Doing great this holiday season

Dear Family!
It was so good to hear all of your voices and talk to you for so long on Christmas! I'm glad we got the chance to talk to each other. It was really cool for me to hear what you have been up to and all the things you've gotten for Christmas. I'm sorry the snow isn't that great for snowboarding and skiing but I'm sure it will get a lot better soon. I'm also so glad I got to tell you all the cool experiences I've been having on my mission. I have seen miracles already and I know if I am obedient and try my hardest the Lord will pour many more miracles upon me. I'm also glad I got to talk to Grandma and Grandpa! Well I'm glad you had a good Christmas and I loved talking with you all of you. I'm so excited to see what happens in this upcoming new month. Me and Elder Sessions prayed and pondered about the goal for January. We have come up with 7 baptisms as our goal. We are going to focus on Romish (he has a baptism date for January the 2nd), The Boyde family (Shelly, Danelle, and Kiren), and the Simeon family. Sister Simeon is a less active that has decided to turn her life around, she has came to church twice in a row now! Her 3 children Sarah, Erica, and Morehu have not been baptised so we are going to focus on them. I am so excited to see what the Lord has in store for us according to our faith. I will let you know all the experiences we will have and the amazing miracles the Lord will bless us with. Church yesterday was great. We only had 3 investigators out of the 13 that were supposed to show up so that's frustrating. But we had 4 less actives come so that was awesome. The investigator class after Sacrament went really good. I taught the lesson. It was on exaltation. The spirit was there and the people had some good questions we answered for them. Priesthood meeting was great too. We announced Romish's baptism to the ward and everyone is very excited for him. Romish has a very strong testimony and is really excited to make that commitment of baptism. President and Sister Porter put together a book of the miracles and experiences missionaries have had in the year 2009 in our mission. I have been reading them this morning and last night and they are incredible. The mission is a mission of many miracles. The Lords hand is truly in his great work. I'm am so excited and happy to be apart of it. I love New Zealand. It is a beautiful country and the people are so friendly. I'm very blessed to be here. Well Sister Porter sent us an E-mail and she told all the missionaries that we did it!! We beat the record for the most baptisms the New Zealand Auckland mission has EVER seen. The year 2009 was the best year this mission has had. They baptised 1094 people this year, that is amazing! We are building up the kingdom of God in this mission and I'm so glad to be apart of it this next year. Well I wont ever be in the United States for the year 2010! Crazy huh? I'm also turning 20 this year!! WOW I wont be a teenager anymore! Well I'm really excited about that!Well thanks again for everything! Thanks so much for the Christmas package! I love the tie mom!! I cant believe that you bought that! I was so pumped when I opened it. And I love the watch dad! Wow its really nice, it looks so fancy and hard to work but I will figure it out. The candy is great and all the letters. Let Susan and Uncle Jason know THANK YOU SO MUCH! I love the tie and gloves. The candy is awesome too. The letters were so fun the read and I loved them. Let them know I love them and that was extremely nice of them to send me a package and write me letters. I will write them a letter or e mail when I have time. I'm so busy. Well I love you all so much. I'm glad Ryan had a great birthday. I'm glad you all had a wonderful Christmas. Thanks again for everything. I feel your prayers. I have been praying for you every night. I know the lord will bless you. I love you. Happy NEW YEAR!!!~LOVE ELDER KITCHEN!

