The Summer Cooking Series....Bacon Recipes Vol. 1

Bacon Wrapped Grilled Corn on the Cob: The ultimate decadent corn on the cob

• 8 ears corn.
• 1 pound bacon.
• Gently pull back the husk exposing the corn. Do not remove the husk.
• Remove the corn silk and use a brush to make sure all the silk is removed.
• Soak the corn with the silks removed in water for 30 minutes. This will prevent the husks from charring.
• Preheat a grill to medium heat.
• Remove from the water and pat dry.
• Take a strip of bacon and wrap it around the corn. Fold the corn leaves back over, covering the bacon and corn.
• Tie the leaves with butcher string and repeat the process for each ear of corn.
• Place the ears of corn on the hot grill and cook, turning occasionally until bacon is cooked and corn is tender, approximately 15 to 20 minutes.

Keith and Kirsten sittin' in a tree...

Here is a good picture of Keith with a lady named Kirsten. They have been dating for a few months. This picutre was taken at a recent Gold & Green Ball in their stake or ward. Pretty nice for a church dance, eh?

Letter from Mark 27 March 2006

Dear Family,

This comming week is going to be a bit hectic, in about an hour we are leaving and will spend the day with the platteville elders, then stay the night there and go to zone conference on tuesday, after zone conference we are going on exchanges with the zone leaders and will be driving back to madison to switch back, then saturday we are going to platteville againg and staying over night for general conference because we do not get it at our building. we estimated that i will be in the car about 14 hours this week, and will get to work in my area about 13 hours. it should be interesting. I am looking forward to conference.

Friday we stoped by a guy that we had met tracting, a few weeks ago we saw him driving his tractor down the road, we wave, and he slammed on the breaks, and got out and talked to us, he had talked to missionaries before and invited us over sometime. we talked a little on friday and h said that next monday he is going to take us to pikes peak, which is just over the mississippi from us, and gets a good view of most of our area. we also talked ot him about going back saturday night and helping him milk his 70 cows. he has a thing where he milks 12 cows at a time on one side, and rotates another 12 in on the other side and a pit in the middle that we were in, and milking machines that swing from one side to the ther. It was tons of fun. we will probably go back and do it again before i leave. elder stahl grew up on a small farm, and had a family milk cow so he loved it, he had missed milking cows, but had never done it on that level. before we left on friday he said "hold on, we have a tradition around here." and ran inside his house, then he came out with two t-bone steacks from cows he raised then had butchered. they were awesome.

the branch here averaged 44 people this month, which officialy qualifies them to buy land for a building, they are getting closer to their gaol of a building, when i got here they were averaging about 35-37 each week, now we are breaking 40 every week. It has been an awesome expienence serving in a branch this small, there are only about 85 people on the ward list. transfers are the 6th of april, so yesterday was probably my last sacrament meeting here. the area is slowly starting to pick up, but i am glad to be moving on.

Thank you for all of the support that you have given me, I appreciate it very much. I love you all.

Elder Lundberg

More Bacon, Please!

Cloned pigs are porky and best, say scientists

Sun Mar 26, 1:15 PM ET

PARIS (AFP) - Researchers say they have created cloned piglets that are rich in omega-3 fatty acids, the oil that is prized as being beneficial to the heart.

Omega-3 is mostly found in fish, but this supply is threatened by overtrawling and clouded by worries about mercury pollution, which accumulates in fish livers.

A team led by Yifan Dai of the University of Pittsburgh's School of Medicine transferred into foetal pig cells a gene called fat-1 that had been identified in a well-studied lab animal, a tiny worm known as Caenorhabditis elegans.

Fat-1 converts the abundant but less desirable omega-6 fatty acids into the coveted omega-3.

The nucleus of pig eggs was then removed and substituted with the nucleus from these engineered cells, following the now-classic method of animal cloning that began with Dolly the Sheep in 1996.

The research's prime aim is to gain a better understanding of cardiac function, where hog and human are strikingly similar, the team reports on Sunday in the specialist journal Nature Biotechnology.

"We would use these animals as a model to see what happens to heart health if we increase the omega-3 levels in the body. It could allow us to see how that helps cardiovascular function," said co-author Randy Prather, a specialist of the University of Missouri at Columbia.

