Hello once again my awesome Family! It's so great to be able to email you on this great day! It's so fun to be able to send an email to the Birthday boy on his actual Birthday! HAPPY BIRTHDAY PARKER!!!!! I can't beleive that you are already 11 years old! I am so glad that you got my card and I hope you have an amazing day! Thank you so much for your fun emails and pictures! I'm so glad that you had a great week! I was sad to hear about Brandon and his sickness and also Bennett breaking his arm. Poor kids! I want give them a hug! This area is doing amazingly well and we have 3 people of baptismal date and we even have a baptism on April 21st and we are very excited for that! This ward is a lot like the Olmstead ward and so I know how to work well with the members which is really nice! I love having experience under my belt! I've heard that the last 6 months of a missionary's mission, is the best part of their mission. I just realized that we are less than 2 transfers away from the new mission President coming in which is coming up so fast! We had another great week and the weather has been perfect! We are supposed to get up into the 70s within the next few days! Another cool thing about this area is that we have a really cool view out of our apartment window that looks to the west and there is a plane that takes off ever few seconds and so we can almost always see a plane from our apartment and it's really cool just because they feel so close! I have always loved watching planes! I hope everything in my letter makes sense and that I include enough details about our awesome week! Today for P-Day, we are gathering as a district to play district sports and throw a football around and also play a game of frisbee together! It will be a really fun time! One of the missionaries in our district is from Madagascar and she is a Temple Square missionary and she will be leaving to go back to Salt Lake in a few days so she wanted to play sports together as a district! I hope we can email lots today! Elder Palmer, who is our roommate and is 1 week into his mission, has been struggling a little bit and is going to talk to President Smith at his house later today. I have become really good friends with him and tried to help him adjust the best I can. It can be hard to train and so I'm very grateful that I had Elder Williams! Here goes my week!
Last P-day was a great, relaxing, and a really nice day to settle in! I had such a fun time emailing you back and forth and hearing from you! I got all settled in and we all had fun laughing about funny things that we have encountered on our missions so far and it really got Elder Palmer excited to experience the same thing! I really got used to things pretty fast even though I'm in a totally different area. I've actually been to this chapel before and so this area looks very familiar! My other area in the Bronx and this area are right next to each other. The boundaries went up Boston Road which is where we spent a lot of our time when I was in Olmstead! This area is really quiet and I'm surprised at how peaceful it is compared to the hustle and bustle of New York City and everything going on. The Church is a 10 minute walk away from our apartment and so it's nice to have it so close. The address to the Church is 211 East Kingbridge Road. It's a really cool church and it's right next to where Edgar Allan Poe lived! There are a lot of friendly people that like to talk to us when we compliment them or ask them how their day was. We love to start conversations this way that can lead into a message about families or the Book of Mormon and then we can teach and testify to help them feel the spirit. It's been fun to put all of my knowledge and experience to the test and figure things out and teach people better each day. I love improving and always trying my best! Elder Mitonzi told me the amazing story of how he was born and raised in a refugee camp until he was 14 and then he and his family moved to Utah and he was baptized when he was 16. It's so cool how he found the missionaries and now he's out serving a mission! After our nice P-Day ended, we went out ready to work as hard as we could and teach as many people as we could. I always get so excited to walk outside and talk to people! It's so fun to share our message with someone who has never heard it and know it is all new to them! I found out something really cool! We were talking to an Elder companship and I asked him where he is from and he said Pleasant Grove. I asked him if he knew Mark Wootton and he told me that his younger brother is the starting quarterback for them and so we took a picture together to show to his brother! It was really cool! Then we went to help a less active lady and her non member husband move a couch down the stairs and also a cabinet and so we moved it out to the curb and then shared a video about Easter. They were an interesting couple and they argued the whole time and it was sad to see them treating each other so poorly. By the end of the lesson, they were getting along much better! Then we talked to a few people on the streets and did some tracting and found a guy who only speaks Spanish and so we invited him to the Spanish congregation. Then we walked around the corner of a store and a sign started to fall down and got bent because it was so windy. This area is really cool and people are so friendly and they love to talk to us! Lots of people will yell "Hey Elders!" Even though they aren't members, they are still really friendly! Then we had a really good Skype lesson with a 14 year old investigator named Kadeem Jones! We taught him about Nephi and the Liohona and the Book of Mormon. He is really shy and wants to get baptized in June and so we are excited for that! It was a really great and fun day! I was thinking about you a lot and I sure do love and miss you! I hope you had a great rest of your day! This area is really awesome and we will have lots of success!
