Dear Family,
We had a great week. I am still in Plattevill with Elder Christensen. several missionaries were suprised to see us stay for a 3rd transfer but we are both excited to get to stay for christmas and new years.
The weather here has been great. we have yet to have any snow stick to the ground this winter. this past week it was up in the high 40's and even 50 a few days. someone told us there is a posibility of snow next weekend, just in time for christmas. I hope it waits till the last minute before christmas to snow.
I think on Christmas we are planning on calling in the morning. I was thinking probably about 10:00 am my time, 9:00 yours. If I decide to do a different time we can call on christmas eve, or christmas morning and schedule a time.
We are going to our Branch President's house for Christmas. on christmas we get to watch one sporting event and one movie. he told us that one of the tv stations is re-broadcasting the BYU-Utah game that day. we are excited about that one even though we already know the unfortunate outcome.
We had our branch Christmas party on saturday. It was great. Elder Christensen and i did The Who's on First again and did it better than at christmas zone conferance. all of the members complimented us on it afterward. it was a big hit. I got a Video of it on my camera(I will probably be sending it home soon.) we also found out yesterday that we are both singing in church next week. there is a member that has a bunch of music that we are going to pick from. she said she had a couple of good ideas.
I found out the the Elkhorn ward had their 4th convert baptism since i left.the most recent was on the 10th. His name Is Steve Russel. if you Look back to the letter i sent on the 10th of July I mentioned him then. he was a former investigator. i had a prompting to call our former investigators, after 30 to 40 minutes on the phone he was the only one to answer. he told us that normaly he wouldn't have been home but he was having health problems and couldn't go to work. about a month later he was back to work going crazy hours again and hard to contact, but because we were in contact before we knew when to contact him. so we found him at the perfect time. we gave him a health blessing in which we told him that he still had some time, but not too long. we also told him that if he was faithful he would join the church (at the time we thought that ment in the next life) It was great to hear that he was baptized and to see how i was aan instrument in helping bring someone into the church. i am now glad that i followed through with that prompting, even though at the time i was having a rough time with my companion.
Next week we have an investigator (Michelle Fernandez) getting baptized. we were a bit concirned that she would have problems with tithing, or the word of wisdom. but she was ok with both. he husband (Tex Fernandez) doesn't want to give up his coffee, but he wanted to wait on baptizm anyway, so that gives us time to work with him. i think when the time comes he will be willing to give up his coffee. the branch president joking with him yesterday said "you know tex, that is a big font, it costs a lot of money to fill that font. If you are planning on getting baptized in a couple weeks, you might as well do it next sunday with michelle and save the time and the money to do it again." it was funny. tex is a joker so he had a good laugh at it.
Thanks for all that you do for me. I love you all.
Elder Lundberg
18 December 2006
Letter from Mark 11 Dec 2006
Dear Family,
Well, Transfers are this week, we find out tomorrow what is happening, and then on the 14th everyone switches. our week has been filled with some big highs and lows. as we contacted all of our investigators, untill saturday they were all comming. On Saturday one after the other told us that they were not comming and only 2 of the 10 came to church. most had good excuses, and still want to come to church, but it was a bit frustrating. we did have a person show up to church who had just moved from Louisiana and is "church shopping" she didn't know anything about the church or anyone in the church, just decided to show up. we talked to her and will be going to visit them this week.
On saturday we had an appointment with Tex and Michelle Fernandez, orur 2 investigators that have been comming consistanly. we were planning to sat a baptimal date for Christmas eve with michelle. She wants to be baptized and tex said he will probably be baptized, but he wants to wait a little. the appointment was canciled but they said they would come to church so we planned on seting the date at church. before we could get to that she approached the Branch president and set her own date for christmas eve. we thought that was cool, and are very excited for her.
Today because it is the last preparation day of the transfer, we are going into madison and the whole zone is going to do preparation day together. it should be fun.
The members here have been great and even though it is a small branch the have done an amazing job of feeding us. especially recently because they know that one of us will be leaving. we have had a dinner appointment evey day for a while, and have even had some lunch and breakfast appointments. Elder christensen said about 4 prayers yesterday because it might be his last sunday here. it has been funny.
Christmas Zone Conferance went great. Elder Christensen and i did "Who's on First" we had a very fun time. in our zone skit, there was a part that E. Christensen and i were acting like we were tracting adn there were people that we tracted into that think we are pool salesmen and we think they are golden investigators. we talked to them about tithing and they thought monthly payments. It was funny. E Christensen had seen something like that before so we did what he could remember and made up the rest.
I got to go, Thank you for all of your love and support. I love you all
Elder Lundberg
Well, Transfers are this week, we find out tomorrow what is happening, and then on the 14th everyone switches. our week has been filled with some big highs and lows. as we contacted all of our investigators, untill saturday they were all comming. On Saturday one after the other told us that they were not comming and only 2 of the 10 came to church. most had good excuses, and still want to come to church, but it was a bit frustrating. we did have a person show up to church who had just moved from Louisiana and is "church shopping" she didn't know anything about the church or anyone in the church, just decided to show up. we talked to her and will be going to visit them this week.
On saturday we had an appointment with Tex and Michelle Fernandez, orur 2 investigators that have been comming consistanly. we were planning to sat a baptimal date for Christmas eve with michelle. She wants to be baptized and tex said he will probably be baptized, but he wants to wait a little. the appointment was canciled but they said they would come to church so we planned on seting the date at church. before we could get to that she approached the Branch president and set her own date for christmas eve. we thought that was cool, and are very excited for her.
Today because it is the last preparation day of the transfer, we are going into madison and the whole zone is going to do preparation day together. it should be fun.
The members here have been great and even though it is a small branch the have done an amazing job of feeding us. especially recently because they know that one of us will be leaving. we have had a dinner appointment evey day for a while, and have even had some lunch and breakfast appointments. Elder christensen said about 4 prayers yesterday because it might be his last sunday here. it has been funny.
Christmas Zone Conferance went great. Elder Christensen and i did "Who's on First" we had a very fun time. in our zone skit, there was a part that E. Christensen and i were acting like we were tracting adn there were people that we tracted into that think we are pool salesmen and we think they are golden investigators. we talked to them about tithing and they thought monthly payments. It was funny. E Christensen had seen something like that before so we did what he could remember and made up the rest.
I got to go, Thank you for all of your love and support. I love you all
Elder Lundberg
04 December 2006
Letter from Mark 04 December 2006
Dear Family,
Things continue to move forward here, and we are having a great time. just this past week(wednesday i believe) there was a huge snowstorm that droped 17 inches not to far south of here and 10" in the milwaukee area, and several in some of the sothern parts of the madison stake, including where the stake president lives. Madison didn't get hit hard, platteville didn't get any. we have been happy for that. The airport in chicago closed because it got so much snow,or so i am told. Yesterday was stake Conferance and the stake president said that he was contemplating about moving staked conferance while driving to work. at work he got a call from a secretary at the office of the 12 asking about the condition and telling him that Pres. Packer and Elder Oaks had been concirned and gave him permission to postpone it a week. he decided not to and laughed at what the members would have thought if he did with the fact that madison didn't get much snow. it was a great stake conferance.
Christmas Zone Conferance is on Wednesday. 3 zones(about 50 people) are all getting together. It should be fun. part of zone conferance is each zone prepares a zone skit. elder christensen and i wer talking about good ideas on what to do and I thought of doing a spoof on the "how to survive worst case scenario's" and do a missionary version of that. It should be funny. there is also a tallent show in which elder Christensen and i are going to try to do "Who's on First" and i am also playing the piano. It will be fun to be able to see a lot of missionaries.
Thanks for the Christmas Package. That is very neet. I realy like the John Schmidt CD. I had heard part of it because a missionary in my district had it.
The work here continues to move forward at a rapid pace. because of stake conferance we have been committing our investgators to come on the 10th. we have now had 10 investigators we are teaching commit to comming then. We are way excited. we have been very blessed recently. it would be impressive to get half that many. our goal this week is to not give out investigators any excuse to not come, which means we will be calling them multiple times this week.
we have a member that feeds us most sundays, and he lives in a town of probably 3,000 and they are the only members. we havew 5 investigators from that town that committed to comming, when we told him that he said that he had been a bit frustrated being the only members in that area and he had been praying for more, he said that it was and answer to prayer that more and more people in that area were listening to us.
transfers is comming up on the 14th, and we would like to stay together, however it isn't likely. usually missionaries will be together for a max of 2 transfers(3 months) and we have been together that long, however sometimes president has extended that. We have asked him to stay (which is the only way we would have a posibility) and yesterday a couple of members tracked him down to tell him that they want us to stay. if nothing else it is a good testimony to us that the members here like us and trust us. we have been working hard in this area, and things have been taking off. I remember when i was in Prairie Du Chien, not much was happening in here in platteville, and the missionaries here were being lazy. the differance between now and then is amazing. Elder Christensen and i get along great, we are working hard, we have the trust of the members, because of that they have been reffering their friends there have been 2 baptisms since August( when E Christensen got here) and more are to follow. I love the blessings that come from hard work.
Thank you for all of you love and support. know that i am working hard and that i love you all.
Elder Lundberg
Things continue to move forward here, and we are having a great time. just this past week(wednesday i believe) there was a huge snowstorm that droped 17 inches not to far south of here and 10" in the milwaukee area, and several in some of the sothern parts of the madison stake, including where the stake president lives. Madison didn't get hit hard, platteville didn't get any. we have been happy for that. The airport in chicago closed because it got so much snow,or so i am told. Yesterday was stake Conferance and the stake president said that he was contemplating about moving staked conferance while driving to work. at work he got a call from a secretary at the office of the 12 asking about the condition and telling him that Pres. Packer and Elder Oaks had been concirned and gave him permission to postpone it a week. he decided not to and laughed at what the members would have thought if he did with the fact that madison didn't get much snow. it was a great stake conferance.
Christmas Zone Conferance is on Wednesday. 3 zones(about 50 people) are all getting together. It should be fun. part of zone conferance is each zone prepares a zone skit. elder christensen and i wer talking about good ideas on what to do and I thought of doing a spoof on the "how to survive worst case scenario's" and do a missionary version of that. It should be funny. there is also a tallent show in which elder Christensen and i are going to try to do "Who's on First" and i am also playing the piano. It will be fun to be able to see a lot of missionaries.
Thanks for the Christmas Package. That is very neet. I realy like the John Schmidt CD. I had heard part of it because a missionary in my district had it.
The work here continues to move forward at a rapid pace. because of stake conferance we have been committing our investgators to come on the 10th. we have now had 10 investigators we are teaching commit to comming then. We are way excited. we have been very blessed recently. it would be impressive to get half that many. our goal this week is to not give out investigators any excuse to not come, which means we will be calling them multiple times this week.
we have a member that feeds us most sundays, and he lives in a town of probably 3,000 and they are the only members. we havew 5 investigators from that town that committed to comming, when we told him that he said that he had been a bit frustrated being the only members in that area and he had been praying for more, he said that it was and answer to prayer that more and more people in that area were listening to us.
transfers is comming up on the 14th, and we would like to stay together, however it isn't likely. usually missionaries will be together for a max of 2 transfers(3 months) and we have been together that long, however sometimes president has extended that. We have asked him to stay (which is the only way we would have a posibility) and yesterday a couple of members tracked him down to tell him that they want us to stay. if nothing else it is a good testimony to us that the members here like us and trust us. we have been working hard in this area, and things have been taking off. I remember when i was in Prairie Du Chien, not much was happening in here in platteville, and the missionaries here were being lazy. the differance between now and then is amazing. Elder Christensen and i get along great, we are working hard, we have the trust of the members, because of that they have been reffering their friends there have been 2 baptisms since August( when E Christensen got here) and more are to follow. I love the blessings that come from hard work.
Thank you for all of you love and support. know that i am working hard and that i love you all.
Elder Lundberg
Letter from Mark 27 Nov 2006
Dear Family,
This week has been good. Thanksgiving was great. a family named the Roberts had us over for dinner. we get to watch a PG movie on thanksgivin, Christmas, and New Years. we watched and old movie called "The Court Jesture." It is one of Elder Christensen's Favorite Movies. It was very funny. We had a family that just moved in and is good friends of the Branch President invite us over for pie that evening. It was a ton of fun.
On Thanksgiving we also get to watch a sporting event, we tried to switch that to saturday to watch the Utes vs BYU, but couldn't. The Branch President is a Huge BYU Fan and he came up to me just before church with a huge smile. He told me it was 33-31 for BYU and said "it was a Game for the ages." after church e told me about the game in detail (he was very excited to tell me) he said after the utes come back from being down , and their touchdown at the end of the game scared him. he said he thought "not again, How am i going to Explain this to Elder Lundberg" that made me laugh because he has been telling me the whole time i have been here that BYU is going to win. he then explained the last drive of BYU and the Last play with 3 seconds left. sounded like a good game. He showed me a picture of a BYU player that use to be in this mission (Bower, he is a QB) he had Beck(?) on his shoulders(the QB that through the winning tougchdown.)
the past week or so we have been having great weather, it has been up in the 50's, or close to that every day, i hope it will last, but i think it is going to start getting colder. I am hoping that i will get to stay in Platteville at least through January. Platteville is one of the most southern parts of the mission, so it would be nice to stay Here for the worst of winter.
Next week is stake conferance for us, and then there is one more sunday after that befor transfers(Dec 14) we are hoping to get 7 investigators to church on that sunday. we talked to 7 people between friday and saturday that all told us they would come to church, although not all could come yesterday. Things have been going very well here in platteville,we are teaching a good amount, the members trust us. we are being very blessed.
Sounds like things are going well. I hope that dad and alex get better quickly. have a wonderful week. I am working hard, and love you all.
Elder Lundberg
This week has been good. Thanksgiving was great. a family named the Roberts had us over for dinner. we get to watch a PG movie on thanksgivin, Christmas, and New Years. we watched and old movie called "The Court Jesture." It is one of Elder Christensen's Favorite Movies. It was very funny. We had a family that just moved in and is good friends of the Branch President invite us over for pie that evening. It was a ton of fun.
On Thanksgiving we also get to watch a sporting event, we tried to switch that to saturday to watch the Utes vs BYU, but couldn't. The Branch President is a Huge BYU Fan and he came up to me just before church with a huge smile. He told me it was 33-31 for BYU and said "it was a Game for the ages." after church e told me about the game in detail (he was very excited to tell me) he said after the utes come back from being down , and their touchdown at the end of the game scared him. he said he thought "not again, How am i going to Explain this to Elder Lundberg" that made me laugh because he has been telling me the whole time i have been here that BYU is going to win. he then explained the last drive of BYU and the Last play with 3 seconds left. sounded like a good game. He showed me a picture of a BYU player that use to be in this mission (Bower, he is a QB) he had Beck(?) on his shoulders(the QB that through the winning tougchdown.)
the past week or so we have been having great weather, it has been up in the 50's, or close to that every day, i hope it will last, but i think it is going to start getting colder. I am hoping that i will get to stay in Platteville at least through January. Platteville is one of the most southern parts of the mission, so it would be nice to stay Here for the worst of winter.
Next week is stake conferance for us, and then there is one more sunday after that befor transfers(Dec 14) we are hoping to get 7 investigators to church on that sunday. we talked to 7 people between friday and saturday that all told us they would come to church, although not all could come yesterday. Things have been going very well here in platteville,we are teaching a good amount, the members trust us. we are being very blessed.
