Tyler Lee :)

April 24, 2011

2011-05-06T13:05:00.000-07:00

Hey!

Sorry to keep you waiting. The smoked eel yesterday was way good! The whole meal was, they had a nice Danish Easter lunch and it was all so good. It was smørbrød which is basically like open faced sandwiches. They had the smoked eel, there was also way yummy smoked salmon, some shrimp, ham, eggs, leverpostej (liver paste, which is actually really good), cheese, and a bunch of other stuff. I ate so much though. I got some pictures of one of the smoked eels, they are way creepy, haha. But they sure do taste good. The Johansens catch them and smoke the eels themselves.
I know, holy cow!! How did Mother's Day get here so fast?! I just barely talked to you guys! I realized that Mother's day is just in a couple weeks and that was kind of weird. I also realized that it will be the last time I call you before coming home (unless I decide to call one more time because I got ripped off 1 call while in the MTC) But I've thought a bit about it, and we could talk to the Johansons and see if we could use their computer for skype, but otherwise we would probably have to just call. I got a calling card from another missionary, but I don't think there is much time left, so I could call you, and then you could call the number back for free. It's free to the recieving phone too right? I was thinking we could probably do it at 7am for you, or like 12:30/1ish after church. Whatever works. I'll get more figured out for next time.

Well I'll start with splits last monday/tuesday. It was fun. And yes we try to do splits with members as much as possible. It is always better when we can have a member come with to appointments, although it is kind of hard hear in this area. We went to Slagelse monday evening and played a quick game of basketball with them. They have a b ball court right outside their apartment. Then again in the morning we went out to the court and played some more, it was fun but guess what! I sprained my ankle! I kind of walked it off, but then made the mistake of playing more. The rest of the week I was limping and it is just barely getting better. It's not completly back to normal yet. While on splits we were able to crank out a few lessons. Oh yeah it was cool. So last week we were at the Johansons and they turned on the news and there was something about a girl named Felicia who was kind of a big deal. I didn't pay much attention to it, but when we were on splits we contacted a girl and taught her, and the whole time I was thinking, I know I've seen this girl somewhere. Well before we left her we asked her name and she said Felicia, and then it clicked that it was that girl I had seen on tv. Anyway, after we were done we had dinner with the slagelse elders and went home, but we missed the train by 1 minute and had to wait for an hour, and so we didn't end up getting home til 11.
One day, I think it was thursday, we decided to bike away from the city and work in an area that hadn't been worked in a long time, and it worked pretty well. We knocked on a ladies door and she was really friendly. She let us in and we talked for like 45 minutes. Her name is Barbl. She is from Germany but has lived here for 20 years so she is good at Danish.
Church was fun. The Germans came again. There were also a lot of ward members absent, so about half of the people in church couldn't understand Danish, so they just had someone up on the stand translating the talks to german the whole time. And then in the sunday school class I got to be the one to translate for everyone! Luckily I got to translate into English instead. But I sure had a lot of pressure on me there.. haha. One of the german girls had her boyfriend with this time, and he looked so much like arnold schwarzenegger! Muscles and all. And he also happens to be Germany's number 2 ranked beat boxer. He beat boxed some hymns for us, it was way cool. After chuch we had a meal as a ward. They do that the last sunday of each month.
Hmm, I think that is about it. It has been so hot this past week! We made it to 75 degrees the other day, but it is also way humid and that makes it seem like even more. What's it like in Utah lately? Did you finally get rid of all that snow for good?
My clothes are doing ok. I have gotten a few things here in DK and my stuff seems to be holding in there. And money situation I think is good. I usually don't take out money from my personal funds. I had to last month because our money took an extra week to get here than it should've so I had to take out like 30 bucks to get me by. Also, that is just fine that I didn't get an easter package. Prices are crazy and it seems kinda like a waste anyway. We got a bag of candies from the ward so that is good enough for me.
Sorry that I wasn't in any of the pictures last time, but don't worry, there are a few of me this time. The first 2 are me with a big smoked eel! yummy... Then I attached some pictures of a cemetary. I think that Danish cemetaries are way cool. They are really pretty. Then there is a pic of me in my new shirt that I bought. After that, oh this is kinda funny, we were at the store and they had free samples of wine! Only in Denmark... And there wasn't even an employee giving it out, it was just there for you to take, a kid could have easily taken some. And then last of all is a picture of me in front of some cool graffiti we found. This is actually what made me remember that Mother's day is almost here!
I miss you!! Have a great week! :D

Love Elder Tyler Lee

April 17, 2011

2011-05-04T15:15:00.000-07:00

Hey!! :D

Unfortunately I don't have too much time so I'll have to type fast!
Well would you like to hear about my week? It has been pretty exciting I'd say. We'll start with bowling last pday! I was on fire! I tied my old high score of 165, and then I beat it, and then I beat it again! My top score was 175. oh yeah! I usually have that problem where I get 9 pins but the last one won't fall down, well that wasn't too much of a problem this time. I think I got 13 or 14 strikes out of 4 and a half games. And I got a turkey. Elder Tolman didn't do as well unfortunately. I usually beat him by at least a hundred points.. You have to see the video of him, its so funny.
In the evening we went to copenhagen because Tuesday was zone conference. I brought a coconut to share with the zone leaders who we were staying with but we got there late, it was like 10:30, so I just saved it and brought it with the the zone conference and everyone thought it was way cool, haha.
On wednesday evening/thursday, the zone leaders came over to Nykøbing for splits. It went way well! They drove us to the very west side of our area, about an hour away, and we visited some less active people who were really nice. And then back in Nykøbing we found two new investigators who are really cool. One is that guy Jeff's girlfriend Hanne. Remember Jeff? He was the one who came to our church to meet with us but then told us he wasnt' interested. Well it had been a month or more so we gave him one more chance and he wasn't home but his girlfriend answered. She said that Jeff had told her a bit about us and they had read a little bit in the book of mormon. She said it was really interesting and that we are welcome over anytime.
Saturday we took another bike ride over to Ronnie's place. His appointments are always great, for one reason because of the way good food! This time we had some delicious American style bbq. He barbequed some steaks, it was way good. I'm trying to remember if he said or did anything extra funny this time, but I'm not thinking of anything.
Then yesterday was a good Sunday. We had a special Easter service that was nice. There were some visitors, a family that came from Germany, and they were way awesome. They also had a foriegn exchange student named Jordan from Idaho and she was way cool too. She asked me to translate for her, so that was fun. It's been awhile since I've had a chance to do that. They are also coming next Sunday. Since it was a special Easter sacrement meeting they asked me to perform a musical number. So not only did I play the organ during sacrament, I also played a song on the guitar. It was Jesus the very thought of thee. I thought it went well, and everyone seemed to be happy about it.
And that brings us to today. We aren't really doing anything fun today. Just going to look around some stores. But later in the evening we are heading over to Slagelse which is in my district and we are going on splits with them tomorrow.
Well that's all. I have some pictures for you today, but I'm not in any of them this time. Sorry about that. The first 3 are bowling scores. I think its funny on the first one, by the time he finally hit any pins I was already over a hundred.. Then there is a cute old matching couple that I saw. Oh man, and then the next ones are of the haunted laundry room that I've told you about! Going up there in the dark is seriously the scariest thing I've ever done. First there is the long dark hallway with the really dim light that turns off every 30 seconds. On the sides of the hall are all these creepy doors with abandoned rooms. Look at the picture with the old bathroom, look at the bottom left corner, I think that black shadow might be a ghost. Then at the end of the hall is the random laundry room. A dark concrete room with a washing machine in the middle. Over in the far corner is a small door that I always think some little demon will crawl out of. Anyway, those pictures are so you can get an idea of the horror I go through just to have clean clothes. I'm glad that the days stay bright longer now. Ok and then the last 3 pictures are my newly decorated planner. I think that it is some of my best work yet! Oh, and I also attached a video, I hope it works.
Well I'm glad that you all had a fun time in Cali and at Disneyland! That place is always a blast. And congrats to Weston and his girl. I didn't even know they were getting married until Grandma and Grandpa told me in a letter I recieved a couple days ago. You probably told me but I forgot. Haha, so you saw that miracle story eh? Yeah it is about Mogens and his Mormons Bog reading. Bog means book, but it's pronounced like (bow) I gotta go so I can't respond to everything, but thanks for the email and the pictures. I love Tia's style! Haha, and her glasses too.
Have a fantastic week!

Love Elder Tyler Lee :)

A letter in the mission banner written by Tyler to the Mission President.

