April 18th 2018~
HAPPY BIRTHDAY DAD!!! Baptismal Date With Jessie Dray! Temple Trip Day! Prince's Baptism On Saturday!
Hello my dear and amazing Family! It's so great to be able to talk to you again! I'm always so very excited to email and talk back and forth! Thank you so very much for your awesome emails and pictures! I am so happy as always that you had another fun and productive week! I feel so much love and so many prayers in your emails and I truly do appreciate them so much! We had such an amazing week and tons happened! We have our Temple session at 11:00 and so we are going to leave pretty soon but here goes my week! I will be in the Temple until about 1:00and so I will email you as soon as I can. I'm really excited to talk back and forth! The most important thing to know is that I LOVE and MISS you all so MUCH!!!!!
Last P-Day was really fun and the weather was so beautiful! We had lots of fun and we played frisbee at the turf field near the Church and it was lots of fun! We looked all around town for a frisbee but nobody sold them anywhere! Then we went to Modell's and they had one! Then we cleaned pur apartment and I scrubbed the stovetop, vacuumed, washed the dishes, and cleaned the bathroom. It was a very productive and fun day! I loved your fun emails so much and I loved talking back and forth! I was thinking about Parker especially on his Birthday! After 6:00 hit, we went straight to an appointment with an African man named Koffi! He is really awesome and is an Evangelist. He moved here with his family from South Africa 2 years ago and he goes to Church every week. We testified of the Book of Mormon and the Restoration! They had a little boy there and he just loved us. He was a short, bald 2 year old running around laughing and giving us high fives. It was really funny! Koffi is the 20 year old son and he lives with his parents who only speak French. It was a really great lesson and we loved teaching him! Then we talked to people on the streets and tried to hand out as many Books of Mormon as we could. We handed out 3 by the time we walked back to the apartment for the night. I was thinking a lot about Parker and how his awesome day went! Happy Birthday Buddie!!
Thursday was a very great and productive day! I woke up and was very excited to see pictures of Puck's birthday and how fun it was and also your email! Thanks so much for sending an email and thinking of me! I was really excited for him and I loved seeing his fun presents! We had another busy day ahead of us and lots of work to do so we planned for our day and studied and then did our weekly planning. I feel like I've really gotten used to the changes so easily and I am starting to match names to faces. I'm just so grateful that we have so many awesome people to teach! We did our companion study and language study before having lunch and doing our big weekly planning session. It went really well and we got so much done and called tons of people! Then we went to the Church and recorded a video for Prince about tithing. After that, we went to a really fun dinner appointment with Travis, who is 20, and Tracy, his Mom. They are both members and the Mom is divorced and her son is in his mid 20s and lives at home with her. We went over about a week ago to share a message with them and she invited us over for a huge feast! She loves the missionaries but has had some bad experiences from going to Church and she got really offended and stuff that members said and did and so they havent been back for about 10 years. It's just so sad that they will deny themselves the blessings of having an eternal family because they got offended by someone who is trying their best to be the best they can be. We tried to explain to her that none of us are perfect and we all say and do things that might offend others but we just have to keep going strong in the Gospel. She made us an amazing dinner and we had a great lesson by reading 1 Nephi chapter 4 with them. They live in kind of a scary area of the Bronx but when you walk inside, it's like a nice home! She used to be a home designer and so she has everything decorated so nice. We had chicken, crab, salad, fried plantains, and rice and beans. It was really good! Then we saw something so cool when we walked to our next appointment!!! We walked right passed Yankee Stadium and the stadium light were on and so I knew that they were playing and then I saw that they were playing the Miami Marlins and so that was really fun! It is so cool and amazing to have Yankee Stadium in our area! It's so fun to walk by it as we are doing missionary work and seeing the stadium light on! Then we had a great lesson about baptism with Wesley Jones and he accepted to be Baptized but not on a specific date. He doesn't feel ready and so we committed him to baptism and we will work on setting an exact date with him within the next few weeks! It was a very great and fun day!