Thursday was another really awesome and great day of work! They have a lot of great exercise equipment here and so it was really great to have so many different things to do for our morning exercise! It was our first weekly planning session and I was really looking forward to getting to know our investigators! I was hoping that your day was going great and that Dad's inspection went great! I always keep you all in my every prayer and I feel so much love from back at home! We really enjoyed talking together! Elder Palmer is from Salt Lake City and went to Brighton High School and played football for Snow College for 1 semester and he is going to Weber State after he gets home. He told me that he went to Utah State a few months before coming out and so it was fun to think that you were close by! Elder Mitonzi's family is moving to Provo soon and so both Elder Palmer and Elder Mitonzi will go home to different houses. Elder Palmer's family is moving to St. George this summer. It's always so fun to talk about Utah because I love Utah so much!!! "Utah! Is the greatest state ever!" I also heard that President Smith is building a house in Heber and so it will be fun to visit him sometime! I love having so many missionaries to stay in touch with since they all live in Utah! It was a fun conversation to have and we learned a lot from one another! After we all got ready for the day, we did our morning planning and studies and I read a ton from Preach My Gospel and the Book of Mormon. We had a busy day planned and I was anxious to get to know all of our investigators and members! The senior couple that was in this ward right before I came to this area left and they drove all the way back to Utah. They were going to do a lot of sightseeing along the way. I met them a few times and they are very nice! Since Elder Mitonzi speaks Swahili, he does language study every day and so I have loved being able to help him with his pronunciation. He is just so nice and he always tells me thanks for being a missionary and serving Heavenly Father. He always has something nice to say and just loves the relationship that I have with you. He thinks it's amazing that I love my family so much because his family was separated when he was at the refugee camp. It has been just so cool to get to know him and hear his story. He's been out on his mission just over 19 months and goes home with Elder Dick. Elder Mitonzi is always trying to serve me and I always try to do that to my companions and so we both serve each other and so it has been really awesome! After our studies together and after reading the Book of Mormon with each other, we had lunch and then did our weekly planning. It went really well and lots of great things happening in this area! We had something really cool happen! So when I was in Olmstead, we got a referral for a man named Hassan Musa. He lived right outside of our area and so we sent him to the Kingsbridge area. So we sent him off and here I am in this very area that we sent him to! I remembered calling him and he was really cool! We were trying to find him on Facebook and I noticed that one of his friends had a picture as his profile picture and it was of him and a street sign telling direction for Salt Lake City and Logan. I hope that makes sense. It was really cool though because I clicked on his profile and he had on an Aggies shirts and he was also at the Temple! If it is the right profile for Hassan Musa, then we will ask him about his friend! It was really cool how the dots lined up! Then we went to visit a less active member named Travis Santiago who played basketball with us and a few other people on Tuesday. Their apartment is so nice but you would never tell from the outside because it is a run down building and has that classic Bronx feel to it but we walked inside and it was really nice! It felt like a home and everything was decorated really nice. Travis and his Mom live together and they are both members but got offended a few years ago by some of the ward members in the ward and they never came back. They are really great people and would be such a big help to the Ward but they told us that they were never coming back. We showed them the President Nelson conference talk where he announced the new Temples and they thought it was really cool and she felt the spirit! It was cool to see her remember some of the things that she learned during the time of her baptism and she loves the missionaries and even gave us an ice cold soda to drink on the way to the Church for our next lesson! We had another lesson with Kadeem who is on baptismal date for June 2nd and he is a 14 year old. We also have Prince Ufo on baptismal date for April 21st and we are so excited to have some baptisms coming up! There is still a lot of things that we need to teach them before they can get baptized but they are doing really well! It's so excited to have so many great people to teach! So right now, our main 3 investigators are, Prince Ufo, Kadeem Jones, and Michael Harrison! We had a Skype lesson with Kadeem and it went really well! We shared the tree of life lesson from the Book of Mormon and he really liked it and learned all about the chapter and how it applies to his life! I was thinking about you a lot and wishing you a fun day!
Friday was one of the BEST days I've EVER had on my mission!!!
I have some very exciting news that I can't wait to tell you! I'm really getting used to this area really quick and I've loved working with Elder Mitonzi! We have an elliptical in our apartment and so I've had fun running in the morning! It's nice to have time dedicated to exercising in the morning and getting in shape. I was wondering how your day was going and how everything went with Dad's inspection! It has been a little interesting having 4 of us share a bathroom just like we did when I was in Olmstead. We have an hour and a half to get totally ready for the day and so it is a little tight sometimes. This apartment is very nice and has plenty of room for us all! I love saying hi to people because a lot of them are from Africa and Brazil and they love to talk to us. I love all of the missionaries in this apartment as well! Elder Mitonzi wants to be an engineer when he gets home and he is going to Utah Valley. Elder Palmer is going to Weber State after he gets home. I just realized that Elder Palmer gets home in 2020 and that seems so far away. We really enjoy getting to know each other and hearing about each other's families. Elder Palmer has 1 younger brother and 1 younger sister. After we planned out our day, we went to our first Ward Correlation meeting and our ward mission leader is Brother Natter. He and his wife are from Utah and he is really nice! We talked about all of our investigators in the ward and there are so many baptisms coming up in this district! We were very excited because we were planning to set a baptismal date with a guy named Kwame that we got as a referral from Salt Lake City! We were also so excited that we have a baptism for Prince coming up as well! After our correlation meeting, we did our personal study and I learned about the Gospel of Jesus Christ and read through the whole chapter. I just love how many times that it mentions the word "enjoy" and "happiness." I truly know that the Gospel makes people so happy! I also read through the Book of Mormon in 1 Nephi about faith and then we had lunch before going to knock on some doors! We found this really awesome guy named Jonathan Santana and he is so awesome! He just got out of prison after being in for 17 years and he told us that he is completely changed because of the experiences that he had. He thought it was so cool that we stopped by and just couldn't believe the timing because he just got out of prison. It was a really great lesson! Then we walked up the main road of Kingsbridge and I totally remembered everything and knew the direction so well! We even have Fordham University in our area and so that is really awesome! The football stadium is pretty close to our apartment. Fordham University is a really nice school right in the middle of the Bronx and has some really cool, old buildings! Then we ran into a member from Chile and he gave us his phone number for the missionaries to contact him in Westchester! Then we went to help a member in the High Priest group cut down some of his trees and so we trimmed the trees and he is a really nice guy! Then we recorded a video for Prince to watch and we taught him about service and finished up teaching him a few of the last principles. Then we had seriously one of the coolest, BEST lessons I've ever been a part of! A guy named Kwame Kissi was referred to us by our roommates and they told us to go visit him as quick as we possibly could and so we set up an appointment with him and it was the coolest lesson ever!!! We taught him the Gospel of Jesus Christ and he has such strong background that he knew pretty much everything. Then he told us that this is what his life is missing and he told us that he loves the Church! We talked about baptism and we both felt so prompted to invite him to be baptized on May 5th and he......accepted!!!! It was so cool! We asked him what baptism was in his own words and he said "Its a remission of your sins and when you go down into the water, you come up clean and spiritually reborn." It was a really great, textbook answer and we were so excited to have him on baptismal date and we are so grateful to teach him! So we have 3 people on baptismal date and so we are so excited! Then we visited with a less active member named Bruce Evans Moore and he loves fishing. It was fun to talk to him and get to know him! We even committed him to come to Church and read the Book of Mormon! It was such an amazing day and I'm so grateful to have so many people to teach!! I was thinking about each of you so much and hoping that your day was going awesome!