Sounds like things are going well. I hope that dad and alex get better quickly. have a wonderful week. I am working hard, and love you all.
Elder Lundberg
24 November 2006
RISE & SHOUT!!! GO MIGHTY COUGARS!!!
Rise all loyal Cougars and hurl your challenge to the foe.
We will fight, day or night, rain or snow.
Loyal, strong, and true
Wear the white and blue.
While we sing, get set to spring.
Come on Cougars it's up to you. Oh!
Chorus:
Rise and shout, the Cougars are out
along the trail to fame and glory.
Rise and shout, our cheers will ring out
As you unfold your victr'y story.
On you go to vanquish the foe for Alma Mater's sons and daughters.
As we join in song, in praise of you, our faith is strong.
We'll raise our colors high in the blue
And cheer our Cougars of BYU.
22 November 2006
Letter from Mark 20 Nov 2006
Dear Family,
Things continue to go well. Elder Chritensen and i continue to get great comments from both members and non-members about how well we work together and how much they have enjoyed having us. We even impressed President Hunt with some stories of how well Platteville is going and he said that we are a good team. We are trying to use all of this as evidence to President Hunt that we should stay together for another Transfer. It is great because our strengths and weaknesses match so that we have been good at helping eachother out. that is part of the reason that we work together well, because between the two of us, Just about everything gets done, and done well.
I went on exchanges to madison after interviews on tuesday. I have found that i'm not as comfortable in the city as i once was. I have been out in the country among all of the farmers my whole mission that i am not use to all of the people in the city. I am actually starting to like being out in these small towns. after 4 areas, and 16 months the largest town in any of my area's is 13,000. I am now use to 30 min drives in the farm country to get to the town that we want to work, so driving in madison, not leaving the city at all was a bit different. I have also found it entertaining that i have stayed just about as far south in the mission as you can. 3 of my area's have bordered the missions southern border, and one was a 45 min drive to the southern border. Over all it has been great.
Thank you for the Pre-Med information, it was great. it helps me get a good idea of what i would be getting myself into if i go that route.
We are getting excited for thanksgiving. on Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years, we don't work. We get to watch any G or PG movie of our choice. a Member here in town invited us over for Thanksgiving, and there are a few members that told us to stop by and visit if we have time. it should be fun.
It is good to hear things are going well there. Hope you have a Great Thanksgiving. Happy Birthday mom. thanks for all that you do. I love you all.
Elder Lundberg
Things continue to go well. Elder Chritensen and i continue to get great comments from both members and non-members about how well we work together and how much they have enjoyed having us. We even impressed President Hunt with some stories of how well Platteville is going and he said that we are a good team. We are trying to use all of this as evidence to President Hunt that we should stay together for another Transfer. It is great because our strengths and weaknesses match so that we have been good at helping eachother out. that is part of the reason that we work together well, because between the two of us, Just about everything gets done, and done well.
I went on exchanges to madison after interviews on tuesday. I have found that i'm not as comfortable in the city as i once was. I have been out in the country among all of the farmers my whole mission that i am not use to all of the people in the city. I am actually starting to like being out in these small towns. after 4 areas, and 16 months the largest town in any of my area's is 13,000. I am now use to 30 min drives in the farm country to get to the town that we want to work, so driving in madison, not leaving the city at all was a bit different. I have also found it entertaining that i have stayed just about as far south in the mission as you can. 3 of my area's have bordered the missions southern border, and one was a 45 min drive to the southern border. Over all it has been great.
Thank you for the Pre-Med information, it was great. it helps me get a good idea of what i would be getting myself into if i go that route.
We are getting excited for thanksgiving. on Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years, we don't work. We get to watch any G or PG movie of our choice. a Member here in town invited us over for Thanksgiving, and there are a few members that told us to stop by and visit if we have time. it should be fun.
It is good to hear things are going well there. Hope you have a Great Thanksgiving. Happy Birthday mom. thanks for all that you do. I love you all.
Elder Lundberg
Cubicle Decorations by Gerald
In preparation for this years big game between the Utes & Coogs, Merilee decorated my cube. Go Utes!
14 November 2006
Letter from Mark 13 Nov 2006
Dear Family,
Things have been going great. Last week a couple named Tex and Michelle fernandez came to church after a coworker that is a member invited them. Tex said last week that he had been to just about every church except the Jehovah's Witnesses, which he wouldn't go to. he figured he should attend this one. he is a nice guy, and fed us dinner last sunday along with the members that invited him to church. we had thought that he was nice, and maybe in time would join, but didn't haveany short term goals for him. this week, to the shock of Elder Christensen and I, Tex and Michelle came to church again. In gospel essentials the teacher asked tex to give the closing prayer. It was amazing! he touched on many points including giving thanks for bringing him and his wife to the church, and asking to help them to join themselves with his church. Later we found out that michelle wants to become a member. Tex said that he can usually read people (if they are lying or not) and he said he knew what the gospel essentials teacher was saying came from his heart. Both my companion and I have been very excited, allong with the Ebery family (the ones that invited them to chruch.) We got a referal a couple days ago for someone who saw a tv ad for a Book of Mormon and called it. when someone calls, they talk to missionaries at the mtc, and they have the choice to have it sent in the mail, or to have missionaries bring it by. all that information gets sent to whatever mission it is in, and the office either sends the item, or gives the information to the missionaries who cover the area the peson lives in. so the fact that we got this was exciting because someone asked us to come and deliver a book of mormon and talk to them. we saw him briefly last night. He was a student at the UW extention here, but is taking the semester off. we didn't have much time to talk to him then but we are going back today. he told us he knew nothing about our church, but he wasn't very happy with his at the moment and was having doubts about god. He then said something that struck me, he said, "I do know there is a god there" but explained he was having hard times. he was open to praying and he commited to praying to ask if god loved him. being there i recognised the light of christ in him, and that he really wants the truth. we are excited about him aswell, his name is John Legassic. Both elder christensen and I have been loving platteville because of all of the great things going on here. we recently were talking with some members of the branch that was working with a friend to have us teach, and told us that she was glad to have missionaries in the branch that she knows she can trust. she said some of the prievious elders were not ones that she would want to teach her friend that has a lot of potential, but could easily be scared away. It was great to hear that we have the trust of the members, i'm sure that is part of the reason that we have had so much sucess recently and are continuing to be blessed.
It snowed a little on thursday, and has since warmed a litted and melted the snow. wednesday it was in the 70's so it was a bit of a rude awakening that winter is comming.
I have started to have problems with my shoes again. my old pair is starting to have the same problems as the first, the stiching on the side is splitting. at first i figured i wouldn't go through the hassel again, but not the new shoes you sent me are starting to peal on the toes. it looks o.k. if I polish them, but still not amazing and it isn't something that i want to wear in public much. i figured that between the two problem they might be willing to refun one ( the old ones hopfully) if not i can last, these new ones will stay together, and i have the pair that i only wear to meetings, but they should be willing to replace them. i figure it is sad that neither one of the 2 pairs i started with lasted 2 years.
Things have been going well and i appreciate all that you do for me. I love you all.
Elder Lundberg
Things have been going great. Last week a couple named Tex and Michelle fernandez came to church after a coworker that is a member invited them. Tex said last week that he had been to just about every church except the Jehovah's Witnesses, which he wouldn't go to. he figured he should attend this one. he is a nice guy, and fed us dinner last sunday along with the members that invited him to church. we had thought that he was nice, and maybe in time would join, but didn't haveany short term goals for him. this week, to the shock of Elder Christensen and I, Tex and Michelle came to church again. In gospel essentials the teacher asked tex to give the closing prayer. It was amazing! he touched on many points including giving thanks for bringing him and his wife to the church, and asking to help them to join themselves with his church. Later we found out that michelle wants to become a member. Tex said that he can usually read people (if they are lying or not) and he said he knew what the gospel essentials teacher was saying came from his heart. Both my companion and I have been very excited, allong with the Ebery family (the ones that invited them to chruch.) We got a referal a couple days ago for someone who saw a tv ad for a Book of Mormon and called it. when someone calls, they talk to missionaries at the mtc, and they have the choice to have it sent in the mail, or to have missionaries bring it by. all that information gets sent to whatever mission it is in, and the office either sends the item, or gives the information to the missionaries who cover the area the peson lives in. so the fact that we got this was exciting because someone asked us to come and deliver a book of mormon and talk to them. we saw him briefly last night. He was a student at the UW extention here, but is taking the semester off. we didn't have much time to talk to him then but we are going back today. he told us he knew nothing about our church, but he wasn't very happy with his at the moment and was having doubts about god. He then said something that struck me, he said, "I do know there is a god there" but explained he was having hard times. he was open to praying and he commited to praying to ask if god loved him. being there i recognised the light of christ in him, and that he really wants the truth. we are excited about him aswell, his name is John Legassic. Both elder christensen and I have been loving platteville because of all of the great things going on here. we recently were talking with some members of the branch that was working with a friend to have us teach, and told us that she was glad to have missionaries in the branch that she knows she can trust. she said some of the prievious elders were not ones that she would want to teach her friend that has a lot of potential, but could easily be scared away. It was great to hear that we have the trust of the members, i'm sure that is part of the reason that we have had so much sucess recently and are continuing to be blessed.
It snowed a little on thursday, and has since warmed a litted and melted the snow. wednesday it was in the 70's so it was a bit of a rude awakening that winter is comming.
I have started to have problems with my shoes again. my old pair is starting to have the same problems as the first, the stiching on the side is splitting. at first i figured i wouldn't go through the hassel again, but not the new shoes you sent me are starting to peal on the toes. it looks o.k. if I polish them, but still not amazing and it isn't something that i want to wear in public much. i figured that between the two problem they might be willing to refun one ( the old ones hopfully) if not i can last, these new ones will stay together, and i have the pair that i only wear to meetings, but they should be willing to replace them. i figure it is sad that neither one of the 2 pairs i started with lasted 2 years.
Things have been going well and i appreciate all that you do for me. I love you all.
Elder Lundberg
06 November 2006
Halloween at Merilee's
Hey, all: Just a couple of pics from Halloween. Kaylin turned out to be a trick or treating animal-- she just went and went!Enjoy!
Letter from Mark 06 Nov 2006
Dear Family,
This week has been good. both elder Christensen and i are together untill December 14th (I think) Haloween was great, we went into madison and had a huge district meeting, some carved pumpkins, we played disk golf, and a little ultimate frisbe, and several other indoor games. it was tons of fun. the pumpkin pie we made was great. it was a bit differnet than normal pumpkin pie but we enjoyed it.
We Recently met a guy tracting named Bob Aylesworth. he is 75, he loves to talk, he is a methodest. the first visit we offered to come back and rake his leafs, and he acctually accepted the offer, most people will not let us help. so when we went bakc he tried to pay uas and was shocked when we said no, and wasreally wanting to compensate us so we told him he could feed us lunch in return of raking his leafs. we went back friday to finish raking and we now have a deal set up where he will come up with "chores" for us and will feed us diner in return. he is a pharmacologist (tests drugs to see how they work) and while we were there he told me he asked if i was good at math and chemistery, he said he thought thatfrom talking with me. he then told me i should go into the medical field. he said he had worked with a lot of medical students and he thought that i would be realy good at it. he also told me that after talking to his son, a pharmacist, that after 7 years of school pharmacist's can make 80 to 120 thousand per year after they graduate. I am starting to think that doesn't sound too bad, not just for the money either. he is a funny guy. he picked out a lot of my different qualities without me telling him. he did the same with elder Christensen, but not as much.
We has 6 non-members come to church yesterday! it was great. there is a university of madison extention here in platteville, and 4 students from their taking a religion class had to attend a servce of a church they wanted to study. our gospel essentialls class took up both sunday school and priesthood. It was taught by a new teacher that just moved from idaho, and is also a former bishop. he did an awesome job. there was also a member who brought a co-worker and his wife to church. the 4 college students enjoied it, but probably won't be coming back. i'm not sure what the members friend thought, but he said he had viseted most other churches so he felt he should come and visit this one.
The time is really flying, today is my 16 month mark. i am now the age that Elder Hodgson was when he started to train me. elder Sieler was also 16 months when i got with him. as i look back it is amazing to see how far i have come and how much i have learned. Missions are great.
thank you for all of your prayers and support, I love you all.
Elder Lundberg
This week has been good. both elder Christensen and i are together untill December 14th (I think) Haloween was great, we went into madison and had a huge district meeting, some carved pumpkins, we played disk golf, and a little ultimate frisbe, and several other indoor games. it was tons of fun. the pumpkin pie we made was great. it was a bit differnet than normal pumpkin pie but we enjoyed it.
We Recently met a guy tracting named Bob Aylesworth. he is 75, he loves to talk, he is a methodest. the first visit we offered to come back and rake his leafs, and he acctually accepted the offer, most people will not let us help. so when we went bakc he tried to pay uas and was shocked when we said no, and wasreally wanting to compensate us so we told him he could feed us lunch in return of raking his leafs. we went back friday to finish raking and we now have a deal set up where he will come up with "chores" for us and will feed us diner in return. he is a pharmacologist (tests drugs to see how they work) and while we were there he told me he asked if i was good at math and chemistery, he said he thought thatfrom talking with me. he then told me i should go into the medical field. he said he had worked with a lot of medical students and he thought that i would be realy good at it. he also told me that after talking to his son, a pharmacist, that after 7 years of school pharmacist's can make 80 to 120 thousand per year after they graduate. I am starting to think that doesn't sound too bad, not just for the money either. he is a funny guy. he picked out a lot of my different qualities without me telling him. he did the same with elder Christensen, but not as much.
We has 6 non-members come to church yesterday! it was great. there is a university of madison extention here in platteville, and 4 students from their taking a religion class had to attend a servce of a church they wanted to study. our gospel essentialls class took up both sunday school and priesthood. It was taught by a new teacher that just moved from idaho, and is also a former bishop. he did an awesome job. there was also a member who brought a co-worker and his wife to church. the 4 college students enjoied it, but probably won't be coming back. i'm not sure what the members friend thought, but he said he had viseted most other churches so he felt he should come and visit this one.
The time is really flying, today is my 16 month mark. i am now the age that Elder Hodgson was when he started to train me. elder Sieler was also 16 months when i got with him. as i look back it is amazing to see how far i have come and how much i have learned. Missions are great.
thank you for all of your prayers and support, I love you all.
Elder Lundberg
04 November 2006
30 October 2006
Letter from Mark 30 Oct 2006
Dear Family,
Things have been great this week. Tami Gabel was baptised on thursday. Her brother in-law came from Michigan to do the baptism & confirmation. It was neet to see someone from start to baptism. she has been very excited about the whole thing. she started coming to church about the same time that i came to Platteville. she recognized that religion was missing in her life and wanted to get back into it. she quit smoking just before we met her, and now is reading anything she can get her hands on. It has been great to see.
I started at the beginging of the monthreading the Book of Mormon trying to finish it quickly, shortly after starting i decided that i was going to read it durring the month of October. I am now on track to finnish tomorrow. all I have left is Moroni. I have loved reading it fast and have had a lot of different things stick out to me that I probably wouldn't have noticed going through at a slower pace. I have also seen the blessings pres. Hinckley promised last year to those who read the book of mormon by the end of the year.
