I Love Being a Missionary!

August 6th 2018~THANKS FOR THE FUN EMAIL & PICTURES!!! Good Luck With Football & Work! Sure Do Love & Miss You!!!

Hello to my dear and amazing Family! How great it is to be able to talk to you again! It is so great to be able to talk to you and talk back and forth! Your email was just so great and fun to read as always and your pictures were so fun to look at! I'm so happy and excited that you had another great and fun week because I sure did too! The days are just zipping by and I've gotten into such a flow of things that time just keeps getting faster! I was so happy to hear about all of the many fun things going on and I LOVE your details! I feel like I was with you this whole week and got to experience everything you did! I'm doing so well and I'm so grateful for this chance to share the good news of the Gospel with others! I always get tears in my eyes when I tell other people what my Family means to me and how much the knowledge that we have have enriched our lives! You are my greatest joy and blessing!!! My week was great and we met and talked to so many great people! The Marvin Family ended up not being able to come to Church because they had to stay with their Dad who is separated from their Mom and so they were out of town but there is always next week! Today for P-day we are going to do something really fun! The fair is in town and so if it isn't too expensive, then we will go check it out! I have missed the fair the last few years and so I'm very excited to go to one! Elder Caccioppoli is also going to get a haircut and so I will have plenty of time to email! It is going to be a great day! Thanks again for the wonderful and thoughtful emails!!!!

Wow! What a great P-day we had! The weather and temperature were just perfect and the sun was shining, and the sky was so pretty! We had tons of fun and the views were just so amazing from High Point! We are so blessed to have a washer and dryer in the foyer of our apartment building and so many grocery stores right across the street! We went to High Point and the views were so pretty! They have a drive that takes you all the way to the monument and then there is a winding staircase that we walked up and we were the highest elevation out of anyone in New Jersey at that very moment! Everything is made of stone and the monument looks just like the Washington Monument and is about 250 feet tall! The total elevation is about 1,800 feet and so that is really high for New Jersey! The monument is free to walk up and it is quite the climb and so we got some great exercise! We got to the top and it was fun to be at the highest point in New Jersey! We walked down the stairs and took some more pictures and we noticed that they had a beach and it was just so crowded since it was a nice day! We spent most of the day just walking around to the different viewpoints and I really enjoyed emailing you! That is the highlight of my week and it's so fun to chat! I took lots of pictures and we even played around with the perspective of our pictures and so I made it look like my finger was on the top of the monument just like I did with the Empire State Building! After we got back, I got a fresh haircut and got all ready for the week! There is a barber shop right down the street and so it made it so easy to go and get it done! Once our P-day ended, I said my goodbyes to you and then we went to a dinner appointment that we were really looking forward to with Sister Campbell! She is the lady that took us out to Wendy's and she has a calling to be in charge of feeding the missionaries and coordinating the meals for us! She fed us some yummy bacon, cheese hot dogs with baked beans to go on them and we also had salad, and peach pie for desert! She is such a great lady but has gone through lots of trials. She had 2 husbands that she got married to end up leaving her and so she lives alone and is such a nice lady. We got to see some pictures of her trip to Peru and then we shared our favorite Book of Mormon scriptures and made the trek back to the apartment for the day. What a fun day it was and I was very excited to see your fun Facebook posts! You are so nice and thoughtful! I had so much fun emailing back and forth and I'm so thankful for all that you do for me! I have been so blessed by the experiences that I've had on my mission! I've changed so much and I'm grateful for your righteous examples! Love each one of you so much!

