18 December 2006

Letter from Mark 18 Dec 2006

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

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

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

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