2011-04-15T21:08:00.000-07:00

Vi har en rigtig possitiv undersøger der hedder Mogens. Jeg kan lige fortælle dig en lille historie angående ham. Vi kontaktede ham for ca 3 uger siden og han fik en Mormons Bog. Han sagde han vil begynde at læse i den. Vi kom forbi nogle gange i løbet af de næste par uger, og spurgte ham om han har læst. Han svarede, jo, men jeg ikke har nået ret langt. Vi var bare begejstret over at han har læst noget som helst! Vi spurgte ham så hvor langt det egenlig er han var kommet. Han sagde; Jamen kun de første 113 sider. :) Han læst hele vejen igennem først og anden Nefi på kun 2 uger. Og han bliver ved med at læse. Nu er han næsten kommet til Almas Bog. -Ældste Lee

April 11, 2011

2011-04-11T18:31:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone! Sounds like you are already having a fun time on your vacation! That's nice of Steve and Susan to let you in and be so nice. Redlands is a good place. It was fun going over there and staying with them for awhile. Tell everyone hi for me. So do you have other plans than Disneyland for while you are in Cali? It's going good as District Leader. I can tell you a little bit more about what it is I do. My district is 3 different areas that I'm over, and so I'll go on splits with them every once in awhile and teach them at district meetings, and it is also my job to interview the baptismal candidates if there is someone getting baptized. That would be way cool! So far I haven't done too much. Just called to the areas to get numbers for the week yesterday. Ældste Tolman and I bought a coconut this week. We were shopping and I saw some coconuts and I had to buy it. Man, it was soo hard opening that thing! We were banging on it with a hammer forever! It was way worth the work though because it tasted so good! It was the first time I've tried a real coconut. Oh I have to tell you about the train ride to Copenhagen for transfers... So we happened to sit next to the bathroom, and we ended up having to help 5 old ladies figure it out during the ride. They would always push the light for some reason instead of the open button, so we had to point to the button they are supposed to push. Well on the last one, the lady goes in and shuts the door, but I guess she did something wrong becuase after a minute the door just opened up completly on its own and the old lady was just sitting on the toilet with a horrified look on her face. So Elder Poulsen just stood up and walked over and pushed the button. That is not what I wanted to see. haha This week we borrowed the Emma Smith movie from someone in the ward and watched it again. I'm glad that I was able to see the ending. That movie was so awesome! So there is this lady in the ward, Lisa. The one that had us pick up the milk for her. Well she saw our missionary planners and said that she wanted something like that, and she gave us a little bit of money to find her a planner. Well we bought one and gave it to her, and she just yelled at us because it wasn't the one she wanted. What the heck? And then she had us carry a big bag of clothes to the church. This is a weird place. We went to visit Jesper the other day, and he gave us an excuse that I have never heard before. He said, sorry I can't meet with you today, one of my cats is giving birth. Haha. I guess that probably happens with him a lot seeing as he has a billion cats. Today we are going bowling! Woohoo. I'll let you know how I do. And then later tonight we are heading to Copenhagen because tomorrow is specialized training. I have some pictures for you. The first two are Tolman. And then there are some coconut pictures! That's all for today. Have fun at Disneyland!! Love Elder Tyler Lee

April 5, 2011

2011-04-11T18:12:00.000-07:00

Hey again!!! Sorry about the stubby email yesterday, I'm just going to get right back into telling you what was going on with my week. Where did I get to last time? Oh yeah, I had just told you about interviews and what is happening with transfers. I just remembered, there is one more thing that President Andersen told me about. He brought up my release date. :O That is so weird that it is getting so close. The date isn't set, but this is how the conversation went. He said, Lets see when you are going home, and then he pulled out a paper and it said me and two of the others go home on Dec 13... What the heck. I told him that it said Nov 17 on the calender he gave us, so he looked at that and was like, oh that's right. Anyway, he basically just said that he wasn't sure and that we would figure it out later. So I could come home on one of those two dates most likely. I think it would be a bummer to miss a third thanksgiving if I had to stay an extra month. That would be a good time to see all of the extended family again. The next couple days were the only days that we were able to work like usual and so we went and visited our investigators so Elder Poulsen could say goodbye. He also had to start packing because we were out of town for the weekend. On saturday afternoon we left for copenhagen. We got some food at burger king and then went to the young adult center to see the first session. The elders that drove us from the station got kind of lost on the way to pick us up, so we came like 15 minutes late. The weekend was way fun, because for one thing we saw conference, but also we got to see a bunch of other missionaries and members that I know from Ballerup. And we also stayed in the Ballerup house with 8 missionaries, so it was a party. (Missionary appropriate party of course). On sunday we went to the stake center and saw the priesthood session, and then later on we saw the saturday afternoon, and sunday morning sessions. We don't get a chance to see the final session, so I'll just have to watch it online sometime or just read it when it comes out. Oh I wanted to tell you. I'm sure I have told you about Maria before. She is the girl from Denmark that I met at EFY before my mission. She was in my group. Well, it had never worked out for me to see her, I was either on the opposite side of the country, or when I was closer, she was living in America. Well I finally saw her at Conference! It was cool seeing her and catching up with her a bit. I also met her parents and talked with them for a bit, they just got home from a mission in Poland. I was also able to see Jennifer and her mom again! They are so fun! I don't think I've told you, Jennifer's mom is investigating the church now pretty seriously. She has stopped drinking coffee and everything. :) I've got some pictures from all that.. It's so great that we are able to hear from the prophet and apostles every 6 months! I think one of my favorites was from Neil L Andersen in the priesthood session. His talk was all about missionaries and missionary work. Haha and then the President Monson one just made me want to get married way bad. ha ha. :/ Ok and then after conference was over we went back to ballerup for one more night, and the next day (yesterday) we spent p day with them. It was kind of lame, we had planned on going bowling together and were all excited for that, but we went to the bowling alley and it was closed down! And there wasn't another one close. But it's ok we still had a fun pday. We ended up going to a cool church that had a bunch of huge coffin things. And then afterwords we got a soccer ball and played a couple games. It was really fun. Well we are back home in Nykøbing but we are making another trip up to Copenhagen tomorrow for transfers! Anyway, thanks for your email. And thanks for the awesome pictures. Utah weather is so weird! It has actually been pretty sunny around here lately! It sounds like you have had a good conference weekend. Thats great that you have been able to get together with some family. I bet the kids are getting way excited for the california trip! Say hi to the lees for me! That vacation got here pretty quick! Time moves too fast.. You asked about Elder Christensen. Well he goes home in 2 months! I remember when I was with him he hit his year mark and now he is basically done! That would be cool if you could go to that, I'm not sure exactly when it is. Did you ever end up doing anything with his mom? Hahaha That April Fools dinner looks awesome! Did you come up with that?! I think that is so funny. It looks so much like a cake. Umm, well I think I'll wrap this up. I sent you a ton of pictures. The first few are from Conference. The first girl I'm with is Maria, and then there is Jennifer and her mom. There are also some random stuff of Me, Willy, and Klc. Then after those there are some pictures from our trip to the Church. :) Thank you for everything!!! See ya! Love Elder Tyler Lee

April 4, 2011

2011-04-04T10:55:00.000-07:00

Hey sorry to keep you waiting, and sorry to tell you that I will have to do it again. The library closes soon and there isn't time to write about all that has happened.

But, I will tell you a bit about interviews! It was the first time I have had interviews with president in 4 and a half months! Because when I had that emergency transfer it was right in the middle of interviews. (Nykøbing interviews were just before and Aalborgs were right after) So I missed out. It was good talking to President Andersen one on one again. He told me some really big news! So transfers are coming up, and he told me what would be happening with me! Are you ready? Well first of all, I'll be staying in Nykøbing longer, and I'll be getting Elder Tolman. AND I'm becoming District Leader! :) So that will be really exciting! It will be some extra responsibilities, but I think it'll be fun! And one of the coolest things is the other bit of news that he told me. In my district it includes the Bornholm Elders, and President told me that it is time for another splits over there, so I get to go visit Bornholm! I don't know if you know anything about Bornholm. It is a little island way way way to the east of Denmark. They speak a language that is a mixture of Danish and Swedish there. It has a reputation for being a beautiful place, especially in the summer. All missionaries want to go there but no missionaries want to serve there, because they are so far away from everything and they usually stay there together for several months. So going on splits there is a big desire for all missionaires. I would also have to travel through Sweden to get there, and then take a boat for part of the trip. How cool is that?! President told me that me and him would go there together for probably 3 days sometime in June probably.

Anyway, transfers happen on wednesday. I don't really know Elder Tolman. He has been here for only 4 months and all I know about him is that he broke a chair at his first zone conference. Haha, he was so embarassed.

Oh dang, this library closes in 5 minutes! So I'm going to have to cut this email short and you can get the rest tomorrow, because there is still a bunch to tell you and I have a lot of pictures too. Sorry to keep you waiting again! Bye for now! Love Elder Tyler Lee Ps I attached a pic of Denmark so you can see where bornholm is. That little island clear over to the right!

March 28,2011

2011-03-30T11:43:00.000-07:00

Hey Everyone!! Whoah today was a bonus email with a little input from everyone! Thanks y'all. Hey Tani! Wooo! That is so cool that you went to the festival of colors! Did you have fun?! I thought it was way cool when I went to it. But it is also pretty weird with their songs and chanting and all that. I'd like to see those pics and videos that you got on your phone sometime. I didn't even know you have your own phone! It's tough to get all of that color off you isn't it. I remember I was still finding green and purple in my ears like 4 days later. Congrats on Churchball! That's awesome that you and your team are doing so well! Good luck with your upcoming games! Tia! I've heard that you are quite the little actress. I feel bad that I keep missing out on all of these plays and things that you have been doing! I would really like to see them. Thats cool that you enjoy doing those plays so much! That 3rd grade California play sounds really fun. I still think it is weird that you are in 3rd grade, and now you are almost done with it! Now that you've done a California play you need to do one about Utah! Or Denmark! Haha. I miss you so dang much, Tia. I always see little kids here that remind me of you. See ya in 7 and a halfish more months. :) (Note from mom...Tia is in 4th grade. What is he going to think when he realizes that?!) Hey pops! Thanks for the sports update. I hear a few things about the sports world every once in awhile and it is good being kept informed. Sorry to say this, but I am kind of glad that the Jazz have been doing so crummy. It would be a bummer if they were doing better than ever and winning the playoffs if I wasn't able to watch it. So I'm fine with them doing lousy while I'm away, but once I come home they need to stop messing around! That is cool though that BYU has done so well this year and gotten so much attention.

