Monday, August 01, 2011

It has been raining here, then 70F, then rain some more. It's raining right now. The weather here is very much the same as Rexburg. People who have been here say it is colder in Rexburg. Not temperatures wise but it feels colder.

I thought of a great idea for kids and stuff, I want to get a bunch of CTR rings, and things like that for kids, even if they are not LDS it still means choose the right. Also if I could get a plan of salvation wooden puzzle or something interactive for teaching kids.

I guess your all alone for a week without Marissa.

Love you!

Monday, July 25, 2011

Elder Tyler, Cj, Joanne, Elder Stone. We call the couple the Yodinkles.

My new companion is Elder Stone he is from Burley. He has been out a little over 21 months he goes home in early November I believe.

For Pioneer Day the ward has a party back at the Mahoni’s place, where we did the baptism. There was lots of food, members, and softball. I hit once and made it all the way home, not on the same hit.

Well I love you and will email more as I have time.

***We sent Tyler a box for the 4th of July and this is how he put it to use!

September 12th, 2011

This past week, Samuel and Nick  were married... uhm... did they have a long talk with Stake Pres. about this??? Just kidding!

My week has been pretty good I really enjoyed the temple. The temple is tiny, it is smaller than the stake center, and it’s also the only temple in the world with an arctic entry. An Arctic Entry is where you come in and there is another door before you enter the temple, when you enter right to your left is a place to take off all of you shoes and coats and hang them in there before you go into temple.


Ok so I need to have all my mail addressed to me and say Alaska Anchorage mission on it or the post office will not send it here anymore, my packages ended up in the church mail box for the Willow building, I only have one for now when they check it again I will probably get my other one.

The zone leaders are Missionary equivalent of stake president, I have a zone leader meeting every second Wednesday of the month, we got to go down with them to the temple, I will post pictures in a minute.

Transfers are Sept 27th, I think I’ll get transferred but idk I could stay here and train. I think it would be fun, yah i would hope I get a nice companion too, I need to get Elder Boulder, he is one of the missionaries coming into the area, the last elders in this area is elder Grawrock my current comp., Elder Stone then Elder Boulder, that is how it has to be. (All types of rock)

We didn’t go down this driveway, we just saw a thousand signs and took a picture.



I will be sending home a package with items a guy here carves. He gave me a bear, a beaver, some mixing spoons and other things. He gave me those to say thanks for helping at the farmers market.

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.