The District leader stuff hasn't been too bad. the hardest part in the 1 hour district Meetings on Tuesdays, but those are even starting to come. the one i did this week was on teaching the Basics. lots of missionaries will overcomplicate things trying to teach all they know when that just isn't necessary. there is a quote in "Preach my gospel" that says something to the effect of it is true intelegence to take a complicated principle and unfold it so that a child could understand t. so we applied that and went through more complicated principles to teach and made a list of what missionaries offen teach, then compared it to preach my gospel and saw if it mentioned different points of a principal or not. if not it doesn't need to be taught in many situations. I thought it turned out well, and Elder Chritensen really liked it and told me it was one of the best District Meetings he has had. Being a district leader is pushing me to see things in a new way (like teaching) and makes me thing how i can help my district to be better at some principal. i have really learned a lot.
Transfers are on thursday (2nd) And i will most likely be staying. we are hoping that we will both stay. we are enjoying being together. Elder Chritensed really wants to stay for christmas, but doesn't think he will make it that long. he is hoping for at least Thansgiving here.
On saturday one of the members of the branch gave us a pumpkin, and this morning we used the pumpkin to make pumpkin pie out of scratch. we have it all done now, we are just waiting for it to completely cool, and it will be ready to eat. it made a lot more than we had originally thought. we could have gotten at least 4 pies out of it. we left a large portion of the pumpkin alone, made one pie(we only had one crust) and put all the extra into a big pan and cooked it that way. It was fun to make and we are both excited to eat it. It was one of those fun experiences to say that i have done, but we had a member tell us just before we did it that it realy wasn't worth the effort. we enjoied making it, but i now see what she ment. now that i have done it, I probably wont make another one from a pumpkin any time soon.
tomorrow because it is halloween we are meeting all of the madison elders (i think about 30) in madison and are having a big zone district meeting and games. it should be fun. we are excited to go. it should be fun.
Well, i got to go. I got the package, thanks for all you do. I love you all.
Elder Lundberg
Things have been great this week. Tami Gabel was baptised on thursday. Her brother in-law came from Michigan to do the baptism & confirmation. It was neet to see someone from start to baptism. she has been very excited about the whole thing. she started coming to church about the same time that i came to Platteville. she recognized that religion was missing in her life and wanted to get back into it. she quit smoking just before we met her, and now is reading anything she can get her hands on. It has been great to see.
I started at the beginging of the monthreading the Book of Mormon trying to finish it quickly, shortly after starting i decided that i was going to read it durring the month of October. I am now on track to finnish tomorrow. all I have left is Moroni. I have loved reading it fast and have had a lot of different things stick out to me that I probably wouldn't have noticed going through at a slower pace. I have also seen the blessings pres. Hinckley promised last year to those who read the book of mormon by the end of the year.
The District leader stuff hasn't been too bad. the hardest part in the 1 hour district Meetings on Tuesdays, but those are even starting to come. the one i did this week was on teaching the Basics. lots of missionaries will overcomplicate things trying to teach all they know when that just isn't necessary. there is a quote in "Preach my gospel" that says something to the effect of it is true intelegence to take a complicated principle and unfold it so that a child could understand t. so we applied that and went through more complicated principles to teach and made a list of what missionaries offen teach, then compared it to preach my gospel and saw if it mentioned different points of a principal or not. if not it doesn't need to be taught in many situations. I thought it turned out well, and Elder Chritensen really liked it and told me it was one of the best District Meetings he has had. Being a district leader is pushing me to see things in a new way (like teaching) and makes me thing how i can help my district to be better at some principal. i have really learned a lot.
Transfers are on thursday (2nd) And i will most likely be staying. we are hoping that we will both stay. we are enjoying being together. Elder Chritensed really wants to stay for christmas, but doesn't think he will make it that long. he is hoping for at least Thansgiving here.
On saturday one of the members of the branch gave us a pumpkin, and this morning we used the pumpkin to make pumpkin pie out of scratch. we have it all done now, we are just waiting for it to completely cool, and it will be ready to eat. it made a lot more than we had originally thought. we could have gotten at least 4 pies out of it. we left a large portion of the pumpkin alone, made one pie(we only had one crust) and put all the extra into a big pan and cooked it that way. It was fun to make and we are both excited to eat it. It was one of those fun experiences to say that i have done, but we had a member tell us just before we did it that it realy wasn't worth the effort. we enjoied making it, but i now see what she ment. now that i have done it, I probably wont make another one from a pumpkin any time soon.
tomorrow because it is halloween we are meeting all of the madison elders (i think about 30) in madison and are having a big zone district meeting and games. it should be fun. we are excited to go. it should be fun.
Well, i got to go. I got the package, thanks for all you do. I love you all.
Elder Lundberg
23 October 2006
Pikachu Chick
Merilee says, "thought you'd get a kick out of this! So, this is my wonderful daughter getting a fantastic education at BYU-I. She was getting ready to run in the traditional ward relay race. Their ward's color is yellow- hence the horrid outfit. Pretty hilarious!!! by the way, since she had a lightning bolt tail, and a sleek, aerodynamic helmet, her team won for the fourth straight semester. Yikes!"
Letter from Mark 23 Oct 2006
Dear Family,
It is neet to hear all of the expieriences everyone is having with wisconsin. It truly is a small world. Elder Free is my Zone Leader right now, and elder Frandsen came out with me, but they are not serving together, however they are both in madison, i will have to talk to them to see if they know Brett Hales
Things ahve been going great here. We are Preparing for Tami Gabel's Baptism on thursday (26th) her brother in law is coming out to do the baptism and confirmation. she has been very excited and it has been a great blessing to watch her prepare herself fot this. it is amazing how the gospel can change people.
One of the members in our branch has a huge garden that he grows all kinds of squash's and pumpkins and such. he recently gave us a spaghetti squash that week cooked and ate. He grows Pumpkins that are supposed to be good for pies that he might be giving us. my companion and i are excited to try to make a pumpkin pie. the member told us the whole process on how to make them. my companion has a few things that he likes to cook, he makes a biscut bread occasionally, and we have done some things with the crockpot. it has been fun to have real food that we make.
This week Elder Christensen and i made up a "word of the day" he pressed play on his tape recorder for a second and whatever it sounded like became the word of the day. when it wasn't a real word we decided that the fake word was the word of the day. the first one was "Permandigashe", meaning -of or relating to squid, then my companion said it should be from an old lanugage so people couldn't look it up. so he said, how about an old kiwian Language derived from "Perma"- meaning squishy, and "gashek"-meaning fish. We had a great time doing it. then we started to tell people and no one questioned us. one person said "squishy fish, i can see that." It was all i could do not to laugh when our member said that. we told probably 5-10 people. it was halarious. It is great to be able to goof off and have fun while being a missionary.
The time in this area is just flying. I have been here a month now and transfers is comming up in a week and a half (november 2) we are hoping to stay, but not sure. Elder Christiensen wants to stay here for chrismas, and has asked president Hunt a few times to let him stay. If he does that there is a posibiliy that i could leave either this transfer, or next and he will stay.
I have started to collect a lot of differant mind puzzels, like wood things that you have to take apart and then put back together, and also several differant metal puzzels that you have to take two things hooked together apart, or take something off. It is funny because every time another missionary sees them they try to figure it out, and there are a few that most figure out but there are a couple that almost no one can figure out. some times they will try to tell me they are imposible, and without showing them how to do it i will take them apart. some of them took me a lot of thinking and time to put them back together (when i found them they were apart,) but i can do all of them now, and there are a few that most people won't even attempt.
Thank you for all that you do. I love you all.
Elder Lundberg
It is neet to hear all of the expieriences everyone is having with wisconsin. It truly is a small world. Elder Free is my Zone Leader right now, and elder Frandsen came out with me, but they are not serving together, however they are both in madison, i will have to talk to them to see if they know Brett Hales
Things ahve been going great here. We are Preparing for Tami Gabel's Baptism on thursday (26th) her brother in law is coming out to do the baptism and confirmation. she has been very excited and it has been a great blessing to watch her prepare herself fot this. it is amazing how the gospel can change people.
One of the members in our branch has a huge garden that he grows all kinds of squash's and pumpkins and such. he recently gave us a spaghetti squash that week cooked and ate. He grows Pumpkins that are supposed to be good for pies that he might be giving us. my companion and i are excited to try to make a pumpkin pie. the member told us the whole process on how to make them. my companion has a few things that he likes to cook, he makes a biscut bread occasionally, and we have done some things with the crockpot. it has been fun to have real food that we make.
This week Elder Christensen and i made up a "word of the day" he pressed play on his tape recorder for a second and whatever it sounded like became the word of the day. when it wasn't a real word we decided that the fake word was the word of the day. the first one was "Permandigashe", meaning -of or relating to squid, then my companion said it should be from an old lanugage so people couldn't look it up. so he said, how about an old kiwian Language derived from "Perma"- meaning squishy, and "gashek"-meaning fish. We had a great time doing it. then we started to tell people and no one questioned us. one person said "squishy fish, i can see that." It was all i could do not to laugh when our member said that. we told probably 5-10 people. it was halarious. It is great to be able to goof off and have fun while being a missionary.
The time in this area is just flying. I have been here a month now and transfers is comming up in a week and a half (november 2) we are hoping to stay, but not sure. Elder Christiensen wants to stay here for chrismas, and has asked president Hunt a few times to let him stay. If he does that there is a posibiliy that i could leave either this transfer, or next and he will stay.
I have started to collect a lot of differant mind puzzels, like wood things that you have to take apart and then put back together, and also several differant metal puzzels that you have to take two things hooked together apart, or take something off. It is funny because every time another missionary sees them they try to figure it out, and there are a few that most figure out but there are a couple that almost no one can figure out. some times they will try to tell me they are imposible, and without showing them how to do it i will take them apart. some of them took me a lot of thinking and time to put them back together (when i found them they were apart,) but i can do all of them now, and there are a few that most people won't even attempt.
Thank you for all that you do. I love you all.
Elder Lundberg
16 October 2006
Letter from Mark 16 Oct 2006
Dear Family,
This Week has been great. On of our investigators, Tami Gables, called us up this week and wanted to set a date for baptism for the 26th of this month. her brother-in-law is comming down from out of town to do the Baptism. she is very excited, along with us. She loves learning about the gospel. she will be good to work with in getting referals because she is new to it and absolutly loves it.
One thing I don't kow if I have told you or not, but i thought it was cool. Platteville is the Home of the Worlds Largest "M" they have a Huge "M" on the biggest hill they can find. I find it Funny that dispite the fact that Platteville has no m in it, it still has the largest M. There is a University of Wisconsin extention here in platteville and it use to be a mining college. but they aren't anymore, and they even changed from the miners to the pioneer's. so now they have no connection to the M other than History. It is funny. We like to say "M stands for Platteville"
This past week has been cold. we have gotten down to the 20's a few times this week. and even found a blanket of snow on the ground on morning, it has since melted though. in some ways i am excited for winter, but in others i don't want it to come yet.
Elder Stephen E. Snow came on tuesday, and we had a little ofver half of the mission all together in milwaukee. the other half met on monday. It was great. he had everyon prepare a 5 min talk of faith, and randomly called up 3 people to give theirs, then he evaluated them and we talked about good and bad things that they did, and how to be better public speakers. It was really neat. he also talked about 4 things we can do to help us have the spirit with us, adn can feel it more. he said, prayer, scripture study, obedience, and service. he then talked on the importance of each one. it was great. they try to get a general authority out about once a year, so unless i get realy lucky this was probably the last one that will come out to visit the mission while i am here. I really enjoyed it.
I have been loving it out here. missionary work is great. I love you all.
Elder Lundberg
This Week has been great. On of our investigators, Tami Gables, called us up this week and wanted to set a date for baptism for the 26th of this month. her brother-in-law is comming down from out of town to do the Baptism. she is very excited, along with us. She loves learning about the gospel. she will be good to work with in getting referals because she is new to it and absolutly loves it.
One thing I don't kow if I have told you or not, but i thought it was cool. Platteville is the Home of the Worlds Largest "M" they have a Huge "M" on the biggest hill they can find. I find it Funny that dispite the fact that Platteville has no m in it, it still has the largest M. There is a University of Wisconsin extention here in platteville and it use to be a mining college. but they aren't anymore, and they even changed from the miners to the pioneer's. so now they have no connection to the M other than History. It is funny. We like to say "M stands for Platteville"
This past week has been cold. we have gotten down to the 20's a few times this week. and even found a blanket of snow on the ground on morning, it has since melted though. in some ways i am excited for winter, but in others i don't want it to come yet.
Elder Stephen E. Snow came on tuesday, and we had a little ofver half of the mission all together in milwaukee. the other half met on monday. It was great. he had everyon prepare a 5 min talk of faith, and randomly called up 3 people to give theirs, then he evaluated them and we talked about good and bad things that they did, and how to be better public speakers. It was really neat. he also talked about 4 things we can do to help us have the spirit with us, adn can feel it more. he said, prayer, scripture study, obedience, and service. he then talked on the importance of each one. it was great. they try to get a general authority out about once a year, so unless i get realy lucky this was probably the last one that will come out to visit the mission while i am here. I really enjoyed it.
I have been loving it out here. missionary work is great. I love you all.
Elder Lundberg
09 October 2006
Letter from Mark 09 Oct 2006
Dear Family,
Things are going great here. we are heading into madison tonight, an then to milwaukee tomorrow because a General Authority is comming to the mission. Elder Stephen E. Snow. It should be Fun.
We have a lady named Tami Gables that has been comming to church the past few weeks, she is a member referal and has told us she wants to be baptized. be talked to the branch president and he wants to do it in 2 week, so we are going overthere today, and talking about it and working out all the details. we have been excited about it. she has a 14 year old girl that we are going to try to baptize with her, and she has 6 year old twins. she told us that she has had a void in her life that she wants to fill. there are also a few other investigators that we have that are doing well. the best thing as a missionary is to see people that understand, and accept the gospel, and let it change their lives. It is truly a blessing to be a part of this work.
thanks for the package, that was great, i also got the enzymes that you sent, thank you, I now have a bottle that i keep in the car so when i eat away from home i can still take them and it has been working well so far. Those pictures you sent of Alex and Allison suprised me. they look like they have grown a lot. I hadn't thought about that untill i got the pictures, but people do change.
It is wierd getting back into the cold season. I have enjoyed it so far, but it is funny being able to remember last year in wisconsin, and not having everyone else remember. I am the same age now as some of my seniors were when i served with them, and all but one of them are home now, and it hasn't seemed that long to me. the thought of 2 years seemed a lot longer at the start of my mission than it does now.
We have approval in this area to go camping, or to stay in members homes who live far away to save miles, unfortunatly, the members that qualify to have us stay the night are not far away, and the members tht are far away, can't stay the night. there aren't too many places to camp, so we get around the whole thing by camping in a members back yard. we did that Thursday night. we have a tent, but for some reason, no sleeping bags, so we just brought a ton of blankets. we found out that it is too late in the year to be camping without warmer sleeping bags, it was a cold night. The member told us that it probably got down to the 30's that night. it was fun thought, i can now say that i have been camping on my mission, even though it was in a back yard. that member also told me friday morning that the Utes had won their game the previous night (he is a big Byu fan but follows the Utes as well)
I talked to president hunt about what is approved as far as talks on CD go and he said that any CES instructer is ok, he said basically any church speaker is ok, anyone that has spoken at EFY, etc.
