FIRST LETTER!

Here is the first letter from Tyler! Enjoy...

Mom and Dad,

Hows it going down south? It has been pretty much raining the entire time. So it goes from 100 to 40 degrees, its pretty cold. But Wednesday was probably the longest day of my life. It seriously was forever long and today wasn't bad until after dinner, then it was so long. But I haven't had much time to do anything for myself. Our days are pretty much planned out for us. My companion is pretty cool, his name is Elder Bickley and is from Washington. He is kind of different but thats alright he is a great guy. I saw Chin the first day that I was here so that was pretty awesome. I went from being pretty sad to happy right as soon as I saw him. He is in the same building as me so I went and visited him tonight. I also see Chris and Derek quite a bit and I saw my roommate Aaron today for the first time. He gets to already leave to S.C., lucky English speakers.

We started our classes today and we learned the alphabet and how to read the scriptures. It is pretty tough stuff and sometimes you remember the words and other times you have no idea. But my teachers are great and the missionaries who have been here for a while helps us out quite a bit. My hall is all missionaries going to Ukraine and the Russians are downstairs and the spanish speakers are upstairs. They have this place pretty well organized. The food is decent and you do get to eat a lot of cereal. One of the missionaries in my district has 4 a meal. But I am the district leader. There are 10 missionaries including myself in there. So that is pretty cool I guess but I am grateful for the chance that I have to serve the missionaries in my district. Pray for them and me please when it comes to learning the language. Its tough and exciting at the same time. The Branch President just asked me on Wednesday after meeting him and the counselors to be the DL.

I am doing great thought and I slept pretty well the first night since I was so exhausted from everything.

But I love you guys and I did get those Dear Elder things. So spread the word about those. I can e-mail on Tuesdays. I love you guys and hope everything is going great.

Love,

Elder Hukill

CTAPEUWUHA= Elder

Pronounced ( Star-nay-shnah_

He's GONE!

We dropped Elder Hukill off at the MTC today at 12:00. He was extremely nervous and didn't eat all day so hopefully he got a snack or something before dinner. He ran into Brant Parker before he went in and he calmed his nerves a little bit I think. He also had Chris Cunningham to hold hands with as he went into the "missionary exit" door. It was a bittersweet day and we are now counting down the days until he comes home! It will be an unreal experience for him.

And that my friends, is what Russian looks like!

We will be posting his e-mails every week here, so if anyone is interested in how things are going for him just catch up on this and leave a comment if you want! We will copy and paste them to e-mails we send back. His MTC address is:

Elder Tyler Hukill
MTC Mailbox #273
UKR-DNI 0805
2005 N. 900 E.
Provo, UT 84604

He would love to hear from everybody so write away!!! Thanks for all of your support of Ty!

PS. I just found out if you go to dearelder.com you can send letters for free to the MTC and they get there the same day if you send it before noon or the next day after noon. Its easy to get an account and then you just type in his Mailbox number and thats about it!