Tuesday was another very great and awesome day! Wow! It made my day to see your fun email when I woke up! I really loved hearing from you and was so grateful that you sent it! I was hoping that you were having a blast at Bear Lake and I was excited to hear about your trip! The weather today was so nice and we had a fun district meeting! It was family History themed and our district leader asked us all to use Family History more when we talk to people. It was a great lesson about sharing our own personal stories about our ancestors to connect with people. Then we came back to the apartment for some lunch and to do our companion study and then we headed out for more great work! I was so very excited to see your video of you at Bear Lake before we left! It was so great to hear your voices and see the pretty water and sand! Thanks so much for thinking of me and sending me such a fun video! I got to watch it just before we ended our lunch break and I had the biggest smile on my face the whole day! We had one of the coolest experiences right before going back to the apartment for the day! First, we had an amazing lesson with the Marvin girls and everything went so well! They had their 93 year old Grandpa there and he is a funny guy! We were able to teach them the Restoration since it had been a while since they heard it but it all started coming back to them and they remembered everything about Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon and so it was really fun to see some progress with them! We had them pray about a specific date to get baptized and now that the youngest daughter is 8, all 3 of them can get baptized! It is so great to see hard work pay off! They have been pretty hard to meet with but I'm so thankful that we were able to have this lesson! Then we had dinner with the Averyt Family and they have 3 sons who are married and have a few kids so they love having missionaries over to keep them company! We had some yummy chicken, salad, rice, and Haagan Dazs ice cream bars. They are really funny and our sides hurt from laughing so much! Hehe! We taught them the Gospel of Jesus Christ to practice teaching and Brother Averyt is a funny actor! Then here is the cool story! So we were driving down the street after our dinner to visit a few investigators in the area and we noticed a guy who had his hazard lights on and we could see that he had a flat tire. We rolled down our window to see if we could help and he asked us to help him jack his car up because it was too heavy. There was another lady already stopped in her 60s and she was checking to see if she had the correct spare tire because the guy popped his spare tire and so he didn't have an extra tire. We drove behind him so he could park a ways down the street and he said that he lived just down the street but his car wasn't going to make it. So we drove him down the street and he asked the people if he could just leave his car overnight and they said yes. Well, after he got out of the car, we asked him what his name was and he said Kelvy. He said that he used to meet with the sister missionaries about a year ago and even remembered their names! Well, come to find out that we have his records in our Area Book and so we are going to go teach him! What are the chances of us helping someone with a flat tire that has met with missionaries before! It was such a cool miracle that we were blessed with! I just love how Heavenly Father knows us individually and blesses us with experiences like these! It was the perfect way to end a great day! I was so very excited to see your email! I'm so happy that you had a great and fun time! Thanks so much for thinking of me! Love each one of you tons!!!

P.S: I just had one quick question! Is there any way to go see a dentist one of these P-Days? I was wondering if the insurance card would work over here in New Jersey? I have seen some dentists that look really good over here and was wondering if I should go in for a cleaning. I want to have pearly white teeth when I come off the airplane! Hehe! Love ya tons!!!

Wednesday was another very great day! It is just so awesome to be a missionary and I'm really enjoying it! I can't believe that it is August 1st already! It's to crazy to think that we are already to the 8th month of the year! I hope that each of you had a great and fun day! We woke up to more rain but it was just a light sprinkle and so it wasn't too bad at all! We had a really great day planned with more time to find and go tracting and we even had 2 lessons with Sister Stevenson for dinner and a less active couple who live way up in the resort part of our area. Their last name is Wallin and they have ancestors that came from Sweden and Brother Wallin told me that they just got back from a trip to Sweden! This morning, we read 2 Nephi 31 as a companionship and the spirit was very strong! We are continuing to pray for a baptism and so reading that chapter really got us excited to have a baptism!

"20 Wherefore, ye must press forward with a steadfastness in Christ, having a perfect brightness of hope, and a love of God and of all men. Wherefore, if ye shall press forward, feasting upon the word of Christ, and endure to the end, behold, thus saith the Father: Ye shall have eternal life.
21 And now, behold, my beloved brethren, this is the way; and there is none other way nor name given under heaven whereby man can be saved in the kingdom of God. And now, behold, this is the doctrine of Christ, and the only and true doctrine of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, which is one God, without end. Amen."