Given that the animals are experimental -- not to say extraordinarily expensive -- no one knows what their meat tastes like, whether it is safe to eat and whether the piglets will retain high levels of omega-3 when they reach adulthood.

If, eventually, the transgenic hogs go to market, there could be double benefits, argued Prather.

"First, the pigs could have better cardiovascular function and therefore live longer, which would limit livestock loss for farmers. Second, they could be healthier animals for human consumption."

Genetic manipulation of animals and plants for agricultural purposes is fiercely opposed by environmentalists as being potentially dangerous to health and the ecology.

Their concerns are shared by many experts, who urge extensive testing to obey the so-called precautionary principle when introducing novel technology.

Animal cloning, with the present technology, also results in many failures, as shown in Dolly's premature demise in 2003.

The endeavour to create the world's first omega-3 pig entailed the creation of 1,633 cloned embryos, which were implanted into 14 sows.

Only 12 pregnancies resulted, of which five came to term, delivering just 10 live piglets and two dead ones.

Of the 10 survivors, only six had the fat-1 gene -- and three (including two with fat-1) had a heart defect and had to be killed at the age of three weeks.

The demand for omega-3 has surged in recent years because of their deemed benefits in cardiovascular disease, rheumatoid arthritis and diabetes.

But a review of the evidence, published on Saturday in the British Medical Journal (BMJ), casts doubt on this.

It looked at 89 studies into omega-3, and said there was concern that people who have angina might suffer a higher risk of a fatal heart attack by taking supplements of the oil.

In 2002, Prather's team created pigs designed to produce organs that were more suitable for transplantation into humans.

Pig organs are coated with sugar molecules that trigger acute rejection by the human immune system. The modified piglets lacked one of the two copies of the sugar-making gene, thus marking an important experimental step towards so-called xenotransplantation.

Letter from Mark 20 March 2006

Dear Family,

This week has been good, on saturday chuck McCullick ( a less Active member) and Liz Anderson( an investigator) got married. that was great to see. Liz still smokes, and is pregnant, so she has been told to cut down slowly, but be careful quitting because the baby could suffer from withdrawls. she has cut back on smoking a bunch, it will probably be a while before she can be baptized, but they are making steps in the right direction.

The last few weeks we have been getting about 40 people at sacrament meetng, and close to 50 one week, if they average 40 this month they can buy land to build a building on, so far I think they are doing it, attendance is slowly going up, the branch here is getting very excited and wants a building bady. general conference will be interesting, our building can supposedly get audio, but we have to go to platteville to watch it, we are trying to get it approved to stay the night there saturday night to save us miles and so we can watch all 10 hours.

my companion and I spoke in sacrament meeting yesterday, we both spoke for 20 min on teaching by the spirit, it went well. I spoke first, I was glad about that because i wasn't sure i would take 20 min, but i eneded up speaking almost exactly 20 min. so it went well. Elder stahl ended up cutting a few stories to keep his to 20 min. he was planning to do that anyway though.

Elder Stahl and i have been doing a lot better this week, he started getting up at 6:30 (he usually was in bed till about 7:30.) he has said that he has not been able to get to sleep after i get up, and i think the fact that it is lighter outside in the mornings now is heling him get up, it has made it a lot easier for me in the mornings.

It dropped a few inches of very wet snow earlier in the week, but most of it is melted now, it has been slowly warming up, and i don't think it will snow much if at all.

Thank you all for the support that you give me, i appreciate your prayers, and have been praying for you. I love you all.

Elder Lundberg

Letter from Mark 13 March 2006

Dear Family,

This week has been nice. it was in the 60's for a few days, it has cooled down to the 40's and is supposed to drop some snow later in the week. It was warm enough earlier that i didn't have to wear a coat, my suit was fine. It has been a mild winter here, but i am ready for spring.

My companion, Elder Stahl, is from hermiston, Oregon. it is in the north west corner. he has been out for 15 months. as far as junior and senior comapions I am the junior right now and it is all up to the mission president on when you go senior, there are some that i came out with that are already senior companions. and for driving the senior usually drives, unless he doesn't have a lisence or has gotten in an accident on his mission, when we go on exchanges i can drive, but other than that i don't. Hope that answers all or you questions.

