Hello again my awesome and dear Family! What a great week it has been! Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU for the awesome and fun emails and pictures! You make my whole week with the awesome, detailed letter that you always send to me! They are always MUCH appreciated and I look forward to reading all about your week! I was so happy to hear about the parade and that Football is starting up! I'm so excited for the boys to play and I can't wait to hear how their seasons go! I'm also very excited about Abby's work and all of your fun summer activites! This week has been full of spiritual experiences and there has been so much to do! I feel so much love for you all and I always know that you are close in thought! Always picture you walking right beside me every step of the way! I'm always confident in testifying to people and I know that is just because you are right with me! Today for P-Day we have something really fun planned! We are going to go to a town called High Point and we are going to drive up to the tallest and highest elevation in New Jersey! It will be a lot of fun and we can see New York and Pennsylvania from the top and they have lots of cool views! It will be a fun day and I'm really looking forward to talking with you! I'm very excited for today and the chance that I have to talk with each one of you! Here goes my week! It was a great one! Wait....every week is a good one!
Last P-day was a really great and fun day! Thank you SO much for all of the emails! It started to pour rain in the morning but it was much needed rain and it made the temperatures go down and it made the weather so nice! It was a lot of fun to email you during the day and I had a blast chatting with you! I have really enjoyed this apartment and the people that live here are so nice! The washer and dryer are quarter operated and so I had fun looking through a roll of quarters for this next month's laundry! It sure is quiet up this way and is a big difference from the busy City! It was so funny because it would rain really hard for 20 minutes and then completely stop and the sun would come out and then it would rain some more and then stop. It was pretty funny! I was thinking to myself: "Make up your mind weather!" Hehe! I enjoyed talking back and forth with you so much! We had lots of fun and enjoyed relaxing and sending emails to all of our loved ones at home! We met some nice people while shopping and some guys from Mexico were sitting outside enjoying a soda and we said hello to them! I bought some burritos, quesadillas, cereal, bread for sandwiches, and some frozen vegetables! I have been making lots of sandwiches and quesadillas and it has been very good! This ward feeds us well and so I haven't had to buy as much. After our fun P-Day ended, I sent out 1 more email to wish you a great week and then we went down near Lake Hopatcong to try and visit David and Debbie to see how their Book of Mormon reading was going and to confirm our appointment. They were home and we confirmed for our appointment which we were really happy about and we also invited them to the 24th of July barbeque picnic! As we were leaving our apartment, I checked our mailbox and what did I see!?!?! A cute letter from Parker! Thank you SO very much for thinking of me and sending a fun postcard! I was so happy to get it! We were out walking and all of a sudden, a sheet of rain came flooding down and drenched us within a few seconds but luckily we were on our way back to the car to go to our next area so we didn't get too wet. We would have gotten really wet if we were farther away from the car. It ended up being so stormy and rainy that we sat in the car to wait it out and so we made some phone calls and invited everyone we could to the barbecue on Saturday. You guys are MORE than welcome to come if you would like to show up! Hehe! I WISH YOU COULD COME! We contacted quite a few people and we had a few people say yes and so we were happy about that! It was a great day and I was very excited to see your email when we got back to the apartment! It was such a great day!
HAPPY PIONEER DAY!!! Tuesday was another very great day! It rained a lot today too but we stayed really dry! I was wishing you all a great and fun Pioneer Day and I hope that you were enjoying your barbecue and burgers! It sounded like a great time and I was thinking about you a lot! I thought it would be fun to post on Facebook about the pioneers and the sacrifices that they made for us! We had a great district meeting and Elder Caccioppoli and I got to demonstrate how to contact someone by tracting and find out more about their religious background and practice teaching with the other missionaries. It helps a lot to practice teaching someone when the person we are teaching is another missionary and it helps to get feedback on how we can improve our teaching. It is about a 45 minute drive to the Ledgewood chapel where we have district meeting and it was interesting because we drove through an area where it was raining really hard and then it would be blue skies and then we would hit another rain storm and it was interesting how patchy the storms were and how it was light a light switch that would turn off and on. The weather here is wierd! Hehe!
P.S: Tell Parker I said thanks for the fun postcard!! I loved it so much Buddie!