I love those scriptures so much! We got some rain in the early morning and afternoon but we stay nice and dry and didn't get wet! We started out by doing some Facebook prosylyting which I'm very new to doing since we didn't really do that in the New York, New York North mission. We find people that live in our area and then talk to them using Facebook messenger and today we focussed on Family history! I love testifying to people about the importance of Family because I have the BEST Family in the whole world! I really appreciate how much you do for me! After our Facebook prosylyting, we went to visit Roland since we hadn't seen him for a while because of a trip that he took. He wasn't home but the 1st door that we knocked on was a really awesome lady from Ghana! It has been a while since I've seen someone from Africa and so it was so great to talk to her! Her name is Patience and she loves the Bible and asked us questions to gauge if we believed in the Bible. She said that she had seen missionaries in Ghana before and so she accepted a copy of the Book of Mormon! Then we met a lady from Austalia and so she had a cool accent and we talked to her about Family History and she said that she has over 200 pages of her ancestors' genealogy and so it was fun to hear about her story! Then I found not 1....but 2 wheat pennies on the ground and so I was very excited about that! They were in 2 separate places and so it was my lucky day! We knocked on tons of doors and I just love how the Holy Ghost guides us to know where to go and what to say! I have felt so excited to share the message of the Gospel and I'm so grateful for the many blessings that we enjoy because of this Church! It truly can change lives and I've been able to seen 1st hand how it can bless other's lives! We had a great dinner appointment with Sister Stevenson and the Sister Missionaries at the Church in the gym and we had some yummy chicken, croissants, salad, and ice cream for desert! Then we went tracting for the rest of the evening and it went super well! I always have a big smile on my face because I get to where a nametag that represents all of you at home and I feel so much love and prayers as I go out to work! You each make me so proud and I am the luckiest missionary in the world! We were able to talk to a guy who has some Family who are members and so he told us that they showed him around Salt Lake and he got to do some Family History while he was there! Today was so awesome! We talked to so many great people and we feel like we are getting closer and closer to our goal of a baptism! We are working so hard and we come back to the apartment very tired! Love each one of you so much!!!!

Thursday was a very awesome day too! I was thinking about you so much and sending lots of thoughts and love your way! We had a very great and busy day planned and everything went so well! The weather sure has been feeling a lot like fall and fall is my favorite season so I love it! I love that crisp cool in the air and I can't wait for the leaves to start changing colors because everything is so green up here that I'm sure it will be so pretty! I just realized that I might be home before it even snows because last year, we didn't get too much snow until mid January. It is just really crazy to think that it is this time of year again! It was over a year ago that we met Bill Smith and so a year ago at this time, we were teaching him and setting a baptismal date with him! It has been really fun to look back in my journal to the exact date and what we did! I have been thinking back to last year and what a special time it was in the mission! I loved the fall and having General Conference, and the President Nelson mission conference! I have been thinking about you a lot and the role that each of you have played in my life! It's weird to think that last year at this time, I was to my 2nd area, 3rd companion and was just above 6 months in! I loved your story about Bear Lake and how last year at this time you were thinking that I had been out 6 months and here we are a whole year later and I only have less than 6 months left! I have been reflecting a lot of the memories that we have made and this last year and a half as a missionary and all of the many amazing things I've been able to see and experience! So we did our weekly planning and it went so well and then at 2:00, we got picked up by the member, Daniel Thompson, to take go on splits with us! He loves to drive the missionaries around to our destinations that we planned to go to and is a big help! After we knocked on a few doors, we had one of the craziest rain storms ever and we didn't have a jacket or umbrella because the forecast didn't call for a drop of rain. It said that it would be nice all day and so it caught us by surprise! Hehe! Oops! Let's just say that we got a little bit wet! There were tons of puddles and a river big enough to cross with a canoe but we forgot our paddles! Hehe, just kidding! We were able to find the husband of a less active member and he isn't a member! He was really friendly and he says that he became friendly when he lived in the South. He told us that he lived in West Virginia. I said "Go Mountaineers, and Thundering Hurd!" and he thought that was pretty cool! He said that his wife wasn't home but would be willing to meet with us when she was home. Then Daniel dropped us off because he had another activity to go to and so then we went tracting for the rest of the day and had a lot of success! We were in the area of a less active member who used to be a professional boxer named Freddie Curiel. He was so nice and had a Dominican accent and so he told us all about the Dominican Republic! The rain stopped and so it made it so much nicer to be outside! We knocked on lots of doors and found a really nice lady that believes humans are "energy" and not spirit children. It was an interesting concept but we were able to testify to her that she is a daughter of a loving Heavenly Father and she accepted a copy of the Book of Mormon and she said that she would read! She went from not being interested and shutting the door to accepting a copy of the Book of Mormon! We then went to visit a referral that we got from the Assistants to President Hess but it was at a gated community and so we needed to contact her first to let her know that we were coming. The day was just awesome and I was sending my love your way! We had lots of success today and got to introduce a lot of people to the Church! Love and miss ya tons and tons!!!!