Hey, we were at our investigor Ronnie's place this week and he let me play his electric guitar for awhile. He has a nice Gibson Les Paul. It was fun playing again, but I've forgotten a ton of the electric guitar stuff I used to know! I have my acoustic guitar of course, but I can't play the same stuff on that. So I'm hoping that when I come home, it will come back pretty quick. I think that when I come home I am going to have to take an entire day down there in the music room with no interuptions. Haha. Well, see ya later. Mom, that is awesome that Landon is waiting on a mission call now! I'm excited to see where he goes and when he goes. I guess there will probably be a couple of months between. That would be weird if there went 4 whole years between seeing each other. Let me know what his call says when you hear about it.

Why thank you. I'm glad you liked seeing those piano videos. They aren't that good, I had a bunch of mistakes in that one. I'm planning on quiting again once I leave this area. This time it'll be for good. Just kidding just kidding. I'll stick with it. I'll just most likely play keyboard instead of piano because a regular piano is boring, and most of the music is lame classical stuff. Well this has been a good week I guess. We were able to get a lot of teaching in. I have to tell you some more about Mr. Jesper. Yeah Jesper is a nice guy. We found out that he doesn't live in that little apartment alone. He has a billion cats! Haha, its weird because the first two times we went there we only thought he had one cat, but this last time, I walked into the main room and there was seriously like 10 cats, and when they saw me they all scattered and ran around the corner. I think Jesper just gathers random cats off the street and keeps them, because some of them weren't in the best condition, and a couple of them hissed at me before they ran away. The weird thing is they ran around the corner into the kitchen and when we looked over there, they had all disappeared! I don't know where they went. Anyway we were able to finally squeeze some teaching in. He talks a lot and it is kind of tough, but we taught him about Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon and showed him a picture of the Prophet. Jesper just went off about how it looked like Joseph had a ''hawk nose'' and that isn't what he imagines a prophet looking like.

We were finally able to get our bikes working like they should! But it wasn't easy. Mine was pretty easy, but Elder Poulsens had a lot of trouble. His tire exploded, so we went and bought a new tube and put it in, but when we put the bike back together and inflated the tire we found out that the actual tire was bad and had a tear and that is why the tube popped. So we took the wheel off again and went and bought a new tire. Well, when we went to put the wheel back on the bike, we found that the chain had randomly shrunk. It doesn't make any sence, the chain seemed to be too short and the wheel couldn't go all the way into place because of it. So after messing around with that for awhile with no success, we finally just had to take it to a shop and have a guy fix it for us. But now the bikes work great and it has been fun riding them around.

On Saturday we rode our bikes all the way out to Ronnie's place. It was like a 45 minute bike ride, so not way too long, but the weather on the way there was pretty good and the sun was shining, so we went with just a really light jacket and no gloves or anything. But after the appointent it was so cold on the way back and it was pitch black! We had lights on our bikes that we bought, so we could see barely in front of us, but it was just so freezing cold, and the wind completely froze our hands, we couldn't even feel them. When we got home we checked what the tempeture was and it was 37 degrees. Plus freezing wind. Next time we will be sure to be more prepared.

Oh let me tell you a bit about the appointment. He made us his famous homemade pizza, and it was so good! He really is a great cook. There was one point where he was telling us about his idea for a pizzeria. He said that he wants to start a pizza place where people make pizzas in the shape of flowers and butterflys... Hahahaha. We also told him that there is a chance that one or both of us might move soon, so he wanted to take some pictures with us.

Earlier that same day we also got some free food for lunch, because it was a relief society birthday party thing, and they invited us. After the meal we watched the Emma Smith movie. Have you seen that? It was the first time that I had seen it and I thought it was really good. Maybe that is mostly because it is the only movie I've seen in a long time. Jk, I liked how it showed about the Prophet Joseph from a different perspective. I was bummed because we had to leave before it was over.

Sunday it was way funny. It was fast and testimony meeting because next week is conference (crazy that it is already time for general conference!) So it was fast sunday, but they had a ward lunch together right after church. Haha, I was kind of confused during the announcements in Sacrement meeting because the guy announced that it was fast sunday, and right after that he said that we would be eating together after the meetings. I don't think they understand the idea of fasting..

We have now switched over to summer time with daylight savings. So we've had an hour less sleep. But a good thing about that is I was able to read your email an hour earlier!

Well, I have 2 pictures for you today. They are me/us with Ronnie. He doesn't smile much in pictures.

That's all for this time. Have a super week! Love Elder Tyler Lee

March 21, 2011

2011-03-21T12:13:00.000-07:00

Hi again!

That's good that you have been able to contact all our friends in Japan and find out that they are all doing good. I'm glad that I wasn't called to Japan. Denmark is way cooler anyway.

You asked about transfers. Yeah they are coming up soon. You said that this one seems like it is going slow. Really? I think it's going pretty quick. I think that every transfer goes by faster than the last. It might seem like a long time because I was sent here a month before transfers so it is all just kind of blending in to one big one. Anyway, transfers are on the 6th. We filled out our fantasy forflytelser (transfers) brackets the other day. It was tough, anything can happen. My guess was that I'm staying here and that I am getting elder Tolbert. We'll just have to wait and see.

So you saw those miricle stories in the banner? Elder Williamson has an intresting way of writing, but his are always funny to read. So did you also see the new missionaries coming and see that we are getting a bald kid? What the heck?

Yeah I don't know why Mogens doesn't try praying. The other day I peeked at him during the prayer to see what he was doing and was just sitting there with his hands on his lap and staring at the table. Yeah It's great that he is flying through the BOM, but I'm getting tired of going over there and just hearing the same thing, that he hasn't tried praying yet.

Speaking of reading the Book of Mormon, I've been reading it again in Danish and I just finished Alma, and I think those war chapters are so cool! It's sad of course, but I think it is exciting to read about all of their strategies and everything. I couldn't stop reading, haha. So not only is it true, but its also a exciting book.

That Jesper guy is doing good. We met with him again. He gained a piece of furniture, this time next to his one chair he had a little pad bed thing. He is nice. We just stand in the kitchen when we talk. Oh, while we were there his cat threw up on the ground.. gross.

Well, this week we have been pretty busy, but not with missionary work unfortunately. On tuesday evening we traveled to Copenhagen and stayed with the zone leaders. And then the next day was zone conference. It was good. Oh, elder williamson finally finished his entry in my Mindebog. I don't know if I've told you about that. A Mindebog (or memory book) is a cool tradition they do in Denmark. It basically has pictures and writing and other things to help remind of good times. So my companions each put something in it, and Willy finally finished. His title page was cool, he had a velvet background with a picture of us holding a jellyfish, and around the picture was a hand knitted frame! Haha. It was knitted of Icelandic Sheep wool and Alpaca wool. Pretty impressive.

At zone conference the zone leaders gave us a way cool training about being ''John Stockton Missionaries''. John Stockton has to be my favorite Basketball player ever.

When we were done there we finally got our bikes! Oh yeah! Unfortunately they weren't in the best condition and when we took them home we had to fix them up a little bit. I had to get a new tube and put it in. I got mine working fine, and everything was going well, but then on Saturday we had an appointment with Ronnie, it had been several weeks since we had seen him. He lives a couple miles outside of Nykøbing and we were going to bike there. Well on the way there, we had just made it out of the city and Elder Poulsen's back tire exploded! So we had to call Ronnie and cancel and then walk all the way home. So far these bikes have been more trouble than help, but I think once we get them working, they will be good to have and also fun. It has also been forever since I have ridden a bike, so my legs have been so sore.

The weather has been pretty good, so it's not bad biking. But is still is frustrating because it gets really nice and warm and then the next day is way cold again. I thought we were done with that!

So that has basically been this whole week. Zone conference and Bike problems. Church yesterday was good. There was no weird or crazy things that happened! That's a first.

Well thats all. Have a super awesome week!!

Love Elder Tyler Lee :)

March 14, 2011

2011-03-14T20:12:00.000-07:00

Hey!!

I'm doing good. It was so scary hearing about that earthquake and tsunami in Japan! It is weird thinking what it would be like if I was called to Japan. Because I thought for sure that I was going to get called to Japan, we all thought that, right? Imagine what it would be like if I was over there when all of this stuff went on. I heard that there are several thousand people who can't be found, and someone in church yesterday told us that a few missionaries are also lost. I have a couple friends who are serving in Japan, but I looked them up and it seems like it didn't effect them at all. I'm glad to hear that so far it doesn't seem to have effected anyone we know. I was thinking, mom, I bet you are glad that I was called to Denmark and not Japan.
Anyway, It was great hearing from you. I'm glad that you are all doing good.

Congrats with the churchball. Sounds like they had an exciting game, even though they didn't pull off a win at the end.
That is cool that Spencer is back home now (its also pretty weird) I'm sure it was fun to see him again and hear from him on Sunday.
Brielle's party sounds fun. That's still weird that she is getting so old. That is so exciting that they are expecting another baby! I'm excited to meet him/her when I come home!

Haha that is funny that you got a letter from the mission pres. I've heard missionaries saying that their parents have been getting those. The real reason is because he doesn't like missionaries and families complaining about release dates. About getting an earlier date or whatever. He's been saying that it isn't our choice if we extend or whatever. I don't think he would make me extend though and miss the holidays again.