I am excited to be able to see the temples in New York, it should be fun.
Thank you for all that you do. I love you all
Elder Lundberg
Things are going great here. we are heading into madison tonight, an then to milwaukee tomorrow because a General Authority is comming to the mission. Elder Stephen E. Snow. It should be Fun.
We have a lady named Tami Gables that has been comming to church the past few weeks, she is a member referal and has told us she wants to be baptized. be talked to the branch president and he wants to do it in 2 week, so we are going overthere today, and talking about it and working out all the details. we have been excited about it. she has a 14 year old girl that we are going to try to baptize with her, and she has 6 year old twins. she told us that she has had a void in her life that she wants to fill. there are also a few other investigators that we have that are doing well. the best thing as a missionary is to see people that understand, and accept the gospel, and let it change their lives. It is truly a blessing to be a part of this work.
thanks for the package, that was great, i also got the enzymes that you sent, thank you, I now have a bottle that i keep in the car so when i eat away from home i can still take them and it has been working well so far. Those pictures you sent of Alex and Allison suprised me. they look like they have grown a lot. I hadn't thought about that untill i got the pictures, but people do change.
It is wierd getting back into the cold season. I have enjoyed it so far, but it is funny being able to remember last year in wisconsin, and not having everyone else remember. I am the same age now as some of my seniors were when i served with them, and all but one of them are home now, and it hasn't seemed that long to me. the thought of 2 years seemed a lot longer at the start of my mission than it does now.
We have approval in this area to go camping, or to stay in members homes who live far away to save miles, unfortunatly, the members that qualify to have us stay the night are not far away, and the members tht are far away, can't stay the night. there aren't too many places to camp, so we get around the whole thing by camping in a members back yard. we did that Thursday night. we have a tent, but for some reason, no sleeping bags, so we just brought a ton of blankets. we found out that it is too late in the year to be camping without warmer sleeping bags, it was a cold night. The member told us that it probably got down to the 30's that night. it was fun thought, i can now say that i have been camping on my mission, even though it was in a back yard. that member also told me friday morning that the Utes had won their game the previous night (he is a big Byu fan but follows the Utes as well)
I talked to president hunt about what is approved as far as talks on CD go and he said that any CES instructer is ok, he said basically any church speaker is ok, anyone that has spoken at EFY, etc.
I am excited to be able to see the temples in New York, it should be fun.
Thank you for all that you do. I love you all
Elder Lundberg
02 October 2006
Letter from Mark 02 Oct 2006
Dear Family,
This week has been great. Conference was Awesome! I have decided that conference as a missionary is great. it gives us a ton more material to work with and to use in our teaching situation. as a missionary working with less active members i especially liked ELder Bednar's talk. I'm already excited to get a copy of the talk and start using it. I also enjoyed the 1st and 2nd talks of saturday morning.
My reliese date is friday July 14th 2007. thursday the 13th is transfers, and we stay the night in the mission home, and friday we fly out. when Elder Hill went home, he flew straight to salt lake, and got there at 10:00 in the morning. most groups don't do that, but they only had 2 flying to salt lake so they put them on a very small plane. New York sounds fun.
I have tried those ensymes and they have done alright. where did you get those? i am actually almost out and was going to buy more. do you think walmart would have it?
After sending the pictures home i noticed that something is wrong with the card i have and my camera would not read it, so i went and baught a card. walmart was having a sale on their memory cards and they had 1 GB cards for $40, so i got one of those. needless to say, i can now take a ton of pictures. my companion loves to take pictures, so we have started to take a ton of fun pictures.
My district is just us and one other companionship, who just moved from Prairie du Chien to Richland Center (just above Gotham WI, they are way excited about that.) Every Tuesday (except for interviews week and Zone Conferance week) I am in charge of a District meeting where i chose a topic and do a training on it using the scriptures, Preach my gospel, and any other resources that i can. district meetings usually last and hour to an hour and a half, and include a few other things beside me. Tomorrow i will go to Interviews, right before that they do a district leader Training that i will go to. I also report the numbers for the district to the zone leaders 3 times a week, who send them in to the office. I am also the person that my district goes through to get anything approved (most of it i then tell the zone leaders and they approve or disaprove it)
It is wierd to think about christmas already. the only thing that i can think of at the moment is the study manuels (Book of mormon, teachings of christ and his apostles, and/or the pearl of great price) talks are also great, I think there is some sort of restriction to who we can listen to. I know we can listen to general authorities, there are missionaries that have talks from people that teach at byu, i think tomorrow i will ask president what the regulations are on talks. I have also thought of a small picture book, i haven't kept many pictures out here, but it would be fun to have a few pictures from throught my mission (not nessisarily all of them) other that that i don't know. i will try to give it some thought.
the mission had a goal to finnish the new testament by sept 30th. I was origanally hoping to finish the whole bible by then, but then i fell behind, so i skipped to the new testiment and finished the morning of conferance. I went through the newtestiment fairly quickly so alot of it, especially the end was still in my mind for conferance, it was neat. i also finished the book of mormon on saturday morning( i planned it that way) and have now started over with the intent to read it as fast as posible. i have talked to a few people that have done it that way and they like to do that occasionally. this morning i got 30 pages in, and i hope that i can keep up that pace.
I have recently been debating what to do with school when i go home, and while i still have not decided pres Hinckleys remarks about education in the Priesthood session has helpfull in letting me know that i do need to persue education. i thought for a little bit about working for a semester, then picking up in spring. but have now decided not to.
thank you for all of the prayers and support. i love you all.
Elder Lundberg
This week has been great. Conference was Awesome! I have decided that conference as a missionary is great. it gives us a ton more material to work with and to use in our teaching situation. as a missionary working with less active members i especially liked ELder Bednar's talk. I'm already excited to get a copy of the talk and start using it. I also enjoyed the 1st and 2nd talks of saturday morning.
My reliese date is friday July 14th 2007. thursday the 13th is transfers, and we stay the night in the mission home, and friday we fly out. when Elder Hill went home, he flew straight to salt lake, and got there at 10:00 in the morning. most groups don't do that, but they only had 2 flying to salt lake so they put them on a very small plane. New York sounds fun.
I have tried those ensymes and they have done alright. where did you get those? i am actually almost out and was going to buy more. do you think walmart would have it?
After sending the pictures home i noticed that something is wrong with the card i have and my camera would not read it, so i went and baught a card. walmart was having a sale on their memory cards and they had 1 GB cards for $40, so i got one of those. needless to say, i can now take a ton of pictures. my companion loves to take pictures, so we have started to take a ton of fun pictures.
My district is just us and one other companionship, who just moved from Prairie du Chien to Richland Center (just above Gotham WI, they are way excited about that.) Every Tuesday (except for interviews week and Zone Conferance week) I am in charge of a District meeting where i chose a topic and do a training on it using the scriptures, Preach my gospel, and any other resources that i can. district meetings usually last and hour to an hour and a half, and include a few other things beside me. Tomorrow i will go to Interviews, right before that they do a district leader Training that i will go to. I also report the numbers for the district to the zone leaders 3 times a week, who send them in to the office. I am also the person that my district goes through to get anything approved (most of it i then tell the zone leaders and they approve or disaprove it)
It is wierd to think about christmas already. the only thing that i can think of at the moment is the study manuels (Book of mormon, teachings of christ and his apostles, and/or the pearl of great price) talks are also great, I think there is some sort of restriction to who we can listen to. I know we can listen to general authorities, there are missionaries that have talks from people that teach at byu, i think tomorrow i will ask president what the regulations are on talks. I have also thought of a small picture book, i haven't kept many pictures out here, but it would be fun to have a few pictures from throught my mission (not nessisarily all of them) other that that i don't know. i will try to give it some thought.
the mission had a goal to finnish the new testament by sept 30th. I was origanally hoping to finish the whole bible by then, but then i fell behind, so i skipped to the new testiment and finished the morning of conferance. I went through the newtestiment fairly quickly so alot of it, especially the end was still in my mind for conferance, it was neat. i also finished the book of mormon on saturday morning( i planned it that way) and have now started over with the intent to read it as fast as posible. i have talked to a few people that have done it that way and they like to do that occasionally. this morning i got 30 pages in, and i hope that i can keep up that pace.
I have recently been debating what to do with school when i go home, and while i still have not decided pres Hinckleys remarks about education in the Priesthood session has helpfull in letting me know that i do need to persue education. i thought for a little bit about working for a semester, then picking up in spring. but have now decided not to.
thank you for all of the prayers and support. i love you all.
Elder Lundberg
01 October 2006
25 September 2006
Letter from Mark 25 Sep 2006
Dear Family,
Well, as you probably guessed after getting the district leader letter, I got transfered. I am not in Platteville, which is right next to Prairie DU Chien. and as didstrict leader i am over just Here and Prairie du chien. I report numbers to the zone leaders on wednesdays, fridays, and sundays, and I am in charge of 4 district meeting each transfer(one every week except for interviews and zone conferance week) my first 4 companions were all district leader, so i'm comfortable with the responsabilities.
The Prairie Du chien elders are leaving prairie du chien the end of this week and are getting re-assigned to a new branch of about 20 members. the are sad to be leaving the branch, the mebers there are great, in that whole process i will pick up some of the prairie du chien area, which i am excited about.
\My companion is Elder Christensen, he is from the cottenwood heights area. IT has been fun, he knows Daniel Tanner, and Jesse Baldridge. he loves to sing and is a hard worker. We have been getting along great so far. he has been out for about 10 months now (as long as Elder Mangum, my last companion,) and there is a posibility that he could train here next transfer, and i could leave. It has been great to serve with a companion that will pull his own weight and is a hard worker. even though i got along great with elder Mangum he was a bit lazy. so i was still pulling a lot of the weight, which he recognised at the end and wes feeling stressed to have me leave because he didn't know anything about the area because i was doing it all. at least he learned.
I have loved Platteville so far, It is a branch of about 60-80 active members. I have been so excited to be serving back in a branch. even after 6 months in elkhorn there were still people i didn't know there, but in a branch you get to know everyone well. I have also been joking with other missionaries about being out for over 14 months and only having 2 districts. occasionaly someone will serve in the same district 2 times, but it isn't a real common event. now i am serving in my 2nd district for the 2nd time, I am loving it though. one missionary said i should request to go to the last area in the lake mills district. as fun as that would be, but i don't think it will happen.
I have worn my glasses for most of my mission, because i havent been able to keep contancts in for a long period of time with out my eyes going red, but recently they havent been bothering me too much and with contacts everyone has been telling me i look like i am 17. most of the ward members thought that i was a new missionary, and were surprised to hear i was senior. it was funny.
I have been getting excited for conferance. conferance as a missionary is great, it provides great teaching material, and is a great experiance for investigators. I have found that at things like conferance, as a missionary, it isn't just for me, but i go there for the people i am teaching as well. It is great to be a missionary and get the pespective of other peoples lives and wher they are at spiritually and helping them progress. It is interesting how a 20 year old can talk to people he has just met and have them open up everything about themselves, sometimes including things that the people won't even tell family members. It is a Remarkable learning experiance, and i think i finaly know why every young man is asked to serve a mission.
Thank you for all of your prayers and support, I am working hard and love you all.
Elder Lundberg
Well, as you probably guessed after getting the district leader letter, I got transfered. I am not in Platteville, which is right next to Prairie DU Chien. and as didstrict leader i am over just Here and Prairie du chien. I report numbers to the zone leaders on wednesdays, fridays, and sundays, and I am in charge of 4 district meeting each transfer(one every week except for interviews and zone conferance week) my first 4 companions were all district leader, so i'm comfortable with the responsabilities.
The Prairie Du chien elders are leaving prairie du chien the end of this week and are getting re-assigned to a new branch of about 20 members. the are sad to be leaving the branch, the mebers there are great, in that whole process i will pick up some of the prairie du chien area, which i am excited about.
\My companion is Elder Christensen, he is from the cottenwood heights area. IT has been fun, he knows Daniel Tanner, and Jesse Baldridge. he loves to sing and is a hard worker. We have been getting along great so far. he has been out for about 10 months now (as long as Elder Mangum, my last companion,) and there is a posibility that he could train here next transfer, and i could leave. It has been great to serve with a companion that will pull his own weight and is a hard worker. even though i got along great with elder Mangum he was a bit lazy. so i was still pulling a lot of the weight, which he recognised at the end and wes feeling stressed to have me leave because he didn't know anything about the area because i was doing it all. at least he learned.
I have loved Platteville so far, It is a branch of about 60-80 active members. I have been so excited to be serving back in a branch. even after 6 months in elkhorn there were still people i didn't know there, but in a branch you get to know everyone well. I have also been joking with other missionaries about being out for over 14 months and only having 2 districts. occasionaly someone will serve in the same district 2 times, but it isn't a real common event. now i am serving in my 2nd district for the 2nd time, I am loving it though. one missionary said i should request to go to the last area in the lake mills district. as fun as that would be, but i don't think it will happen.
I have worn my glasses for most of my mission, because i havent been able to keep contancts in for a long period of time with out my eyes going red, but recently they havent been bothering me too much and with contacts everyone has been telling me i look like i am 17. most of the ward members thought that i was a new missionary, and were surprised to hear i was senior. it was funny.
I have been getting excited for conferance. conferance as a missionary is great, it provides great teaching material, and is a great experiance for investigators. I have found that at things like conferance, as a missionary, it isn't just for me, but i go there for the people i am teaching as well. It is great to be a missionary and get the pespective of other peoples lives and wher they are at spiritually and helping them progress. It is interesting how a 20 year old can talk to people he has just met and have them open up everything about themselves, sometimes including things that the people won't even tell family members. It is a Remarkable learning experiance, and i think i finaly know why every young man is asked to serve a mission.
Thank you for all of your prayers and support, I am working hard and love you all.
Elder Lundberg
24 September 2006
18 September 2006
Letter from Mark 18 Sep 2006
Dear Family,
Things have been going well. It has been starting to cool off the past few days, some leaves are begining to change colors. it is wierd to see the change in the weather again and be able to remember last year as a missionary at this time.
Transfers are up again on thursday (sept 21) And I will probably be going, so please send everything through the office. there is a posibility that i will stay, but most likely not.
Gas has steadily gone down here. we were paying over $3 a gallon for a while, but now it is just under $2.50. It is amazing how $3 will make $2.50 look cheep, but when i left $2.50 was expensive. actually, it was about the same price when i got to wisconsin last year.
I had a cool Experiance this morning. the seminary teacher got some old time cloths and asked me to dress up as Joseph Smith and tell the story as if I were him. She had the Idea, and asked her neighbor who was the seminary teacher last year what she thought and she recomended me(we had taught them and i did the joseph smith part) so we did that and afterward there were a few people that wanted pictures, so we got a lot of pictures. It was fun. I should be sending a lot of stuff home this week, including those pictures. If i don't get transfered i probably won't send it though.