Friday was so awesome! I always enjoy going to the food pantry and helping out! It is a fun way to do our weekly service! They gave us some cool t-shirts to wear while we are there and let us keep them! Friday is always a busy day for them and they have lots of Families come in especially because it is the summer! So we went to do our service and it all went really well! The people are always so nice and they always say "I can't take too much, I have to leave some for the people that need food more than I do". It's always a cool experience to help someone out and it helps us build more Christlike attributes! It wasn't very busy today and there weren't a whole lot of people that came through. Here is the cool part! They had boxes and boxes of girl scout cookies and expected a lot more people to come and so they had us take home about 6 boxes of different kinds of girl scout cookies! I thought of the movie, Despicable Me because he the have a whole bunch of girl scout cookies and I laughed when they gave us some "Coco-nutties" Hehe! It was a great project and then we headed off to our next appointment with a guy named Ron! He is really cool and had some awesome questions from when the Sister Missionaries taught him a few months ago. He said that he took his Book of Mormon to work and has been reading it little by little! We got another really bad rain storm and the lightning felt like it was right over our heads! It was so loud and the rain was coming down so hard and the wind was blowing water everywhere! We knocked on lots of doors and then went to see if a Family was home. Their last name is Martinez and I haven't seen them in Church yet and so we weren't sure if they are active. Thank you so much for sending me an email! It made my day to hear from you and I'm so happy that you got my letter! I sure do love sending them and know that you will get them so quick! I am always thinking about you! After we grabbed some grub, we visited a member who we didn't know named Sister Martinez. We had the records for her and her 2 older sons that live with her and so we went over to see if she was home and she was! We were so thankful that she was home and that we got to teach her! She is from Florida and her son served a mission in West Valley City and loved his time in Utah! Her husband passed away a few years ago and so she has had a tough time coming to Church. We shared with her a quote about the light of Christ and how each one of Heavenly Father's children have the light of Christ and we all radiate his light! She was so thankful that we came by! Then we went tracting in a very nice neighborhood and it was the closest thing to a neighborhood that looks like ours that I've seen in a long time! The people we met were so friendly and we testified to them that Families can be together forever! We gave out a couple of copies of the Book of Mormon and read the introduction with them and we got lots of great responses! We set a few return appointments which we were just so excited about! We were so excited to be able to teach so many people simple truths that are so important for people to know! It was a very great day and we were beat after lots of hard work! I just want to tell you LOVE YOU!!! I'm so happy that each of you are doing so well and enjoying your summer!