Friday was so amazing! We got a call the night before from an Elder in Middletown and he served in this area and so he wanted to check up on his old area and he gave us so many really cool investigators that were on the dropped list for a while because they either weren't ready or they went out of town and so he referred us to a lot of cool investigators! We are so blessed and Elder Mitonzi said that this area has really done so well since I got here and new investigators are coming out of the woodworks! It's very exciting!! His companion, Elder Falls, who I know very well from when I was in Manhattan, found a wheat penny for me! It's funny how people pay attention to the small things and I was very impressed that he not only remembered that I love collecting old coins, but the fact that he looked out for one and is saving it for me! It was really cool! Elder Mitonzi and are have been so blessed to have so many people to teach and we are so very busy contacting new referrals and we have so many appointments with tons of different people that it can be tricky to make all of our appointments due to the traveling but Heavenly Father always helps us out and we are always on time! Elder Mitonzi and I said to each other how grateful we are to have a huge list of awesome investigators and then we got the call from Elder Mendenhal giving us even more awesome people to teach! I have some very exciting news! We set a baptismal date with a guy named Jessie Dray! He is really nice and is from Nigeria and wanted us to teach him again! He was being taught a few weeks ago but then just disappeared and stoped texting and calling the Elders and he texted us the night before and wants to get baptized! We had an amazing lesson with him at the Church and taught him more about the Book of Mormon and we even showed him the talk from President Nelson from October 2017 and the spirit was very strong and so we invited him to be baptized on May 5th and he accepted! The blessings just keep coming and coming because Elder Mitonzi didn't think that he was ever going to text back and forgot about him and then he texted us out of the blue and wanted to meet! Heavenly Father truly knows us and blesses us in so many ways! Then we helped set up for the APF in front of the Church! We had the 2:00-4:00 shift and we were there to help set up for those doing the 12:00-2:00 shift before coming back to the apartment for lunch. We filled up a 5 gallon jug of lemonade and printed out some cards that have questions and answers and the corresponding chapters from the Book of Mormon. It was great to help them set up! It was hot, and I mean HOT!!! It was so humid and gave us a taste of the heat that we still have coming our way. It was about 75 degrees and the humidity was about 70%. The lemonade tasted so good to cool us down! After lunch, we ran back over to the Church to take our shift. It was really fun to be the 2nd oldest out of the whole district and explain some of the ways that I have found that work during APF activites. We had a tv set up with tons of copies of the Book of Mormon and we had the doors open so people could come in to the cool Church, have some lemonade, and learn more about the Book of Mormon. People were so willing to come in because of the heat and they always have great questions about the Book of Mormon. It went so well and we had lots of people stop to get lemonade because it was so hot! We got to pass out close to 50 copies of the Book of Mormon for our whole zone which is about 8 companionships. We had some great people stop by, just wondering what we believed. Lots of people have misconceptions about our beliefs and so it's always great to clear those up. We sent a recorded video to Michael Harrison and also Prince and we chose to fast with Prince for him to get work off so he could go to Church. We also had a great lesson with Kadeem at the Church over Facebook messenger. That is one thing that I really love about this area is that they have so many lessons and contacts over Facebook. We taught him about Chapter 9 in the Book of Mormon and talked about Nephi crossing to the new land on the ship that he built. It was such a great day and we were ready for a good night's rest so we could wake up refreshed for a new day!