Wednesday was just so great! 1 year ago today I moved from the Bronx to Kingston! I was wishing you all a great day and sending lots of well wishes to you! We planned out a really great day and had a huge list of people that we had records for and guess what!?!?! The very top left portion of our area borders Pennsylvania and we planned to work just a few minutes away from the border and so it was fun to think that we were so close to another State! It is a town called Montague and it is mostly forest and trees with houses tucked into the trees and so things are pretty spread out up there. The weather was really crazy today and it poured rain like none other the whole day! It was off and on in the early part of the afternoon but after 5:00, the rain caused some flooding in certain areas and the storm drains were overwhelmed with how much water was flowing in. We hadn't been to this particular town called Montague before and so we had lots of work to do while we were there. It takes about 45 minutes to drive up there but we had most of the day to spend up there! In my morning studies, I read about the parable of the olive tree and how Heavenly Father can take us and shape us into better people and it was just such a cool chapter to read! Elder Caccioppoli has been pretty excited because he only has 10 weeks left but he told me that he is getting a little bit stressed about what he should do for college and for a job. His Dad used to work for the post office as a mailman and so he thought about doing that but he wants to go to Union College and do something in the English program. He is really good at drawing and loves to write. I forgot if I mentioned this or not but I got an email from Church headquarters about the "My Plan" activity that I will do my last 6 weeks in the mission field. It is a really cool program and helps us map out some things for when we get home! I'm excited to start it in a few months! I will print out a copy and share it with President Hess and also President Farnsworth! It has us set some goals as to how we want to keep our good habits and what we will do to achieve them! I'm very excited to show you my goals! We were able to find a really nice girl named Brianne who is the daughter of a member that passed away a few years ago. She isn't a member but she says that her Mom was the only member in the Family and so we were able to teach her about the Book of Mormon and how to say a prayer! Then we got to drive past something really cool that I never realized was in our area! It is a small town called High Point and it is actually the highest elevation in all of New Jersey and so we got to see the monument from a distance and while we were at the crest, I got to see Pennsylvania! Then as we were driving, more rain came crashing down and it was so dark and it just poured and poured the whole rest of the day. We stayed dry because we would get out of the car, run to the door, tract a few housesnaround our lookup, and then hop back in the car and drive to our next place. It was a great system and so we didn't get very wet! We were able to have a great lesson with a member, who is 28, named Gabriel Barrientos. He is in the YSA and recently lost 2 of his best friends and so he has been needed someone to talk to so we went over with some comforting scriptures and we could tell that he was much happier! We just talked to him and got to know him better and he has some really cool stories about how he buys and sells new and classic cars and makes more money than what he bought them for. He is a great guy and it was nice to get to know him better! Then we tried to knock on more doors but the rain was just so very crazy and we were soaked within 10 seconds of being out in it even with umbrellas and so we tried calling some of our investigators and a lot of them answered! It just makes me so thankful and happy to have a car and that we can still stay busy even while we are in the car to call people! I hope that each of you had a very fun day! Hugs and kisses for all!!!!!
Thursday was another great and fun day of hard work!
Wow! Friday was a very awesome day! The weather was so pretty again and we were thankful that it didn't rain! We headed off to our food pantry service project and had a really great time helping those in need! They have a really cool system down where they have the people sign in and then the volunteers that they have will help them through the line and they can pick out things that they need. It went for a few hours and we met some nice people who were so thankful for our service! It is at a Episcopal church and they have volunteers from a few different Churches around the Sparta area and so it has been fun to see how other Churches interact with each other. We then had some lunch and planned out our day and then studied! I forgot to tell you something really cool! So I found out that our Bishop in this ward, Bishop Jensen, was born in Laramie Wyoming and so we had fun talking about the Cowboys! He was pretty young when his Family moved to Arizona but he still remembers some of the sights! I set some more goals and wrote them down on my notes so I wouldn't forget because I have been praying to know what I should do for school and how I can best finish my mission strong! I have received so many answers through prayers and I pray for each of you individually every day! We were able to talk to this very nice Catholic lady and we had a great 15 minute conversation about her beliefs! She told us that she has been to Salt Lake a few times and she remembers the peaceful feeling that she had and just how fun it was to be there. She also said that Salt Lake City has a different feel to it and she can tell that it is a special place! She also told us that she has a daughter that lived in Jackson Hole Wyoming and visited there a few times! It's interesting to see the connections that people have all the way over here on the East Coast! We shared with her a scripture from the Book of Mormon and she thought it was so cool that we read from both the Bible and the Book of Mormon together! She is in her mid 60s and very smart and said that she is studying the Bible and taking a class to become more familiar with