Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving!! I Love you all so much!! I hope you all have an amazing thanksgiving! I'm sure going to miss you all so much around the holiday season but its okay . Where are you going for dinner today? Hopefully you have a nice yummy thanksgiving feast. We are having ours at 12:00 I think. But guess what?! Elder Holland is coming to speak to us for thanksgiving today! I'm so excited to hear him speak! He is an amazing apostle of Jesus Christ. Remember his talk on the Book of Mormon last conference, it was so good. And on Tuesday Elder Oaks came and spoke to us! I cant believe we get to hear from two apostles of the Lord. Elder Oaks was So amazing! Right when he walked into the room every single missionary in the room stood up. Right when he walked in the you could feel an amazing over whelming spirit fill up the room. He spoke with power in his voice. I know that he is an apostle of Jesus Christ. First of all I just wanted to thank you mom so much for all the things you’ve been sending me! I love the cinnamon rolls, cookies, pop tarts, candy, pop corn, and all the other stuff. Thank you so much. Sorry I haven’t told you where my elders in my district are going …and no we don’t have any sisters in our district but we do have some in our branch. Okay four elders from my district are going to Oakland California, and four are going to Manchester New Hampshire. Just me and my companion, elder Belnap are going to New Zealand from our district. But I know of like 8 other elders and at least 2 other sisters from other districts that are going to New Zealand and they are flying out on Monday also. There is one Elder in my district from cedar hills and one from Spanish fork. Three live around north Ogden Utah, One lives in Idaho, One lives in Texas, One lives in Las Vegas, and one lives in Beaver Utah. I cant wait to go out into the field! I'm so excited to go to New Zealand!! I haven’t ran into Zack Whitney, Did he already leave, I haven’t seen him here once. But I did see Daniel R a couple of times actually. I got a picture with him and talked with him for a while. I finally got to see Skyler Hardy the day before he left. I guess he had been trying to find me. Ive seen some of my friends from high school too! It was cool to see people I know here. The MTC is so fun still. I love being a missionary. Ive learned so much this week. I'm getting lesson 2 down and lesson three a little. Me and Elder Belnap have had a lot of opportunities to teach. It is a really cool experience. Ive felt the spirit so much here. I'm glad to be serving the lord, I know it’s the best thing I can be doing right now in my life. I have also got the opportunity to speak to some non members at the referral center, I have talked to some on the phone and some on chats. Its so cool because I’ve got the opportunity to share my testimony and what I know is true. I sent a Book of Mormon to a lady because she wanted to read it from what I told her. The referral center is so awesome but I have gotten some really rude people. I guess it gives me so experience on how its going to be in the field. Oh yeah we got to go to the temple again yesterday because we had some extra time and our branch president let us because we weren’t going to be able to go today. It was awesome. The Provo temple is pretty and I love going to the temple. So after Elder Oaks came and spoke to us we had a district devotional review. I am the district leader so I conduct the meeting. We all took turns to say something that really stuck out to us and then we shared our testimony. It was unreal. We were all pretty much in tears. I felt the spirit SOO strong! I loved to hear all their incredible testimonies! It was amazing! I shared my testimony twice because I started the meeting off and then I talked again after everyone had an opportunity to gives their's. It was probably the most powerful testimony I have ever given. I wish you could of heard it. Well I'm kinda in a hurry, sorry I want to tell you so much more about my spiritual experiences here but they don’t give us very much time to do things here! I sent you all an individual letter, I hope you got them. If you didn’t get the letters yet you should soon! I wrote 6 of them so one for each of you! Oh and about the talk on Sunday. Our branch president just goes up on stand and announces right there who is speaking in church. He gives all the missionaries a topic the week before and everyone just needs to prepare one just in case he calls them up. I haven’t spoken in sacrament meeting yet.Okay so I leave the MTC on Monday around 1:30, we head straight the the Salt Lake Airport. I can call you from the airport. So plan on being home around Monday afternoon, I don’t know exactly what time I’ll be calling you. My flight leaves to Los Angeles at 4:50 and then we have a four hour lay over I think. Then we get on a plan to Auckland New Zealand! Crazy huh? I heard the flight is like 13 hours! I'm not excited for that. But I'm way excited to hear from you. So please try and be home! Well Happy Thanksgiving again!! I LOVE you all so much! I miss you very much. Thanks for everything you’ve done. Your all amazing. I couldn’t ask for a better family. I hope you all have an amazing thanksgiving! The next time I Email you will probably be In New Zealand!! :D crazy huh. Well I got to go know. Just send me a letter with Sister Belliston if you need anything before I leave on Monday. I don’t know if I’ll have time to read your email by then. Well I love you all. Have a happy thanksgiving and be safe. I’ll talk to ya on the phone on Monday. LOVE ELDER KITCHEN

First Email From the MTC

