Letter from Mark 21 Nov 2005

Dear Family

THe trip to the temple was great! there were 6 people from our ward puls us. the session that we went to was completly full, we didn't get back to our appartment until about midnight. the attitude of the members here is awesome. they love having a temple so close to them (a little under two hours drive away) before the chicago temple was built they had to go to the Washington D.C. temple. there are some people in the stake that go once a week. it has made me apreciate the temples that we have a lot more. they were talking of doing something cool for next year. someone said that in an old ward the got about 300 family names that someone had and did a thing where they wanted to "create a ward on the other side" and did all of the temple work for those 300 people. they said that they had a check list posted to get peole excited, and they would check stuff off as they got it done. i thought it was a neat idea.
this comming week is going to be interesting. wednesday is zone conference and we don't usually get much done then, on thaksgiving we dont work at all, and today we don't work much. on thanksgiving the ward is havng a football game that we are going to, then we are going over to a members home for thanksgiving dinner(the hearts will be there also) we can also aprove one pg movie to watch, and we can watch one sporting event. I am excited.
the next transfers are on the 1st of December, and i am hoping to stay, but i have been here for 3 transfers already, the last two missionaries trained here have both stayed for 4 transfers, so i am hoping the same will be for me. the longest they usually let missionaries stay in one area is 6 months or 4 transfers.
I Can not view pictures on my email. i have tried but it dosen't work.
I did finish Jesus the Christ, it is an awesome book. I borrowed my companions copy to finish it. by the end of the year i will have finnished all of the mission library on my mission except for the bible, after i do that i can approve other books to read.
The coat that i have Hs been great so far, on tuesday it snowed a little bit and got down to about 15 degrees. it has warmed up since then. and is now about 30 to 40 in the day, and if geels great after a couple days below 20 plus wind.
We did a lot of tracting this week. we got 22 hours, last transfer we got 21 hours, and got the top tracting that week in the mission, which is neet, but not somthing to brag about.
In one of your letters you asked what our schedule is like, it is usually about like this, 6:30-7:00 excersize 7:00-8:00 get ready and eat
8-9 personal study, 9-10 companion study 10am -9pm tract, visit less actives,recent converts, investigators, potential investigators, etc.9:00-9:30 plan for the next day. we get an hour for lunch and an hour for dinner. our dinner hour is usually at 8 if we dont have a member feeding us so we can stay in the area that we are working. usually after 4 or 5 it gets dark,so we try to stop by people then, and we don't tract after 8 because people don't like it. we also have 4 hours of planned service a week, an hour to an a hour and a half district meeting, 2 hour weekly planning session. every 3 weeks we meet with the zone for interviews with the president or zone conference, those take the place of district meeting.
The work in this area is slow, but I am loving it and the members here are great. I apreciate all of your letters. I wish that i had time to write to all of you personally, but I dodn't have that much time. I love all of you.

Elder Lundberg