Wow! Saturday was so great! I hope you had an amazing and fun Saturday! I was sending lots of love to you and I prayed for your happiness and safety! We had such an awesome day and I really enjoyed being out and about! I have really grown so much in so many different ways on my mission and this has been such a special time of learning, growing, and stretching for me!! Thank you for letting me come on a mission and for your many sacrifices because you sure have been so loving and helpful throughout my whole life! I'm so excited to apply the things I've learned on my mission to life when I get back home! My mission has been such a blessing to me and I can't wait to see what the future holds! We got to go visit the Marvin Family and remind them about Church and also that one of the members is going to give them a ride! The girls weren't home but we were able to talk to their Grandma and she said that the girls would love to get picked up for Church! It all worked out so perfectly! It has been interesting to both be brand new to the area because we are both on the same page about knowing the members and investigators but we sure are getting the hang of things! I really loved seeing your Facebook message! You are so nice to think of me! Then while we were tracting, we had something so cool happen and we had to be in the right place at the right time! We were walking up a driveway and just as we turned to walk to another house, a guy in his early 20s yelled "Are you religous?" He was really far away and couldn't tell if we were salesmen or religous people. We walked towards him and it turned out to be a very friendly, polite 20 year old! He said that he has been researching about different religions and the day prior, he was at the Sussex County Fair and the Baptist Church had a booth to learn more about their Church. He asked if we believe in the Trinity and so we explained that Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ have bodies of flesh and bones and we were created in their image. He thought it was an interesting concept and hadn't really thought of it before. We also told him that they are 1 in purpose and make up the Godhead. He seemed so interested but he had to run an errand with his Mom and so we gave him a pamphlet with all of our information on it and invited him to Church! It was really cool and it was so awesome that he flagged us down and made the effort to talk with us! He asked us if he was bothering us and we told him that we are out TRYING to find people to talk to! Hehe! Then we had an amazing dinner with Brother and Sister Marecic! They are a couple in their 70s and are so nice! Sister Marecic is from Frankurt Germany and Brother Marecic is from Coatia. Brother Marecic worked for an airline and so they got to move to Honolulu Hawaii and that is where they found the Church! I love their accents because they sound just like Elder Utchdorf! It was so amazing to hear their stories because they were little kids during World War 2 and luckily, Sister Marecic was on the West Germany border. It reminded me of Night Crossing and the trials and hardships that they had to go through. We had a really yummy pizza from an Italian restaurant down the street and we had some German tofu salad with tomatoes and vinegar and it was so tasty! I am so sorry but I forgot to get a picture with them but there is still plenty of time for me to get one! Sister Marecic found out a few months ago that she has some ancestors that crossed the plains from New York to Utah and so she has been having a blast researching more about her new found ancestors! Brother and Sister Marecic talk back and forth in German and it sounds so cool! I love the way German sounds and I wish I could speak it! Here is something fun that I learned you could say to make it sound like you speak German! Say, "Mine shtool" it means "my chair" in German! Hehe! It was fun to get to know them and share our favorite scriptures out of the Book of Mormon with them! We had such a great day and we were very excited for our very 1st fast Sunday in this Ward! I sure do think about you a lot and I so appreciate all of your many prayers! I'm so excited for you email tomorrow! Love you so very much!