We had a few pretty cool experiences this week. tuesday was interviews with the president, and because we have a large area and we live on the edge of it, he approved us to go camping to save miles when we are on the far edge of our area. we are going today to cabelas (the have a big store/factory here) to get stuff. we probably won't go untill the end of the transfer when it is warmer, but we will go before i leave, which is most likely on april 6th.
tuesday night we stayed the night in plattevill with the elders there, then worked our way back home. around 5:30 we decided to go a bit further into our area than we had planned to see an old referal from salt lake for a video. Her name was kathy edwards, she has a member daughter in arizona, and a grandson in mexico on a mission. she is mostly nice to us because she has a granson on a mission. when we stopped by she had a daughter that had a baby about a month ago. the baby had a whole in its heart, and on tuesday she was talking to her sister in arizona( who has our number after visiting here in december.) her sister said she could call us and send us over to give the baby a blessing even though they are not members. we had not even been home since they talked, but we were able to give the baby a blessing. it was great, the spirit was very strong there, and I think we left a good impression that might open the door down the road, after the blessing the mother was crying. It was amazing.

Friday night we found out that an excommunicated member was being re-baptized on saturday. we got a ride to platteville saturday night to see the baptism. Eizabeth Hull, the lady that was baptized has come to church the whole time i have been here, she plays the piano every week. we were shocked because we had nothing to do with teaching her or the baptism, but it was great to see her be baptized, her son baptized her.

Things have been tough the past few days with elder stahl, but after interviews i am almost posative that I will be leaving. he is a nice guy, but we have conflicting personalities, he is the youngest, a bit spoiled, and very hard headed. so far we have been able to work everything out, but i will be glad to get a new companion

i love you all, and appreciate your support. I am trying to work hard and have been praying for you.

Elder Lundberg

Letter from Mark 06 March 2006

dear family,

This past week has been good. It snowed about 8 inches yesterday. most of the snow here is a very dry snow, this was a wet snow, so it was heavy. and they don't plow much until it stops snowing, they mostly just salt, that made it hard to drive in. we had a member that lives on top of a hill in farm country invite us to eat right after church, they also invited the 1st counselor in the branch presidency and his wife. we were driving on snow that had not been driven on, and pushing some snow with our bumper, when we got to the hill we got about half way up, and couldn't make it, so we turned around. the 1st counselor saw us and was following for a litle while in a suburban, they said they would tell the family we couldn't make it. we called when we got back, it took us a little over 2 hours to do a trip that would normaly take half hour. It has warmed back up a little but today, and will probably gradually get better.

My companion and I are getting along alright, we aren't best friends, but we get along. he works hard a times, but isn't always obedient. he has had a hard time adjusting to the area because he doesn't like how the missionaries that opened the area in the summer worked it. he has a few idea's of how to get the area going well, onone of them is he wants missionaries to rotate through quicker to get new faces that haven't worked the town too much. tomorrow we have interviews with the mission president and said he is going to ask to have me transfered at the end of this transfer, and him transferred the one after that.

Our lesson with Judy and laura this week went well. It is nice to have Elder Stahl there, I was doing almost all of the talking, and explaining the chapters of the book of mormon that we read. elder stahl has been doing his share of talking, and has been giving his insight on the chapter as well, it was a great lesson. they have been meeting with missionaries for a while, so we are going to start to try to get the point accross that it isn't just a weekly scripture study that we come over for. both of them love the book of mormon, laura especally feels its power, so we are going to try to get them to start doing more and comming to church. the branch president's wife told us that she is going to invite both of them to enrichment night this month. laura has been a bit hesitant comming to church because se doesn't like large crouds, or that was the excuse she gave us, so we are hoping she will go to enrichment.

We met a guy just after elder stahl got here that we have taught a few times, he is a bit slower, so we will have to go over every thing a few times before he fully grasps everything that we are telling him, but he is very interested in religion, adn so far has liked to talk with us. he told us he is a catholic, but after talking with him, he has some conflicting views with the catholic church.

Thank you for all of the support that you give me. I love you all.