Saturday was really awesome as well! We were very busy and we had lots of great lessons! We got a text that morning from our Zone Leaders, Elder Jensen and Elder Aurich. Elder Aurich just got released as one of the 4 AP's. So we got a text from the Zone Leaders asking us if we could go on a split. It has been a while since I've been on a split with the Zone Leaders and so I was excited for the opportunity! We planned out our day and then headed out for more great work! We also did our companionship study and I love how Elder Mitonzi always has something nice to say! We prepared for our 3 hour split from 12:00-3:00 and I went with Elder Jensen who is really awesome! It made me think of having Matt right beside me! It's interesting how they have been doing these 3 hour splits and they seem very fast. I really enjoyed working with Elder Jensen and we got a lot done! We had so many cool things happen and we were so very busy! First, we split at the Church and then we went to go see a less active man named Norberto and he has had some health challenges that prohibit him from coming to Church and so we shared a message about President Nelson and he said that he loves reading the Book of Mormon! He also told us that he would try his best to make it to Church! Then we took a bus to our next appointment and I talked to this younger guy who told us that just got out of jail but he was so awesome! His name is Isaac and he is very cool! He told us that he had seen missionaries like us and then he told us that his Grandma goes to the Spanish ward. He told us that he was pretty spiritual but doesn't go to Church but he wants to know more so then we got his phone number and gave him a copy of the Book of Mormon. He was really awesome and we hope to teach him soon! So this split, we had 4 missionaries within our area boundaries all doing work inside of Elder Mitonzi's and my area. It was cool to think that we had 4 missionaries all working in the same area! Elder Jensen is a Spanish missionary and actually lives in Springville so I showed him a picture of the Jensen family and he thinks that Matt looks very familiar. He graduated from Springville High school in 2016 just like me and so it was cool to think that he went to school with Matt and Kamber! Since he spoke Spanish, he started talking to this lady in Spanish and she sounded so awesome and was very interested from what I could tell. This was such a cool experience! They talked for about 10 minutes and I could pick out bits and pieces of what she was saying but come to find out that she lives right across the street from a Church in the Dominican Republic and told us that it was Heavenly Father placing her in our paths at the right time! We would have been in that area regardless but we wouldn't have been able to talk to her because neither Elder Mitonzi and I speak Spanish and so it was just so cool to happen to have a Spanish speaking missionary with me! Then we had a Skype lesson with Kadeem and we read a chapter in the Book of Mormon and then went to do a lookup and we taught a really cool guy the Restoration and he ordered a Book of Mormon online. Then we went to the Church to unsplit and once we unsplit, a really nice guy was walking outside and was standing there reading the signs and so we went out to talk to him and he said that he is looking for a Church to join! I mean, how cool is that!?!? We happened to have a member named Frank that was sitting in the lobby of the Church and he bore testimony to this man who is looking for a Church. His name is Tony and we are so excited to have met him! Then another lady came to the door and we were able to help her get the phone number for the Spanish missionaries and then we printed out a dinner calendar for the 5 companionships of missionaries in this ward. We have 2 sets of Elders which is our roommates and Elder Mitonzi and I, and then 3 companionships of Sisters. The Sisters are from Eagle Mountain Utah, Draper, Madagascar and so it has been fun to get to know everybody in this district because it is really big! We were on cloud 9 from all of the amazing things that were happening and all of the amazing and prepared people that we met to hear the Gospel! Then we had a delicious dinner at our Apartment! We made some chicken and rice with Adobo seasoning! I thought of Dad when we ate some on our chicken because Dad always loves Adobo! It was just such a great day and Elder Jensen was really impressed with the work going on in our area! He is a great missionary and is the youngest in his family and all of his older siblings have served missions. We unsplit before dinner and I was glad to have Elder Mitonzi back even though it was just for 3 hours. We aren't sure why the Zone Leaders like to do such short splits with missionaries but we packed the day full of great stuff! It turned out to be great and was action packed for the 3 hours that we split! After dinner, we went down to Yankee Stadium to visit an investigator named Wesley! Unfortunately, he will be moving soon and so we won't be able to teach him for much longer. He is in his mid 20s and has been coming to Church and playing basketball for a while. It was so amazing to see Yankee Stadium all lit up in the night sky! There wasn't a game going on but I just pinch myself every time. It was an amazing day and we were really tired to say the least. I had tons of fun working hard and trying my best! I hope you were all having a great, awesome, and fun day as usual!