Merry Christmas from New Zealand

Hey Mom, Dad, Ryan, Jami, and Kaylee!!
It sounds like your Christmas holidays are going really good! I bet your excited for Christmas! I forgot if I told you but we are going to 3 different members houses for Christmas!! CRAZY huh?? We are going to the Huntley's for Christmas breakfast then Sister Colliers house for lunch, and then the Sunnexs house for Christmas dinner! So I'm going to be well fed. I haven't gotten the package yet. Or the letter. But they said if they get Christmas packages before Christmas they will make an extra effort to get them to us. I hope they give me them but if not I'll just open them when I get them. Thanks so much for sending me one though! I'm excited to open it. Well I'm going to miss you all so much at Christmas! I'm going to miss being with you all and everything around the holidays, especially snowboarding. But I'm enjoying the holidays here. We go up to the temple Christmas lights every even night of December! We get to listen to the choirs and see all the awesome lights. We go around and talk to non members and try and get referrals and to tell them to go to the visitor center. We had our first zone conference last week on Thursday the 17th. It was SO cool. We had a really spiritual Christmas program! It was amazing. We focused on Jesus Christ so much and President Porter gave an amazing talk of the Savior! It was so powerful. We focused of the birth and life of the Savior, and also the saviors resurrection. This Christmas has already been an unforgettable Christmas because it is SO focused on Jesus Christ and the true meaning of Christmas. We had a huge Christmas feast during zone conference, wow it was really good. We also did a ton of other cool things at zone conference. It was really good. I got to see Elder Belnap too! (my MTC companion!) and after zone conference I had my first interview with the mission president! He is so funny and is a way cool mission president. He has such a strong testimony of the savior and the church. He is extremely nice and is funny too. We had a good talk and he said he knows I'm going to be an incredible missionary. Oh yeah I forgot to tell you the New Zealand mission has broken the all time record of baptisms this year (2009) for the history of this mission. This mission is a mission full of miracles. So far in 2009 they have baptised 1,027 people this year!! But anyway President Porter said he knows that Heavenly Father knows how much success the mission is having and is sending some of the best missionaries to New Zealand for 2010 year! He told me he believes I'm going to be a incredible missionary. Dad, I told him you were best friends with his younger brother Jeff. He said he remembers you and wants to wish you the best holidays. Sister Porter is also amazing! She has such a sweet spirit and is seriously one the nicest ladies I have met. Well I have had some amazing spirtual miricles and experiences this past week. We are finding a lot of investigators and many amazing things are happening here. I can feel the spirt all the time on my mission and its so amazing. Well we are probably going to set the baptism date for some of our investigators soon but none of them have a baptism date yet. It's kinda hard for me because some of them have a testimony they are just not keeping the commitments to read and do everything they should. We will just have to keep working with them. Its increible to see people start accepting the gospel in their lives. Well about the calling thing on Christmas. I was planning on calling you on my Christmas day (so your Christmas eve). But I forget what time it is there when its a certain time here.....I can call you anytime on my Christmas so you can still go to the Christmas eve party. But I just need to know what time! What would be best for you. I think they want us to call on our Christmas because on yours it will be the day after Christmas here and we will probably be proselyting. Merry Christmas Family!! And happy Holidays!! I'm very excited to talk to you all on the phone. I miss you so much. I'm having a great time in New Zealand! Thanks for your prayers and for everything. I'm praying for each one of you every night. I love you all so much! Love, Elder Kitchen

Happy in New Zealand

Hello! How are you guys doing? Wow thanks for the emails. It sounds like your doing fine and getting ready for Christmas! I cant believe its snowing there and is so cold. Here it is really warm and sometimes really hot. It doesn't really seem like Christmas here because no one really makes a big deal out of it. They don't put up any lights or hardly any Christmas decorations. The only lights there are is the temple Christmas lights. They are really awesome. Well my week has been really really good. I've had some really cool experiences and some spiritual experiences. I love being on my mission so far. The people here are so friendly its unreal. Even if they reject our message they do it in a nice way or let us in to talk and have a drink. The members are extremely nice too. They feed us A TON of food and then they give us a bunch of food to take home for later. We don't really need to go grocery shopping because we get so much food from the members. Last P day we got to go to the Hamilton Gardens! They were SO cool. I took a lot of pictures but if we ever come back to Hamilton we need to go to the gardens so you can see them. It was really fun. I will send you pictures as soon as I get that cord because I don't know how to send you any without it. That's awesome Ryan has already been snowboarding! How is it Ryan? I'm jealous but I love being out here and I know its where I'm supposed to be. Its going to be really weird not being home for Christmas though. I really wish I could write each one of you an email... but me and Elder Sessions have to ride with Elder king and Elder Bapcock (our district leader) because we don't have a car. They only want to stay for an hour...so I don't have a lot of time. But next time I'll try and stay here longer. We had district meeting which was really cool. The Elderly couple from the temple visitor center came and told us we were going to go up to the temple every even night of December. The 12th was our first day. Its really cool. The temple is gorgeous and the lights are so cool looking. They have choirs and people singing Christmas songs and everything. There is a ton of people that come to the lights here. What we do is go around and talk to people. We try and get referrals and teach people about what we believe in. We are doing it again tonight! I'm excited. I have never been inside the temple yet...the first time I've ever saw it was on the 12th. It is a really cool visitor center and temple. Okay well we have gotten a lot of new referrals this last week. Me and Elder Sessions ride about 20 minutes on our bikes to our area and we talk to everyone on the way. We have got a TON of teaching appointments for this upcoming week. We have had a lot of success at teaching and finding people to teach. We have a ton of potential investigators and we have a lot of investigators. Right now we are teaching a really nice lady named Shelly. We have taught her a lot of the lessons. She has came to church too. We are working on teaching her daughter Danelle and her son Krien. They are really nice people and we think we will be getting to baptise them pretty soon. It is an awesome experience. We are also getting close to setting a baptism date for Romish. He is from India. He is extremely nice and has gone to church a lot and is reading the Book of Mormon everyday! We also have been going to the Lua Lua family. The dad was inactive and we have got him to come back to church and he has two unbaptised daughters. We have been teaching them and believe they will probably want to get baptised too. We are also teaching another less active family named the Falilae family. The mom has a younger brother living with her and I'm pretty sure he will want to get baptised soon too. Our goal before the end of the year IS 6 BAPTISMS BEFORE THE END OF THE YEAR!!! cool huh?! We are having a lot of success and blessings from the Lord. We are also teaching Brenda. She is a really nice Maori lady. We mowed her whole lawn for her a couple days ago. We have taught her lesson one and two. We are also teaching a guy name Wihi, he is 25 and is really awesome. We have taught him and his sister lesson one twice. They are having trouble believing in the Book of Mormon and the prophet Joseph Smith. I'm loving teaching and I've felt the spirit a lot when I teach! I'm getting pretty good at teaching. And I know the Lord is helping me in so many ways. We have a lot of investigators so we dont really have to track much. We are usually trying to visit and teach the investigators we already have. We are working with the memebers a lot. They are really nice and very helpful. I love the ward here. I spoke in church yesterday! I talked about charity and bore my testimony. It was in sacrament meeting. Christmas day we have dinner plans all day long. Breakfast lunch and dinner I'm going to be really full that day. Well I love and miss you all, until next time.
Love Elder Tyler Kitchen

