Letter from Mark 27 March 2006

Dear Family,

This comming week is going to be a bit hectic, in about an hour we are leaving and will spend the day with the platteville elders, then stay the night there and go to zone conference on tuesday, after zone conference we are going on exchanges with the zone leaders and will be driving back to madison to switch back, then saturday we are going to platteville againg and staying over night for general conference because we do not get it at our building. we estimated that i will be in the car about 14 hours this week, and will get to work in my area about 13 hours. it should be interesting. I am looking forward to conference.

Friday we stoped by a guy that we had met tracting, a few weeks ago we saw him driving his tractor down the road, we wave, and he slammed on the breaks, and got out and talked to us, he had talked to missionaries before and invited us over sometime. we talked a little on friday and h said that next monday he is going to take us to pikes peak, which is just over the mississippi from us, and gets a good view of most of our area. we also talked ot him about going back saturday night and helping him milk his 70 cows. he has a thing where he milks 12 cows at a time on one side, and rotates another 12 in on the other side and a pit in the middle that we were in, and milking machines that swing from one side to the ther. It was tons of fun. we will probably go back and do it again before i leave. elder stahl grew up on a small farm, and had a family milk cow so he loved it, he had missed milking cows, but had never done it on that level. before we left on friday he said "hold on, we have a tradition around here." and ran inside his house, then he came out with two t-bone steacks from cows he raised then had butchered. they were awesome.

the branch here averaged 44 people this month, which officialy qualifies them to buy land for a building, they are getting closer to their gaol of a building, when i got here they were averaging about 35-37 each week, now we are breaking 40 every week. It has been an awesome expienence serving in a branch this small, there are only about 85 people on the ward list. transfers are the 6th of april, so yesterday was probably my last sacrament meeting here. the area is slowly starting to pick up, but i am glad to be moving on.

Thank you for all of the support that you have given me, I appreciate it very much. I love you all.

Elder Lundberg