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