Such a fun letter from Tanner this week. I am so excited he got to go into Manhattan today. It sounds like he just had the best day and had a great week.
March 6th 2017 (Happy 16th Birthday Abbs!..........Almost!)
Hello my dear family! I'm so glad to be able to email you again! Another week has flown by! Time is really flying by! I look forward to Sunday nights so much because I know another awesome email is coming my way! I loved your email so much! I have missed you all so much but your emails always make me feel right at home! It is hard to believe that a week from this Saturday, I will have been in New York for a month already! Crazy!! I love that there is always something going on that I get to tell you about each week! I love that no two days are alike!
I am so excited to say that we are going to Manhattan and going to go to the 9/11 museum and memorial!!! I have been looking forward to going for a long time so I'm so glad we get to go today! At zone conference, President Smith told us to go have lots of fun on P-Days so we can recharge our batteries and work even harder the next week! So after we go shopping, we will take a subway train that runs right next to our apartment (just down the street) and we will take it to Lower Manhattan! I have always been interested in learning about 9/11 so this is going to be such an amazing experience! I will be sure to take lots of pictures and tell you all about it when we get home! Hopefully there will be time! We have an appointment at 6:30 so hopefully I will be able to tell you all about my day! First, we are planning to go see the water fountains where the original Twin Towers stood and then we will go to the Museum with all the artifacts from the World Trade Center! The museum is right next to the fountains so it is all right there. The museum costs $25.00 but I think it is well worth it! There are so many amazing things to look at! So, we are all really looking forward to that!
Elder Kirkham and I have loved working together! This week we have been spending a lot of time looking investigators up in our area book and tried to get in contact with them so we can teach them a lesson. I love the Bronx and I have really gotten to know the area pretty well! We mostly travel on the buses and so you have to remember which bus to get on and where it takes you. All of the busses start with "BX" for Bronx. But then there is a number associated with the different busses. At first I thought: "There is no way I will be able to memorize all the bus numbers!" But after a while, I got used to which bus we take at certain times. It still amazes me that I'm in the Bronx!
Last Tuesday was an amazing P-Day! We all had such a good time traveling to the big city and going through the Temple! We were so lucky that we got to go because they only had a limited amount of spots so not everybody in our mission got to go. But those who did get to go, they assigned times for us. So luckily we had time to get laundry, shopping, and emailing done before 10:00! So we woke up at 6:00 and then threw in a load of laundry then headed back upstairs to study and plan out our day. After that we switched our laundry and then started to email. After we got everything done we walked to the train station which is just down the street from our apartment. We got on the train and headed to Manhattan! The subway only takes about 45 minutes to and hour depending on how many people get off at each stop. So we really aren't too far. The subway is really cool! It actually goes underneath Central Park for about 20 minutes! We get off at the 66th street stop and then walk up out of the tunnel and there it is...the big city! It is further up by Central Park so I didn't get to see the Statue of Liberty or the Empire State Building but still, the buildings are HUGE! The Temple is really amazing! I couldn't help but think how amazing it was to have a Temple right in the middle of the hustle and bustle of New York life! We then went inside at about 12:00 and got ready for the session. They have really pretty stained glass windows and really amazing pictures! There are tons of behive logos carved into the wood which made me feel like I was in Utah! Very amazing Temple! The session was great and tons of missionaries where there that day! After the session, we all wanted to stay and look at some of the amazing sights but we knew if we had stayed any longer then we would have had to count it as our Manhattan day trip. So we headed back to the apartment and spent some time cleaning up.
On Wednesday, my companion and I went all over the Bronx and tried to schedule some appointments to teach people. I had a really cool experience later that night! We were knocking on doors at an apartment and we were just about to leave to head back to the apartment for the night and I had the strongest impression that we should knock on a door that had bikes. I hadn't seen any bikes around so I wasn't sure where to look but as I started to look around, sure enough there was an apartment just across from where we were that had two bikes out in front. So Elder Kirkham and I walked down to the apartment and knocked and a really nice man named Richard answered the door! We told him that we were missionaries from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. He said that he was really busy at the moment with his kids but he really wants to know more! So we are going to set up a return appointment soon! It is really exciting to have people tell you that they want to learn more! President Smith told us to plant those seeds in people's minds bevause you never know how someone's faith can grow just because you where nice and friendly to them. Then they will remember how friendly you where and then want to know more. So we gave him our card with our number on it. Pretty cool experience!
Thursday was such a great day! We started off the day by doing our weekly planning which is where we call our investigators and see if there would be a time we can set up to teach them during the week. We called Kojo and his wife again and they said we could come over this Saturday! We are both excited to be able to teach them again! After weekly planning we decided to go to a restraunt down the street called China Mia! All 3 Elders in our apartment have been there before and said it was amazing Chinese food. It was really cheap and they gave us so much food that I had to take some home. It only cost $6.95 for a ton of rice that had chicken. And then I got to choose to kinds of meat. I chose the China special chicken which is just like tiny spicy chicken, and then I also had the teriyaki chicken. And it also came with a drink. So, it was a really good deal for all that food! It was really good but I honestly like your tiny spicy chicken better! After lunch we decided to go do some weekly service at the Church. It had been so windy all week so we cleaned up all the garbage that had been blown out of people's trash cans. We raked up so much garbage! After we were done it looked so much better than it did before! We had a great time and lots of people thought it was cool that we were cleaning up the city!