This past week i got a call from someone in that lake mills ward that i didn't know (and she didn't know me or that i had served there,) telling me that one of the youth from that ward was in the Elkhorn Hospital, and the father needed help giving a blessing. the kids name is James Delory, he was in a soccer game as golie and had someone drive on him and he grabbed the ball as it got a little a head of the other player. the kid on the other team couldn't stop and tripped over him, kicking him in the head, and after that James counln't remember a thing. he kept asking what happened adn as soon as they finished telling him he wouldn say "oh, ok, i don't know if i have asked you,but can you tell me the play." they said he just had a concussion and that he should be ok. One of their sons came home from a mission while i was their is now married, and another one of their sons is leaving on a mission soon. It was neat to get to see them.
Thank you for all that you do. I love you all.
Elder Lundberg
Things have been going well. It has been starting to cool off the past few days, some leaves are begining to change colors. it is wierd to see the change in the weather again and be able to remember last year as a missionary at this time.
Transfers are up again on thursday (sept 21) And I will probably be going, so please send everything through the office. there is a posibility that i will stay, but most likely not.
Gas has steadily gone down here. we were paying over $3 a gallon for a while, but now it is just under $2.50. It is amazing how $3 will make $2.50 look cheep, but when i left $2.50 was expensive. actually, it was about the same price when i got to wisconsin last year.
I had a cool Experiance this morning. the seminary teacher got some old time cloths and asked me to dress up as Joseph Smith and tell the story as if I were him. She had the Idea, and asked her neighbor who was the seminary teacher last year what she thought and she recomended me(we had taught them and i did the joseph smith part) so we did that and afterward there were a few people that wanted pictures, so we got a lot of pictures. It was fun. I should be sending a lot of stuff home this week, including those pictures. If i don't get transfered i probably won't send it though.
This past week i got a call from someone in that lake mills ward that i didn't know (and she didn't know me or that i had served there,) telling me that one of the youth from that ward was in the Elkhorn Hospital, and the father needed help giving a blessing. the kids name is James Delory, he was in a soccer game as golie and had someone drive on him and he grabbed the ball as it got a little a head of the other player. the kid on the other team couldn't stop and tripped over him, kicking him in the head, and after that James counln't remember a thing. he kept asking what happened adn as soon as they finished telling him he wouldn say "oh, ok, i don't know if i have asked you,but can you tell me the play." they said he just had a concussion and that he should be ok. One of their sons came home from a mission while i was their is now married, and another one of their sons is leaving on a mission soon. It was neat to get to see them.
Thank you for all that you do. I love you all.
Elder Lundberg
11 September 2006
Letter from Mark 11 Sep 2006
Dear Family,
Things have been going well this week. We talked to the Hobson's, the family that wants their 9 year old son baptized and we have decided that we are going to first work on getting them to church regularly, then when the time is right he will be baptized, but i told him I would rather have it done right, and have to miss it, than to see his son baptised when he isn't ready. It was a good visit.
Our Zone is getting together today and doing a zone Preparation day. I'm not sure what we are going to be doing, but it has been a while since we went to milwaukee for preparation day, so it should be fun.
It was wierd to talk to Brandon Hill, he has called me a few times, he said "you will never guess who i am talking to on the phone", then he said "your sister" and told me how he ended up doing that. i was surised
I have a package that i will be sending sometime, but i might not send it untill next week, when i will know if/where i am getting transfered.
We went on an exchange with a member that served in this area about 4 years ago. he took us to go find some less-active members that nobody knew anything about. we got lost a few times, and each time ended up in a small town called Little Prarie, it has about 50-100 people in it. each time we would start saying, this looks familiar, then we realized where we were. it was annoying, but funny.
Elder Mangum and i are getting a long great. It makes missionarywork so much easier when you and your companion get along. it makes it nice to not have to argue what needs to be done. the only thing that we fight over is the piano it is basically a race to the piano when we have free time. I found a John schmidt book at a music store, and have been teaching myself "All of Me" I am slowly getting it. I love playing the piano now, i find it is getting easier, at least the hymns are. I think i can play them al lot better now after focusing on those for the past while.
There is a family that is on the border of the Elkhorn ward and the Lake mills Ward. lake mills changed their meeting time to a time when the father could't make it (he is a manager of an old navy and works some sunday evenings) so they are going to start comming to elkhorn so they can come as a family. It was fun to see them again. they said that i looked taller and they think i have grown. i don't think i have, but now I want to try to fing a way to check it. I think it is just that they havn't seen me in a while.
Thank you for all that you do. I love you all.
Elder Lundberg
Things have been going well this week. We talked to the Hobson's, the family that wants their 9 year old son baptized and we have decided that we are going to first work on getting them to church regularly, then when the time is right he will be baptized, but i told him I would rather have it done right, and have to miss it, than to see his son baptised when he isn't ready. It was a good visit.
Our Zone is getting together today and doing a zone Preparation day. I'm not sure what we are going to be doing, but it has been a while since we went to milwaukee for preparation day, so it should be fun.
It was wierd to talk to Brandon Hill, he has called me a few times, he said "you will never guess who i am talking to on the phone", then he said "your sister" and told me how he ended up doing that. i was surised
I have a package that i will be sending sometime, but i might not send it untill next week, when i will know if/where i am getting transfered.
We went on an exchange with a member that served in this area about 4 years ago. he took us to go find some less-active members that nobody knew anything about. we got lost a few times, and each time ended up in a small town called Little Prarie, it has about 50-100 people in it. each time we would start saying, this looks familiar, then we realized where we were. it was annoying, but funny.
Elder Mangum and i are getting a long great. It makes missionarywork so much easier when you and your companion get along. it makes it nice to not have to argue what needs to be done. the only thing that we fight over is the piano it is basically a race to the piano when we have free time. I found a John schmidt book at a music store, and have been teaching myself "All of Me" I am slowly getting it. I love playing the piano now, i find it is getting easier, at least the hymns are. I think i can play them al lot better now after focusing on those for the past while.
There is a family that is on the border of the Elkhorn ward and the Lake mills Ward. lake mills changed their meeting time to a time when the father could't make it (he is a manager of an old navy and works some sunday evenings) so they are going to start comming to elkhorn so they can come as a family. It was fun to see them again. they said that i looked taller and they think i have grown. i don't think i have, but now I want to try to fing a way to check it. I think it is just that they havn't seen me in a while.
Thank you for all that you do. I love you all.
Elder Lundberg
09 September 2006
Cross Country Cougar Challenge 08 Sept 2006.
The Cougar Challenge was hosted by Kearns High School, and included 5 high schools; Murray, Kearns, Payson, Lone Peak and Waterford.It was a nice facility at the Oquirrh Park adjacent to the Olympic Speedskating Oval. And except for a faulty starter's gun and a locked gate on the course that the JV runners had to hop, a really well-run and fun spectator event.
Allie (freshman) placed first in the Girls JV race!
Allie's time puts her on the varsity squad for the next meet, and she hopes to letter (must run two varsity events).
Here's a prediction: Allie will be really good if she decides to go for it, even with the disadvantage of my genes!
This smaller, out-of-focus photo shows the margin of Allie's vistory. The second place girl, who ran a good race, is the person about 50 yards back by the goal. Incidentally, Allison knows her from violin. Small world.
Julie and I agree that this was a fun sport to watch because you don't have wacky parents yelling at refs. Everyone supports one another and all appreciate a good effort.
Signed, Proud Papa
04 September 2006
Letter from Mark 04 Sept 2006
Dear Family,
This week has been good. we had Zone Conferance in Lake Mills on saturday. that was great. I got to stop by the harts and say Hi.
We are Getting close to having a 9 year old baptized. both his parents are members, but they don't come to church much. once they start comming to church he can be baptized. they have told us the last 3 weeks they are comming, but they havent yet. we even tried stopping by on sunday morning, but they didn't answer the door. they would like to have him baptized before i leave,which could be the 21st of this month. That isn't likely though, because they haven't been to church yet, and we don't want them just to come the minimum, then not come again later.
Elder mangum and i are getting along great, I am going to ask president to leave me here, but i don't know if he will because i have been here a long time.
well i got to go i don't have much time. i love you all.
Elder Lundberg
This week has been good. we had Zone Conferance in Lake Mills on saturday. that was great. I got to stop by the harts and say Hi.
We are Getting close to having a 9 year old baptized. both his parents are members, but they don't come to church much. once they start comming to church he can be baptized. they have told us the last 3 weeks they are comming, but they havent yet. we even tried stopping by on sunday morning, but they didn't answer the door. they would like to have him baptized before i leave,which could be the 21st of this month. That isn't likely though, because they haven't been to church yet, and we don't want them just to come the minimum, then not come again later.
Elder mangum and i are getting along great, I am going to ask president to leave me here, but i don't know if he will because i have been here a long time.
well i got to go i don't have much time. i love you all.
Elder Lundberg
28 August 2006
Letter from Mark 28 August 2006
Dear Family,
Things have gone well this week. The IPOD that i was going to buy didn't work out, it turns out they were stolen, and EBay canciled it.
This Saturday we have zone conferance and i think it is in Lake Mills, so i will get to go to my old area, and posibly see some of the members there, the Relief society provides lunch for the missionaries. I am excited for that.
We had an Investigator that moved from the chicago South mission in late june and had a baptism date set for the 1st of july. she moved in with he mom for a month and now has her own appartment. her name is Cheryl Backster. her mom is against her joining the church. so she is now starting to get back into it. she had to hide her book of mormon from her mom. she came to church with her 9 year old daughter yesterday. we are hoping to set a baptismail date with her this week. one of our investigator that came to church a few weeks ago, has disapeared. he was very excited about the church, but now he hasn't been home and his phone is now disconnected. we were sad about that.
Alex's Truck looks cool. that should be fun for him.
Well i don't have much time, thank you faor your prayers and support. I love you all.
Elder Lundberg
Things have gone well this week. The IPOD that i was going to buy didn't work out, it turns out they were stolen, and EBay canciled it.
This Saturday we have zone conferance and i think it is in Lake Mills, so i will get to go to my old area, and posibly see some of the members there, the Relief society provides lunch for the missionaries. I am excited for that.
We had an Investigator that moved from the chicago South mission in late june and had a baptism date set for the 1st of july. she moved in with he mom for a month and now has her own appartment. her name is Cheryl Backster. her mom is against her joining the church. so she is now starting to get back into it. she had to hide her book of mormon from her mom. she came to church with her 9 year old daughter yesterday. we are hoping to set a baptismail date with her this week. one of our investigator that came to church a few weeks ago, has disapeared. he was very excited about the church, but now he hasn't been home and his phone is now disconnected. we were sad about that.
Alex's Truck looks cool. that should be fun for him.
Well i don't have much time, thank you faor your prayers and support. I love you all.
Elder Lundberg
25 August 2006
21 August 2006
Letter from Mark 21 Aug 2006
Dear Family,
Things are going great so far. There is a general authority comming to this mission in october, and that has changed a few things, so we had Interviews this week instead of next week. the stake here is trying hard to double convert baptisms, responding to a challence of Elder Ronald A. Rasband of the seventy when he came to a stake conferance In april. the zone leaders are trying to get a new program going in the zone to increace working with members to get referals. it should be great.
On Thursday we were going to go on exchanges, but one of the members couldn't go, so just the one member took usarround to different people. his name is Bro Crocker, he was a missionary in this area 4 years ago (he was trained here) after he took us back to his house briefly and while there his wife said she saw a Guy in Ireland Selling a ton of new 60GB IPOd's for about $75 american dollars(normaly over 350), and about the same in shipping. when they got online while we were ther they had 2 left. They bought both, I had them buy one for me. and then i pulled $160 out of my home account, so when you see that withdraw, you know what it is. I am excited. there is an elder in my district that has an IPod and Loves it.
Elder Mangum and I are doing great, we have a lot in common. He is amazing at the Guitar, we have a few less-active members that love the guitar, so that will be good for them. his previous 2 companions he didn't get along with, and they didn't work to hard, so he is glad to be with me and start realy working again.
Living with members is good. they have a son returning from a mission next month, so that will be fun. It's funny because Since Elder Griffiths left everyone has commented on how long i have been here. last summer-winter there was an elder here for 7 months, from may to january. the members are starting to joke around about me matching his record, which i wouldn't mind. at the moment i have been here 4 1/2 months and will be just short of 6 when the next transfers come around in september.
Things are going well, and we are starting to teach a lot more. I am working hard and loving it. I love You all.
Elder Lundberg
Things are going great so far. There is a general authority comming to this mission in october, and that has changed a few things, so we had Interviews this week instead of next week. the stake here is trying hard to double convert baptisms, responding to a challence of Elder Ronald A. Rasband of the seventy when he came to a stake conferance In april. the zone leaders are trying to get a new program going in the zone to increace working with members to get referals. it should be great.
On Thursday we were going to go on exchanges, but one of the members couldn't go, so just the one member took usarround to different people. his name is Bro Crocker, he was a missionary in this area 4 years ago (he was trained here) after he took us back to his house briefly and while there his wife said she saw a Guy in Ireland Selling a ton of new 60GB IPOd's for about $75 american dollars(normaly over 350), and about the same in shipping. when they got online while we were ther they had 2 left. They bought both, I had them buy one for me. and then i pulled $160 out of my home account, so when you see that withdraw, you know what it is. I am excited. there is an elder in my district that has an IPod and Loves it.
Elder Mangum and I are doing great, we have a lot in common. He is amazing at the Guitar, we have a few less-active members that love the guitar, so that will be good for them. his previous 2 companions he didn't get along with, and they didn't work to hard, so he is glad to be with me and start realy working again.
Living with members is good. they have a son returning from a mission next month, so that will be fun. It's funny because Since Elder Griffiths left everyone has commented on how long i have been here. last summer-winter there was an elder here for 7 months, from may to january. the members are starting to joke around about me matching his record, which i wouldn't mind. at the moment i have been here 4 1/2 months and will be just short of 6 when the next transfers come around in september.
Things are going well, and we are starting to teach a lot more. I am working hard and loving it. I love You all.
Elder Lundberg
14 August 2006
Letter from Mark 14 August 2006
Dear Family,
Well, I'm still in Elkhorn. Elder Griffiths got transfered to Bever Dam with Elder Sizemore (from my MTC district) My new companion is Elder Mangum (a lot of the members have been calling him magnum, Its funny)A lot of the members were shocked to see me still here, but it is nice to stay. things have been picking up recently, and i thought that i was going to leave as they were getting better.
Elder Mangum is cool. he is from Lakeside, Arizona. which is in the eastern part in the mountains. He has been out for about 8 months, he playes the guitar very well, and also playes the piano a little. he said his last couple companions have been a bit lazy, so he is glad to be with someone who will work. he is still getting use to doing gverything we are suppose to do again. It has been fun so far.
We had the first investigator come to church since i have gotten here. his name is willie Tiption. him and his girlfriend had both ordered copies of the Book of Mormon. we taught him for the first time last week. this week when we came he said he saw us pull up, and almost didn't let us in. he told us his girlfriend took his car and money and ran off, so he had to walk home from work (about 15 min is what he said) and clime through the window to get in. he was mad and depressed when we got there. we started reading the book of mormon and he started to feel a lot better and he calmed down. he said he had planned on comming to church this sunday, but now he had no car. we told him we would get him a ride and he was very excited. he had a great time in church. he had a lot of comments and questions for the gospel principals teacher, and after that class. the Brother Taylor(the teacher) grabbed him and had him come and sit by him for priesthood. he explained a lot of different things that came up durring the lesson. Willie enjoyed church and was happy to get two new manuals, gospel principals, and the Wilford Woodruff one. It was great.