First letter from the mission field

Wow I cant believe I'm half way around the world writing you this e mail. Well today is my P day, its always going to be on Monday here so on Sunday in Utah. How are you family?! I love you very much and I miss you but the mission is going great. New Zealand is awesome and its a beautiful country! President Porter is really nice and a very spiritual man. We had dinner at his house the night we got here. He gave us a lesson about missionary work which was amazing. He told us the people in this mission are humble and that there is a lot of people that get baptised. He said that 80 percent was through the members. So he said to gain the trust of them and they will give you referrals! Well the first night I slept great, we slept in some motel in North Shore City. The next morning we when to the mission home again. The mission home is really cool and it has a gorgeous view. New Zealand is extremely green. We had a really good breakfast here and we talked a lot about missionary work again. Then they told us where we would be serving and who are companion is. My companion is ELDER SESSIONS! He is really nice and is way funny. We get a long very well and he has a extremely strong testimony of the gospel. He is from Mesa Arizona! crazy huh?? Guess what he has only been in the field for about 5 months and he is already a trainer. The mission President felt he was ready and so he assigned me and him as companions. So we are both fairly new. He is doing a great job though. I'm learning a lot from him. He is very good at teaching people and also good at remembering names. Its kinda hard for me to remember all these weird New Zealand and Maori names. Sometimes its way hard just to pronounce them. Well I got called so serve in the Hamilton Stake Mission!! Isn't that really cool?! Right now I'm serving in the Claudlands Hamilton Area. Claudlands is my ward name too. I was really excited when I got to called to serve in Hamilton! Well the drive from Auckland to Hamilton was extremely beautiful! It was really green and way cool looking. I saw some of my first sheep . It was about an hour and half drive. Oh yeah except yesterday and today its been raining NON stop here! It rains so much...I thought it was never going to stop . It rained the whole way down to Hamilton. Our bags got soaked. We got to our flat (that's what they call apartment) and unloaded all our stuff. Its kinda a run down place buts its nice. It has a kitchen, two bedrooms, family room, bath room, and a little laundry closet. Just me and my companion live in out flat. We live out of our area right now so we have to ride our bikes like 20 minutes just to get in our area. Yeah we've been riding our bikes A LOT. They are looking for a flat in our area right now. So it was crazy the second day I got here we hopped on our bikes and road a long way in the pouring rain. It was a cool experience. We live around the city of Hamilton so there's a lot of people here. Oh yeah I ate at subway Ryan! They call the vegetables salads here . It tasted almost the same but not exactly. Well we have already had some really cool experiences in Hamilton. We have met a lot of members from the ward. Brother Sunex is a really really awesome guy in the ward who is obsessed with missionary work. He is so funny. He comes with us a lot when we track and stuff. He gave us a ward list of non members and less actives. We have already gone around to less actives and talked to some and invited them to church. Brother Sunex is very funny and sometimes he talks so fast and laughs so much you cant even understand him. But he has a way strong testimony of missionary work. He is such a blessing. We knocked on this door and a guy from Nepal opened the door. He let us right in and we talked to him for a while. He is so nice and he's about 21. We talked to him about the gospel and I got to give away my first Book of Mormon away to him. Wow it was a amazing feeling! He told us we could come back and give him the discussions. It was so cool. We also have had many experiences already to give away pamphlets, share our testimony, and teach people about the gospel. We have a bunch of investigators already and many potential investigators, it is seriously a miracle, its a blessing from God! I love missionary work already. I have also got the opportunity to teach some lessons too! I have felt the spirit so strong as I teach people about the restored gospel. We had a amazing experience two days ago. We were tracking and knocking on doors of a apartment complex. A boy opened on of the doors. It turns out he is 15 years old, he and his family are from Fiji. They are Fiji Indians. Anyways we told him who we were and talked a little about the church and then asked if we could come in. Brother Sunex was with us. The boy asked his mom and she said yes!! We went in and started teaching the boy. His name is John and is extremely nice. The amazing part of this experience is we started teaching just him and then eventually the whole family was sitting around listening. The mom, dad, son, and daughter. There name is the Poa family. Well we taught them the first lesson, about Joseph Smith, Book of Mormon, Restoration, and the Church. I bore my testimony and got to teach a lot of the lesson. It was incredible. The spirit was so strong. We gave them a book of Mormon and challenged them to read it and ask God themselves if it was true. I cant wait to find out if they did. Well we have had amazing experiences already, we have had success and have taught a lot of people. I'm learning a lot already. I'm studying really good and I'm obeying all the rules. The Food is great here! I have already ate at a members house. The members here are really nice and have strong testimonies. (now go to first letter continued)