I'm glad you like my balloon pictures, they were pretty fun. Oh, the big orange one DID pop actually. We were getting bored of it anyway though.
Mogens is the man! But he still hasn't tried praying. He reads a lot, he has come all the way to Alma almost, but that is only half of what it takes, he needs to pray too! We try to get him to, but he is scared to for some reason, or he just doesn't do it.

No, Henrietta and Isebella are in this area. Its just that we visited them the first week I was here and haven't been able to since, until last week. I don't know what was up, they would answer whenever we would try to get a hold of them. but when we finally got a hold of them the other day, they seemed really excited to see us again.

Gas at $3.35 is nothing. Haha, jk that is getting up there. I think it is going to be so weird though to come back to America and see all of the low prices. It is going to be so weird to go to a fast food place and get an entire meal for like 3 or 4 bucks. It costs like 10 bucks here for the same thing.
Here is something exciting. We found out that we are getting bikes finally!! We get them on wednesday when we go to Copenhagen for zone conference. I think it is going to be fun on bikes. It will definitely be better than walking around everywhere.

The other day, we got a call from a new convert, Lisa. She is this old lady who got baptized a little less than a year ago. Well she called us up and asked if we could come over and help her with some service. We said yeah of course. So we went over there and asked her what she needed, and she gave us money and said she needed 4 liters of 2% milk, and told us to go to the store and buy it for her. Haha, what the heck. So we did. It was one of the weirdest ''service projects'' I've done on my mission. Oh and that reminds me, there is another guy we teach, Henning, and everytime we go over to teach him, he always has us walk his dog for him when we are done. I don't mind, its a cool dog.

On wednesday, our district leader, Elder Mauler and his comp came on splits. But the best part about it was that it was a surprise splits. Haha, they just showed up without telling us before. It kind of freaked us out with they knocked on our door. It was good though, we found a new investigator. Jesper. He is kind of weird though, he let us in, and he had nothing in his apartment. There was literally only one single chair in the middle of the room and nothing else. No tv, to fridge in the kitchen. It was weird. We thought he might've just moved there, but he said he's been there for 5 months. And he has a big santa beard.

we made some darts. They are way fun! We also made a homemade target on the wall. We are getting pretty good I think. When the two missionaries came on splits we had some dart tournaments. They got way intense. It's funny, the next day we all had way sore arms.

On saturday we did a little presentation thing for the primary (or in other words, for the 2 youngest Johansen kids) They were having a mission preperation day where they learned to make some food and learned other important missionary things, and we were asked to share with them some of the things we did to prepare for our missions. Oh by the way, those kids loved the gift from you and they say thanks for that. They are obsessed with those little rubber band things.

Umm, that is about it. This next week should be good. We are going to Copenhagen tomorrow night and sleeping over and then going to zone confernce on wednesday. And then we are coming home with our new bikes, oh yeah!

I have some pictures for you today.
The first 2 are a way awesome sunset we saw the other day! It was even cooler in person. Then there is a bunch of pictures of our homemade darts and dartboard. You can see all the holes in the wall.. The last dart one is cool, Poulsen took the picture while the dart was in the air. And it happens to be the throw that I hit the balloon. And then the last two are some pictures that I got off of Elder Poulsens camera of our district meeting at the cliffs. To close we sang the national anthem and I had an american flag with. Hahaha.
I hope you have a great week and I can't wait to hear from you again next week!

Love Elder Tyler Lee

March 7, 2011

2011-03-07T12:58:00.000-08:00

Howdy!

That sounds like fun that you have been able to spend so much time with family lately. Brielle sure is a little cutie. I like her smile. That is way wierd to me that she is turning 3. I still haven't even heard her talk.
We've always had a pretty stacked churchball team. I don't know why it always turned out like that. Church ball was always fun to play. No doubt the Meadowlark 1st ward priests will win the tourney.

Yeah it was annoying. I hate getting sick. It was just a cold I think. The funny thing is that when I got better, Elder Poulsen got sick. Haha. But we are both back to normal again.

I recieved the package on Tuesday! Thank you very much!! Thanks for adding the extra goodies as well. You know me really well, those were the perfect goodies to send. We have an eating apt with the Johansens tomorrow so I'll give them those gifts and tell them thank you.

We luckily work mostly here in the city anyway, so it's not too bad walking. But we can't visit any of the places outside of the city, so that's annoying. We have complained to the APs and to President and they should be getting us something soon. I think bikes would be fun. I won't have to buy one probably, because there aren't many biking areas in the mission and they don't make missionaries spent that money and try to manage a bike their whole mission.

I think the Jazz are done for for this year. There is no saving them. I heard that they lost Williams too. What the heck?

Yeah it's a bummer with Jeff, but that's what happens. He has his agency and can choose. He just made a dumb choice though. haha. But at least I can say, Mogens is doing way good! Let me tell you a little story about him. So we went over there a few times, and he said that he has been reading in the Book of Mormon, but he kept appoligizing that he hasn't made it very far. We were just excited that he had read anything! But then I asked him how far he has actually come, and he opened his book and said, I've only made it here, to page 113. Hahaha, he made it through first and second nephi in just 2 weeks. And he continues to read. We extended a baptismal invitation to him on friday, and got a soft yes. Meaning, he said that if he finds out that it is true he will get baptized. That punk just needs to pray!

This week has been ok. Like I said, Mogens is doing great, but other than him, there isn't too much exciting happening work wise. We haven't been able to work as much as usual because of lame sicknesses.

We were finally able to meet with Henrietta and Isabella again. She is that cute little girl I told you about who made me the paper frogs. It was so much fun, she is one of my favorite little kids ever. This time I tought her how to make paper airplanes and we talked on a walkie talkie.

Hahaha, at the Johansens it was so funny! The youngest kid, Peter fell asleep, and they woke him up because we were gonna eat ice cream. He was so out of it, he didn't know what was going on. They were all shouting his name and he was just staring blankly. Then they tried handing him a spoon so he could eat the ice cream, but he just reached out right past the spoon and grabbed the icecream with his hand and squeezed it. Hahaha, we were cracking up!

Oh I wanted to ask, what are gas prices like in America now days? I ask because prices here have now gone over 12 kroner/liter which equals over 8 dollars/gallon!!! So you can't complain about whatever it is over there.

I think that we have a haunted laundry room! It is the creepiest thing ever! I was doing my laundry a couple nights ago, and I was so creeped out, because the washer here is on the top floor of our apartment building and there is a long hall with all these abandoned old rooms and at the end of the hall is a creepy room with a washer. The light in the hall is dim and flickery, and the light in the room with the washer doesn't even work, so it is way dark up there. The only thing I was thinking when I was up there was Horror Movie. I think I'm going to wash my clothes during the day from now on.

Alrighty, a highlight of this week has been Balloons!! Hahaha, we got a bunch of balloons and have been having a lot of fun with them. These aren't normal every day balloons. I got some figure balloons and have been making balloon animals/hats/other things. Yeah, I can still remember how. But the best is the giant balloons we got!!! THey are so huge!! Don't worry I have some pictures.

Speaking of pictures, thank you for those pictures! It's fun seeing everyone. Everyone looks different! That is a good make up job. I looked at the pictures before I read the email and got kind of freaked out when I saw that.

My pictures this time are all just balloons. The first 2 are me and the star hat I made, and then #3 is the flower I made. Then the rest are just huge balloon pictures. They are enormous! Especially the big orange guy there! I don't know why, but huge things are always way funny for some reason.

Well, that's all for today. Thanks for the email and for everything!! Miss you!

Love Elder Tyler Lee

Feb. 28th, 2011

2011-02-28T18:33:00.000-08:00

Hey there!

Thanks! I'll be glad to recieve that package! Hopefully it gets here soon. Haha, that's ok that you forgot to stick those things in there. You sent me the school pictures in my christmas package so I have those already.

That is cool that you went to a Carl Bloch exhibit! Chelsey went there a few weeks ago and told me about it. That's cool that they have that there. I know a lot about that guy. Wanna hear something cool? Remember that castle that I went to a couple months ago? Well in the chapel in that castle they have a room with many of the original Carl Bloch paintings! So I got to see them in person! I didn't take any pictures because they wanted to preserve them so they were in a dim room and I couldn't use flash. Another cool fact, there is a member in Aalborg named Søren Bloch, and his grandpa, I think, is Carl Bloch. That's awesome that you were able to see his paintings. He is way good.

Congrats to Andrew on getting his Eagle, and to Camron for all that businuss stuff he does. It sounds like he is starting to be a pretty successful businussman guy.

The weather is finally starting to get better. But that happened like a month ago. I've heard that it is now supposed to make the swich to spring, so I'm happy about that.

I guess I'll get to telling you about my week. Well starting on Thursday it wasn't the best. I woke up on Thursday and I was sick! Grrr, Thursday happened to also be the day that we had planned to go to the white cliffs again as a whole district. So we had other missionaries with us, and I didn't want to ruin the fun, so we went anyway. It was sooo cold that day, and we were outside hiking in the cold. I don't know if you have tried hiking in the cold while being sick, I don't recommend it. It was kind of cool though because this time we went to the beach at the bottom of the cliffs so we got a different view, and we held a district meeting there. It was probably the coolest district meeting ever held. Anyway, I'm sure that was not the best thing for my sickness.