We had a really awesome Saturday! I was thinking about you a lot and wondering how your weekend was going! We had such a busy day and had lots of lessons scheduled and so we got right to work! We did our studies and then went to our first lesson with our awesome investigator named Prince. We decided to fast for him so he could be able to come to Church. He has been getting called into work almost every Sunday and so we really needed him to come to Church so they could announce his baptism. We had a great lesson with him but he is struggling to understand the concept of Tithing. It was my first time meeting with Prince in person and he agreed to live the law of tithing! He didn't agree with it at first because he thought that if you get paid $300 and you have all of these expenses, then he should pay tithing after he has already paid for necessary expenses such as rent and groceries. We explained everything to him and he was excited to start paying and looked forward to the blessings that come from paying tithing! Then we traveled back to the Church for 2 more appointments but they never showed up and we couldn't get a hold of them through phone calls and texts and some went to the East side of our area near my old apartment in Olmstead to teach a man named Kevin Michenn. We taught him when I was on a split with our zone leaders and we were able to give him a Bible and Book of Mormon and so we were looking forward to following up to see if he read it and also to invite him to Church. He was home but didn't want to talk. He and his friend were smoking and so we told them that the Gospel of Jesus Christ can help people quit smoking. We showed them a video about Jesus Christ and invited them both to Church. They didn't seem ready to start meeting with us or progressing towards baptism so we will try to keep in touch every once in a while. After we had some dinner, we called and invited lots of investigators to Church and then we went to visit Jonathan Santana and he told us that he had just gotten home and so it was perfect timing! He committed to come to Church and so it was really cool! Then we walked back to the apartment and it was so nice to be outside because the weather was perfect and there was a nice breeze. We walked right by Fordam University and since it was dark outside, we could see into some of the old buildings of Fordham and it is a really nice school! The outside looks rustic but the inside is really nice! It was a fun walk and we talked to tons of people along the way! Happy Saturday everyone! Love you tons!
Sunday was so awesome! We woke up to some of the craziest wind I've ever seen in my life! The wind was so crazy and it would change directions so quickly and the gusts of wind were probably 30-45 miles per hour. We were really excited for Church especially because we were expecting lots of investigators to come. Church was really awesome! We had......wait for it......5 Investigators come to Church!!!! We were so proud of our investigators and that they came to Church! We had Wesley James, Prince, F.B, Kwame, and Jonathan! We had some great talks about Jesus Christ and his life and ministry. They also reorganized the Elder Quorum and they called our ward mission leader, Brother Natter, to be the new Elder Quorum President! Then they had a really nice member who works in Manhattan teach the lesson about the talk about Revelation from President Nelson. He is from Boise Idaho and we connect really well! Sometimes it can be hard for me to connect with members from Africa but I love making friendships with them! It was such a great day at Church and we were just so excited that we had 5 investigators in Church! It really is amazing! We made some really yummy sandwiches with Boar's Head meat and cheese and barbeque sauce and then we baked them for a few minutes and they turned out really good! It was very tasty! Then we went to our next appointment with a guy named Daniel Oppong from Ghana. He called and told us to come by later and so we made some cookies to take to our dinner appointment with Brother and Sister Wright. They are really nice and invited us over for dinner and we were excited to go over! Then before our dinner appointment, we went to visit a referral named Wesley Forde who lives in the Hospice Center at Saint Barnanby Hospital. He was asleep and so we told them that we would come back. Then we had a really awesome dinner appointment with Brother and Sister Wright. On our way to our dinner appointment, we were walking by a Family Dollar and we saw something crazy! We were a few yards away from the store and all of a sudden, 3 or 4 teenage boys ran out of the Family Dollar with tons of items and ran into their apartment just down the street. They stole lots of stuff and one of the workers immediately called 911. It was really crazy! They are both from Jamaica and have lived in the Bronx for many years. They fed us some really yummy chicken, pork, rice, beans, salad, and a carrot juice with ginger and lime. It was really good! Then we read 2 Nephi 31: 19-20 with them and talked about what we can do to best help the ward. We also gave Sister Wright a blessing because she requested one because her knee was giving her problems. Then as we went outside, it started to absolutely pour down with rain and the wind was just so crazy. I don't think I've ever felt wind like that before. We were walking at a normal pace and neither of us could hardly walk because the wind was pushing up against us. We had a really good video lesson with Kadeem about the Book of Mormon since he is struggling to read it and so we invited him to basketball. It was a really awesome Sabbath Day!