Sunday was so great! I was excited to experience my first time going to this Church and getting to know everyone! We had a baptism of a little 8 year old girl named Clair from the ward and it went really well. The ward is so nice and I got to meet Bishop Fergusen! He is really nice and has a great sense of humor. We were excited for Church to start and we called lots of our investigators to make sure that they were in Church and we had quite a few investigators commit to coming! We also got to teach about Repentance in Gospel Principles as well. This ward is very diverse and we had a great turnout at Church! We had about 100 members and 4 investigators of ours to Church. We had a really great Elder Quorum meeting and had a really great discussion about the new changes that President Nelson announced and how everyone really loves the new ideas! They released both the Elders and High Priests group leadership and then we all enjoyed having a discussion together. We had a guy who was visiting from Tooele with his wife and son and he had some really great insights on how to better minister to others. The members were so friendly and welcomed me in! I'm so grateful for Elder Mitonzi because he took the initiative to introduce me to everyone and he connects to a lot of the members really well because he is from Africa and so are a lot of the members. After Church, we came back to the apartment and I had such a bad headache. I'm not sure what caused it because I haven't had one in a pretty long time. It was a bright, sunny day with pretty blue skies but I had to squint just because my headache was so bad and it hurt to look at the light. It went away shortly after coming inside the cool apartment for a few minutes and doing our studies. Then we went to visit a really cool guy who has tons of potential to progress in the Gospel from Ghana. He accepted a copy of the Book of Mormon and even wants us to come back and so it was really great to find someone like him! Then we had dinner at our apartment and then went out for more great work! The people here have been so nice and friendly and they always like to talk which is so nice! People in Manhattan just don't really like to talk and they are always so busy and so it's nice to have so many conversations. Elder Mitonzi has been so nice to have around especially because he is from Africa and there are lots of Africans here and so he connects to them really well. During dinner, I watched a conference talk and I loved watching it over again! Conference is always so great and it means so much to me to have an awesome family to watch it with when I get home! I watched the talk from Devin Durrant and I really enjoyed it! Elder Mitonzi shared with me a PDF file on his tablet of his conversion story and it was so amazing! I think I already told you the story but when I read the story, it added a few more details that I didn't know before. He was born in the Congo and then moved to Uganda and he was in the refugee camp for several years and he said that it was the hardest thing that he's ever done. One of his brothers contracted malaria and passed away shortly after they left for Utah. The agency that chooses where to send the refugees originally sent him and his whole family to Canada but they ended up going to Salt Lake where he and his family of 11 lived in a 3 bedroom apartment and didn't know English and so he and his family had an aid to help them all do their grocery shopping and other necessary things. They then found the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and they went to a Swahili speaking branch. They loved going there and then started meeting with missionaries. He and his family didn't agree with all of the teachings at first but his whole family got baptized after a little while of meeting with them. Then his older brother got his mission call to the Oakland California mission and when he gave his homecoming talk, Elder Mitonzi gave his farewell talk. Now here he is!!!! Companions with me! It's so amazing to be able to be a part of his journey! At the end of his letter, he mentioned that he is on a mission because Heavenly Father knows each one of us and if he would have gone to Canada, he probably wouldn't have found the Church and I wouldn't be serving with Elder Mitonzi right now! He is so awesome and very funny! I'm so thankful to be serving with him because he is very, very awesome!
Monday was a really great and busy day of hard work! We had a lot going on and we got to do a training in Distirct Meeting and also teach Family Home Evening to a big group of people! We spent the morning preparing for the training and Family Home Evening and we decided to do a "Minute to win it" style game at the end and then a member was bringing ice cream and root beer for root beer floats! I was really excited to get your email and picture! Thanks so much for wishing me a Happy Monday! I was thinking about you a lot since it was your day to go back to school and work. I hoped that you had a blast on Spring Break!!!! We had a fantastic district meeting and got to discuss tons of investigators and their needs. Elder Mitonzi and I gave a training on how to use members in technology and it went so well! We found out that our zone conference was on Tuesday and it was a big surprise because we got some new Assistants to President Smith and so they forgot to send out the announcements. So then we prepared for our Family Home Evening and we prepared to talk about being kind to others and the senior couple left a laptop with tons of lesson ideas and so we were able to use one of them. Then we bought a few supplies for our minute to win it games for the evening. Then we had a great lesson with a guy named Lamont who ordered a Bible online. He was very nice and said that he would come to Church and read the Book of Mormon! He has a Christian background but has struggled to come to Church but he loved Moroni 10: 3-5! Then we had dinner before setting up for our Family Home Evening activity that we were in charge of and it went so well! Right after eating dinner, we got a call from Bishop Ferguson's wife and she told us that she was buying pizza for our Family Home Evening and so we walked over to the Little Caesars pizza near the Church. Then she told us that Bishop would be coming to pick us up and drop us off at the Church with the pizza! I was so excited when his car pulled up to the curb!! What a cool car to ride in! He pulled up in a jet black Dodge Charger with a turbo charger and so it was a fast car but we didn't have to go more than 20 miles per hour because of traffic. It wasn't too far but it was still really fun to drive in a Dodge Charger! Then we taught the class about kindness and we had a good turnout of 20 people! We had Prince come and also an investigator of ours named Jose from Puerto Rico. Then we had the pizza and a few other treats and we bought a package of Oreos and we did a "Minute to win it" style game where they had to put the Oreo on their forehead and then eat it. I wish I had you there because I wasn't very creative and ran out of ideas. You are always so creative and have great ideas! It was a very fun night and all of the missionaries' investigators had lots of fun! I was thinking about you a lot! Love ya!
