August 9th 2017~What An Amazing Week From Kingston!!!
Another P-day is upon us my dear family! Thanks so much for your great and fun email and pictures! It is always so much fun to hear a week's worth of news all in 1 email! I appreciate the time that you spend to write me such great email! I'm so glad that you all had a great week! That makes 2 of us because our week was so awesome! I have some fun news about today! A really nice member, Sister Parks, is the wife of Brother Parks who took us out to Olive Garden on my 1st day here in Kingston. She has a really cool man made waterfall that her and her family love to go to all the time and so she asked if we would like to come along. So today at 11:00 our time, we are going to meet at her house and then drive up with her and her family to see this cool waterfall! She has 3 kids and they are all younger than 12. Their story is really cool! She is from Poland and her and Brother Parks met when he was on his mission in Poland. Brother Parks flew back after his mission to Poland and they started dating and then got married a few months after he got home from his mission. So they were so nice and invited us to come along! One of their son's name is Brandon and so I think of Dubbie every time I see him! So we will get our laundry done, and then drive to their house and see the waterfall for a little while and then go shopping. I was so excited to read all about you week that you had! I can't believe that school is starting up so soon either! When you are away from everything, you don't realize how fast summer actually flies by. Every day just feels like a regular day of missionary work even though it is summer. Pretty crazy! I can't believe that football season is starting up either! I have to admit, football season is going to be hard to be away from especially because I will miss Dubbie playing. I will miss watching him play and watching all of the action unfold with you. I really hope that you get season tickets again to watch the Aggies! I can't wait to hear how they will do! It's going to be pretty hard to miss all of the games and activities but I just keep thinking about how many more are to come. Missing 2 is only a sliver of all the seasons that I will get to watch with you! I will miss watching Brandon play so much but maybe, just maybe, I can cheer loud enough for him to hear me.
Wednesday was a really awesome day! I had been ucustomed to the area and all settled in so it was a really good time! We woke up and got ready for the day and then we did laundry and then went shopping, Elder Howard buys all of his food for most of the month like frozen meals, rice, noodles, and then buys perishable food each week. So since it was the beginning of the month, we had a BIG shopping trip! Then after we got laundry and groceries put away, we emailed and then cleaned the apartment. I had lots of fun chatting back and forth and hearing all about your day! Then, a huge lightning and rainstorm came out of no where. It was so crazy!
THURSDAY WAS INCREDIBLE!!! I have some VERY exciting news!! These are the kinds of days that I just love and make serving a mission even more fun! We were in Zone Conference for most of the day and it was such a good conference! Our Zone is the Newburgh Zone and so our conferences are in Newburgh which is about 45 minutes away. It is nice because while 1 person is driving, the other person can call our investigators while we are driving. So we woke up at about 5:30 since we had to be in Newburgh by 8:00 for breakfast. We left the apartment at 7:00 so we could have plenty of time to get there by 8:00. So we got to the Newburgh Church at about 7:50 and then breakfast started at 8:00. Sister Smith made us some really good chocolate chip cream cheese spread to go on bagels. It was so good! Hehe, I have to get to the end of the day until I can tell you the exciting news! "Just do it, the waiting is the worst part!
What an amazing day Friday was!! Friday was an amazing and great day! It was so busy and jam packed that we barely had enough time to jump from appointment to appointment. Since last Thursday was Zone Conference, we couldn't do our weekly planning that day and so we did it on Friday instead. So we woke up and after our studies, we had an awesome service project with a really cool member named Brother Monterroza. He is one of the most active members in the ward and so we really wanted to help him and share a message with him to let him know that his hard work doesn't go unnoticed. He and his wife are from El Salvador and he moved to America when he was about 15. He needed a huge inflatable pool and all of the metal poles moved to the side of his house and it was just too big and heavy for him to move all by himself. So we helped him move it to the side of his house and then we raked lots of leaves and put them in Lowes and Home Depot bags for someone to come pick up and haul to the dump. We could only stay for about an hour so we shared a message with him and then drove back to the apartment to shower and change and then drove to our next meeting which was with Sister Wootton at the Mid Hudson Buffet in downtown Kingston! I can't believe that she takes the missionaries out to eat every single week at this same restraunt. It must get pretty expensive for her because it costs about $8.00 each for us to eat. We are always so appreciate and thank her for her kindness. I will be sure to get more pictures with members so you can visualize who we are teaching and working with. She is such a nice lady and the food is always so good! It is a lot like Golden Corral which I think I mentioned before last week. So every single week, we will be eating at this delicious restraunt. It has soft serve ice cream which is always my favorite! We had a nice talk and lesson with her while we are lunch and we talked about Bill and our exciting news about his baptismal date! It was a fun time and then we went over to the Church to do our weekly planning session. It usually takes missionaries about 3 hours of work to fill up our schedule and get everything all set and ready to rock and roll for the upcoming week. We talk about just about everyone and decide who needs us to come over most and who is progressing toward baptism! It is fun to take a step back and focus on our people that we are working with! So after that, it was time for a few more lookups and then we had a dinner appointment at 6:00 with an awesome family, the Scheringers! The evening was so amazing and we had an awesome lesson with them! First of all, Kingston is so amazing and pretty! The trees are so dense and everything is just so amazing! I took lots of pictures, especially at the Scheringers, just so you can see what it is like up here because it is so amazing!! So after weekly planning, we had to leave about a half an hour before our 6:00 appointment because it takes a good half hour drive to get up there. It is up high in the back country and the drive was so incredible! There are so many cool sights to see and animals to look at. So far, we have seen lots of deer and little tiny ground squirrels. Who would have thought that New York would be so pretty and country like?? It really is so pretty up here! So we drove up