Monday was a very awesome day as well! It seriously poured rain the entire Sunday night and Monday morning and was so windy. We got so much water and it didn't stop raining until about 1:00 in the afternoon. The gusts of wind was up to 50 miles per hour and blew lots of garbage everywhere and tree branches everywhere. It was pretty crazy! After we did our studies, we make the trip to the Church in the pouring rain. I am so thankful that the Church is so close to our apartment. It is so nice to be so close to the Church! It was pouring rain.....and I mean absolutely POURING rain! It was raining buckets to say the least and there were puddles and small rivers everywhere. I thought that we needed a canoe to get to district meeting! Hehe! We had the Assistants go on a split with our roommates and so we had Elder Nadolny in our district meeting and it went really well. We had lots of cool discussions about what our investigators need to progress and some of the members that can help out fellowshipping them. I was really excited to get an email from you!!! I could not believe that video and how much rain we got! We didn't get as much up in the Bronx but 145th Street is in Harlem and so it's really close. We got so much rain and I've never seen that much water on the ground! The Church building was even leaking and the workers had to put buckets to keep the ground dry. Thanks so much for thinking of me and sending me that email and video! I had my New York bag in a plastic bag to keep it dry and so I wasnt able to get any pictures of all of the water but that video that you sent sums it up. Hehe!
Tuesday was a very awesome day as well! I was extra excited to read your email and see your pictures and hear all about your week! We had a very busy day and lots to do and so after studies, we went to our first lesson with a couple named Indra and Satesh Bola. They are from India and they were found a few weeks before I got to the area and so I was excited to meet them. They weren't home but we called and set up another appointment. Then we had lunch and did our companionship study and prepared for our lessons and planned out what scriptures we would share for our lessons. Then we had a Facebook lesson with Jessie and read 2 verses in the Book of Mormon and he really liked them. He wants to follow Jesus Christ and enter into the right path like it talks about in the verses. I was very excited to get your message and know that you were having a great day! Then we read 3 chapters out of the Book of Mormon together in Helaman and then went to find people to teach for a few hours. We knocked on tons of doors and talked to lots of people on the streets. We were at a bus stop and there was a guy wearing a hoodie and he was with his daughter. Elder Mitonzi walked up to him and asked him how his day was going and he reacted as though he insulted him. It was so crazy to see his reaction and was really mad at Elder Mitonzi for asking him how his day was. He looked right at us and had such a mad face and said "I'm old enough to be your father bro! Why do you think you can ask me how my day is going when you are so young!" We just told him to have a nice day and then we walked away with a smile on our faces because we couldn't beleive it. Hehe! Then we invited lots of people to our evening basketball activity and also knocked on a door that we had records for and we met an older man who would tell his 2 grandsons to come to play basketball. Then we grabbed some cold drinks because it was pretty hot and very cloudy and then we had some dinner! I was really excited for your email and really looking forward to reading it! After dinner, we went over to the Church tompkay basketball with everyone that we invited and also our roommates, Elder Palmer and Elder Ihalmo. It was so much fun and we had a great turnout! We all scored a ton of points and had lots of steals and even more fun! We had a kid named Antoine come and he was really good and made lots of shots. It was a great time! Then we came back to the apartment ready for a fun P-Day
Well my dear Family, I loved typing up this email and talking with you! I hope that this email made sense because I was typing really fast to type everything up before we head to the Temple. I just want you to know how much I love and appreciate you and all that you do for me! I love and miss you so much and think about you all the time! You guys are the best!!!!! I hope you have an amazing Birthday Dad!!! I will be thinking about you a lot! HAPPY BIRTHDAY DAD!!! LOVE AND MISS YOU ALL SO VERY MUCH!!!!!
Love You Always!
~Elder Lindberg
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