Tuesday was such a great day of Zone Conference! It took up most of the day but it was so amazing as usual! As always, I was extremely excited to get your email and see your pictures that night and I was very excited to hear from each of you! We took the train to Scarsdale and had a wonderful meeting! We welcomed in a new senior couple from the South mission who are the new vehicle coordinators and they are from Kentucky. They are really nice and fun to have around! I have some exciting news! After zone conference, Sister Smith came up to us and......invited us over for dinner at the mission home! The reason why she wanted us over is because Savannah, their oldest daughter, is going to some volunteer work in Belize at a refugee camp and since Elder Mitonzi was in a refugee camp, she wanted them to talk during dinner! Isn't that exciting! It's so amazing to think that I get to have dinner at the mission President's with his Family! President Smith is a really awesome guy and it's so awesome and nice for them to have us over! We talked a lot about the Book of Mormon and how to use it more effectively in our missionary work and how we use it to talk to people. We had a training on Priesthood blessings and how to give them. President Smith really liked the conference talk from the Priesthood Session about blessings and the story about the Dad who said a prayer for his baby girl rather than give her a blessing. It was a powerful message and Elder Kalzer who is a senior couple gave the training and shared some miracles of when he gave blessings and they were healed within a few days. I wish we could all be here together for these zone conferences because they are just so good and packed full of cool stories and insights! Then we talked to a really nice lady from Gyana and we even gave her a Book of Mormon! She says that she follows many religious and loves to learn and so we gave her our phone number. It was such a great zone conference and I loved meeting all of the new missionaries and new senior couples! We had a really yummy lunch with lots of different meat sandwiches, chips, salad, and cake and brownies for dessert! We are always so spoiled to have the wards out together nice meals for us! He we went to our weekly basketball activity with our investigators and it went so well! I was very excited to get back for the day and read your fun email and see your fun pictures! I can't thank you enough for always sending such amazing emails because they mean so much!!! I loved every word so much and I was just so excited to hear about your week and Spring Break! I was so thankful for it and I loved hearing about your week!
Well my dear and amazing Family! I loved putting together this email and hearing all about your fun week and everything that you got to do! I'm doing great and working hard! The Bronx is a cool place and a lot more people will talk to us and have Gospel conversations! My teaching skills have really been improving as I've been able to put into practice what I've learned from my last 5 companions and 3 areas. Thank you all so much for your sacrifices so that I can't be out here serving with all my heart, might, mind and strength! I am so proud to be your son, brother, cousin, nephew, and grandchild! I love and miss each of you so much and I know that this Church is true! I know that Joseph Smith really did translate the Book of Mormon by the gift and power of God. I know that this Church is Christ's original Church restored back upon the Earth and I know how much this Gospel blesses lives. I've been so incredibly blessed to have the best family ever! I hope you all have an amazing and fun week! I will be thinking about you a lot! Can you beleive that next P-day, I will be out for 15 months!?!? That's just amazing because I feel like I just left! Parker, I hope you have such a fun Birthday and I hope it's full of laughs and good times! I will miss being there so much! I hope you all have an awesome week!
Love You Always!
~Elder Lindberg
Last P-day was a great, relaxing, and a really nice day to settle in! I had such a fun time emailing you back and forth and hearing from you! I got all settled in and we all had fun laughing about funny things that we have encountered on our missions so far and it really got Elder Palmer excited to experience the same thing! I really got used to things pretty fast even though I'm in a totally different area. I've actually been to this chapel before and so this area looks very familiar! My other area in the Bronx and this area are right next to each other. The boundaries went up Boston Road which is where we spent a lot of our time when I was in Olmstead! This area is really quiet and I'm surprised at how peaceful it is compared to the hustle and bustle of New York City and everything going on. The Church is a 10 minute walk away from our apartment and so it's nice to have it so close. The address to the Church is 211 East Kingbridge Road. It's a really cool church and it's right next to where Edgar Allan Poe lived! There are a lot of friendly people that like to talk to us when we compliment them or ask them how their day was. We love to start conversations this way that can lead into a message about families or the Book of Mormon and then we can teach and testify to help them feel the spirit. It's been fun to put all of my knowledge and experience to the test and figure things out and teach people better each day. I love improving and always trying my best! Elder Mitonzi told me the amazing story of how he was born and raised in a refugee camp until he was 14 and then he and his family moved to Utah and he was baptized when he was 16. It's so cool how he found the missionaries and now he's out serving a mission! After our nice P-Day ended, we went out ready to work as hard as we could and teach as many people as we could. I always get so excited to walk outside and talk to people! It's so fun to share our message with someone who has never heard it and know it is all new to them! I found out something really cool! We were talking to an Elder companship and I asked him where he is from and he said Pleasant Grove. I asked him if he knew Mark Wootton and he told me that his younger brother is the starting quarterback for them and so we took a picture together to show to his brother! It was really cool! Then we went to help a less active lady and her non member husband move a couch down the stairs and also a cabinet and so we moved it out to the curb and then shared a video about Easter. They were an interesting couple and they argued the whole time and it was sad to see them treating each other so poorly. By the end of the lesson, they were getting along much better! Then we talked to a few people on the streets and did some tracting and found a guy who only speaks Spanish and so we invited him to the Spanish congregation. Then we walked around the corner of a store and a sign started to fall down and got bent because it was so windy. This area is really cool and people are so friendly and they love to talk to us! Lots of people will yell "Hey Elders!" Even though they aren't members, they are still really friendly! Then we had a really good Skype lesson with a 14 year old investigator named Kadeem Jones! We taught him about Nephi and the Liohona and the Book of Mormon. He is really shy and wants to get baptized in June and so we are excited for that! It was a really great and fun day! I was thinking about you a lot and I sure do love and miss you! I hope you had a great rest of your day! This area is really awesome and we will have lots of success!