Saturday evening we tried stopping by a Less-actives house that we have been working with. her husband isn't a member. they speak spanish and a little english, so it is a bit hard to comunicate, but they are trying to start going back to church, to a spanish branch in Illinois. saturday evening they said that they were busy, but they wanted us to come back on sunday evening. when we did I almost drove past their burnt down house. I saw it, but it didn't recognise the house right away, i saw their kids waiting in the front yard. the whole hose was burnt and was fenced off. they said at 2 A.M. sunday morning their mom woke up, not to the fire alarm, but feeling something was wrong, as she left her bedroom she saw lots of smoke, and yelled at her family to get out. the only thing they saved was themselves and the cloths they were wearing. they told us they were living with their autn nearby and took us to their house. we found out that they had been renting the house, and the owner had been very nice to them, including giving them their security deposit back, and helping with school supplies that they had just gotten. we talked to the Elders Quarm President (under the bishops direction) about what they needed. it was a real shock. It made me feel greatful for all of the blessings i have recieved and the safty that i have enjoyed.
Thank you for all of your prayers and support, i love you all.
Elder Lundberg
Well, I'm still in Elkhorn. Elder Griffiths got transfered to Bever Dam with Elder Sizemore (from my MTC district) My new companion is Elder Mangum (a lot of the members have been calling him magnum, Its funny)A lot of the members were shocked to see me still here, but it is nice to stay. things have been picking up recently, and i thought that i was going to leave as they were getting better.
Elder Mangum is cool. he is from Lakeside, Arizona. which is in the eastern part in the mountains. He has been out for about 8 months, he playes the guitar very well, and also playes the piano a little. he said his last couple companions have been a bit lazy, so he is glad to be with someone who will work. he is still getting use to doing gverything we are suppose to do again. It has been fun so far.
We had the first investigator come to church since i have gotten here. his name is willie Tiption. him and his girlfriend had both ordered copies of the Book of Mormon. we taught him for the first time last week. this week when we came he said he saw us pull up, and almost didn't let us in. he told us his girlfriend took his car and money and ran off, so he had to walk home from work (about 15 min is what he said) and clime through the window to get in. he was mad and depressed when we got there. we started reading the book of mormon and he started to feel a lot better and he calmed down. he said he had planned on comming to church this sunday, but now he had no car. we told him we would get him a ride and he was very excited. he had a great time in church. he had a lot of comments and questions for the gospel principals teacher, and after that class. the Brother Taylor(the teacher) grabbed him and had him come and sit by him for priesthood. he explained a lot of different things that came up durring the lesson. Willie enjoyed church and was happy to get two new manuals, gospel principals, and the Wilford Woodruff one. It was great.
Saturday evening we tried stopping by a Less-actives house that we have been working with. her husband isn't a member. they speak spanish and a little english, so it is a bit hard to comunicate, but they are trying to start going back to church, to a spanish branch in Illinois. saturday evening they said that they were busy, but they wanted us to come back on sunday evening. when we did I almost drove past their burnt down house. I saw it, but it didn't recognise the house right away, i saw their kids waiting in the front yard. the whole hose was burnt and was fenced off. they said at 2 A.M. sunday morning their mom woke up, not to the fire alarm, but feeling something was wrong, as she left her bedroom she saw lots of smoke, and yelled at her family to get out. the only thing they saved was themselves and the cloths they were wearing. they told us they were living with their autn nearby and took us to their house. we found out that they had been renting the house, and the owner had been very nice to them, including giving them their security deposit back, and helping with school supplies that they had just gotten. we talked to the Elders Quarm President (under the bishops direction) about what they needed. it was a real shock. It made me feel greatful for all of the blessings i have recieved and the safty that i have enjoyed.
Thank you for all of your prayers and support, i love you all.
Elder Lundberg
Letter from Mark 07 August 2006
Dear Family,
This week has been good. Transfers are this week, so please send everything through the office this week. So far living with members has been good, still getting use to it. they finished their basement room so we are down there now, and they are working on a bathroom downstairs, but that will take a while.I will probably try to send a package home on wednesday, so i don't have to pack so much. the members here have a CD burner, so i talked to them and i am going to make coppies of all of my cd's, then send the originals home. i bought a small case that has 10 CD's to burn and it is compact.
We had a great expierience on saturday. saturday afternoon we went to a members house to drop off his dolly that he left after helping us move. when we got there they were cleaning up from a garage sale(they are trying to sell their house.) we talked a little bit, and told them we were planning on going to a restaurant in that town that has the slogan "world's best burgers" they said it was good, their 14 year old son asked if he could come, we told him he would have to work with us until then, and he needed a shirt and tie. he was excited and went and changed. in talking to his parents, they said don't bring him back early if he starts complaining. we tracted to 2 hours with him and tried to see a couple people before that but no one was home. he was complaining a little durring tracting, but it was good for him, he was excited at times. then we went to a referal who had not been contacted yet, and they were home. the guy's name was Willie Tipton. him and his girlfriend both called for commercials and talked to missionaries at the mtc. His girlfriend wasn't home, but he was very excited, and had a lot of questions. we had a great visit. after walking out carson, the kid we took, thought that was great and couln't stop talking about it. we told him now he had a good journal entery. he said he doesn't like writing in journals. we told him at dinner he should get out his journal and write in it. on sunday he got up and bore his testimony, then we ate at his house and his parents told us he talked about it all night, and went to bed early so he could get up early and write in his journal, then he wrote 2 full pages without thinking about it. his parents wer very thankful that we took him, and that now he has even mord modivation to go on a mission. It was great to see that happen, and to help get the youth excited about missionary work.
This week we had our district leader challenge us to get double honor roll, 15 lessons and 15 hours tracting. it is sort of funny because the lessons kept on coming, and the tracting led to more lessons, so we ended up with 22 lessons and 14 hours tracting. Elder griffiths and i that it was funny that we were trying so hard to get 15 tracting hours (which isn't too hard) but we couldn't get it. we did get 4 new investigators though. an new investigator is someone that we teach to that hasn't been meeting with us, and then we set up an appointment to come back. one of them is named Cheryl Backster. she had a baptismal date set in the chicago south mission, then moved in with her mom before that happend and couldnt get baptised (her mom is against her joining the church.) we had her moms phone, and a future appartment address. we then found out that she didn't move into the appartment, and her mom wouln't let us talk to her. sunday she called the church, and gave the bishop her address. we stopped by briefly, and met her and set a time to come back. she was very excited to see us and had been sruggling, but said she would never turn her back on the church after the help that they have given her. it was neat.
I have been having a great time, learning a lot and working hard. thankyou for all of your support. I love you all.
Elder Lundberg
This week has been good. Transfers are this week, so please send everything through the office this week. So far living with members has been good, still getting use to it. they finished their basement room so we are down there now, and they are working on a bathroom downstairs, but that will take a while.I will probably try to send a package home on wednesday, so i don't have to pack so much. the members here have a CD burner, so i talked to them and i am going to make coppies of all of my cd's, then send the originals home. i bought a small case that has 10 CD's to burn and it is compact.
We had a great expierience on saturday. saturday afternoon we went to a members house to drop off his dolly that he left after helping us move. when we got there they were cleaning up from a garage sale(they are trying to sell their house.) we talked a little bit, and told them we were planning on going to a restaurant in that town that has the slogan "world's best burgers" they said it was good, their 14 year old son asked if he could come, we told him he would have to work with us until then, and he needed a shirt and tie. he was excited and went and changed. in talking to his parents, they said don't bring him back early if he starts complaining. we tracted to 2 hours with him and tried to see a couple people before that but no one was home. he was complaining a little durring tracting, but it was good for him, he was excited at times. then we went to a referal who had not been contacted yet, and they were home. the guy's name was Willie Tipton. him and his girlfriend both called for commercials and talked to missionaries at the mtc. His girlfriend wasn't home, but he was very excited, and had a lot of questions. we had a great visit. after walking out carson, the kid we took, thought that was great and couln't stop talking about it. we told him now he had a good journal entery. he said he doesn't like writing in journals. we told him at dinner he should get out his journal and write in it. on sunday he got up and bore his testimony, then we ate at his house and his parents told us he talked about it all night, and went to bed early so he could get up early and write in his journal, then he wrote 2 full pages without thinking about it. his parents wer very thankful that we took him, and that now he has even mord modivation to go on a mission. It was great to see that happen, and to help get the youth excited about missionary work.
This week we had our district leader challenge us to get double honor roll, 15 lessons and 15 hours tracting. it is sort of funny because the lessons kept on coming, and the tracting led to more lessons, so we ended up with 22 lessons and 14 hours tracting. Elder griffiths and i that it was funny that we were trying so hard to get 15 tracting hours (which isn't too hard) but we couldn't get it. we did get 4 new investigators though. an new investigator is someone that we teach to that hasn't been meeting with us, and then we set up an appointment to come back. one of them is named Cheryl Backster. she had a baptismal date set in the chicago south mission, then moved in with her mom before that happend and couldnt get baptised (her mom is against her joining the church.) we had her moms phone, and a future appartment address. we then found out that she didn't move into the appartment, and her mom wouln't let us talk to her. sunday she called the church, and gave the bishop her address. we stopped by briefly, and met her and set a time to come back. she was very excited to see us and had been sruggling, but said she would never turn her back on the church after the help that they have given her. it was neat.
I have been having a great time, learning a lot and working hard. thankyou for all of your support. I love you all.
Elder Lundberg
01 August 2006
Letter from Mark 31 July 2006
Dear Family,
We have spent a ton of time this past week cleaning out our appartment and moving all of our stuff in with a couple named the smiths. our appartment had a ton of things like extra bedding, shirts, lots of cleaning supplies and a ton of food like canned vegedables, pasta noodles, and other stuff most missionaries don't eat. there is a member that will give us food occasionaly, some of it stacks up. I think we gave 7 jars of peanut butter to the food pantery, and we kept 2, one almost empty. we had our final appartment inspection this morning, so after the move on saturday we cleaned all day.
Living with members is wierd. right now i feel like i am just hanging out in their house for way too long. they have part of the basement that they are finishing so right now we are in a very small room. it will be nice once we move to the basement because then we will have a little more space, and we will be off on our own a little more. it is nice because we have a cell phone now, with very few minutes, but free nights and weekends, we also get free laundry, and they told us they are suppose to buy all the cleaning supplys and laundry deturgent. we still buy our own food, but they will feed us if we tell them we will be around for dinner. it is nice, but it will take some getting use to. and then the 10th of August is transfers, and i will probably be leaving.
one of the things they are trying to do with moving us in with members is to move us to different members after a while, to get us in a different part of the area, and to give the members a break, so the bishop has asked a few people to get things ready for missionaries, he is also pushing for another set of missionaries in the ward. the bishop is a general contractor and is building a house with an appartment above the garadge for the missionaries, and he is going to be helping another family finish their basement for missionaries. it is a good program, i wontder if/when they will expand it to other missions.
It has been very hot and humid the past few days. saturday while we were cleaning i would occasionally step outside, and i felt like i was going to break a sweat just standing there for 30 seconds. I'm glad we were inside most of the day.
Well, training is going alright, I will be glad for transfers though. I think i am ready for a new comanion and a new area. training has been a good experience, and i have learned a ton. it really puts pressure on you to do what you need to do. being a junior comanion you have input on what to do, but all of the responsibility in working ultimatly lies on the Senior comanion. and looking back at my senior companions i can see why they did a lot of what they did, even though at the time it bothered me and i didn't like it. Hopfully E. griffiths will feel that way when he becomed senior companion and trains.
Thank you for all of your prayers and support yat you have given me, it has helped strenthen and encourage me. I pray for you and i love you all.
Elder Lundberg
We have spent a ton of time this past week cleaning out our appartment and moving all of our stuff in with a couple named the smiths. our appartment had a ton of things like extra bedding, shirts, lots of cleaning supplies and a ton of food like canned vegedables, pasta noodles, and other stuff most missionaries don't eat. there is a member that will give us food occasionaly, some of it stacks up. I think we gave 7 jars of peanut butter to the food pantery, and we kept 2, one almost empty. we had our final appartment inspection this morning, so after the move on saturday we cleaned all day.
Living with members is wierd. right now i feel like i am just hanging out in their house for way too long. they have part of the basement that they are finishing so right now we are in a very small room. it will be nice once we move to the basement because then we will have a little more space, and we will be off on our own a little more. it is nice because we have a cell phone now, with very few minutes, but free nights and weekends, we also get free laundry, and they told us they are suppose to buy all the cleaning supplys and laundry deturgent. we still buy our own food, but they will feed us if we tell them we will be around for dinner. it is nice, but it will take some getting use to. and then the 10th of August is transfers, and i will probably be leaving.
one of the things they are trying to do with moving us in with members is to move us to different members after a while, to get us in a different part of the area, and to give the members a break, so the bishop has asked a few people to get things ready for missionaries, he is also pushing for another set of missionaries in the ward. the bishop is a general contractor and is building a house with an appartment above the garadge for the missionaries, and he is going to be helping another family finish their basement for missionaries. it is a good program, i wontder if/when they will expand it to other missions.
It has been very hot and humid the past few days. saturday while we were cleaning i would occasionally step outside, and i felt like i was going to break a sweat just standing there for 30 seconds. I'm glad we were inside most of the day.
Well, training is going alright, I will be glad for transfers though. I think i am ready for a new comanion and a new area. training has been a good experience, and i have learned a ton. it really puts pressure on you to do what you need to do. being a junior comanion you have input on what to do, but all of the responsibility in working ultimatly lies on the Senior comanion. and looking back at my senior companions i can see why they did a lot of what they did, even though at the time it bothered me and i didn't like it. Hopfully E. griffiths will feel that way when he becomed senior companion and trains.
Thank you for all of your prayers and support yat you have given me, it has helped strenthen and encourage me. I pray for you and i love you all.
Elder Lundberg
24 July 2006
Letter from Mark 24 July 2006
Dear Family,
Thank you for the shoes and the presants, they were all great. the tops of the shoes are made out of a different material that looks like it will last a lot longer, it isn't soft like the other ones. It was nice to get those talks, i have been listening to the lectures on faith, and have loved it so far. The disks were also great, and i am excited to get to use them.
I found out that we will be moving in with members on saturday (july 29 i think) their address is
I will probably only be there for a couple weeks because transfers are the 10th of August, but until then, that is where you should send any letters. It will be very different living with members, when we do we get a cell phone so we do not tie up the members phone line. ther will be less privacy, but it isn't like we are in the appartment a lot anyway. It is an older couple that have all of their kids out of the house, their youngest comes home from a mission in the next couple months. they both are up and out of the house before 6:30, So we probably won't be around them much. It shoulld be fun.
Things are still up and down with elder
while it has been hard training, i am greatful for the experience, and what i have learned from it.
Thanks for all of the prayers and support. I love you all.
Elder Lundberg
17 July 2006
Letter from Mark 17 July 2006
Dear Family,
we have had good week. last sunday the bishop told us he wanted us to see as many less actives as we could this week. the result was 11 lessons to less-active members (that is a ton for this mission) and 22 lessons total, which is the highest number of lessons i have gotten in one week. it is also cool to see that we did that on an interviews week, so we lost most of thursday to meetings.
thanks for the hymn book. it has been great. I have started to play more now that i have it. i have missed sitting down and just playing the hymns.
