Letter from Mark 27 Feb 2006

Dear Family,

This week has been a good week. Elder Sieler Got transferred to Lake Mills, Elder Stahl is my new companion. He is cool. He is a Jock, he did Football, Wrestling, and La Crosse. he is from oregon, but his parents moved to nevada shortly after he came out. he loves to fish and loves the fact that we are on the mississippi river, it is frozen over at the moment, but when it melts, he wants to be down there on preparation days. he works hard, but isn't always the most obedient. Eler Jensen, Came to madison from lake mills, so i got to see him there. he said that they baptized Lori and Telly Paris. they are a couple that i started teaching with Elder Jensen. when i left they were planning on getting married, but not for a while, they also had some drug problems, it was great to hear that they overcame everything and were able to be baptized.
the temperature has been warming up, it has been in the high 30s and 40srecently and i think it is going to get warmer. the past few days have been windy, but warm.
Elder Stahl and i have decided that we are going to work with the less actives a lot this transfer, the branch is really stressing home teaching and wants us to help them get in the homes they normally cant. there isn't much tracting to be done in prairie du chien, and elder stahl doesn't want to tract anything in prairie while i am here because i have tracted all of it. it is complicated to explain, but the missionaries before Elder sieler were tracting way too much in prairie du chien(about 30 hours a week) and keeping records of who they contacted, but not the best records, they would then go and try to contact everyone. it isn't a bbad way to do it, they just didn't keep track of when, so some houses said no 8 months ago, and some up to a week ago, now there isn't much to tract. so we are planing on tracting the farming areas and outside towns this transfer, and a lot of les actives.
the streets that we have been tracting the past few days are just outside of prairie and are in big hills, this area has a ton of hills, walking them has made my legs a bit sore, but we are trying to let our town cool off so that when i leave they can slowly start retracting the town.
Elder Stahl has a scale, none of my other appartments or companions have had one, i cheked myself, and i have gained 10 pounds, I was sort of surprised because i have ween doing a lot of walking, but I have also started to do pushups after every compaion prayer,I am now up to 30 and usualy do that about 7 or 8 times a day. I picked that up from elder Jensen who did that.
Thank you for all of the support, I love you all , and pray for you.

Elder Lundberg