Later that night, we had an eating appointment scheduled with the Ravn Family. He assigned me to give a talk that sunday (yesterday)

Friday we took it easy for the first part of the day but had a couple appointments later so we went to them still. We met with Mogens and it went really well. By the way, his name is pronounced like (Moe-ins) He's a funny guy. We also met with Jeff, that guy I told you about and got some big disappointment when he told us that he isn't interested in our church at all.

Saturday we lost our car. They decided that another area needs it more than us so we had to drive to Copenhagen and deliver it. Oh, but when we were in Copehagen I got a dyne from some other missionaries, so I don't have to sleep in that dumb little blanket anymore. Right now we don't have any form of transportation. We can only walk. We might get bikes though, I think that would be fun.

On the train ride back I prepared my talk for the next day, and I think my talk turned out pretty good. Better than the last one. I think it's better when I prepare less. haha. Last time I wrote out the whole talk basically and this time I just wrote a couple of key words, and I think this one turned out a lot better. I talked about member missionary work (big surprise haha)

Oh it was so funny and weird, the closing prayer in church was given by this old lady, sister korgaard. She must've been really confused or something, because her prayer was half Danish, and half English. Haha. Vi beder dig om to be with those who ikke kunne be here idag... Me and Poulsen were trying hard not to laugh during the prayer. The funny thing is, she is Danish, so I have no idea why she would switch to english.

I have a few pics today too.
First is me with some ugly pink hair, and then the rest are from the white cliff beach and our meeting. It was way pretty, there was ice all over everything. It was also freezing cold...
I'll see ya soon!

Love Elder Tyler Lee

Feb. 21, 2011

2011-02-21T15:16:00.000-08:00

Hey!!!

Thanks for the email, and for the picture of Jansen. It's always great hearing from you.
Hey well maybe I should tell you about what has happened this week, because it has been a really great week. We got 3 new investigators this week! Which is really good, especially for this area. And they are also really possitive ones.
Let me first tell you about Jeff. A couple of weeks ago, Elder Poulsen and I knocked on this guy's door. He said he didn't have any time, but said we could try again some other time. A few days later, our district leader and his companion came on splits. I was with Elder Mauler. We went and knocked on his door, not knowing what to expect. Jeff opened the door. Jeff, as we came to learn, is a young guy around my age who was in the military for awhile, and even served in Afghanistan for 6 months, and he is now studying at a nearby university. We taught him a good lesson and gave him a Book of Mormon. We also got his number and gave him a card with our number. Now this is where the story gets really good! A couple of days later, HE contacted US. I think it was maybe the first time that someone has contacted me from a card that we gave. Not only did he ask us if he could meet with us again, but he asked if he could come to our church and meet with us there! I said, yeah of course. So the next day, Jeff came to our church. We showed him around, which took about 5 seconds. (we have a really small church building) And then afterwords, we sat down and had a great discussion with him for about an hour. Jeff had a lot of great questions for us and was really interested in what we had to say. He even took notes and wrote down a lot of the stuff we told him, so he wouldn't forget.

There is also Mogens. He is interesting because the first couple times we met him, he really didn't seem to care. He never made eye contact and didn't answer our questions. But he still let us talk to him at his door. We thought he was just too nice to say no. But everytime we meet him he seems more and more possitive. We gave him a book of Mormon and he said he would read it. We came again and he was so much different than before. He smiled when he saw us and actually looked at us. We asked if he started reading, and he said he started but apoligized that he didn't get very far. Haha. We were just surprized that he had read. People never read. I've noticed on my mission that the book of mormon is what determines if someone gets baptized or not. If they actually are willing to read it and try to find out, they get a testimony and get baptized. If not, they never progress. It's too bad that many people just aren't even willing to try. Anyway, he also wants to come to church next week.

The last one is Kim. Kim is a guy name here. Yes mom, you have a man name. He was a referal, and is way interested in learning about everything. He is always thinking about deep questions, and trying to get more knowledge. He also is going to come to church next sunday.
So things are going pretty good workwise at the moment. It's nice actually having appointments now.

The Johansens are a fun family. Appointments there are always exciting. We went there last monday for FHE with them. So I brought my guitar and played a couple hymns for them and we had a little activity and all. The kids are now obsessed with guitar and one of the kids wanted me to teach him how to play. So I taught him a couple of chords. The cool thing is they had an extra guitar case and they gave it to me! And it is a pretty nice one. It is going to be a lot more convenient than the cardboard box I have been using. The funniest part of the night would have to be the 20 minute conversation we had about swear words. Haha. I don't remember how it came up. I learned that in Denmark they use the S word in the same context as us, but it is not bad at all here. The kids were all saying it and the parents and they were all laughing. I guess it's just like saying 'Oh crud' here. Don't worry, I'm not going to start using it.

We also met with Ronnie on Saturday. He made some way good cheeseburgers. The funniest thing he said this time was that he makes pizza by the spirit... O_o He rolls the dough and spreads the sauce and then opens the fridge and prays for insperation for the things that will taste the best on the pizza. He also played piano for us this time.

So get this, last week, the weather was getting pretty warm and sunny. All the snow was melted and it felt great outside. And then all of a sudden it is colder than ever!!! It has been snowing again the past few days, and its always windy. It is frustrating. I'm ready for the summer!

Oh yeah, bowling was fun last week. I wasn't playing my best. I had that same problem, I always get nine pins, but there is always one stupid pin that won't fall. My top score was 130. The last couple games I was messing around and working on my spin. I got ok at it and got a couple strikes like that. I think I am just going to try perfecting that from now on.

The main things that I need are Garments and a razor. I was wanting a few more pairs of garments anyway, even before some of them were taken. So maybe like 5 pairs if possible. I like the mesh ones the best. I don't know what size it is. The same that you sent last time. I guess you probably don't remember that. I can't really check right now. With the razor, it was some replacements too. I had it all in that black bag for convenience and the whole thing was taken. Sorry about all this. I'll be more careful in the future. other than those two things, there isn't really anything I need.

That is cool that you went in to get your hair cut by Chelsey. She told me about it too. She said it was fun having you come in and getting to talk to you for awhile. I guess she is doing a good job with all that hair cutting stuff.

So, you guys bought a condo, went on a cruise, and now are going to Disneyland all while I am gone? Wow.. Hahaha, just kidding, I'm in Denmark for 2 years, I can't complain. That is cool. That will be a fun trip.

Hahaha, Dad thanks for the story! That gave me a nice laugh. It actually reminded me a lot of a former companion I had who was definitely not my favorite. I don't know why you told me that story either, but it a good one. Don't worry, I'm not in that same situation right now. I haven't written much about my comp Elder Poulsen, just because it is just a nuetral companionship. We get along just fine, but it's not like a Willy companionship with a ton of adventures every day. It's just a basic companionship.

I don't have any pictures this week. Sorry. Probably next time. Have a great week!

Love Elder Tyler Lee

Feb. 14, 2011

2011-02-21T15:05:00.000-08:00

Hey!
Happy Valentines day to you too! Valentines day is a really lame holiday as a missionary. haha. If I do anything to celebrate it I'll probably just get in big trouble.

Hmm, it seems like I was just barely writing you.. I'm glad that you survived those few days waiting for my email. I was really worried that you might not make it. Since I just wrote you a couple days ago, I don't have much material for this email. So don't expect another novel like last time.

Yeah, last week was so crazy. There was so much that happened, good and bad.
I sure do have a lot of crazy eating appointments here in Nykøbing. We had another fun eating appointment a couple days ago that is worth telling you about. It was the Johansens again. They invite us over at least once a week. We ate with them on friday and we are going there again tonight! When we pulled up last time it was so funny, because they have 5 windows on the side of there house, and there was a different kid in each window waving to us. The 2 youngest kids started fighting about who gets to sit next to me. I said, Hey whoah, you can both sit by me. While we were there I tought them how to do light saber pictures with a pen. It was fun, I'll attach some of them. We are going over there tonight for FHE with them.

Church was cool yesterday. It was branch conference so there were a lot of guests from the stake. There were 3 different people that I knew from Ballerup so it was good to see them all. I had a lot a pressure to play piano my best because it was a full house.

It's been kinda discouraging lately because like all of the people who seem possitive randomly don't want anything to do with us. They won't answer or anything and they seem to just avoid us. It's hard putting all this effort into something and seeing no results come of it.

The other day I was bored to I decided to make a paper chain for how many days I have left on my mission, haha. It isn't a trunky chain, it's actually an anti-trunky chain. Because I see that I still have a looooong time to go.

I've bought a few things to get me by, things that were stolen. I didn't buy a new dyne because they are way expensive, but I just bought a little blanket for now and a pillow. Elder Williamson has an extra dyne at his appartment so he is going to give that to me the next time we see him. For now I'm just getting by with the crappy little blanket. Yeah, they took my razor. I bought some crappy little disposible razors. And I am pretty low on garments as well. If you wanted to send a couple things I wouldn't complain. Well, if you or anyone happen to send a package you would need to send it to:

Elder Tyler Lee
Østerbrogade 33, 2tv
4800 Nykøbing F
Denmark
:)

I wasn't expecting a valentines package from you anyway so it's alright. It would be kind of weird for my mom to be my valentine anyway...

I'm sure everyone is always ready for those plays to get over by that time, and to move on to something new. It sounds like they have some fun plays in store for this next year. Hey, I guess I'll get to see one or two of those plays next year.

That is some crazy news! I heard that Jerry Sloan retired this week, and also about all the controversy. That's crazy! He has been good, but I think that it is time for him to move on and like you said, get some new blood. Now hopefully they can get it together and start winning some games.