to the Scheringer's beautiful log cabin home and they were waiting on their porch. When they saw us driving up, they both bolted inside and already had plates of hot food waiting for us. All we had to do was get out of the car, meet them, sit down and we were ready to go. They are really nice people! We talked while we ate and we got to know them really well. Elder Howard told me that they haven't been to Church in a very long time. We aren't exactly sure why because they would be great for the ward! We had our first meal which was so good and then they told us it was time for our 2nd course. It was pretty funny because they had a leaf of lettuce with 4 fried shrimp andnthen a really good 1000 island dressing on top of it all with bread and it was so good! Well, then they told us to grab our plate and come get the main meal. It was just funny because I felt like I was in a restaurant with an appetizer. So we had the shrimp and then for the main meal, we had grilled black pepper chicken, twice baked potatoes, a coleslaw bake and green beans. I have noticed here that people can cook pretty well and that we get meals a lot since we are the only missionaries in the whole city. It has been fun to get to know people and try their cooking. It's good but no where near your delicious meals!!! So we had our meal and then Sister Scheringer brought out these HUGE slices of fresh strawberry pie with whipped cream. It was so very good! After that, we were all stuffed.
Saturday was a really awesome day! We woke up, exercised, did our studies, and then headed out the door for another great day! We had a service project scheduled in from last Sunday with Brother Pease and his son. His son, if from Twin Falls Idaho and so it was really fun to see Idaho plates when we drove up to their house! So we pulled up to their house and we weren't sure what we were doing for service and so we knocked on the door and Brother Pease happily let us in. He told us that he rented a chainsaw for us to use to chop down a couple of trees! We were happy about that because it would be pretty fun to cut down some trees! So Elder Howard and Brother Pease's son who is married and lives in Twin Falls, started pulling weeds and really thick vines that had grown all around his trees and were pretty pesky. Brother Pease is only in his mid 60s and so he is pretty young. His wife has been battling cancer for many years now and just a few days earlier, she went in to go have some tests done and they all came back negative. They were both so happy to hear such great news! So he has just been so busy with hospital visits and medical procedures that he hasn't had any time to do yard work. So we were very happy to help him out! After we pulled all of the vines and weeds out, we started up the chainsaw and I got to saw branches off of the tree and then we tied rope around the tree and I cut it at the base and then they pulled and it came right down! It was an old pine tree that had been dead for a few months and so he was so happy to finally have it chopped down. There is no way that he could have done all of that by himself. I was really glad that he called us and asked if we could help. Then after a few hours of service, we shared a message with him and then he had made lunch for us while we were out working! We had big beef kielbasas with peppers and onion and then we put them on French bread. It made a really good sandwhich! Then he had pink lemonade and sweet white corn, not out of his garden though like we do at home!
Sunday was a really great day! I realized that we had another dinner appointment scheduled for that night and so that made 4 in a row. People here really like to have the missionaries over and they sign up lots of times! So we woke up, got ready for the day, did our studies, and then drovemovermtomthe church to get there by 9:45. We were one of then1st people there so we helped the 1st counselor in the Bishopric turn on all of the lights and unlock some doors. Then after we were done, he asked me if I would speak in Sacrament Meeting this next upcoming Sunday. I was glad to! He asked me to speak on "Having Faith in Adversity." It should be a fun talk to give. I will spend the first little bit introducing myself and telling them about you so that will be fun. Then, we had a really awesome day at Church! We didn't have any investigators come but we should have 1 or 2 this week. We had really good attendance at Church! We almost had 100 people there which is so awesome! The week before, we only had about 4o and so it was a great jump and was really fun to see! So we had Church and the lessons were great! We had a member named Brother Hansen who taught a really good lesson about President Monson's recent talk about charity, love, and kindness. He is a really great teacher and kept us interested the whole time. Then after Church was over, we headed back to the apartment to change out of our suits and then we did a ton of lookups and knocked on lots of doors. Then we drove for 45 minutes and went to a 6:00 dinner appointment that we had scheduled with the Thompson family. They are a really great family and love having the missionaries! Sister Thompson leads the music and Brother Thompson just got called to be the 2nd counselor in the Elders Quorum. They are both really into Nascar and so they told us all about the races that were going on. Then we had dinner which was really good! We had......wait for it..... venison! It was so good! Brother Thompson actually hunted it himself and then we had carrots, baked potatoes, salad, and a lasagna side dish. The venison was so good and had a really good flavor. It was funny though because he had a taxidermy deer mounted on his wall and so here we are eating venison while the deer was staring at us. It was pretty funny! We talked with them and got to know them better. They are both converts to the Church and were baptized in 1991 right after they got married. They are both active but they have 2 sons that don't want anything to do with the Church. It's so sad to see good families like the Thompsons have kids fall away. I'm so glad that we are blessed to all be active in the Church so we can be happy forever. Brother Thompson told us about himself and he has had a hard life. He has been arrested 3 times and spent over 6 years of his life in prison. Then he said that the Gospel completely turned his life around and he was so grateful for the missionaries who taught him. We had a great lesson and dinner with them and then it was time to drive back 45 minutes to our apartment. They love out in some really beautiful country but it takes a really long time to get there. I forgot to tell you something so cool that I found out last week!!! We live about 12 miles away from Woodstock New York which is where the 1969 Woodstock Rock concert was supposed to be but I think that it got rained out and so they moved the concert to Bethel New York which is about 50 miles away. It is just really cool to think that such a famous concert happened just down the street from where we live! That concert was huge! I think there were over 150,000 people that went to that concert. So we had an awesome day of missionary work and were ready for a good night's rest!