Thursday was another really awesome and great day of work! They have a lot of great exercise equipment here and so it was really great to have so many different things to do for our morning exercise! It was our first weekly planning session and I was really looking forward to getting to know our investigators! I was hoping that your day was going great and that Dad's inspection went great! I always keep you all in my every prayer and I feel so much love from back at home! We really enjoyed talking together! Elder Palmer is from Salt Lake City and went to Brighton High School and played football for Snow College for 1 semester and he is going to Weber State after he gets home. He told me that he went to Utah State a few months before coming out and so it was fun to think that you were close by! Elder Mitonzi's family is moving to Provo soon and so both Elder Palmer and Elder Mitonzi will go home to different houses. Elder Palmer's family is moving to St. George this summer. It's always so fun to talk about Utah because I love Utah so much!!! "Utah! Is the greatest state ever!" I also heard that President Smith is building a house in Heber and so it will be fun to visit him sometime! I love having so many missionaries to stay in touch with since they all live in Utah! It was a fun conversation to have and we learned a lot from one another! After we all got ready for the day, we did our morning planning and studies and I read a ton from Preach My Gospel and the Book of Mormon. We had a busy day planned and I was anxious to get to know all of our investigators and members! The senior couple that was in this ward right before I came to this area left and they drove all the way back to Utah. They were going to do a lot of sightseeing along the way. I met them a few times and they are very nice! Since Elder Mitonzi speaks Swahili, he does language study every day and so I have loved being able to help him with his pronunciation. He is just so nice and he always tells me thanks for being a missionary and serving Heavenly Father. He always has something nice to say and just loves the relationship that I have with you. He thinks it's amazing that I love my family so much because his family was separated when he was at the refugee camp. It has been just so cool to get to know him and hear his story. He's been out on his mission just over 19 months and goes home with Elder Dick. Elder Mitonzi is always trying to serve me and I always try to do that to my companions and so we both serve each other and so it has been really awesome! After our studies together and after reading the Book of Mormon with each other, we had lunch and then did our weekly planning. It went really well and lots of great things happening in this area! We had something really cool happen! So when I was in Olmstead, we got a referral for a man named Hassan Musa. He lived right outside of our area and so we sent him to the Kingsbridge area. So we sent him off and here I am in this very area that we sent him to! I remembered calling him and he was really cool! We were trying to find him on Facebook and I noticed that one of his friends had a picture as his profile picture and it was of him and a street sign telling direction for Salt Lake City and Logan. I hope that makes sense. It was really cool though because I clicked on his profile and he had on an Aggies shirts and he was also at the Temple! If it is the right profile for Hassan Musa, then we will ask him about his friend! It was really cool how the dots lined up! Then we went to visit a less active member named Travis Santiago who played basketball with us and a few other people on Tuesday. Their apartment is so nice but you would never tell from the outside because it is a run down building and has that classic Bronx feel to it but we walked inside and it was really nice! It felt like a home and everything was decorated really nice. Travis and his Mom live together and they are both members but got offended a few years ago by some of the ward members in the ward and they never came back. They are really great people and would be such a big help to the Ward but they told us that they were never coming back. We showed them the President Nelson conference talk where he announced the new Temples and they thought it was really cool and she felt the spirit! It was cool to see her remember some of the things that she learned during the time of her baptism and she loves the missionaries and even gave us an ice cold soda to drink on the way to the Church for our next lesson! We had another lesson with Kadeem who is on baptismal date for June 2nd and he is a 14 year old. We also have Prince Ufo on baptismal date for April 21st and we are so excited to have some baptisms coming up! There is still a lot of things that we need to teach them before they can get baptized but they are doing really well! It's so excited to have so many great people to teach! So right now, our main 3 investigators are, Prince Ufo, Kadeem Jones, and Michael Harrison! We had a Skype lesson with Kadeem and it went really well! We shared the tree of life lesson from the Book of Mormon and he really liked it and learned all about the chapter and how it applies to his life! I was thinking about you a lot and wishing you a fun day!
Friday was one of the BEST days I've EVER had on my mission!!!
Saturday was really awesome as well! We were very busy and we had lots of great lessons! We got a text that morning from our Zone Leaders, Elder Jensen and Elder Aurich. Elder Aurich just got released as one of the 4 AP's. So we got a text from the Zone Leaders asking us if we could go on a split. It has been a while since I've been on a split with the Zone Leaders and so I was excited for the opportunity! We planned out our day and then headed out for more great work! We also did our companionship study and I love how Elder Mitonzi always has something nice to say! We prepared for our 3 hour split from 12:00-3:00 and I went with Elder Jensen who is really awesome! It made me think of having Matt right beside me! It's interesting how they have been doing these 3 hour splits and they seem very fast. I really enjoyed working with Elder Jensen and we got a lot done! We had so many cool things happen and we were so very busy! First, we split at the Church and then we went to go see a less active man named Norberto and he has had some health challenges that prohibit him from coming to Church and so we shared a message about President Nelson and he said that he loves reading the Book of Mormon! He also told us that he would try his best to make it to Church! Then we took a bus to our next appointment and I talked to this younger guy who told us that just got out of jail but he was so awesome! His name is Isaac and he is very cool! He told us that he had seen missionaries like us and then he told us that his Grandma goes to the Spanish ward. He told us that he was pretty spiritual but doesn't go to Church but he wants to know more so then we got his phone number and gave him a copy of the Book of Mormon. He was really awesome and we hope to teach him soon! So this split, we had 4 missionaries within our area boundaries all doing work inside of Elder Mitonzi's and my area. It was cool to think that we had 4 missionaries all working in the same area! Elder Jensen is a Spanish missionary and actually lives in Springville so I showed him a picture of the Jensen family and he thinks that Matt looks very familiar. He graduated from Springville High school in 2016 just like me and so it was cool to think that he went to school with Matt and Kamber! Since he