Friday was great as well! We had zone meeting with just the 10 missionaries in our zone at our church! We all talked about our investigators and how everything was going with finding people to teach, etc. We all love hearing about the cool stories that happen during the week. We shared a really cool experience that Elder Kirkham and I had on Monday! We were walking over to an appointment to teach Kojo and his wife, Sophie, but as we were traveling to their house we got a phone call saying that they totally forgot they had an appointment for their newborns checkup. We understood but we're bummed that we couldn't teach them. But not a few minutes later after we got off the bus a really nice Jamaican man who stopped us and wanted t chat. He told us that he has been looking everywhere for missionaries! He said that he was being taught by missionaries up until just recently when he moved to America! He didn't know where to find the missionaries so he was really happy to just see us walking passed him! He said that he is really busy but whenever he has free time he would love to be taught some more! We were thrilled! We knew that it happened for a reason and that we needed to be there at that specific moment!
Saturday was very windy and cold! It was only about 30 degrees but the wind chill made it feel like negative 10! We had a really full day with lots of teaching so it made the weather seem not as cold because we were excited to teach our investigators! We taught lots of lessons but the most memorable lesson we taught was to a man named Deinde Coker. He is a really nice Jamaican man who travels back and forth from Jamaica to visit family. He lives alone here in New York. We thought he was maybe in his early 60s but come to find out that he turns 90 this April. I wish I got a picture of him because he looks so young! We both couldn't believe that he was 89! So we taught him the Restoration and then he told us that we wouldn't get to see him for a while because he was headed back to Jamaica in a few days for 3 months! We wish we could teach him more because he was really nice and open to what we had to teach! Then after that we headed over to one of the member's house for dinner! I was excited for my first dinner with a memeber! He is from Jamaica as well! Elder Kirkham is really good friends with him! His name is Dalton Beckford and he is 43 and lives alone. He was baptized in 2012. He made us rice with chicken curry. And to drink....ginger Kool aid sangria. It was really good but Elder Kirkham warned me in advance that he puts a LOT of ginger in his drink and boy was he right! It tasted good at first like the Mountain Dew Sangria but the after taste burned my mouth like non other!!! He says that he makes it just like they do in Jamaica! And all the kids love it! I'm not going to lie, it was really good but it burned like crazy! We had a really fun chat with him and had a really good dessert called peaches melba! It is basically peach cooler but without the cake mix. First he put in about a half a bottle of maple syrup into a fry pan then a can of peaches and then you bring it to a boil. Then you serve it over ice cream! It was really good! We had a great time!
Yesterday was great as well! Elder Kirkham had a lady that he and his last companion found named Wanda Rodriquez! She has 3 Grandkids that live with her. Elder Kirkham and his previous companion tried to get her to come to church but she was really busy on Sundays and she always had something that was keeping her from church. So Elder Kirkham and I went over to check on her a few days ago and she told us that she really needed missionaries in her life right now! She had been waiting for missionaries to come back and teach her. One rule that we have is that we can't so inside of a house unless there is a third male. So since she lives with her 3 Granddaughters we couldn't go inside. We scheduled a time to come back and teach her the Restoration on a day when we could bring one of the Elder Senior Missionaries just because they are about the same age. Right before we were about to leave for her house she called us and said that we weren't able to come over because her daughter broke her arm and so they had to go to the hospital. We were bummed because we really wanted to go over and get to know her and her Granddaughters better! We invited her to church and her Granddaughters to primary and they were all thrilled to go! But on Sunday right before church started we got a call from her and she said that her daughter got her cast wet on accident so she had to drive her daughter to the hospital to get a new one. After church we Skyped her and she was in tears. She said that she wanted to come to church so bad because she knew that we were sent to her for a reason and this is what she wanted more than anything. She told us that she felt like somthing was always keeping her from church. We told her to just rely on the Lord and he will take care of the rest! We are going to try again to meet with her this week. We can't wait! She is very willing to learn which is awesome!
Well, I really wish I could talk with you forever but we are just about ready to head off for the Big City! I am so excited to go and see so many amazing sights! I have wanted to go to this museum forever! I want you to know how much I love and appreciate all that you do for me! I have enjoyed so much hearing every week how everything is going back home! I will definitely tell you all about my day when we get home! I put this week's pictures on my drive! Hopefully you can tell which ones you haven't seen. It is going to be a blast to see all the amazing artifacts and the cool memorial fountains! I think there is a website you can go onto and see all the cool stuff that they have at this museum! It is called the 9/11 tribute center and museum! I hope you all have a wonderful week at work and school and all of your various activities! Have so much fun celebrating Abby's big birthday and eat lots of cake and ice cream and eat at a really yummy restraunt! I will be thinking about her all day! I love you all more than anything and I have felt so much love and so many prayers each a every day! Serving a mission is going to impact my life so much for the rest of my life! I have loved serving the Lord so much even though it has been really hard to leave you all at home but not a day goes by that I don't think of you all and pray for your safety! Thanks again for the amazing email! You are in my prayers always! Have a great week! Love you all so much!
Love Always!
~Elder Lindberg
P.S: I love taking pictures! I took pictures of Dalton and the dinner he made us, 2 Honda Civics identical to Dad's, a person that lived in one of the buildings named F. Gore (For Brandon!) and just some of the amazing sunsets that we have! Enjoy!
Here is an email we got today after Tanner got back from the 9/11 museum.
Here are just a few of the pictures he took today.
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