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