Paige & Luke's Baptism

Their Family

Elder Tyler, Luke, Paige and Elder Grawrock

Lake where Baptism was held.

It is really weird to have such long days and short nights it made fireworks not as much fun but it also allows for us to help our member and to do other things later in the night

Bishop Jones the member we live with is a lot like you... a whole lot like you, we are helping him build the deck on his cabin right now and having light all the way till 10 or so helps.

It does not ever get dark completely unless there are thick rain clouds but it’s still weird.

The baptism went as expected and their parents and grandma where there and seemed to enjoy it I'm going to upload pictures today

That is weird to think all the kids are gone. I am not even alone for longer than it takes to go to the bathroom and that is one thing I’m excited for when I get home, I like to have plenty of alone time.

Well i love you but need to get to moms emails

bye dad

That is cool to hear about Troy, he was a good kid and we had fun together, he will have fun in Florida, i would not have liked Florida because it is hot but he should have fun there.

The baptism went as planned, the next day Elder Grawrock went to Eagle River and i stayed with my new companion Elder stone, i will be putting up pictures of the baptism and everything right now then labeling them

I know that every elder is called to an area for a reason, Elder Grawrock said that he knows that i came into the area because i got along really well with Luke. Each elder is in their place for a reason regardless of whether we know what that reason is.

We had transfers last week I stayed here and my new companion is from Burley Idaho he is very nice.

I love you mom

June 27, 2011

This week I got to teach the 6 year old primary class, and it just happened to be a lesson about being a missionary, it was really fun to talk to those kids about being a missionary and they all wanted to be a missionary too.

It was a lot of fun, it reminded me of teaching primary for the nine year olds. That is cool that Nick is getting married.

They have quite a lot of people in the area we cover who do nothing but make tourist stuff, no kidding they do a lot of tourist stuff around here.

We can see mount McKinley every so often, as we drive around, there are a lot of trees though so sometimes I can see it. I believe we are about 50-100 miles from McKinley but i think it is in technically our area.

The culture here... how to describe well most people move here to stay to themselves and if you find them they are angry and want to be left alone, most of the time

We live in a strange area, it is close enough to towns that you can drive a half an hour to 2 hours (depending on where in our area you are) and go to a Walmart, but you are far enough out here on dirt roads no one will find you unless they are looking for you, its a really strange area

I don't know about transfers, tomorrow our new mission President will arrive and take over so no one knows what transfers will be like, he will either shake up the board or leave things like they are for another transfer.

Our 2 investigators will be baptized on the 9th of July in a lake at our members property.

I love you

Elder Tyler

p.s. I dont think they mention poop anywhere in the dress code, also you are in the family department obligations to your son come first... something something pterodactyl or something

(For Father's day, Tyler sent Michael a Moose poop tie tack and chapstick)

June 13, 2011

Yesterday I got the chance to do a baby blessing, for a 9 day old baby, there is a Samoan and his "wife" who came, he has been inactive for 10 years and less active for 20 his soon to be wife and him have several kids about 10 days, 2y, 3y, 7y, and 9y she was almost baptized a couple times in Hawaii but he was holding her back and now he really wants to get back to church and have her baptized, they will be getting married soon, and she will be baptized.

He had me bless his baby because I know how to pronounce Samoan names and words, the baby's name is Tolu Ipuasa Taala

That stuff about Danali is really cool, I realized that apparently our area is more like 200 miles north south than i thought it was

I am mailing Marissa's gift today for her birthday and also my social security card will be with it.

I also got my Alaska drivers license this week as well.

Bob Boyd one of our recent converts since October I think is in prison for gun charges, he is a convicted felon and had a sawed off shotgun and a pistol I did not know he wasn't allowed to have, and some mental problems, and smoked marijuana we have been helping him try to get it back together but now he is in prison, he is about 73 or so and in bad health facing minimum of 3 to 5 years

Also I was wondering if we have any Dances in our family tree President Dance thinks we may be related.

Can you tell me how I am related to Porter Rockwell, I was just curious about that as well.