scripture. She told us how amazing it was that we left our Families and I looked at her and said "I love my Family so much that I left them for a short time so I could be standing on your doorstep today sharing this message with you!" I told her how much this Church has blessed our lives and just how many blessings we receive from being a part of this wonderful Church and how close it has brought us. I know that I have the best Family ever and I'm so thankful to have a close relationship with each of you! We then went tracting for the rest of the evening and it went so great! This mission has a challenge that 1 zone will challenge another zone to see how many people we can talk to in a single day and they keep track and tally them all up and whichever zone contacts the most people face to face in a single week, wins! So we have been having fun seeing if we can beat our record for how many people we talk to but sometimes it can be out of our control if someone isn't home or they don't answer their door but we have been doing really well! It started last Friday and went until today and it was a race to see how many people we could talk to! We grabbed a quick snack so we could spend as much time before Friday ended so we could talk to more people! We were driving and could see the darkest clouds I've ever seen roll in and one of the craziest storms I've ever seen roll in! When I say crazy.....I mean......crazy! Hehe! ⛈
Saturday was so great! We woke up and were very excited for the 24th of July barbeque because we had a few people that committed to coming! We also got to help a Family move that lives in a really pretty area on the West side of our area right next to the Pennsylvania border! So we drove to the Teets' home and helped them move from 9:00-11:00 and then we drove to the Church to help set up and serve food for the barbeque! The weather was nice and cool and I'm not going to lie, it is already starting to feel a little bit like fall! Crazy huh! I feel like it was just fall and here we are again. Time sure does fly by on the mission! We had such a great time helping the Teets Family move and everything went really smoothly and we had a great turnout! They had lots of heavy furniture to move and it ended up not being enough room in the van that they rented and so we packed as much as we could and they rented a storage unit because their house closes on August 1st and so they really needed to move out. Then we changed into our white shirts and ties and then went to the Church for the ward barbeque and what a fun time it was! We had a really good turnout and had lots of good food! I was able to talk to lots of members and I connected with them really well! I was hoping that you were having a fun Saturday! I sure was thinking about you a lot! We had some yummy barbecue and we helped set up tables, chairs, bread trays, and we even made some honey butter for Sister Stevenson. We really had a great time and had some great conversations with the members! They had a pie baking contest and did some fun Pioneer themed games and they made some butter in baby food jars. This ward really knows how to party! The weather was so pretty and there were puffy white clouds all over! We helped clean up and put all of the food away and it has been fun to see the ward trust us so much and want us to help out! I love being able to help out in any way that I can and it really brings a smile to my face to make other people happy!
Sunday was such a great day as well! I was just so excited to read your email and see your pictures! I always love hearing all about your week and I look forward to it so much! I had a crazy dream that night and I'm excited to tell you about it! So I had a dream that a few years after I came home from my mission, we were sitting in Grandma and Grandpa Lindberg's living room just talking and all of a sudden, someone says: "Let's go to England!" So we all hopped in the car and drove to the airport and within a few hours, we were walking the streets of England! Hehe!
P.S: I have something so funny to tell you! Hehe! We have been knocking on so many doors lately that my knuckle actually has a callus and is red from how much knocking we have done! I seem to knock with the same part of my knuckle and it is pretty red! Also, it was so interesting to me how my dream was so specific and I even dreamed about the 3 places! So crazy and it might come true!
P.P.S: Thanks again for the awesome and fun emails and pictures! You make me so happy and you always put a huge smile on my face!!
P.P.P.S: Good luck with your practice tonight Brandon! It will be 2:00 in the morning here in New Jersey by the time you start and then I will be up 4 and a half hours after your practice starts!
Well my dear and awesome Family! It was so much fun to type up this email and I loved reading your email and seeing the pictures that you sent! Thanks again for all of your thoughtful emails! I loved seeing pictures and hearing about all of the fun activities going on! I hope that you have another amazing and fun week! I really can't believe that it is August already! Where does time go? Seriously....where does it go? I am always thinking about you and you motivate me so much each day! I know that this Church is true and that the Gospel of Jesus Christ can change people's hearts and make them better people. I know the power that comes from reading the Book of Mormon and how it changes lives as well. Robert is the grand example of just how much the Book of Mormon can help someone and he was able to feel peace, that lead him to stop drinking and smoking for 3 weeks. I know that Joseph Smith was called by God to restore Christ's Church back to the Earth for our benefit and happiness! This Gospel blesses our Family so much and I am so full of gratitude each day that I can be a part of this great, Latter Day work and I'm so thankful to have the best Family ever that loves and supports me in everything that I do! You are just so incredible and make me so proud! I love you with all my heart and you are the greatest joy and blessing in my life! LOVE & MISS YOU TONS & TONS!!!!!!
Love You Always!
~Elder Lindberg
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