First Letter continued

Well yeah I haven't tried anything that I haven't liked yet so far. The food is good. But we have only ate at one members house so far so we'll see. Well like I said I'm loving my mission and its really good. But there has been some trails already too. I guess the part of Hamilton is kind of prideful and a lot of white people here. Some of the people are extremely rude. We haven't gotten the door slammed in our faces but we have gotten really rude people. Like when we ride our bikes on the side of the road sometimes people yell out of their cars and swear at us or laugh or say really horrible things. Some people flip us off too. Its sometimes kind of hard but I have to remember what Joseph Smith went through. Its like nothing compared to that! I just kinda laugh now. But I have gotten a little discouraged but my companion has helped me. Its just hard to see people make fun of you and people hate you when I'm used to people liking me yeah know. But I'm doing fine no worries. I still love it here. Well its been really rainy here the first couple of days. It was kinda cold too. But yesterday and today are much better. The sun is out and its really warm. Its really humid here so a lot of my stuff is wet and wont dry sometimes. Well my district leader is named Elder King, he is really awesome. My Zone leaders names our Elder Davidson and Elder Nebiker. They both are really helpful and are really friendly. Elder Davidson is from Australia! He has a cool accent. Oh yeah the New Zealand Accent is really cool. I love listening to people talk. Sometimes its hard to understand some people but I can for the most part. Well it doesn't really feel like Christmas...but I guess the temple lights up all the tress and bushes around the grounds. We are going to go help set up and we'll be there helping with the visitor center and stuff. I haven't seen the temple yet, but I will soon. We already have dinner plans for Christmas and Christmas Eve! Oh yeah I can send you pictures if I had the camera cord. I cant remember if I brought it here. I don't have it with me right now so maybe you can see if I left it in my room. If I did maybe you could send it. Thanks for the Email and letters and everything. Yeah I bet it was really cold there. I cant believe how far away I am right now. Its crazy!! Well I miss you all so much! I'm loving NEW ZEALAND!! I cant believe I'm here on my mission its so crazy! I have already had some amazing experiences here. I know this is Gods work. I'm trying to do my part to help save our fellow brothers and sisters. The people here are kind for the most part. I'm grateful for my companion. We are getting along great. Well I don't know when I'll have time to get on again. Maybe not until next Monday. Just remember Sunday is Utah is my P day. Here its Monday! Well I hope you have a fun time getting ready for Christmas. I'm going to miss you especially during this season. I'm So excited to hear from you on Christmas! :) I'll let you know whether its mine or yours...I don't know yet. Well sorry if I didn't go into very good detail about my experiences so far. There's so much more I want to tell you but we are in some computer place that charges us. The District leader drove us here because we are in down town Hamilton. Well I have to go now I guess. I love you all so much. Thanks for everything. Love Elder Kitchen

Elder Kitchen Arrived Safely in New Zealand!

Hey family!! I just wanted to let you know I made it safe to New Zealand! I'm at the mission office right now in North Shore City. It's near Auckland. The flight was really good. I slept a lot of it so it didn't seem too long. The plane was huge, two floors and really wide and long! Its 12:30 pm on Wednesday December 2nd here!! crazy huh?! Well New Zealand is beautiful! Right when I Stepped out of the airport I knew I was in a different country! Its so green here, it feels really humid, there is the coolest trees and plants here. It was really cool driving on the wrong side of the road. It was weird to see all the different kinds of cars and things we don't have in the USA. It was also crazy to see a different flag flying on the flag pole. But anyways I LOVE it here already! It seriously is gorgeous! Way pretty green hills, the city of Auckland is So cool looking! This is awesome I really feel like I'm in a totally different country. I'm so happy I have been called so serve here! WOW I love New Zealand already so much. I got to meet President Porter and his wife. They are really, really nice and amazing people. Everyone in the mission office is so nice and so excited we are here. I love it here. well I have to go. I love you all so much! I'll write to you more soon. Love Elder Kitchen