Elder Lundberg

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

Letter from Mark 20 Feb 2006

Dear Family,

This week has been interesting. tuesday we had a meeting at 9:00 in the morning 145 miles away. we drove the first 50 on monday night so that we wouldn't have to get up too early. Thursday we got hammered with about 8-10 inches of snow, so we spent all day shoveling. friday the temperature droped to about 5 degrees, probably aabout -10 or -15 with the wind chill. then friday night we were told to avoid going out except for appointments on saturday, the high was supposed to be -7, it got to around 0, but when we woke up it was -20, and the wind chill was bad all day. around noon it was about the same as friday whe we were tracting, but my companion didn't wan't to go out at all, which is understandable being from arizona. we stoped by a part member family , but that is it.

our attendance at church is hovering around 40-45 per week, we need to average 50 per week for three months to see a building. recently we have not had our investigators showing up to church, but we have had a few less actives starting to show up more. the branch is starting to look for land to put a building on.

Transferrs are comming up on thursday. one of us will be transferred because we have been together for two transfers and they don't usually kep two elders together longer then that. most likely elder sieler will be going bcause he has been here longer, but there is the chance that i do, so please use the office this week.

thanks for the box, it was nice. we don't buy snack foods offen, so it has been nice to have them.

thank you for all of the support that you give me. I love you all.

Elder Lundberg

How To Become Elmo

HI!

My name is Thomas James Lundberg.

I am two.

I am insane. You can see it in my eyes.

For my birthday I wanted to become Elmo and this is how I did it.

Keep going, my transformation is almost complete...

Wahlahh! Finished!

I'm thinking about becoming Grover for my third birthday...stayed tuned!

Letter from Mark 13 Feb 2006

dear family,

this week has been good. i am in Platteville at the momemt because we are going to janesville early tomorrow morning, and it is a 3 hour drive from Prairie Du Chien, a 2 hour drive from Plattville.

thank you for the piano music that you sent, that is great, it is nice to have something to play that is different the the hymns, the hymns are great, but they aren't made as piano solo's. It has been great going through them. they are hard enough that i actually have to put some effort into them, but still easy enough that i can learn them in the time that i have to play. I recieved the valentines package as well. that was great, thank you.

We had a dinner yesterday with a family that recently moved into the branch. they moved from arizona. they are awesome and are very eager to help us. she just got called as the 1st counselor in the young womens, giving us more leaders then young women, but that should change in june with a family that is moving in. they called her because the YW president lives by madison and comes because her husband was called as the 2nd counselor in the branch presidency, so they commute 2 hours to prairie du chien every sunday. this way they can have a leader here for the activities.

Our lesson with Judy and Laura went well this week. laura is realy getting into the book of mormon, and is starting to question if she is on the right path with the catholic church (she doesn't actively attend that church) she said she was going to try to make it to church on sunday, but didn't show up. it will be a slow prosses, but i think her heart is being softened from reading the book of mormon. judy has expressed interest in joining the church, but doesn't feel the time is right. she still smokes, and has a very busy work scheduel, she gets off of an 16 hour shift sunday mornings at 8 so she hasn't been comming to church recently.

My companion has been having a hard time, and realy wants to leave this area. prairie du chien was tracted way too much by the elders before my companion. we keep track of houses that tell us not interested so we don't bug them too much, and so there are a lot of streets that don't have many houses to knock, several times my companion will se someone he recognises that has told him no before, he has been doing a good job working, he just donsn't want to stay because he has knocked every door in prairie du chein multiple times. it has made it a little harder because he complaines alot, but he is willing to work.

I set up a bank account with wells fargo a few weeks ago. i did that so that i can cash checks that get sent to me without paying any fee's. I don't plan on using it for much than that at the moment, but there are several locations around the state that if nothing else i will have access to at big meetings. I figured that would be a good place because i can keep it when i go home.

I love you all and appreciate your support. thank you for your prayers, i pray for you.

Elder Lundberg

Letter from Mark 06 Feb 2006

dear family,

this week has been different, it started out in the 50's, then droped to the 20's, windy and humid. it is now hovering in the 30's, but the sun is out and it isn't windy or humid, so it feels a lot warmer.

we had chuck McCullick and Liz Anderson show up for church. chuck is a less active member, and liz isn't a member, but is taking the lessons. they are not married, but are getting maried on the 18th of march. chuck has been comming for the past couple weeks now, liz has been working a lot so has not come in a while. chuck has a 12 year old son that is a member that came, and is interested in joining the priesthood. they are starting to make progress, and will probably make more once they are married, they both smoke, but liz has to be carefull quiting cold turkey because she is pregnant.

we met with an old catholic couple named Jan and Wane Koeke. we tracted into them last week and they invited us back. Jan told us that they were catholic's and like talking to missionaries (they had met some before) but she wouldn't be interested in changing religions. we gave her a book of mormon and she was very excited. she said the other missionaries never gave her a book of mormon. she told us that she would read it. Even if she isn't ready to change religions yet, reading the book of mormon is a steap in the right direction.