June 6, 2011

So about 10 minutes ago elder Grawrock and I were on our way here and right in front of us a car went to go into the other lane quickly and it hit another car and the mirror went flying and then while everyone was hitting their brakes 2 motorcycles almost ran into the cars that were slowing down really quickly. it was pretty crazy everyone was alright but the 2 people looked pretty ticked when they pulled over.How has your weeks been I don't see any emails ):
(we forgot to write him, but I was on when his email came in so I wrote him while he was still on)

The 2 kids are going to talk to their parents this week to see if they can get permission we are pretty sure that the parents should have seen it coming by now, the baptismal date for now is still June 18th, we will find out this week if that is going to work.

The new mission president gets here at the end of the month and will be doing the new transfers, he only has less than a day to be with President Dance before President Dance leaves. He will not get any information on any of the elders except maybe if they have something really serious, so he will not know anything about most of us except from our brief meeting with him as a zone this month.

I have my social security card and will be trying to get my license tomorrow to give you an idea of how long it takes to get mail, I got the ssn card on Friday night. I found out the mail goes to Anchorage and from Anchorage goes all the way to Fairbanks(it has to drive past us to get to Fairbanks), like 300 miles north of us by truck, then on the way back it drops off the mail for our area at Wasilla, then we get it the next day or later depending on when they get it to the ups store, here it goes to the ups store they sort it and give it to their customers, no packages are delivered on Saturdays.

Today we are going on a hike to what is called lazy mountain which is funny cause everyone says it is anything but a lazy hike, i got some cool pictures of the mountains and will take more while up there. left to right Me, Elder Espiritu, Elder Dourghty, Ulu ave, Elder Hinkly, Sis. Lee, Elder Gardner, Elder Lee, Sis Baker, Elder Grawrock, Elder Goodwin(top)Elder Mazzefaro, top ElderQuinlin, mid Elder Wegan botom Elder Uele.

Monday, May 9, 2011

(This letter from Tyler is fairly short.....
he called yesterday for Mother's Day!)

It's fine that you did not chat more, in case you had not noticed I never really spent much time on the phone, I never really know what to say to people. I don't know the official rules for how long, just around an hour or so, next time my companion (whoever it is) and I will do a better job at finding some one with Skype, as we are allowed to do that.

I really enjoy just teaching about Christ, I don't know if you have read it but one of the books we have is Jesus The Christ, by Talmage, people seem to respond to that pretty well.

Because I am the junior companion Elder Grawrock decides what we do on p-day, we usually go play sports for about 3 or 4 hours with a bunch of missionaries in our zone, there is not a whole lot to do here on p-days anyways. We are allowed to go to zoos, and museums and that kind of stuff, we can go hiking. I'm sad we can't go swimming, even though it is cold, or snow machining, ATV's and shooting guns and stuff with members.
left Elder Grawrock ,right Elder Loveland he was incharge of our vehichles in the mission.

I'll try to send some cool pictures.

So I spent $50 dollars on clothing, can I use some money for food?

Monday, May 2, 2011

So the package got here but was kinda a gooy moldy mess....the strawberries looked so good and yet so bad, even in the state they were in they still looked better than the strawberries in stores here (the less moldy ones and less bruised ones anyways), due to the mold I did not try any. I think it would be best to hold off on trying that kind of stuff till I am in Juneau or Anchorage somewhere easier to get it to, also they were in a soft box like the kind they make cereal boxes that is real thin. The other package also arrived Monday, thank you very much for the candy and letters. The prescription medication seems to be working my nose has been pretty clear.

We have 2 investigators on date for June 18th, Page 16 and Luke 15, they are siblings in a non-member family that have taken it upon themselves to investigate the church and to seek after what is right, this is really surprising to everyone for teens of their age to be doing that themselves. We are pretty excited about that especially because they put themselves on date to get their parents more involved in learning about the church.

