Letter from Mark 14 Nov 2005

Dear Family,

My companion and I are getting along great. Our zone leaders said that if anyone in the zone gets 15 lessons and 15 hours tracting in one week they would buy them a pizza. if you get just one it is considerd gettin on the honor roll. we got 13 lessons this week and 16 hours tracting, we tried hard to get those last 2 lessons but they didn't come. It was one of the best teaching weeks in thes area in a long time.
On Friday our ward has a ward temple day, they are going to the chicago temple. we called president Hunt adn he approved letting us go to that, we have to be within 2 hours of the temple, and we are right on the border, we also have to make up the time on preparation day, so most of today will be a normal day. I am very excited, missionaries are only allowed to go 2 times a year and only if they are close enough and only on ward temple days.
At the moment we a teaching a few people, most of which are slow to progress. One old lady we are teaching is reading the book of mormon, has been for a couple years, she reads it slowly and re-reads sections until she feels she understands it. she is now around 3 nephi 20 and believes it is true, dipite what others have said to her. she has health problems and sometimes has a hard time getting to church, but she likes our church, her only concirn is she was baptized by another church that claims to trace its authority and she doesn't think she needs to be baptised again, but she has an open mind.
we taught a lady a couple times, she took the lessons 7 years ago and almost got baptized, then she met her boyfriend and at the time he was pushing her away from that, she said that at the time she felt great and knew it was true and wants to feel that again. her boyfriend is also very interested, the first time we taught him he told us right when we got there that he was going to start to read the bible every night, he said it was going to be a priority for him, whe we left he said that he was going to read the book of mormon instead, he was convinced that it was more importat to read then the bible, it was great. the only problem is that they are not married and cannot be baptised until they are, or they break up.
there are a few others that we are teaching, that like talking to us, but have a hard time keeping commitments. I will tell you more about others in another email.
It is slowly starting to get colder here, it has been really windy and rainy the past few days, i have heard from a few people that it is going to be a harsh winter here, and a few said it would be not too cold for wisconsin, but that it would be a very wet winter, either way i am not looking forward to it.
I have to go. I love you all.
Elder Lundberg