I bought a slow cooker earlier this week and made a roast in it. it was nice to have real food. I planed out how much it costs and i can probably do one roast or stew a week. it is also small enough that i will be able to pack it with me when i am transfered. it was nice to have a good meal, and the leftovers lasted a few meals. it was nice to have because we don't get many dinners with members.

I love you. thank you for all of your support.

Elder Lundberg

Letter from Mark 23 Jan 2006

dear family,
things are starting to pick up here. it is still slow, but we have had a decent week. we were able to teach a few people that we have had a hard time getting in contact with recently, we have gotten a few refferalls recently, and we hve been able to teach off of tracting. the most promising that we met off of tracting is a lady named stephanie that we met earlier this week. she was very excited to talk with us. she is a baptist, but does not like the religion, so she iss looking for a new religion. she weas very receptive and told us a few times how glad she was that we stopped by. she works every other sunday, so she wasn't able to come to church yesterday, but said she would come next week. she has a 19 year old daughter that is a senior in high school and she said that her daughter would come, she also has an 11 year old daughter that said might want to come if the 19 year old comes. she said that her husband is realy shy, and might come, but he might take a whild to get more comfortable with the religion. it was great. we met her tracting a street that had been tracted not too long ago.

saturday we have a family with a 19 month old and a 6 month old moving in.then the 1st of march a husband of a family of 6(one is on a mission) will be here, and his family will come shorly after. I haven't heard anything from the family that came last week. we are hoping that they come as well. in that past few months 3 families have moved in and 3 or 4 more could move in in the next 3 or 4 months. this branch is really starting to grow.

while we have had a better week, this area is starting to get frustrating. before this week we had several weeks where we did not teach off of tracting at all, and we don't have a large teaching pool so we were tracting a lot. there isn't a whole lot of people out here either, so i have already almost tracted everything nearby. it makes it hard, but going back to the streets that were tracted a few months ago(some by my comanion) we have had some success. the assitants to the presidant and the presidant were woried about this area, because we we not getting any lessons for a few weeks except for the part member family that we are working with(they are not married, but they are now engaged for march 18th, that made us happy) and judy and laura, who are progressing, but slowly. this branch nees the support of the missionaries, but they expressed concirn that they didn't know if they could keep missionaries busy in this area. it just recenly opened after being closed for about a year, and it has taken a hard hit from being closed, so they didn't want to do it again. hopefully we will continue to have the sucess that we have been getting this week.

I got the camera, i haven't had too much time to fiddle with it but it looks cool.

Thank you for your prayers and support. I pray for you, and i have been trying to work hard, dispite the difficult circumstances. I love you.Elder Lundberg

***FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE***: ARRIVING JULY 8, 2006 - TO A FAMILY NEAR YOU!

On July 8th 2006 Angela will be giving birth to lucky number THREE!!!!!

We invite your guesses on gender, hair, eyes, and length. We also welcome any name suggestions you might have.

Angela is doing fine and is have much less nausea than she had with the boys. Samuel wants a sister. He's been asking for one for several months now. I think we would also love to have a girl. But, we'll be grateful for whatever the Lord sees fit.

Alright now, get those suggestions rolling in!

Lovies - Grant, Angela and the Boys.

Transferred! Letter from Mark 05 Dec 2005

Dear Family,

I was Transferred. I am now in Prairie du Chien. it is on the mississippi river. it is a huge area. it is larger than my last area by a little bit, but we live on the edge of our area, so to get to the other side of our area we use a lot of miles. My nw address is