I woke up on Monday and was so excited to see your email! I loved the picture that you sent with it! Thank you so much for always thinking of me! Mondaywas a really awesome day! I couldn't believe that it was already the 2nd District Meeting of the cycle. So we woke up and got our studies done and then we drove to New Paltz for District Meeting! It is such a pretty drive and I enjoyed it even more than last week! (Especially because I was driving!) It was so much fun to cruise through the pretty trees and hills! We got to District Meeting right on time and then we talked about all of our investigators and how we can better use our technology to help our investigators. Elder Newbold is a great District Leader and really makes our meeting interesting. He talked about Facebook and how we can use it more effectively to connect with members, non members, and less active members. It was very helpful and I learned a lot of cool ideas from him! His companion is Elder Wallace who was in the sign language program and then there is just 1 companionship of Sisters and then Elder Howard and I. So our District is pretty small compared to my last one. Then after District Meeting, we drove to the Church to share a message with a group of basketball players that play at the Church almost every weekday with Brother Larin, who is the 2nd counselor in the Bishopric. He has been friends with them for a while and so he likes it when missionaries come to share messages with them. Parker and Dubbie would love to watch them because they are really good and VERY intense. They take it so seriously and act like it is the NBA Finals or National Championship even though they are just playing for fun and there isn't even a ref. Then I got thinking.....isn't that how we treated our backyard football games at home?? Hehe! We treated our backyard games as if they were the Super Bowl!
Tuesday was a fun and different day! I couldn't wait to get your email and I was so excited to look through your pictures! We had a really busy and great day planned and were excited to get going! We woke up, did our studies and then headed to Poughkeepsie to go to a training that a senior couple put together about family history. It was just for the missionaries and it gave us some ideas on how to get our investigators and recent converts into family history and eventually the temple! That lasted for 2 hours and then we drove a half an hour to New Paltz where there was a big service project for filling the Bishop's storehouse orders. The training on family history was really good and very interesting. So we drove to New Platz which is a small little town and it only has a branch. Well, every so often, that is where the Bishop's storehouse food gets delivered to and so we were asked to go! We were really excited and happy to help out! It started at 1:00 and so we were there right on time but they told us that the truck was running a little late and so it wouldn't get there until 2:00. So everyone showed up and finished setting everything up. The Sister Missionaries and our District Leader and his companion were there as well. Then the truck got there and so we all helped unload it and put the food and supplies next to a tag on a table. They had it down to a science and it all worked like clock work. I took lots of pictures of it so you could see how cool it is! So we had order sheets and then we had to fill bags and write where it was going on the bag and then fill the order. It was a lot of fun and I enjoyed serving and meeting everyone so much! There were lots of people from all over New York like West Point, Poughkeepsie, Monticello, and Newburgh! Then a guy walked in with a Colts shirt on that said: "We've got Luck!" I thought it was really cool and so I went up to him and asked him if he was from Indianapolis. He told me that he was from West Point and he was a big Patriots fan and the shirt he was wearing was his Brother's. He said that he was born and raised in Arkansas and so I asked him if he was a Razorbacks or Red Wolves fan. He was shocked that I knew those 2 mascots! It is always such a great conversation starter! I love surprising people with their college mascots!!! Great way to start a conversation!
Well my awesome family! I have enjoyed typing up this email so much! It is always fun to look back and see some of the things that I have gotten to do. I hope you all have an amazing week and that you enjoy your summer! I will be thinking about you all week! I'm really to be able to chat back and forth today! I always feel so close to home with all of your emails and pictures. Im really excited for the Jensens to open up the package that you put together for them after Matt leaves. So will he fly out from the Salt Lake airport to the Domican Republic MTC on Tuesday or Wednesday? I can't wait to hear all about his experiences and it will be so much fun to have 2 Elders from the Evans side out! Have an amazing week and know that I love and miss you all so much! LOVE YA!!
Love You Always!
~Elder Lindberg
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