I'm glad you liked the White Cliff pictures. They really were amazing! I think it is one of the coolest places I have seen in Denmark. It might be something that we could all see in the future sometime.

Jansen and his girl are looking pretty snazzy. I think it is funny that the style now is wearing shoes like that to dances and formal things.

The first 5 pictures I sent you this time are the Johansen kids. We were doing some light saber pictures. I think the 5th one is so funny! One of the kids wanted to try taking the picture and he just completely failed. The best part is the kid's face, he is so in to it. haha. Then I have some pictures of my chain. I still have forever left. It's 278 days, as of yesterday. And the last one is one of my new ties. It was so rediculious that I had to buy it.

Today we are going to go bowling! Heck yeah! I always love bowling. Thank you for everything! I miss you! Can't wait to see you in 9 months.

Love Elder Tyler Lee

Feb. 10, 2011 cont.

2011-02-17T19:34:00.001-08:00

Alright here are those pictures from our trip to the cliffs. Enjoy. My favorites are the ones with me on the green moss, and the white cliff to one side, and the blue water to the other side. It was way pretty.
The third to the last is Elder Poulsen ... Then me in a tree, there was a really cool branch, and last is me in a weird chair.

Love Elder Tyler Lee

Feb. 10, 2011

2011-02-17T19:15:00.000-08:00

Hey!!
Sorry again that you had to wait til today to hear from me. But this has probably been the craziest week of my mission so far. So much has happened, and I can warn you right now that this might be a long email. I'm going to get right into telling everything that has happened.

Church was good. It was testimony meeting and there were only like 15 people at church, so I thought for sure that I would have to go up and take a few minutes bearing my testimony, but they were actually able to fill up the whole meeting. There weren't even any awkward long pauses between people. I think I'm getting better at piano. I learn the songs a lot faster than I did at first, so I get bored of playing the hymns over and over again, so I have been learning Part of That World on piano. :) And also I'm learning the Zelda songs! haha.

Ok, sunday after church is when things started getting really crazy. We packed some things and left to Slagelse. That is where our district leader is. We stayed there with them that night, and the next day we all went to Copenhagen for Pday! We got a big group of missionaries together, I think there were 10 of us. It was way funny, we went to the middle of the city in a busy place by a fountain and had a little ceremony for Elder Williamson because he was the transfer guess winner. He was presented with a trophy and gave little speech. It was funny, we were clapping and stuff and people were stopping to see what was going on.

In Copenhagen we walked around and went into some stores. We went to an awesome tie store and I picked up some nice ties. I'll have to show you a picture of one of them, maybe next week. It's pretty wild. We also went to a church there that was really really cool. They have the original famous Christ sculpture there. Me and Elder Poulsen wanted to go and see the Little Mermaid statue. It's back from China finally. But the other missionaries didn't want to walk over to it. Lame.

Ok, the next day was specialized training, so we met with all the missionaries in the zone, and also with President of course, and got some instruction on how to be better missionaries. Aw man, me and Willy were just talking about how we wanted to go to Sweden so bad. One of our favorite bands ever, Rush, were playing in concert that same night about 2 hours away! After training was done we headed home. We were at the Copenhagen station and had like 40 minutes before our train came, so we went to mcdonalds to get some dinner. In the mcdonalds there was a crazy lady on the ground held down by some cops, and she was just yelling and screaming, it was so weird. So anyway, I put my bag down, ordered, and literally 30 seconds later I turned around, and my bag was gone!!! Someone stole my bag! I think that the screaming lady was working with the thief or something. There wasn't to much in the bag, and nothing irreplaceable, but still it is way annoying. There was my dyne (that feather blanket) my pillow, both with the cool cases, there were a pair of jeans, a t-shirt, my cool gold tie, one of my favorites }:-( A couple pairs of G's and my bag of toiletries stuff. So I have to buy a new blanket and pillow and some other stuff. grrr. The last couple nights I just slept with my sheet over me and my coat on top of the sheet. and no pillow.

Anyway, yesterday was way awesome! We had an appointment with a less active guy who lives really far away, on the very edge of our area, and we have been told that there are some really awesome white cliffs over in that area that we have to see. So after the appointment we went over there and checked it out. It was way cool!! We went on a nice little hike and saw some really cool stuff. I got a ton of pictures there. We also went to some castle ruins. That was also way cool.
Well, that is why I haven't been able to write you until now.

Well it sounds like you have also had a pretty eventfull week. That is a lot of neat stuff that has happened, especially with all the church stuff; baptisms, missionaries, conference, members of the 70, and all that. That is cool that they were able to visit the Christensens and help them out a bit. It's good to hear that Jason is doing good. That would be awesome to see him go on a mission.

Whoah, new stake presidency finally. I new that Pres. Wadley had been it for a long time, but I didn't know that it was close to 10 years! I guess it is time for a change. I don't recognize any of those new names, but I guess I'll get to know them as soon as I get home.

Thats a bummer that there has been so much sickness going around there lately. I've been pretty lucky so far on my mish. I've never really been sick, more than just a little runny nose or sore throat. It's never been something that has stopped us from working.

It's sad to hear that about Cambrey. It's weird hearing something like that happen to somebody so young.

Thanks for the sports update. It's funny, everyone has been talking about the Super Bowl, everyone was all excited about that, but I really didn't care one bit about it. I'm sure the Measoms have been excited about that, I know they always have been big Packer's fans.

I'm going to get going. I'm tired of typeing. This time I have like a billion pictures for you. Lets see if I can explain these all. Haha, I love the first one. We were walking down the street and I saw this awesome little house. It looks just like a guy with a hat and a mustache! Then there is another picture of a building with a face. Numbers 3 and 4 are the award cerimony for Willy. Him getting his award and then his acceptance speech. Next 2 are from the church in Copenhagen. Next is a bunch of missionaries crammed in a car. You can't see at all how many there are in that car from this picture. There were also 3 missionaries in the front 2 seats, and 1 in the trunk. then the last few here are from the castle ruins we went to. I'll attach the white cliff ones in another email. :)
Well, that's all I have for you today. See ya.

Love Elder Tyler Lee

Feb. 6, 2011

2011-02-07T06:39:00.001-08:00

Hey I am really sorry to say this, but I can't email you today. We are in Copenhagen and there isn't time today. I most likely won't be able to write you until thursday. Sorry. But, at least I'll have a lot of good things to write about. Love you, bye!

Love Elder Tyler Lee

Jan. 31, 2011

2011-01-31T18:14:00.000-08:00

Hello!! :D

How are you doing? Thanks for the email!
So we heard about transfers. And we are both staying. So I guess I am here for another 2 months at least. Oh well I don't think it will be so bad, we are starting to get some good things going here. Transfers were way lame though. We had a bunch of missionaries in on that competition where we guess transfers, and when we found out about transfers it ruined all the fun, because for some reason President is keeping almost everthing the same. There are just a few changes but other than that, everyone has the same area and companion. Weird. The winner of the competition was Elder Williamson. So he gets a trophy. Haha, we are going to do this every transfer from now on. The trophy gets passed along to the winner.

I hope that I'm able to serve in Odense sometime too. But it's getting less likely. It's kinda crazy that I haven't had a chance to see the Halls at all. You'd think I'd see them around at a stake conference or somthing or other. Denmark isn't that big, and it's even smaller within the church.

I guess it is kind of fun being the ward pianist. And I'm sure they appreciate it, so I guess it is a little service that I can do for the ward. It is kind of stressful though sometimes. As you know, before my mission I didn't play piano for a few years, so I'm not the best and I didn't know a single hymn. But these people think that I'll just automaticly be able to play any hymn in the book.

Yesterday was Elder Poulsen's Birthday. He's now 20. The ward found out and they threw a little party for him after church. They had a way good cake. It had blueberries and it tasted great. It was funny, one of the guys tried to draw an American flag on the board and it was terrible. I should have taken a picture. It had like 30 stripes, and then in a tiny little corner there were a couple of dots for stars. And the whole thing was blue. haha.

I have a feeling that I might have to give a few more talks in this area.. I haven't had to bless or pass the Sacrament yet. There is one family here, the Johansens, they have 5 boys, and their family takes care of Sacrament most of the time.

That is sad to hear about that little boy who got lost out there. I hope that ends with a happy ending.

I wish I could report a lot of fun exciting things that happened this week, but it was pretty uneventful. We did however have a lot of success with missionary work these past couple of weeks. When I first came to this area we had one single investigator, but now we are finding a bunch more. We found like 8 new investigators or potential investigators, and the best part about it is that like 5 of them are young attractive women. I guess we are doing something right. haha. I'll let you know if anything happens with these people and if we are able to keep teaching them.

Sorry I don't have more to report about my week. We haven't really done anything because we have both had no money and no gas in our car, so we couldn't really do anything. I am excited to get some more money tomorrow so we can actually do things on p days.

I'm glad that the jazz finally got a win in there. Hopefully they will stop messing around and win some more games. I guess I'm not hip, I haven't really heard anything about that Jimmer guy. Dad mentioned something about him once, but that's it. That's cool that he is helping byu do so well. He sounds kinda like a big ball hog to me. haha jk.

Well, that is all for this time I guess. I sent you a couple pictures of a crazy car that we saw! I don't know if it can actually drive or not, it had a motor and everything. I also thought you might want to see a picture of me, and not just a weird car, so I just barely took a picture of myself 2 minutes ago. That's what I look like when I email you. Haha

Have a great week! I miss you!