637 e. Blackhawk ave app. H
prairie du Chien, WI 53821

My companion is Elder Sieler. he looks like a taller Elder Hodgson. the branch here is small. last month was their highest average for attendance and is was just over 40. they meet in an old auto parts store. i didn't get to see the ward size because it was stake conference yesterday.It has been interesting. I wanted to stay in lake mills, but the more i thought about it i didn't think i would be staying, and i felt a great peace that where i would be transfered woud be the right place for me. elder jensen was a very hard worker, and we got along great, i picked up some good habbits from him. my companion now will work hard, but i hae to push him to work, he has a more laid back approach to missionary work and dosen't have a problem breaking a rule here and there as long as it dosen't happen too often. we have been working way harder than they did last transfer, dispite his last companions efforts to work hard, we get a long great, so he is willing to work hard as long as we have fun, he said his last compaion was way to serious about everything. i can see a lot of room for growth here and while i know it will be hard, but i know I will grow more this way than with a companion that wants to work as hard as i do.

thanks for the tape, it was great to hear from all of you. alex is getting good on the piano, and allison and amanda did a great job on the violins. I will try to send a tape and pictures soon.

I don't think i had time to write it last week, but it sounds like you had a fun thanksgiving, ours was cold, but fun. happy birthday a little late to mom.

there is now about 6 inches of snow here and starting to get colder. my companion has a temperature thing in our appartment and it got down to 0 this morning when we woke up.

we got to go to the christmas devotional lastnight. that was great. we had to drive an hour to plattville to be able to see it at their church building, but it was worth it.

I am having a great time here and can see the blessings both here and there from service. I have been working hard, and pray for you, i am thankful for your prayers and support. I love you

Elder Lundberg

Letter from Mark 28 Nov 2005

Dear Family,

Thanksgiving here was great.  we played football in the morning when it was 14
degrees and very windy. it was very cold, once we got moving around it wasn't
too bad. we ate dinner with 3 families and a guy that is single and about 30. It
was a lot of fun.  there were a lot of little kids running around.  we played
phase 10 after we ate, then we went over to the harts and watched the man from
snowy river, my companion saw it and was way excited, it use to be his favorite
movie, i thought it was funny.  we didn't watch a sporting event.

We found out that on christmas eve we can watch a movie and a sporting event, or
on new years eve or something like that because christmas is on sunday.  we get
45 min. to call on christmas.

it snowed a little on wednesday, and a few inches on friday, but by sunday it
was in the 40's and raining, it is raining today and it is about 50 degrees. 

transfers are on thursday, so you would want to send anything through the
office. I will find out tomorrow night if i am being transfered.

I finished reading the book of mormon on saturday, i picked up my pace because
sis. Hunt challenged us to mark our book of mormons looking for references to
christ, his attributes, his words, and doctrines in the book of mormon. we
started in september and i just continued from where i was and figured i would
try to finnish and get through to where i was. It hss been awesome reading the
book of mormon and marking it  looking for christ.

I love you and appreciate your letters.

Elder Lundberg

Letter from Mark 21 Nov 2005

Dear Family

THe trip to the temple was great! there were 6 people from our ward puls us. the session that we went to was completly full, we didn't get back to our appartment until about midnight. the attitude of the members here is awesome. they love having a temple so close to them (a little under two hours drive away) before the chicago temple was built they had to go to the Washington D.C. temple. there are some people in the stake that go once a week. it has made me apreciate the temples that we have a lot more. they were talking of doing something cool for next year. someone said that in an old ward the got about 300 family names that someone had and did a thing where they wanted to "create a ward on the other side" and did all of the temple work for those 300 people. they said that they had a check list posted to get peole excited, and they would check stuff off as they got it done. i thought it was a neat idea.
this comming week is going to be interesting. wednesday is zone conference and we don't usually get much done then, on thaksgiving we dont work at all, and today we don't work much. on thanksgiving the ward is havng a football game that we are going to, then we are going over to a members home for thanksgiving dinner(the hearts will be there also) we can also aprove one pg movie to watch, and we can watch one sporting event. I am excited.
the next transfers are on the 1st of December, and i am hoping to stay, but i have been here for 3 transfers already, the last two missionaries trained here have both stayed for 4 transfers, so i am hoping the same will be for me. the longest they usually let missionaries stay in one area is 6 months or 4 transfers.
I Can not view pictures on my email. i have tried but it dosen't work.
I did finish Jesus the Christ, it is an awesome book. I borrowed my companions copy to finish it. by the end of the year i will have finnished all of the mission library on my mission except for the bible, after i do that i can approve other books to read.
The coat that i have Hs been great so far, on tuesday it snowed a little bit and got down to about 15 degrees. it has warmed up since then. and is now about 30 to 40 in the day, and if geels great after a couple days below 20 plus wind.
We did a lot of tracting this week. we got 22 hours, last transfer we got 21 hours, and got the top tracting that week in the mission, which is neet, but not somthing to brag about.
In one of your letters you asked what our schedule is like, it is usually about like this, 6:30-7:00 excersize 7:00-8:00 get ready and eat
8-9 personal study, 9-10 companion study 10am -9pm tract, visit less actives,recent converts, investigators, potential investigators, etc.9:00-9:30 plan for the next day. we get an hour for lunch and an hour for dinner. our dinner hour is usually at 8 if we dont have a member feeding us so we can stay in the area that we are working. usually after 4 or 5 it gets dark,so we try to stop by people then, and we don't tract after 8 because people don't like it. we also have 4 hours of planned service a week, an hour to an a hour and a half district meeting, 2 hour weekly planning session. every 3 weeks we meet with the zone for interviews with the president or zone conference, those take the place of district meeting.
The work in this area is slow, but I am loving it and the members here are great. I apreciate all of your letters. I wish that i had time to write to all of you personally, but I dodn't have that much time. I love all of you.