spoke Spanish, he started talking to this lady in Spanish and she sounded so awesome and was very interested from what I could tell. This was such a cool experience! They talked for about 10 minutes and I could pick out bits and pieces of what she was saying but come to find out that she lives right across the street from a Church in the Dominican Republic and told us that it was Heavenly Father placing her in our paths at the right time! We would have been in that area regardless but we wouldn't have been able to talk to her because neither Elder Mitonzi and I speak Spanish and so it was just so cool to happen to have a Spanish speaking missionary with me! Then we had a Skype lesson with Kadeem and we read a chapter in the Book of Mormon and then went to do a lookup and we taught a really cool guy the Restoration and he ordered a Book of Mormon online. Then we went to the Church to unsplit and once we unsplit, a really nice guy was walking outside and was standing there reading the signs and so we went out to talk to him and he said that he is looking for a Church to join! I mean, how cool is that!?!? We happened to have a member named Frank that was sitting in the lobby of the Church and he bore testimony to this man who is looking for a Church. His name is Tony and we are so excited to have met him! Then another lady came to the door and we were able to help her get the phone number for the Spanish missionaries and then we printed out a dinner calendar for the 5 companionships of missionaries in this ward. We have 2 sets of Elders which is our roommates and Elder Mitonzi and I, and then 3 companionships of Sisters. The Sisters are from Eagle Mountain Utah, Draper, Madagascar and so it has been fun to get to know everybody in this district because it is really big! We were on cloud 9 from all of the amazing things that were happening and all of the amazing and prepared people that we met to hear the Gospel! Then we had a delicious dinner at our Apartment! We made some chicken and rice with Adobo seasoning! I thought of Dad when we ate some on our chicken because Dad always loves Adobo! It was just such a great day and Elder Jensen was really impressed with the work going on in our area! He is a great missionary and is the youngest in his family and all of his older siblings have served missions. We unsplit before dinner and I was glad to have Elder Mitonzi back even though it was just for 3 hours. We aren't sure why the Zone Leaders like to do such short splits with missionaries but we packed the day full of great stuff! It turned out to be great and was action packed for the 3 hours that we split! After dinner, we went down to Yankee Stadium to visit an investigator named Wesley! Unfortunately, he will be moving soon and so we won't be able to teach him for much longer. He is in his mid 20s and has been coming to Church and playing basketball for a while. It was so amazing to see Yankee Stadium all lit up in the night sky! There wasn't a game going on but I just pinch myself every time. It was an amazing day and we were really tired to say the least. I had tons of fun working hard and trying my best! I hope you were all having a great, awesome, and fun day as usual!
Sunday was so great! I was excited to experience my first time going to this Church and getting to know everyone! We had a baptism of a little 8 year old girl named Clair from the ward and it went really well. The ward is so nice and I got to meet Bishop Fergusen! He is really nice and has a great sense of humor. We were excited for Church to start and we called lots of our investigators to make sure that they were in Church and we had quite a few investigators commit to coming! We also got to teach about Repentance in Gospel Principles as well. This ward is very diverse and we had a great turnout at Church! We had about 100 members and 4 investigators of ours to Church. We had a really great Elder Quorum meeting and had a really great discussion about the new changes that President Nelson announced and how everyone really loves the new ideas! They released both the Elders and High Priests group leadership and then we all enjoyed having a discussion together. We had a guy who was visiting from Tooele with his wife and son and he had some really great insights on how to better minister to others. The members were so friendly and welcomed me in! I'm so grateful for Elder Mitonzi because he took the initiative to introduce me to everyone and he connects to a lot of the members really well because he is from Africa and so are a lot of the members. After Church, we came back to the apartment and I had such a bad headache. I'm not sure what caused it because I haven't had one in a pretty long time. It was a bright, sunny day with pretty blue skies but I had to squint just because my headache was so bad and it hurt to look at the light. It went away shortly after coming inside the cool apartment for a few minutes and doing our studies. Then we went to visit a really cool guy who has tons of potential to progress in the Gospel from Ghana. He accepted a copy of the Book of Mormon and even wants us to come back and so it was really great to find someone like him! Then we had dinner at our apartment and then went out for more great work! The people here have been so nice and friendly and they always like to talk which is so nice! People in Manhattan just don't really like to talk and they are always so busy and so it's nice to have so many conversations. Elder Mitonzi has been so nice to have around especially because he is from Africa and there are lots of Africans here and so he connects to them really well. During dinner, I watched a conference talk and I loved watching it over again! Conference is always so great and it means so much to me to have an awesome family to watch it with when I get home! I watched the talk from Devin Durrant and I really enjoyed it! Elder Mitonzi shared with me a PDF file on his tablet of his conversion story and it was so amazing! I think I already told you the story but when I read the story, it added a few more details that I didn't know before. He was born in the Congo and then moved to Uganda and he was in the refugee camp for several years and he said that it was the hardest thing that he's ever done. One of his brothers contracted malaria and passed away shortly after they left for Utah. The agency that chooses where to send the refugees originally sent him and his whole family to Canada but they ended up going to Salt Lake where he and his family of 11 lived in a 3 bedroom apartment and didn't know English and so he and his family had an aid to help them all do their grocery shopping and other necessary things. They then found the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and they went to a Swahili speaking branch. They loved going there and then started meeting with missionaries. He and his family didn't agree with all of the teachings at first but his whole family got baptized after a little while of meeting with them. Then his older brother got his mission call to the Oakland California mission and when he gave his homecoming talk, Elder Mitonzi gave his farewell talk. Now here he is!!!! Companions with me! It's so amazing to be able to be a part of his journey! At the end of his letter, he mentioned that he is on a mission because Heavenly Father knows each one of us and if he would have gone to Canada, he probably wouldn't have found the Church and I wouldn't be serving with Elder Mitonzi right now! He is so awesome and very funny! I'm so thankful to be serving with him because he is very, very awesome!