I have had a pretty good week so far. I went on an exchange with the zone leaders and we did a little bit of tracting, we caused a puppy to pee all over the place at the first house (it was very excited) then 6 pugs at the next house would not let the man hear us, we said we'd try back, then a lady talked about some very bad experiences with her older brother claiming to be a Mormon and that the Book of Mormon was the only scripture allowed in the house, threw out the bibles, and said the Mormon church told him it was ok to drink lots of alcohol and to beat your wife and family, we tried to explain that none of those things have ever been accepted in our church and we made it clear that there are many off shoots, but she said she is still so traumatized from him that she could not let us in. That was my first tracting experience. My next one later that day went better we found 2 less actives and 2 who were open to us coming by and all 4 gave us phone numbers, names and better times to come by, one said that her door was always open to us. We don't tract where I am, I am in the Wasilla Zone but my area is just north of there we cover from Houston to above Talkeetna.
The red X is where our house is, the circle is where our church is and the outline shows our entire area at least up and down, it might be wider or narrower it is about the same distance as going from Rexburg to American Falls.

We drive a 2011 Chevy Colorado truck, the senior campions usually get the designated driver, I am the "co-driver" I sit there. There are quite a few trucks in our mission. Without a truck even getting to our house becomes very hard during the winter here, without a truck we could not visit many of our investigators or members. There is one ward that covers all of Willow, Big Lake, and Houston that has around 300 active I believe, that is our ward. Talkeetna Branch has about 30 active LDS members.

Also did you hear the big news??? Osama Bin Laden was killed yesterday in a shoot out with navy seals. I am really happy that at least the search for him is finally done. We were at a members house, the older couple we visited earlier, they got a telephone call, then we got one from a member and they turned on the news about it. Apparently there is quite a bit of excitement everywhere about that. It is funny because it was told to a New York baseball team during their game, in the 9th inning with it tied 1-1 9-11 weird.

I love you and thanks for the package.

Monday, April 25, 2011

Q: Did you get your strawberries and package?
Tyler: Hey I have not gotten any box, I'm not sure exactly how it works here, no one has mail boxes apparently, they get a box somewhere that everything is dropped off to and the Jones pick them up and give them to us. idk what will happen. No strawberries either. : (
Q: What did you do for Easter?
Tyler: We ate at a members house. They used gold silverware (at least it looked like gold) and they had the whole family over, then we went to an older couples house and helped them with their computer and they gave us some Easter treats with our name on them, they treat the missionaries like their kids.
Q: Who is your new companion?
Tyler: So my new companion is Elder Grawrock, we get along just fine but we have pretty much nothing in common. He is from Aloah Oregon, and thinks Oregon is better than California in every way, we don't let that get past joking arguments. He really likes to work out, we get up at like 5 some mornings and work out and other mornings we get up at 6 to go to seminary in the Jones house because he teaches seminar. I have not been getting to sleep lately, I just sit there and think but I am trying a new thing to get to sleep and it seems to help so far.
Q: Do you like to exercise or do you do it because your companion makes you?
Tyler: The second one. When I say exercise I am talking about an hour plus work out at a members "gym" where I hurt after we are done, it is not lose weight stay in shape exercise it is get big muscle exercises. We have a treadmill at our place and not exercising is not an option. I'm already awake so I do the exercises with a lot less weight than he does.
Q: Where do you live?
Tyler: We live in a cabin separate from the Jones house, about 50 feet from the house. We use the whole cabin, it is just a kitchen with a loft above that we sleep in with a bathroom and shower on lower floor.On Thursday I met a Danish photographer artist something or other. We were waiting for interviews at the church with Pres. & Sis. Dance and a man came in and asked me if he could speak with our pastor. I told him that I can try to help him get in contact with the Bishop. He explained that he was doing a story or something like that on the Wasilla area and found that the area is very religious and is going around to the different churches and talking with the church leaders and doing sketches of them, to show the variety in the area or something like that. His name was Rasmus, this is a picture of him. I told him that my dad served in Denmark in the 80's? and he said that Denmark has changed quite a bit since then, he said he remembers seeing Americans dressed like us around Denmark and that a friend of his apparently followed some of them around and became good friends of the missionaries.