Elder Lundberg

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

Williams Family on the Holodeck

This is inside NIF, standing by the target chamber "ball". When all lasers are connected, they will shoot through the big metal boxes that are sticking out of the target chamber into the center of the ball. 192 lasers will focus down on a tiny gold box containing a pellet the size of a BB, then, ka-boom! We got to see inside the chamber - very, very cool.

Mark's Letter 07 Nov 2005

Dear Family

Yesterday we had stake conference here. that was great, they had several returned missionaries speak about the book of mormon. It was great. I'm not sure if you have heard about this (most of the people out here haven't) but Elder Ballard reciently issued a challenge to the members of the church to invite someone over to their home to hear the message of the restoration before Joseph Smith's birthday.(December 23) The stake President issued that challenge to the stake, that has made me excited, we have been working with a few members in our wart do do this, and now they got to hear it from the stake president.

They are going to try out something new in our mission and in a mission in arizona or somewhere around there. They want us to move into members homes, the thinking is that they will save a lot of money on rent. I haven't heard much of the details but I have heard that there would need to be a seprate entrance for the missionaries, and they need to have access to the kitchen. i'm not sure how they would work it, but we wouldn't be able to be in the house without a male member over the age of 18. they are starting to push us to do that, and i think some areas are getting moving in with members soon. It will be interesting, I will tell you when I hear more.

I'm not sure how much i told you about elder Jensen, but you asked how long he has been out. he has been out just over a year, he just got done training someone that came out with me, but i didn't know him too well, he was in a different MTC district. he is from sandy, Elder jensen is from the same stake that president hunt is from, so they knew each other before, but not well. he is the youngest of 7, and his parents left on a mission shortly after him and are in japan and will get back a little before him.

I still get to play the piano a little, but i haven't been playing as much as i was before. I have played a couple times for priesthood, and i have played for all of our district meetings (once a week with 3 companionships) and for most zone conferences and interviews (once about every 3 weeks) sometimes i have know before what i am playing and i can practice it. sometimes I know what i am playing when they announce what hymn is going to be played (that gets to be fun) sometimes i just play one hand because i am the only one that can play well enough to do that.

Just yesterday i was thinkin that it had been 4 months since I went into the MTC. the time goes by so quickly when all of the time that you have is filled doing something, it seams like i just got here.

i have thought of a few other christmas ideas. I am almost done reading Jesus the christ, and the end of the copy that i have skipps several pages in some spots and it repeats in some spots, i have 3 chapter 38's. i have borrowed my companions coppy but if i ever want to read it again it would be nice to have a copy with everything in it. I probably won't read it soon, but i thought i would tell you anyway. i also thought that some dark sweaters to wear that would look good with my suit would be nice as it is starting to get cold. My last companion said that he had been looking for a ski mask, one that covers up over your mouth and nose, but it isn't a hat, you pull it down. i thought that might be nice to have, but i wouldn't know where to find it. other than that i havent come up with much. I did get the halloween package, thank you that was great.

I don't have much more time to write, i love you all and i pray for you. I appreciat your prayers. one thing that someone told me that i thought was neet is he told his family to pray for those that he is teaching or will meet. I love you

Elder Lundberg