Dear Family! June 19, 2011

Kia Ora agian! Time just flies by sometimes! There is a lot going all with all the family! I’m glad that everyone is getting involved with all the exciting activities...especially with the church. That makes me happy to hear Ryan is still on Heritage Tours and is loving the experience. I can’t wait to hear how it was and get an e mail from him. So did he get to go in Washington D.C.? I remember we didn’t get to go there for some reason. When did he go to New York City? I wonder if it was the same day I went past Auckland.... I just hope and pray that he is having a wonderful spiritual experience. I’m so happy for him. I absolutely loved Heritage Tours. I hope he is taking a lot of pictures and writing in his journal. Wow and I’m excited to hear Jami is going on OYA! That will be really cool and exciting...I remember I wanted to do that. I looked at it and it looked really fun. Jami you’re going to have an amazing experience. Take Pictures!! And then tell me all about it. I will be praying for you to have a great experience. I’m just so happy everyone is doing some really amazing things. Our family truly is blessed so much to be able to do all things incredible things.

Your probably right....it must be so weird to have only one child in the home from used to be 4. haha Dad I started laughing when you said you’re in a house full of girls. I’m sure it’s good for you to go golfing or the gym eh? I hope you start playing a little better....I remember how frustrating it can get sometimes. Mom I’m sure you’re so excited to go down to Arizona with all your sisters. That’s always exciting....I remember when you guys would stay up so late talking and we always wanted to be involved with listening. I was really sad to hear that the forest is all burnt down...It’s a blessing though that Eagar is okay. It seriously is the signs of the times...even fires are extremely worse than usual. I’m really glad Kaylee had a good time at the youth conference. :) Jami and Kaylee are both really wonderful girls!

Well your probably wondering how my Temple Trip/Zone Conference went! Wow it was seriously so much fun and very spiritual experience...I loved it. Well we were supposed to drive down Monday night and stay the night in Auckland. But one of the other companionships clear up north didn’t understand and they left to late. So me and my companion had to stay back and wait for them. Went had to get up at 2 am!! Eh I know!! And then leave by 3 am so we could get there on time and be early just in case the bus left us. So we drove all the way to Auckland. Then everyone got on this really nice bus and we all drove down (1/3 of the mission) the other 2/3 went to the temple of different days. Oh yeah guess what our mission is one of the biggest missions in the entire church!! The bus ride was fun...We watched the Joseph Smith movie. We got to the temple and we had a spiritual devotional in the visitor center. Then we went up and did a session in the temple. Wow I had so many spiritual experiences and I received some revelation from Heavenly Father. That place is literally Heaven on earth. I loved it so much and I love being in that sacred and holy place, absolutely beautiful inside. Then we went to a stake center in Hamilton and had our zone conference. We had lunch first which was so good. We had some musical items while we were eating. Then we went inside the chapel for some trainings and things. We had another musical program...wow it was breath taking...some of the missionaries and just so talented here. It is amazing to be in a mission with so much culture. There are missionaries from all around the world. In our zone we have missionaries from Samoa, Africa, Thailand, Philippines, Australia, Fiji, and the United States! That’s just in our zone!! So it is just great to see musical performances and just experience all the culture. After that we had a very spiritual experience with President and Sister Porter. They gave some just wonderful training and we had kind of a farewell program for them. Wow I got so emotional....I’m going to miss them so much. They have influenced me in incredible ways. You could tell President and Sister Porter loved their mission so much and they are going to be so sad to leave. They got so emotional too. But it was a bitter/sweet experience. They also did a really funny thing. They both went up to the front and said okay we've never done this...but now you can ask us about our marriage, dating, how the met and stuff about that. Wow it was hilarious!! We laughed so hard. ohhh man....I love them. After that we all went to this famous place and all got ice cream!! It is a place with so many flavors and you can get as many scoops as you want. The record is last year a missionary got 18 scoops! And they are big scoops! Someone in our trip got 12 but I don’t know about the other days. I only had 4...I didn’t want to spend that much money on just getting a brain freeze haha. Well after that we headed back and traveled to Auckland. We then we into our cars and headed back up to Whangarei....okay we had this crazy experience. We were driving and the main high way was closed because of an accident. So we had to drive on this Tiny little country road in the middle of NZ and it was almost a dirt road. Well the missionary who was driving us went way to fast around a corner and .......well we crashed!! I got in my first accident! Wow it was a weird....But before I say anything more...I am perfectly okay! I didn’t even get a little bump or scratch on me, nothing at all. And no one in the car did. But the car got pretty banged up. Well just the front. We slipped off the road and crashed into a little hill side. It wasn’t bad and we are lucky we crashed where we did. The missionary was pretty upset. Well I don’t know what happened to the car we just went into another car and drove home. Well that was my Temple Trip experience!

This week was great. The sisters in our district had a baptism and the guy asked me to baptize him because I had interviewed him, so that was a cool experience. Ohhh yeah my bike tire exploded on Friday. hahaha...we filled it with too much air and when I was just riding it, it sounded like a gun shot went off and it was my tire! So we've been walking the past couple of days. Oh man I’ve had some pretty funny experiences. Riding bikes in this crazy place is just an adventure.

Well Destiny will be getting baptized this Saturday. Hone had some big trails and decided not to get baptized which was heart breaking....but we just have to move on and don’t be too depressed when things happen like that. I know Heavenly Father will prepare a way. Well it just keeps on raining here....So much!! Rain Rain Rain hahaha. Well tell all the family hello for me! On both sides...I miss them all so much.

Thanks mom for your e mail. I love hearing all about the family and whats going on. I really miss ya. :) You should send some more pictures. I am going to send another DVD with more recent pictures with it soon. Have you gotten 2 DVDs from me?? I think so eh. Me and my companion made Lasagna last night for dinner....it wasn’t as good as yours. I miss your cooking mom! I just love everything about you.

Well until next week everyone be safe on all their trips and everything they are doing! I love you all very much. Just know I’m loving my mission and everything is just amazing.
Love your son, brother, and friend.
Elder Tyler Kitchen