Monday was a really great and busy day of hard work! We had a lot going on and we got to do a training in Distirct Meeting and also teach Family Home Evening to a big group of people! We spent the morning preparing for the training and Family Home Evening and we decided to do a "Minute to win it" style game at the end and then a member was bringing ice cream and root beer for root beer floats! I was really excited to get your email and picture! Thanks so much for wishing me a Happy Monday! I was thinking about you a lot since it was your day to go back to school and work. I hoped that you had a blast on Spring Break!!!! We had a fantastic district meeting and got to discuss tons of investigators and their needs. Elder Mitonzi and I gave a training on how to use members in technology and it went so well! We found out that our zone conference was on Tuesday and it was a big surprise because we got some new Assistants to President Smith and so they forgot to send out the announcements. So then we prepared for our Family Home Evening and we prepared to talk about being kind to others and the senior couple left a laptop with tons of lesson ideas and so we were able to use one of them. Then we bought a few supplies for our minute to win it games for the evening. Then we had a great lesson with a guy named Lamont who ordered a Bible online. He was very nice and said that he would come to Church and read the Book of Mormon! He has a Christian background but has struggled to come to Church but he loved Moroni 10: 3-5! Then we had dinner before setting up for our Family Home Evening activity that we were in charge of and it went so well! Right after eating dinner, we got a call from Bishop Ferguson's wife and she told us that she was buying pizza for our Family Home Evening and so we walked over to the Little Caesars pizza near the Church. Then she told us that Bishop would be coming to pick us up and drop us off at the Church with the pizza! I was so excited when his car pulled up to the curb!! What a cool car to ride in! He pulled up in a jet black Dodge Charger with a turbo charger and so it was a fast car but we didn't have to go more than 20 miles per hour because of traffic. It wasn't too far but it was still really fun to drive in a Dodge Charger! Then we taught the class about kindness and we had a good turnout of 20 people! We had Prince come and also an investigator of ours named Jose from Puerto Rico. Then we had the pizza and a few other treats and we bought a package of Oreos and we did a "Minute to win it" style game where they had to put the Oreo on their forehead and then eat it. I wish I had you there because I wasn't very creative and ran out of ideas. You are always so creative and have great ideas! It was a very fun night and all of the missionaries' investigators had lots of fun! I was thinking about you a lot! Love ya!
Tuesday was such a great day of Zone Conference! It took up most of the day but it was so amazing as usual! As always, I was extremely excited to get your email and see your pictures that night and I was very excited to hear from each of you! We took the train to Scarsdale and had a wonderful meeting! We welcomed in a new senior couple from the South mission who are the new vehicle coordinators and they are from Kentucky. They are really nice and fun to have around! I have some exciting news! After zone conference, Sister Smith came up to us and......invited us over for dinner at the mission home! The reason why she wanted us over is because Savannah, their oldest daughter, is going to some volunteer work in Belize at a refugee camp and since Elder Mitonzi was in a refugee camp, she wanted them to talk during dinner! Isn't that exciting! It's so amazing to think that I get to have dinner at the mission President's with his Family! President Smith is a really awesome guy and it's so awesome and nice for them to have us over! We talked a lot about the Book of Mormon and how to use it more effectively in our missionary work and how we use it to talk to people. We had a training on Priesthood blessings and how to give them. President Smith really liked the conference talk from the Priesthood Session about blessings and the story about the Dad who said a prayer for his baby girl rather than give her a blessing. It was a powerful message and Elder Kalzer who is a senior couple gave the training and shared some miracles of when he gave blessings and they were healed within a few days. I wish we could all be here together for these zone conferences because they are just so good and packed full of cool stories and insights! Then we talked to a really nice lady from Gyana and we even gave her a Book of Mormon! She says that she follows many religious and loves to learn and so we gave her our phone number. It was such a great zone conference and I loved meeting all of the new missionaries and new senior couples! We had a really yummy lunch with lots of different meat sandwiches, chips, salad, and cake and brownies for dessert! We are always so spoiled to have the wards out together nice meals for us! He we went to our weekly basketball activity with our investigators and it went so well! I was very excited to get back for the day and read your fun email and see your fun pictures! I can't thank you enough for always sending such amazing emails because they mean so much!!! I loved every word so much and I was just so excited to hear about your week and Spring Break! I was so thankful for it and I loved hearing about your week!
Well my dear and amazing Family! I loved putting together this email and hearing all about your fun week and everything that you got to do! I'm doing great and working hard! The Bronx is a cool place and a lot more people will talk to us and have Gospel conversations! My teaching skills have really been improving as I've been able to put into practice what I've learned from my last 5 companions and 3 areas. Thank you all so much for your sacrifices so that I can't be out here serving with all my heart, might, mind and strength! I am so proud to be your son, brother, cousin, nephew, and grandchild! I love and miss each of you so much and I know that this Church is true! I know that Joseph Smith really did translate the Book of Mormon by the gift and power of God. I know that this Church is Christ's original Church restored back upon the Earth and I know how much this Gospel blesses lives. I've been so incredibly blessed to have the best family ever! I hope you all have an amazing and fun week! I will be thinking about you a lot! Can you beleive that next P-day, I will be out for 15 months!?!? That's just amazing because I feel like I just left! Parker, I hope you have such a fun Birthday and I hope it's full of laughs and good times! I will miss being there so much! I hope you all have an awesome week!
Love You Always!
~Elder Lindberg
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