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