Hey Dad, Mom, Ryan, Jami and Kaylee!! How are you family?? Ive missed you so much and its only been one week! I love you all very much! How’s everyone doing? Anything new going on? I'm doing extremely well and I love the MTC. So as you can see I can e mail you now! I can e mail you every P day. Thursdays are my P days at the MTC. I don’t know if it will be different in the mission field. I'm pretty sure if you e mail me back today then I can read it again later tonight. Otherwise I don’t think I can read it until Thursday but I don’t know. Well I just wanted to thank you very much for sending me all that yummy stuff. I loved the cookies they were really good. My district also loved them! Well I got your cookies, candy, towel, soap, and your letters and stamps you sent me. I started laughing when you sent me letters and stamps. It was probably a hint like you need to write us, but I had already actually written you when I got them. I wrote you a letter on Saturday but they don’t pick up on Saturday night or Sunday. And then I was so busy on Monday I forgot to drop it off. It left here Tuesday so I hope you got the letter I wrote you already.Well the MTC is way awesome! I love it here so far. But we are EXTREMELY busy! That’s why I've had no time to write you! I'm glad I have time to Email you! Well the MTC is really cool and I love the spirit I feel here! Its so awesome. I love my mission so far. My district is also way tight! They all our way funny, nice, and all have strong testimonies of the gospel. My companion is way cool too! His name is Elder Belnap, I already wrote to you about him and my district in my letter. He is from Liberty Utah, its by Eden Utah where we go boating at pine view lake. He is really nice and we get a long really good. We teach good together and we are doing good at having companion study and prayer every day. I'm glad he is my companion. Well my district is pretty much the coolest. I get a long with all of them very well. We have 10 elders in my district including me and my companion. They all are super funny, nice, and we all have unbelievable testimonies. I love hearing them stand up and bare their testimonies. There names are: Elder Anderson, Elder Nelson, Elder Revees, Elder Lystrup, Elder Dalinga, Elder Urrietta, Elder Capener, and Elder Jessup. Ive gotten to know each one of them really good. And they are all awesome missionaries. Well you probably already know this from my letter but I have been called to serve as our district leader!! Our branch President, President Crawford interviewed each of us the second day we had been here. Then he called me to be the district leader! I know the Lord has called me and I am way happy to be their district leader. I get the mail everyday for everyone, keep them in line, go to district leader meetings, report to the branch president on our district, collect all the letters to the branch president, I conduct all our district meetings, and I call on elders to sing songs, pray, give talks, and I usually am the one to bear my testimony first. There's a lot more but I cant think of them right now. I have to be a good example to the other elders. Our Zone leaders are way cool too.I love my teachers. Their names are Brother Stephenson and Sister Lindorf. They both are way chill, nice, funny, great teachers, and both have an extremely amazing testimony and love for the gospel of Jesus Christ. I've learned so much from them already. We have been working a lot on Preach my Gospel and the first lesson: the restoration of the gospel. I am doing really good on learning and teaching the first lesson. I have read a lot about it and listen and learned a lot about the restoration of the gospel of Jesus Christ. My testimony has strengthened so much already. We have had a lot of opportunities to teach the lesson and get practice. We have been getting a lot of help from the teachers, other companionships, and from each other. I've been doing a ton of personal study of the scriptures and preach my gospel. We also do companion study everyday. We have class instruction a lot and we also have Teaching evaluations and other teaching practices. I'm getting it down very well. But the most thing that has helped me learn and teach the lessons is the spirit. I've prayed a lot to have the spirit with me while I learn and teach and it has. It touches my heart as I listen and teach to fake investigators. I love bearing my testimony to them and tell them what I feel. On Tuesday me and Elder Belnap had our first real teaching experience teaching “investigators”. They are volunteer members who come to the MTC and pretend to be an investigator. You get to know them just like a real investigator and you teach them like if they had no idea about our church. Her name was Dyane and she was a Catholic and his name Was Doug. It was amazing teaching them. I think it went really good. We taught with the spirit and I know they felt it. It was a way cool experience. I love teaching the gospel to people already. Even its to a member, it gives me practice and I feel the sprit really strong. Another cool place we have been going to a lot is the Referral Center (RC). That’s where we actually get to talk to non-members. We call them on the phone confirming that they got a free dvd or bible or book of Mormon they asked for. We also invite them to have missionaries come to their house and teach them more about the gospel. We get opportunities to share our testimony with non members! Its so cool! I talked to a lady who watched finding faith in Christ (the dvd the church sent to her) and she said she loved it. I asked her if she had read the bible and she said yes she has and that she believed in it. I then asked her if she had ever heard of the Book of Mormon. She said no and I got to share with her my testimony of the book of Mormon and tell her what it meant to me. She said she would love for us to send it to her and that she would read it! I was so excited! I loved that experience. It was my first experience sharing my testimony with a non member! It was so cool. I felt the spirit working through me as I shared my testimony and talked with her! I love missionary work! Its amazing!Well I've had many amazing and awesome experiences at the MTC so far. I love it here and I'm having a good time. Me and my district know when to laugh and have fun and then when to be serious and feel the spirit. I love my Branch and my Zone! They are all way cool missionaries. The Food at the MTC is pretty good! Some of it is way good and other times I wish I was eating your food mom! I miss your yummy food Mom. I hear the New Zealand food is really good so I'm excited! Ive heard even more good things about New Zealand since I've been here! I'm way excited to go into the field! They are planning on me leaving for New Zealand on November 30! So plan on me calling you on that day. I’ll let you know sooner when I hear. I cant wait to talk to you on the phone. Thanks for all the stuff you made me bring because I've been using a lot of it. I'm really prepared, a lot more then some of the other elders. I hope that you can e mail back soon. Thanks so much for everything! You guys are amazing and I miss you a lot. Well have a good next week and write me so I can stay in touch more often. I can feel your prayers and I'm praying for you everyday! I love you so much! LOVE ELDER TYLER KITCHEN 