Wednesday I went on overnight exchanges with Elder Johnston, the redhead that i came out with. It was cool to be ble to serve together for a day. I took him over to Bill Shephard's house ( the leader of the Strangite church.) when we got there they were just getting ready to eat dinner, so they invited us in for dinner. Elder Johnston asked for a book of the law, so he took us to their storage in the church and gave him one, while back there we saw a pile of books that he said that he had written on the teachings of James J. Strang. he gave both of us a copy of that book aswell. we were both way excited. he told us they started a website. their address is www.churchofjesuschristoflatterdaysaintsstrangite.com or .org.
later in the week we met Jehovah's Witnesses tracting and they gave us one of their sheets for a free book called "What does the bible really teach?" both my companion and I sent in for that. We were excited to order it.
Thursday was interviews. I talked to President hunt about how training was hard, and he told me that I was on of the trusted missionaries that he knew he could put anyone with and i would follow the rules, and that is why he put Elder griffiths with me. because he will work with me, but other missionaries may be swayed not to work if they would have trained him. It was a good talk, very comforting to me. He also told me that the stake had been slacking off, and has not found members for us to move in with yet, so he said thyey will try to extend the lease on the appartment for a month or two, or just get a new appartment. he wasn't very happy with the stake, they told him to cancil the lease, then they fell through on their part. I will let you know more when I find out where we will be staying.
Yesterday We went to the Hubsmith's house, a family in the ward, for dinner. they have a daughter in the singles ward that invited those elders (the assistants to the president) to dinner on sunday, because one of them was trained in this area. the other assistant, Elder Olson, Has the same Birthday as me. we to the family that about a week ago when we foundout that they were having the assistants over, then they invited us over and they said that would do a bithday dinner. when we got there they had superman stuff everywhere, they had a superman tablecloth, plates, masks, and for elder Olson and i they got Superman Life Cerial, a superman frisbee, a superman toothbrush (they said they looked for tooth paste, but couldn't find it,) an a few other things. It was Awesome. It was a fun dinner. It made may birthday away from home very enjoyable.
This weekend has been hot here as well. we haven't hit the 100's, but I'm sure the humidity is making up for that, we have hit the 90's a few times though.
Thankyou for all of your support, I appreciate your prayers, and i pray for you. I love you all
Elder Lundberg
we have had good week. last sunday the bishop told us he wanted us to see as many less actives as we could this week. the result was 11 lessons to less-active members (that is a ton for this mission) and 22 lessons total, which is the highest number of lessons i have gotten in one week. it is also cool to see that we did that on an interviews week, so we lost most of thursday to meetings.
thanks for the hymn book. it has been great. I have started to play more now that i have it. i have missed sitting down and just playing the hymns.
Wednesday I went on overnight exchanges with Elder Johnston, the redhead that i came out with. It was cool to be ble to serve together for a day. I took him over to Bill Shephard's house ( the leader of the Strangite church.) when we got there they were just getting ready to eat dinner, so they invited us in for dinner. Elder Johnston asked for a book of the law, so he took us to their storage in the church and gave him one, while back there we saw a pile of books that he said that he had written on the teachings of James J. Strang. he gave both of us a copy of that book aswell. we were both way excited. he told us they started a website. their address is www.churchofjesuschristoflatterdaysaintsstrangite.com or .org.
later in the week we met Jehovah's Witnesses tracting and they gave us one of their sheets for a free book called "What does the bible really teach?" both my companion and I sent in for that. We were excited to order it.
Thursday was interviews. I talked to President hunt about how training was hard, and he told me that I was on of the trusted missionaries that he knew he could put anyone with and i would follow the rules, and that is why he put Elder griffiths with me. because he will work with me, but other missionaries may be swayed not to work if they would have trained him. It was a good talk, very comforting to me. He also told me that the stake had been slacking off, and has not found members for us to move in with yet, so he said thyey will try to extend the lease on the appartment for a month or two, or just get a new appartment. he wasn't very happy with the stake, they told him to cancil the lease, then they fell through on their part. I will let you know more when I find out where we will be staying.
Yesterday We went to the Hubsmith's house, a family in the ward, for dinner. they have a daughter in the singles ward that invited those elders (the assistants to the president) to dinner on sunday, because one of them was trained in this area. the other assistant, Elder Olson, Has the same Birthday as me. we to the family that about a week ago when we foundout that they were having the assistants over, then they invited us over and they said that would do a bithday dinner. when we got there they had superman stuff everywhere, they had a superman tablecloth, plates, masks, and for elder Olson and i they got Superman Life Cerial, a superman frisbee, a superman toothbrush (they said they looked for tooth paste, but couldn't find it,) an a few other things. It was Awesome. It was a fun dinner. It made may birthday away from home very enjoyable.
This weekend has been hot here as well. we haven't hit the 100's, but I'm sure the humidity is making up for that, we have hit the 90's a few times though.
Thankyou for all of your support, I appreciate your prayers, and i pray for you. I love you all
Elder Lundberg
15 July 2006
Letter from Mark 10 July 2006
Dear Family,
This week has been better. lots of things have happened in this past week. I have a lot of things to write, and probably wont be able to write them all in much detail, but i have been keeping up my journal and i have written good accounts in there. eventually i will get to tell you all that has happened in detail. just know that with diligence and patience come many blessings, and i am beginning to see that. yesterday the priesthood lesson was on writing in journals. it made me glad i have been keeping mine, it also made me realise the full picture of what went on, and to see how i was guided as i thought about how to write it.
since elder giriffiths had our argument things have been better, i have tried not to ask him to do anything, occasionally i would, and he said no, then i dropped it figuring now it is his problem. most of the time after that happened he went and did what i asked him to do. it was frustrating it had to happen that way, but at least it happened. he has also been doing a little bit more since i stopped asking him to do things. Wednesday we reported numbers and our district leader was on exchanges with the zone leader. he takes the numbers on speaker phone so the zone leader heard everything and made comments. by wednesday we had 7 lessons in and they were both impressed. the district leader asked if we were going to get double honor roll(15 lessons and 15 hours tracting) i said yeah, we can do it, elder griffiths complained about the tracting a lot, to which the zone leader responded, humble yourself and listen to your trainer, i was very happy, he wasn't, but we did it, and he didn't complain too much as we were doing it. i am starting to learn how to modivate him to greatter efforts. Interviews are thursday and i will council with president hunt then.
the day that we had our argument, I had been calling a lot of former investigators, only one we could get to listen to us. we met him for the 2nd time on saturday. he has had lots of health problems and durring both visits i had the prompting to give him a blessing, the first one was short and i didn't ask him. on saturday he was saying how depressed his health problems were making him, and how he wasn't suicidal, but sometimes he wishes god would let him go if he wasn't going to be healed. after that i offered a blessing. That was elder griffiths frist blessing. in the blessing the frist little bit i tried to tell he would be healed but i couldn't say it. i can't describe it but my thoughts and words were led to say things i hadn't thought of before. Basically i told him that he was going to die(i said released from his all his phisical problems), and if he turned to god he would have support till then and great blessings afterward. we didn't stay long after that, but once we did that i felt that that was why we were led to him. my companion was giving me a hard time about blessing someone to die. I tried to explain that it wasn't me that blessed him to die, but it was gods blessing for him. It was hard for me to tell him that, but the words came more easily that any other blessing i have given, which has been a decent amount since i have been out. I knew what god wanted for him, i knew it. it is times like this that i know that this that i know this is where got wants me, and that i am doing what he needs done.
on to a higher note, thanks for the package, it was great. where did you come up with that green eggs and ham thing. it was great. i must admit, when i saw it i thought, "what are they sending me green eggs and ham for?" but i was great. E. griffiths said, "did your family come up with that, my family couldn't do something like that" i told him i didn't know, but it wouldn't surprise mi if you did come up with that.
I think i told you we will be moving in with members. I'm not sure when or where, but it should be before the end of the month, which is when ou lease is up.
I got to go, but i appreciate your prayers and support, i love you all
Elder Lundberg
This week has been better. lots of things have happened in this past week. I have a lot of things to write, and probably wont be able to write them all in much detail, but i have been keeping up my journal and i have written good accounts in there. eventually i will get to tell you all that has happened in detail. just know that with diligence and patience come many blessings, and i am beginning to see that. yesterday the priesthood lesson was on writing in journals. it made me glad i have been keeping mine, it also made me realise the full picture of what went on, and to see how i was guided as i thought about how to write it.
since elder giriffiths had our argument things have been better, i have tried not to ask him to do anything, occasionally i would, and he said no, then i dropped it figuring now it is his problem. most of the time after that happened he went and did what i asked him to do. it was frustrating it had to happen that way, but at least it happened. he has also been doing a little bit more since i stopped asking him to do things. Wednesday we reported numbers and our district leader was on exchanges with the zone leader. he takes the numbers on speaker phone so the zone leader heard everything and made comments. by wednesday we had 7 lessons in and they were both impressed. the district leader asked if we were going to get double honor roll(15 lessons and 15 hours tracting) i said yeah, we can do it, elder griffiths complained about the tracting a lot, to which the zone leader responded, humble yourself and listen to your trainer, i was very happy, he wasn't, but we did it, and he didn't complain too much as we were doing it. i am starting to learn how to modivate him to greatter efforts. Interviews are thursday and i will council with president hunt then.
the day that we had our argument, I had been calling a lot of former investigators, only one we could get to listen to us. we met him for the 2nd time on saturday. he has had lots of health problems and durring both visits i had the prompting to give him a blessing, the first one was short and i didn't ask him. on saturday he was saying how depressed his health problems were making him, and how he wasn't suicidal, but sometimes he wishes god would let him go if he wasn't going to be healed. after that i offered a blessing. That was elder griffiths frist blessing. in the blessing the frist little bit i tried to tell he would be healed but i couldn't say it. i can't describe it but my thoughts and words were led to say things i hadn't thought of before. Basically i told him that he was going to die(i said released from his all his phisical problems), and if he turned to god he would have support till then and great blessings afterward. we didn't stay long after that, but once we did that i felt that that was why we were led to him. my companion was giving me a hard time about blessing someone to die. I tried to explain that it wasn't me that blessed him to die, but it was gods blessing for him. It was hard for me to tell him that, but the words came more easily that any other blessing i have given, which has been a decent amount since i have been out. I knew what god wanted for him, i knew it. it is times like this that i know that this that i know this is where got wants me, and that i am doing what he needs done.
on to a higher note, thanks for the package, it was great. where did you come up with that green eggs and ham thing. it was great. i must admit, when i saw it i thought, "what are they sending me green eggs and ham for?" but i was great. E. griffiths said, "did your family come up with that, my family couldn't do something like that" i told him i didn't know, but it wouldn't surprise mi if you did come up with that.
I think i told you we will be moving in with members. I'm not sure when or where, but it should be before the end of the month, which is when ou lease is up.
I got to go, but i appreciate your prayers and support, i love you all
Elder Lundberg
08 July 2006
Bryan Michael Lundberg
Bryan Michael Lundberg was born July 5, 2006 at 12:22 p.m. at Cottonwood Hospital in Murray, Utah.
From very beginning we noticed that Bryan had a unique and extra special birth mark on his chest.
ANOTHER COUGAR IS BORN!
RISE AND SHOUT!!
28 June 2006
Bound for Zion
Alex, Julie & Allie prepare to walk to the church for a 4:00 a.m. departure to Martin's Cove. They look pretty good for 3:30 a.m.!
Letter from Mark 26 June 2006
Dear Family,It was great to get the tape. It was funny to listen to knowing that you hadn't gotten the package yet. Itsounds like things are going well. the piano songs sounded great I was suprised at how good allison is getting. It sounds like she has been playing a lot longer then she has. It was good to hear that the surgery went well.
This past week we had zone conferance and i found out something i had been thinking for a while. President Hunt confirmed that we will be moving in with members before the end of july. the lease on our appartment is up on july 31, and they do not want to renew for another year. he said that they have the members in mind, but he didn't know who, so sometime in the next few weeks when we find out who we re moving in with and when, i will get you that information, and their address.
Friday Elder Griffiths and I went to the chicago temple. when we got there one of the temple workers said they were short on men in the sealing room. so we went in there and were witnesses for a while, and acted as kids getting seal to parents. it was great.
training is going good. Elder giffiths at tims doesn't want to work, and would rather just sit in the appartment, or doesn't want to follow a rule because he doesn't understand it. so that has been a bit hard.
It was good to hear that bryan got his call.
I was thinking the other day about how much time we have to study the scriptures. we do at least 2 hours a day. 1 hour personal and an hour companionship study. while i have been out i have grown to love study, and even find myself frustrated that i don't have more time to study. when i first came out an hour of personal study seemed too long, now it doesn't seem long enough. I have realy grown to love the scriptures, and it wasn't untill i started training, and see elder griffiths get use to all of the studying that i realised how much i had grown to love it. Last week in church in gospel principals the teacher asked each of us to give a deffinition of faith in our own words, not reading scriptures. I also thought then of how much i love to teach from the scriptures when all that came to my head was scripture after scripture of faith. I had trouble teaching with the scriptures before,but with srudy and practice, i have learned to use the scriptures to give authority to what i say. despite the dificulties i am loving being a missionary.
Thanks for all of your prayers and support, they are much appreciated. I love you all
Elder Lundberg
19 June 2006
Letter from Mark 19 June 2006
Dear Family,
This week has been going good. It has started to get hot, saturday it was in the 90's and around 60% humidity. both my companion and i were sweating a ton. we have started to freeze waterbottles, and cary them around with us, that way we have cold water for a long time.
training is going good, it is frustrating at times, after going on exchanges he picked up that obedience isn't important. the missionary he was with was telling him all the rules that most missionaries don't follow, that made me mad. so some things have been hard to get him to do, or see the importance of, but overall it has been fun and a good expierience. training goes for 2 transfers, the first ends the 29th of this month, then i finish on the 10th of August, when one of us will be transfered, most likely me because i have been here longer.
Elder Hill, my last companion gave me his phone, but it is now starting to die, so i will probably take money out of my home account to buy a new phone sometime soon. I am also planning on sendin a package home today with that camera and some other things in it.
Yesterday i ws thinking how it had been one year since i gave my fairwell talk in church, time sure seems to fly, a couple weeks ago at interviews i was talking to an elder i came out with (elder anderson) and he said, pointing to Elder Griffiths "doesn't it seem like just yesterday se were in his position." It has been wierd being the companion that has been out longer. elder griffiths is only my 2nd companion that wasn't a missionary when "preach my gospel" came out.
I have been having a great time, and i am trying to work hard. thank you for all of your prayers and support, it really helps. I love you all.
Elder Lundberg
This week has been going good. It has started to get hot, saturday it was in the 90's and around 60% humidity. both my companion and i were sweating a ton. we have started to freeze waterbottles, and cary them around with us, that way we have cold water for a long time.
training is going good, it is frustrating at times, after going on exchanges he picked up that obedience isn't important. the missionary he was with was telling him all the rules that most missionaries don't follow, that made me mad. so some things have been hard to get him to do, or see the importance of, but overall it has been fun and a good expierience. training goes for 2 transfers, the first ends the 29th of this month, then i finish on the 10th of August, when one of us will be transfered, most likely me because i have been here longer.