Love Ældste Tyler Lee

Jan. 23, 2011

2011-01-30T16:25:00.000-08:00

Hey Everyone!

Yeah things are going ok. Honestly though, I don't want to stay here in this area very long. Sounds exactly like the place dad described on his mission. Work here is just really tough. We find out of what will happen with transfers on friday, and transfers are on tuesday or wednesday. Some of the other missionaries and I filled out transfer brackets.. haha. We made our predictions for where everyone is going. It's a little competition we started up. My prediction for me is that I'm going to Randers with Elder Tolman.
Yeah it is weird with not so many people at church. This week there were even less, probably like 20. Our Branch President is imported from another ward. He and his wife travel 2 hours each sunday to be here. Oh wanna hear something funny? Our ward chorister is deaf! Hahahaha. I think it's kind of ironic. Anyway, on that note, I am now officially the ward pianist. I played for sacrement meeting again, but this time it was much better than last time. I was able to go down to the church a couple times throughout the week and practice the songs, so this time I could actually play both hands. My talk turned out pretty good I guess. I actually went over time on accident and cut into the next speakers time. It ended up being around 20 minutes long. I talked about pretty much the same thing I talked about for my farewell talk. I just translated that into Danish and changed some parts of it.
After Church we had a ward lunch thing where we all stayed after church and ate together. While they were preparing the food I was just messing around on the keyboard and impressing the kids. I switched it to drums and impressed them with some drum beats, and played some other fancy stuff. This one kid kept telling me to play Eddie Murphy. haha It turns out he meant that Crazy Frog song. The food was good, it was funny, the guy from ballerup, Lars Paulsen was there again today and he brought some cake in after the meal, and one of the kids yells out ''Hey everybody, the Dentist brought cake!'' Haha.
Works going ok. We had our district leader over and his comp for splits, and we got a lot of lessons in. We decided later to take a break from knocking, and did some less active work instead this week. We were able to meet with a whole bunch of less active members and get to know them.
Wow, mom! Congrats on the race!! Thats cool. I still think you and dad are crazy and don't think that I will ever enjoy running. I think I am going to try to start running again after this transfer. The snow is all melted and it is getting a little warmer.
Thats a bummer hearing about the Jazz. You never know what to expect with them. Hopefully they will pick it up, and stop messing around!
Glad you liked the pics. It was great seeing some more of you all. Some people are really starting to change. It's crazy there are so many swans there! I have no idea why there are so many there, but It's cool. I have a few more for you. The first 2 are us/me in front of a huge weird statue that's by our house. I'm not exactly sure what it is supposed to be, I think its a bee. Then I have a new swan picture for you. There were even more, and this time it was daylight so I had to get more pictures. Number 4 is of our Church/our Apartment. I guess I'll get going. Have a super amazing week. I miss you, and I'll see ya soon! Just 10 fast sundays.

Love Elder Tyler Lee.

Hey Tia!
What up sis? Thanks for deciding to jump on the computer and write a quick hello. It was fun hearing from you. :) I'm glad to hear that you are having a fun time with school and with your play and everything. I'm sad that I can't be there to see it. Oh well, maybe next time. Are you seriously in 4th grade already? And already half way through the school year? What the heck?! How did that happen? You are an old lady. Too bad you can't do the I need a vacation play. That was always a favorite of everyone. That Mountain Man Beaver Pelt thing sounds fun though. That is way impressive, 700 pelts! Wow. So what to you get to do with the pelts? Do you get to buy stuff at the end of the activity or something?
Well, I miss you a ton. There are a bunch of little girls that I play with in the different wards here and they always remind me of you. I'm excited to see you again in less than 10 months and give you a big hug!
Love Tyler.

Hey Sis!
Yo, Tani! Thanks for the little email. It's always great hearing from you. :) I'm glad to hear that you have it quite spectacular. That is so cool that you are getting so involved with all that drama and play stuff. I think it's great that you got such a big part. Good luck memorizing all your lines and all. I'm sure you will do great. I wish I could see it.
I listened to that Chopin song. That is way crazy. That will be really impressive if you can learn that, and I'm sure you will be able to.
Nice! Church ball was always my favorite! It is way fun. I didn't even know we had a girls team. Congrats, our ward always seemed to have the best players around.
Sorry I don't have more time right now. Keep enjoying school and everything. I miss you! I'll see ya in a few months. :)
Love Tyler.

Jan.17, 2011 Things are going better now

2011-01-17T06:05:00.000-08:00

Hey!

Things are going better now. I'm getting used to this new place. I'm still kinda bummed about all this, but I've now seen the little branch and got to meet some of the people. There have also been some good things happening work wise the past couple days, so I'm thinkin that I'll be able to get used to it and it will be fine. Thanks for your emails.
Oh yeah, so Nykøbing is prounounced kinda like ''new-koob-ing'' Go to google translate type it in, there is a button that lets you listen to how it's said. So you can hear it in a robot voice. It's funny that you have no idea how Danish is pronounced or anything. Haha, because for me it's just natural now, and I forget sometimes that all you people back home don't know it. :P Let me tell you a bit about what has happened so far here. We have one investigator, yeah only one... So we have spent a lot of time trying to find new people, knocking on a lot of doors. And we have had some success. We taught a few lessons and got a couple of phone numbers. There is this kid, Daniel, like 20ish, he seemed really cool and said we can come over again and tell him more. And there is also this girl, Steffanie. It's funny, before we knocked on her door we could hear the radio on really loud inside and she was singing along. Anyway she let us come inside, which almost never happens the first time you meet them. She is probably 25ish, and she is a way believing person. She had her bible opened up on her table. We had a nice chat with her about religion and she was really interested in the book of mormon, so we gave her one. I'm excited to go back there and see what happens.
The weather is getting warmer. Most of the snow has melted and it has rained the last few days. We have a car, but the problem is, we have no gas. The missionary before used up most of our gas money because he had to drive to copenhagen and back a couple times because of his back problems. So even though we have a car, we have been walking around most the time.
Church yesterday was... Interesting. It was way different than what I've ever experienced. There came about twice as many people as there usually is, and there still were not very many at all, maybe 30. It was cool because a family that I know really well from Ballerup was there visiting so I got to catch up with them. Listen to this, the ipod wasn't working for some reason, so they said that they would just have to sing without music, so I decided to volunteer and play the right hand. So without any practice I went and sight read the music. It turned out all right. I'm going to practice though during the week so I'll be ready for the songs next week. Oh, I was also assigned to give a talk next week... 10-15 minutes in Danish. Wish me luck.
Yesterday after church we visited a less active lady and her daughter. They were so much fun! Little kids are great! The little girl was named Isebella. She's 9 years old. For most of the time I just let Elder Poulsen talk to the mom, and I just played with Isebella. :) She showed me all of her toys and told me all sorts of stories about school and everything. And then we made paper frogs together and she colored them for me. It was way fun. Hopefully we can help them come back to the church.
Tonight is going to be exciting... We ran into this guy on the street the other day, Ronald Smith Jr... He is an interesting guy.. He told us all about how he used to be a member of the church but than he was excommunicated, but he still does all of the things that mormons do. He holds his own sacrament meeting at his house every week. Anyway we have an appointment with him tonight.
Oh yeah, zone conference was good. It was nice seeing all the people from Sjælland zone again. They seemed happy to have me back. I gave the cactus to Williamson and it was a big hit. Everyone thought it was so awesome. Haha. It even made it into the zone conference picture, so you will be able to see it in the next banner. Yeah, president and his family are doing good. They talked a bit more about what happened, and he talked about how thankful he is to have a knowledge and testimony about the plan of salvation.
Let me tell you a bit about my pictures today. The first one is of the 2 paper frogs that I got from Isebella. :) Then these next few are crazy. We were walking somewhere and we turned a corner, and all of a sudden there were TONS of swans! Ya know how there are usually only like 2 or 3 in a pond? Well there must have been 50 swans here. I couldn't even get a good picture of all of them because there were so many. Then I've got a picture of my new shoes. I have a nice brown tie that matches the shoes exactly. The last 3.. Remember that time I sent you a picture of me playing giant solitaire? Well I bought some cards that are even BIGGER! So here is real giant solitaire. We also made a big house of cards. You can also see my freshly cut hair. Ya know, any card game is 10 times funner when played with giant cards. haha. Anyway, those are my pictures.
Ok hopefully I'm not forgetting anything that I wanted to tell you. I probably am, I usually do. Oh well. I hope you have an amazing week. See ya in 10 months! ;)