THANKS A TON FOR THE FUN EMAIL!!! What a great day Sunday was!! I was really, really excited for your email and couldn't wait to see how your fun week went! We woke up at 5:45 and got right ready to go when we realized that there aren't any meetings on fast Sunday! Hehe! Oops! It was so great to be able to fast and feel the spirit! We had lots of time to ponder and study and I enjoyed reading True To The Faith! I have loved reading the 4 book series that we bought right before I left and so far, I'm almost done reading True To The Faith and I have already read "Our Search For Happiness" and "Our Heritage". I was also able to read about the Pioneers and read from the Book of Mormon! It was a great morning and the sun was just so pretty and the temperature was so very nice! Church was really awesome and the weather was just so nice! I love going to Church and taking the sacrament! This ward has lots of members from Utah, Idaho and some from Wyoming and so I have really been able to relate to them! I talk about you a lot and how much joy you bring to my life and the members say that they want to meet you! I am just so thankful for you and what a joy and blessing you are in my life! We had some great testimonies and one that stuck out was about the hardships and trial we go through in life can be hard but the main message was that it is all worth it! They said that living together in Heaven with our Families forever and having true joy here on Earth makes it all worth it! The spirit was really strong and could be felt by everyone! They had a baby blessing after the 3 hour block and it went really well! He sure is a cute little baby! We didn't have any investigators in Church which was sad because we were sure that the Marvin girls and Stan would be there and so we aren't sure why they weren't able to come but we later found out that the Marvin girls were at their Dad's house and Stan had a buyer for a motorcycle that he was selling. There is always next week! But we still had such a great day at Church and I was getting more and more excited for your email!!!! We got to go visit a Bible referral that we had received this morning and it was near Lake Hopatcong and so the views were amazing! He ended up not being home and so we tracted around his house and let me tell you, we climbed so many stairs! We got quite the workout just walking up and down the steps to knock on people's doors. They live up on these huge lake houses with 20 or 30 steps to get to their front door but the views are just amazing! It was a lot of fun to be out and about and we talked to some very nice people! One lady answered the door and she was in her mid 70s and was so friendly! She told us how she goes to a Christian Church every once in a while but hasn't been just because things come up. One really awesome thing happened while we were talking to her! She told us that she had a dream a few nights ago about God and she says that she hasn't had a dream in a very long time. She knew that we were sent to her for a reason! We testified to her that Heavenly Father knows each one of us and knows what we need! It was a neat experience to have her tell us that she had had a dream! We grabbed some dinner and we were very hungry and so we fueled up and headed back out for some more work before the Sabbath ended! We thought it would be fun to write a little letter to the new Family that moved in and so we took it over to them and they really appreciated it! Their daughter is going to Southern Utah University and so on the card I wrote "Go Thunderbirds!" Then we went tracting around their neighborhood and it really reminded me of our beautiful neighborhood! It was fun to talk to Sister Kochevar because they just moved here from Riverton and they love Lagoon! They even have Utah licence plates and they have a son on a mission and he comes home next June! It is so fun to see the other side of missionary work and the Family that has their missionary out! It's so cool because you are doing the same thing they are and cheering on their missionaries! We met some nice people and got to hand out quite a few pamphlets which is always so nice when they accept our material! We were driving back and I had a strong impression to knock on a certain door and so we acted on my prompting and a very nice lady in her 60s answered the door and she said that she goes to a Methodist church and so we asked her what keeps her going back. She said that she loves how people serve each other and so we told her that our Church loves Families and service! We gave her our phone number and she said that she would call us to have us come back! We hope and pray that she will accept the Gospel because it will bless her life so much! We got back to the apartment and what did I see?!?!?! Your fun email and pictures! I enjoyed every single word and loved every story so much! Your email was just so AMAZING!!! Wow, you had such a great week and I'm so thankful for everything that you said! I always love all of your input! It's funny because Elder Caccioppoli has been asking me about Utah and some of the fun things we get to do and he is just amazed at how beautiful Utah is and how lucky we are to live there! I was talking about how we make cream peas and potatoes and then in your email, you said that you made some! I was telling him that we have a garden and he just couldn't believe that we can pick fresh fruits and vegetables out of our yard! He hasn't ever had a backyard our even been to Utah and so I love talking to him about you! Thank you a ton for the great and exciting email! I'm so happy and excited to talk to you tomorrow! I loved the scripture quote at the end! "Men are that they might have joy!" So true! I can honestly say without a doubt that my greatest joys and happiness come from you and the times we get to spend together! LOVE AND MISS YOU ALWAYS!!!

Well my dear and amazing loved ones! You truly are the best Family ever and I'm the happiest guy in the world! I get to help others find the joy that comes from living the Gospel! I have always loved a line in Preach My Gospel that says that our greatest source of happiness is our Family relationships! You have sent so much love and many prayers and I can always feel your love and support! I know you are always right beside me and I'm so grateful! I'm so thankful that my prayers are always answered and that you continue to be safe, healthy, and happy! I hope that you ahve another amazing and fun week! Good luck with all of the many fun activites going on! Keep enjoying the summer! LOVE & MISS YOU SO, SO, SO, SO VERY MUCH MY DEAR LOVED ONES!!!!!

Love You Always!
~Elder Lindberg