Elder Hill, my last companion gave me his phone, but it is now starting to die, so i will probably take money out of my home account to buy a new phone sometime soon. I am also planning on sendin a package home today with that camera and some other things in it.
Yesterday i ws thinking how it had been one year since i gave my fairwell talk in church, time sure seems to fly, a couple weeks ago at interviews i was talking to an elder i came out with (elder anderson) and he said, pointing to Elder Griffiths "doesn't it seem like just yesterday se were in his position." It has been wierd being the companion that has been out longer. elder griffiths is only my 2nd companion that wasn't a missionary when "preach my gospel" came out.
I have been having a great time, and i am trying to work hard. thank you for all of your prayers and support, it really helps. I love you all.
Elder Lundberg
14 June 2006
Letter fromMark 12 June 2006
Dear Family,
Things have been going good here. It is really starting to warm up here, we have had a lot hot and humid daysin the fast couple weeks. It has also Rained a ton, It seems like it rains, or is supposed to rain every other day. It makes everything here very green.
We had one of our better investigators Dropp us last week, although we saw it comming. his girlfriend is a member, and they broke up so he no longer wants to take the lessons. a few weeks ago the member said he was acting wierd and didn't think he wanted to talk to us. we met him once after that. they both just graduated and are going to different schools. We did however get a new investigator this week, he is getting married to a less active member in the ward, they; fed us dinner this week and then after we taught them. We are going to start doing that every week. He is a cop and works sundays, but another less active that he works with said that he is due for a promotion that will make it so he doesn't have to work on sundays. hopefully by september he will be able to come to church regularly.
we have started to ride our bikes alot. I put mine together for the first time since i came out a couple weeks ago. we have been riding those alot since it has started to warm up. they dock us miles on the car when it is warmer to make it so we will ride our bikes more. In the winter we will drive to another town, then we drive around town visiting people. now what we have been doing is driving into town and parking, and riding our bikes anywhere we need to go. so far the bike is working very well. I don't know what you worked out with liahona, but the bike i have will easily last the rest of my mission, we don't use them enough here to be too hard on it.
I will probably be sending home a package in the next week or so, with the camera and some other random things that i have but don't need. we talked to the head of the strangite church, and he gave us a book called the book of the law, from what i can tell it is parts of the law of moses that were important, but left out of the bible. james J. Strang translated them from plates given to him by an angel, I think they claim that they were the brass plates that nephi got from laban, because they didn't have the changes our bible today has. it is interesting, I was excited that he gave us them. he said that James J straing also translated other plates that he could get a a book to.
Well I am doing good, and trying to work hard. Thankyou for all of your support and prayers. I love you all.
Elder Lundberg
Things have been going good here. It is really starting to warm up here, we have had a lot hot and humid daysin the fast couple weeks. It has also Rained a ton, It seems like it rains, or is supposed to rain every other day. It makes everything here very green.
We had one of our better investigators Dropp us last week, although we saw it comming. his girlfriend is a member, and they broke up so he no longer wants to take the lessons. a few weeks ago the member said he was acting wierd and didn't think he wanted to talk to us. we met him once after that. they both just graduated and are going to different schools. We did however get a new investigator this week, he is getting married to a less active member in the ward, they; fed us dinner this week and then after we taught them. We are going to start doing that every week. He is a cop and works sundays, but another less active that he works with said that he is due for a promotion that will make it so he doesn't have to work on sundays. hopefully by september he will be able to come to church regularly.
we have started to ride our bikes alot. I put mine together for the first time since i came out a couple weeks ago. we have been riding those alot since it has started to warm up. they dock us miles on the car when it is warmer to make it so we will ride our bikes more. In the winter we will drive to another town, then we drive around town visiting people. now what we have been doing is driving into town and parking, and riding our bikes anywhere we need to go. so far the bike is working very well. I don't know what you worked out with liahona, but the bike i have will easily last the rest of my mission, we don't use them enough here to be too hard on it.
I will probably be sending home a package in the next week or so, with the camera and some other random things that i have but don't need. we talked to the head of the strangite church, and he gave us a book called the book of the law, from what i can tell it is parts of the law of moses that were important, but left out of the bible. james J. Strang translated them from plates given to him by an angel, I think they claim that they were the brass plates that nephi got from laban, because they didn't have the changes our bible today has. it is interesting, I was excited that he gave us them. he said that James J straing also translated other plates that he could get a a book to.
Well I am doing good, and trying to work hard. Thankyou for all of your support and prayers. I love you all.
Elder Lundberg
05 June 2006
Letter from Mark 05 June 2006
Dear Family,
Things have been going well here. training is great, Elder Griffiths got told he had broncidus (I don't know how to spell it) by the mission doctor, he is starting to get his voice back after having had a horse voice for a month. now that he is getting over that, he will be doing more.
We got back from milwaukee earlier today, we played basketball a little and did disk golf, we switch off driving with other elders in our district so we can go on mondays and not use too many miles. It was fun. Elder Griffiths found 2 disks today, he is starting to like it.
we tought 15 times this week to get on the teaching honor roll again, I have been blessed to be able to teach more in this area than in my first couple areas.
We did have a disapointing expirience this past week. a week ago sunday we went to talk to a less-active who was offended on a professional level by one of the members of the ward, to the point that they would not go to church if he was there. the member is less-active, and olny comes occasionally, but they were unwilling to come. we took a member over there and started telling them that their salvation should not suffer because they were offended, and that they should confront the member about their problem, they assured us that he knew, and the member we came with said that he had had nothing but good experiences from the member they were offended by. that caused the less active wife to storm off in anger saying that the member didn't deserve to live, and should burn in hell. we tried to clear things up with the husband, but he completly supports his wife in all her decisions. this week the member we took talked to the member that offended the less actives, and he didn't even know who they were, he had forgotten the whole thing ( so the less actives had been boiling over nothing) we tried to go and appolagize on sunday to the less actives and thay said they didn't want to be members of the church. It was very depressing, he also said some things that told me he never had a testimony of the church to begin with. they mostly joined because they LOVED the missionary that biptized them about 2 years ago. as I have reviewed the conversation I have tried to figure out what went wrong. And i have come up with 2 things. too much on our part, and too little on theirs. we were trying the whole time to commit them to do something, to change, to better themselves in some way, and the whole time they were refusing to change. It was definately a learning expierience. I learded what rejection really is, and that not everyone will accept the gospel. I'm just sad that i Couldn't help them, or missed my opportunity to.
Other than that i have been doing good. I'm Working hard and I Appreciate your support and prayers, it realy helps me. I Love You all.
Elder Lundberg
Things have been going well here. training is great, Elder Griffiths got told he had broncidus (I don't know how to spell it) by the mission doctor, he is starting to get his voice back after having had a horse voice for a month. now that he is getting over that, he will be doing more.
We got back from milwaukee earlier today, we played basketball a little and did disk golf, we switch off driving with other elders in our district so we can go on mondays and not use too many miles. It was fun. Elder Griffiths found 2 disks today, he is starting to like it.
we tought 15 times this week to get on the teaching honor roll again, I have been blessed to be able to teach more in this area than in my first couple areas.
We did have a disapointing expirience this past week. a week ago sunday we went to talk to a less-active who was offended on a professional level by one of the members of the ward, to the point that they would not go to church if he was there. the member is less-active, and olny comes occasionally, but they were unwilling to come. we took a member over there and started telling them that their salvation should not suffer because they were offended, and that they should confront the member about their problem, they assured us that he knew, and the member we came with said that he had had nothing but good experiences from the member they were offended by. that caused the less active wife to storm off in anger saying that the member didn't deserve to live, and should burn in hell. we tried to clear things up with the husband, but he completly supports his wife in all her decisions. this week the member we took talked to the member that offended the less actives, and he didn't even know who they were, he had forgotten the whole thing ( so the less actives had been boiling over nothing) we tried to go and appolagize on sunday to the less actives and thay said they didn't want to be members of the church. It was very depressing, he also said some things that told me he never had a testimony of the church to begin with. they mostly joined because they LOVED the missionary that biptized them about 2 years ago. as I have reviewed the conversation I have tried to figure out what went wrong. And i have come up with 2 things. too much on our part, and too little on theirs. we were trying the whole time to commit them to do something, to change, to better themselves in some way, and the whole time they were refusing to change. It was definately a learning expierience. I learded what rejection really is, and that not everyone will accept the gospel. I'm just sad that i Couldn't help them, or missed my opportunity to.
Other than that i have been doing good. I'm Working hard and I Appreciate your support and prayers, it realy helps me. I Love You all.
Elder Lundberg
15 May 2006
Letter from Mark 15 May 2006
Dear Family,
It was good to be able to talk to you yesterday. it was fun. yesterday we ate at a members hous that use to live in idaho where Elder hill grew up, they didn't know each other, but they know a lot of the same people.
When we pass arround the dinner callandar What i have been doing is writing that i am lactose intollerant at the top of the callendar, and then when we call to confirm i will remind them if i'm not sure that they know. so most of the time them members try to avoid milk, but alot of them forget, or don't realize that something has milk, or they don't know how sensative i am. but overall it has worked well.
As for the eyedrops, I don't remmber what kind they are, but i think the perscription has one refil left, if not don't worry about it, i can buy regular stuff out here if i need to. hope that answers your questions.
As I have looked back on my old area's and companions, and preparing to be a trainer, although i havn't had the easiest companions, I feel i have learned a lot more about the relationship with a companion, and about what kind of missionary I want to be than i could have with companions that were easy to get along with. I have heard that training is hard because for the first little while you do all the work while he stards around and watches, but hopefully that meants I will be able to get him to work hard once he gets the hang of it. I am excited to train.
We are going to milwaukee today, the missionaries there found a cheep place to go bowling, so we are going to go and do that, then maybe play frisbe golf if the weather permits. Elder hill is wanting to get everything he can in because it is his last preparation day of his mission.
Thankyou for all of your support and prayers, i really apprecate it. I love you all.
Elder Lundberg
It was good to be able to talk to you yesterday. it was fun. yesterday we ate at a members hous that use to live in idaho where Elder hill grew up, they didn't know each other, but they know a lot of the same people.
When we pass arround the dinner callandar What i have been doing is writing that i am lactose intollerant at the top of the callendar, and then when we call to confirm i will remind them if i'm not sure that they know. so most of the time them members try to avoid milk, but alot of them forget, or don't realize that something has milk, or they don't know how sensative i am. but overall it has worked well.
As for the eyedrops, I don't remmber what kind they are, but i think the perscription has one refil left, if not don't worry about it, i can buy regular stuff out here if i need to. hope that answers your questions.
As I have looked back on my old area's and companions, and preparing to be a trainer, although i havn't had the easiest companions, I feel i have learned a lot more about the relationship with a companion, and about what kind of missionary I want to be than i could have with companions that were easy to get along with. I have heard that training is hard because for the first little while you do all the work while he stards around and watches, but hopefully that meants I will be able to get him to work hard once he gets the hang of it. I am excited to train.
We are going to milwaukee today, the missionaries there found a cheep place to go bowling, so we are going to go and do that, then maybe play frisbe golf if the weather permits. Elder hill is wanting to get everything he can in because it is his last preparation day of his mission.
Thankyou for all of your support and prayers, i really apprecate it. I love you all.
Elder Lundberg
11 May 2006
Letter from Mark 08 May 2006
Dear Family,
We just got back from seeing an Imax, we are allowed to watch those on monday if we are in the milwaukee area, there are missionaries that can get free tickets from their service, so we didn't have to pay. We watched one on Mt Everest. It was neet.
Saturday we got it approved to go to a team penning thing where a member and some investigators would be riding. it is where three people on horses try to get 3 cows from a pack into a pen. it was neet, Elder Hill loved it, some missionaries came from milwaukee and saw it because they are into that kind of stuff. it wen't a lot longer then we thought it would, and when we got home late we had messages from the mission president asking us to call him. I then found out from elder hill that we had premission to go, but we were supposed to be back on time. It made me mad that he didn't bother to tell me that. he called up president hunt and took the blame for it. Elder Hill goes home a week from friday, thursday is transfers and friday morning he leaves and gets home at 10:15 utah time, then will drive up to idaho. he is getting realy excited, which is understandable, but it is hard to get him to work all the time.
I did get to see the Harts at stake conferance, and on tuesday i got to go to Lake mills on exchanges with Elder Sieler. that was wiered, old area with an old companion. anyway, i got to see the Harts then as well. that was fun.
as for calling on mothersday, I'm not sure what time we are having dinner with the membersw that signed up, but it will probably be in the afternoon that i call. we can call the night before or the morning of and set aup a time, so i will probably call saturday night or early sunday morning and we cant figure out waht time will work best.
Thank you for all of your prayers and support, i pray for you, i love you all.
Elder Lundberg
We just got back from seeing an Imax, we are allowed to watch those on monday if we are in the milwaukee area, there are missionaries that can get free tickets from their service, so we didn't have to pay. We watched one on Mt Everest. It was neet.
Saturday we got it approved to go to a team penning thing where a member and some investigators would be riding. it is where three people on horses try to get 3 cows from a pack into a pen. it was neet, Elder Hill loved it, some missionaries came from milwaukee and saw it because they are into that kind of stuff. it wen't a lot longer then we thought it would, and when we got home late we had messages from the mission president asking us to call him. I then found out from elder hill that we had premission to go, but we were supposed to be back on time. It made me mad that he didn't bother to tell me that. he called up president hunt and took the blame for it. Elder Hill goes home a week from friday, thursday is transfers and friday morning he leaves and gets home at 10:15 utah time, then will drive up to idaho. he is getting realy excited, which is understandable, but it is hard to get him to work all the time.
I did get to see the Harts at stake conferance, and on tuesday i got to go to Lake mills on exchanges with Elder Sieler. that was wiered, old area with an old companion. anyway, i got to see the Harts then as well. that was fun.
as for calling on mothersday, I'm not sure what time we are having dinner with the membersw that signed up, but it will probably be in the afternoon that i call. we can call the night before or the morning of and set aup a time, so i will probably call saturday night or early sunday morning and we cant figure out waht time will work best.
Thank you for all of your prayers and support, i pray for you, i love you all.
Elder Lundberg
02 May 2006
Letter from Mark 01 May 2006
Dear Family,
This week has been alright. we went to a less active members house and taught their 9 year old son who they want to have baptized. they want a former bishop to do the baptism, but he is less active as well. we are going to talk to the father about comming to church with his son, and then baptizing him himself. hopefully that will all work out.
we had three investigators tell us that they were going to be at church this week, and none of them showed up. one had to go in to a training thing for work, but said that he would have much rather been at church. i don't know why the other two didn't come. hopfully we will be able to get them to come next week.
The pictures from the vacation looked great. It looks like Alex is starting to grow. he looked tall in a few of the pictures, that was a little bit wierd to see, but it sounds like you had fun.
there is a break off group of mormons here that we went and talked to the head of their church yesterday. they claim that am man named james j. strang was next after joseph smith. they came to wisconson and he found more plates and translated them into another book, he wanted us to come by latter because we didn't want to stay too long, next time we see him i'm going to see if he will give me one. Elder Hill got one when he was here the first time. they are an interesting group.
Well i got to go. Thank you for all of your prayers and support, i love you all.
Elder Lundberg
29 April 2006
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