Love Elder Tyler Lee

1-11-11

2011-01-11T07:59:00.000-08:00

Hey y'all. <-- (I've been around Van Nevel and his Tennessee accent too long) First of all, thank you for the encouraging words. :) I'm trying to have a good additude about all of the stuff that has happened, but it is just really hard to. The last couple of days have been really tough. Saying goodbye to everyone was hard. I've been transferred before, but it has been nothing like this time. I never thought that I would become so attached to the people that I serve. I really do love the wonderful people in Aalborg, and leaving them suddenly was the hardest thing that I've had to do on my mission. This was equally as hard as when I said goodbye to my family and friends when I started my mission. I miss the people in Aalborg already, they are some of my best friends. I really really hope that I get the chance to go back there one more time. I'll definitely go there again, if not on my mission, then I'll go after. I also hope that I can grow a similar love for the people here in Nykøbing. I just got here last night and haven't been able to meet anyone yet. I guess I'll just have to have a good additude about things and try my best. On that note, I guess I can tell you a little bit more about the new situation. I'm now serving in a place called Nykøbing Falster. It's way down at the bottom of denmark on an island. It's in the Sjælland zone, but not actually on Sjælland. It's another island below it. My new companion is Elder Poulson, I think that's how you spell his name. He is from big ol' Texas, and he's very proud about that. He's been on his mission for almost 8 months I think. He's a cool guy and i think that our companionship is going to be a fun one. We left from Aalborg on Monday at 10 am. I feel bad for Elder's Greenhalgh and Van Nevel, because they had to travel all the way to Copenhagen with me and straight back again (but at least they got to go back again) That was over 10 hours for them.. hehe. After a break in Copenhagen I met up with Elder Poulson and we got on another train and headed to Nykøbing. We arrived at our apartment around 6. It was pretty crappy trying to get all my luggage there. I only have 2 suitcases (most have 3) but I also have my guitar, a cool framed painting of a sailor smoking a pipe (haha, I don't think I ever told you about that), and I also had a cactus... hahahaha. ok side story.. There is a girl in Aalborg, Cecilie, who had a birthday and we happened to have an eating appointment with her and her family the day before. We decided to get her a present. Well, we couldn't think of what to get her so one day I was talking to Elder Williamson on the phone and I asked what we should get her. He said, Just get her a cactus! So we did :D. I decided to get one for Willy too. So that made it a little harder to transfer all my stuff, oh and on top of that, one of the wheels on my big suitcase busted. grrr. The ward here isn't actually even a ward. It is just a branch. I've been told that there are only about 14 people that come each week! So it is going to be a bit different. The church building is extremely small, and they don't have anyone who can play piano. They use an ipod and speakers for music, and if they find out that I can even play a single hymn, then they will make me play. Our apartment happens to be right above the church. So we have no excuse if we ever come late to church. And church is only 2 hours. We have probably the nicest apartment in the mission. It is really big and well kept. So you may be wondering why it has such a bad name with the missionaries. For one thing, the ward is basically nonexistant, and the work is way hard. We have 1 single investigator at the moment, and the area has been knocked and contacted to death. Everyone has talked to us and almost nobody likes us. That could be the reason. Oh, Dad, I hope you know I do like hearing your mission stories from all those many years ago. I may not have when I was younger, but now that I'm a missionary myself it's fun hearing about what my dad did. And even though it was several decades ago, and times have changed over these many many MANY years, it still helps me out today. ;) Hey guess what! Next week I'll hit my 14 month mark, and that means that I only have 10 months left! TEN! We can count down on are hands, how crazy is that?! I can't believe how fast these months are flying by. Tomorrow should be a good day. We are having a zone conference. So I will get to see all of the missionaries who have been in Sjælland zone again, like Willy and Klc and the rest. Oh I wanted to tell you, I bought some fancy new shoes last week! They are probably the coolest shoes ever. They are brown with kind of a pointy-ish toe, and the best part about it is they are suade. They are ecco brand, which is supposably a good shoe, and I scored them at half off. I don't have a picture right now, but I'll try to remember to get one for next time. I have only one picture for you today. Nothing special, just me standing in front of a billion Cactuses. Uh, I mean Cacti. We went to a store called Plantorama, there was just a sea of plants, any plant you could ever need. This was the cactus isle. Well, I'll talk to ya next week! Thank you for always being there for me, especially when I'm having a hard time. Have a wonderful week! Love Elder Tyler Lee

Jan. 8, 2011 :(

2011-01-10T13:30:00.000-08:00

Hey,

I have some extremely terrible news... This is probably the absolute worst thing that could happen. There is an emergency transfer.. Since we were 3 they have to take one of us to fill an empty spot in the mission. So anyway, I am leaving the amazing city of Aalborg to go to what is considered by the missionaries to be the ''not the greatest'' of Denmark.. Nykøbing. I'm really not happy about this at all. Aalborg is my favorite place ever. This sounds crazy, and no offense to you, but I like this ward even better than my home ward. So I am really bummed that I have to suddenly leave it. They called me yesterday and told me that I was leaving. They said originally that I would be leaving today (saturday) But I said No, I'm at least going to church on sunday to say goodbye to people, so President said I can stay til monday. But then I'm out of here. :( It really sucks. I want to go into it with a good attitude but I can't really. We have so many good things that have just started up here. The holidays finally got over and I was able to get a hold of many of the old investigators that I've had. They were all excited that I was back and wanted to see me again. I was able to get a ton of appointments with them over the next couple weeks, and now I learn that I won't even get to see them. I was also needed here for some things with the ward. I agreed to help sing in a little youth choir in sacrament meeting and to a fireside and now they will have to try to do it without me. Tomorrow is going to be tough saying goodbye to everyone. It wouldn't be that bad, but the thing is that it is so sudden and unexpected. I expected for sure that I would at least be here for the rest of this month.
Anyway, I'm leaving on Monday. I don't know all the details, but I may or may not be able to send you an email at the regular time. Just send me an email when you usually do, and I'll write back when I get the chance.
Have a good weekend.

Love Elder Tyler Lee

Jan. 4, 2011

2011-01-10T13:23:00.000-08:00

Hi again!

We went to FHE last night and that means that we had to take an hour out of our Pday and that means that we get an extra hour today of computer time and that means that you get an email from me two days in a row. ;) But this one is basically just to send you the pictures that I meant to send you yesterday. I'll go ahead and tell you about them.
So first is me on New Year's Eve wearing a some cool glasses and an awesome hat. Then the rest are from our trip to the north. There isn't much explaining that needs to be done about them. The last one is pretty cool. It is the path from the hike that we did. The path was completely frozen. The whole thing was just a chunk of ice. Anyway, there are the pics. Enjoy :)

See ya later.

Love Elder Tyler Lee

Jan. 3, 2011

2011-01-10T13:17:00.000-08:00

Hey Y'all!

I'm doing great! How are you? Mondays are great!! There is no better way to start off the week then with some nice emails! Thanks!
I'm glad that you had a good New Years! Sounds like you had some fun. New Years in America is just not nearly as big as it is here in Denmark. Let me tell you about my New Year's Eve! It was awesome! So anyway, we went to some people in the ward, Benny and Ane-lise Kristensen. She is a gourmet cook and she made such amazing food. When she serves it, it all looks so pretty that I don't want to eat it. I don't remember if I told you this before, one time I had an eating appointment with her and she served a dessert that had real gold flakes on it. So I ate gold. This time it was some really good meat. Cooked rare, just how it should be. And a whole bunch of other stuff, salads and potatoes and all. Mmmm it was good. We also watched the Queen's speech. Each year the Queen comes on tv and gives a little new years speech. The rest of the night we played some fun games, and did another 'white elephant' type gift exchange. This time I ended up with some good chocolates. Then midnight finally rolled around and it got really exciting. In Denmark they launch fireworks at midnight, and I gotta say, our fireworks in America sure are lame.. There were fireworks in every direction, it was crazy! I got some cool videos but guess what.. I left my camera at our appartment.. I'll show you sometime. The weirdest part of the night was after we had had enough of the fireworks, we came back inside and they served us another meal. At 1 am! It was way good, but I really didn't want to be eating at that time.

The rest of this week was fun! On tuesday we had a little christmas party thing with the mission. We all met together and had some food and games. They even brought a Wii along and I got to play the newest Mariokart game for a bit. It was fun.
Saturday was really cool! We went with the Jensens up the the tip top of Denmark, Skagen. I've been there a couple times before, but this time was really cool because it was way windy, and the waves were a lot bigger. We also went on a hike through the woods and to the ocean. The path was completely frozen! It was straight ice! It was so slippery but I managed to survive without falling. Elder Greenhalgh was the only on who actually fell down. We found a big frog there. The little guy couldn't even hop, it was so cold. It just crawled it's way across the ice. Poor guy.

Other than that not much happened. I am glad that the holidays are over. They were fun and all, but now we can get back to work. Most of our investigators were on vacation or just told us to wait until after the holidays. And so yesterday we called a ton of people and they are ready to start meeting with us again! I called Celina, remember her? She was the most positive person when I was here last time, but she had slacked off and hasn't been meeting with missionaries anymore. But she was really excited to hear that I had come back to Aalborg, and she really wants to meet with us again! I also talked to her little daughter on the phone, she is a cutie. Last time I saw her she could only speak Chinese, but in the past 6 months she has learned Danish! Cool huh. I'm really excited to see both of them again.

Oh I thought of something we have been doing lately. Basically just being ninjas.. We throw cards across the room at a candle and hit the flame out. It's probably the most ninja thing I have ever done. Oh besides this one time I was sleeping, well trying to, and a stupid fly kept buzzing past my face, so I open my eyes and right at that same moment the fly flew past in front of me. So I quickly reached out my hand and caught the fly in my hand. I then crushed it and went back to sleep. That is a random story... Anyway, I got some videos of us throwing the cards at the candles. I'll show you sometime.

Thanks for the pictures! It's always fun seeing pictures of you all and the things you have been up to. :)
I had a lot of pictures for you, and some videos, but I forgot my camera.. :( So you are just going to have to wait.
Well have fun getting back to real life, with school and work and all. I can't wait to see you later this year! It is so weird that it is 2011! Where did 2010 go?! I have been in Denmark for an entire year (almost). See ya soon!

Love Elder Tyler Lee

Oh yeah, you asked about the family I had Christmas with, The Klitgaards. I don't know their email, but I can find out. Yeah they speak English. The dad served his mission in Provo, so he is way good. He loved it and they are basically half american now.