Elder Lindberg - 75 Baker St Apt #2 Johnson City, NY 13790

 First item of business is this week is transfers. I got called as District Leader, and Elder Hubbell from Binghamton (the city right next to Johnson City) will be joining me, as well as Elder Schindler, who I know nothing about. As a trio, we will be covering 2 areas. It's going to be stinkin awesome.       Second item is I accidentally lost our phone last night. That's the bad news. The good news is I found it this morning. I apparently forgot that I had let it fall out of my pocket in a puddle in the street... Soooo that was a neat discovery.       Third item,  on Tuesday  Elder Jarman, one of my favorite missionaries in the mission, and Elder Vorkink, the most famous Elder in the mission, who coincidentally are also our ZL's, blitzed our area. Elder Jarman and I went to the Church, and watched the broadcast from the Church. That was awesome, it's a rare thing, to see a new Prophet called while on your mission. President Nels...

First and foremost, we had a baptism this week! Millie, a 77 year old lady who's been an investigator for almost two years, was baptized on Saturday . It took her a while, but we wanted her to do it for her, and she finally got her answer. The crazy thing about the baptism was that Friday  was 60 degrees and raining, then we woke up Saturday  morning to 3 degrees and 8 inches of snow. The roads were terrible, and we were slightly worried that we would have to reschedule it. But we figured we'd just go for it, and we actually had a decent turn out, and it went wonderfully. There was one awkward bit. About 20 minutes before we were going to start, Millie went into the restroom to change. As she was walking out of the Relief Society room, her skirt fell down. Elder Hubbell and I had just walked out from turning the font off, and we just see Millie picking her skirt up and hear the Elder's Quorum president say "LORD HAVE MERCY" and we just started dying laughing...

First of all, NY is quite cold. Like it's rather miserable. It's so cold in fact, the entire mission was commanded to NOT LEAVE THEIR APARTMENTS FOR TWO DAYS. Friday and Saturday were spent entirely in the apartment. The only times we went outside were to confirm that the mailbox was still empty, and to retrieve care packages from members. That last bit was awesome, because a nice member lady brought us like legit 30 lbs of KFC, and then another nice member family brought us Krispy Kreme Donuts. You see, Krispy Kreme doesn't really exist up here. The closest ones are located in Montreal (that's in Canada) and Scranton, Pennsylvania (probably near Dunder Mifflin, if you know where that is.) So getting Krispy Kremes is a very rare treat, and luckily, the Collyer fam was dropping a daughter off at the airport, and stopped and got donuts for all the missionaries. So that brought some joy into a miserable two days. My current companion and I have virtually nothing in common,...

It's been cold this week. Like cold enough our windshield-wash/de-icer freezes when we use it. So that's awesome. Another bummer thing about this week is our car broke. The dealership claims they replaced the intake solenoid valve but I'm pretty sure they just reset the check engine light because the car still sucks. Anyone who has a 2015 Chevy Equinox, sell it, take any offer over $6, and buy a pogo stick. I've killed ours like 5 times, it's an automatic, you should not be able to kill an automatic. Plus when you turn the traction control off, it doesn't go all the way off, so the church parking lot donuts are abysmal. (for anyone who thinks I'm being a terrible missionary or at least an ungrateful one, this paragraph includes bits of sarcasm, but rings mostly true.)      Elder Richardson is still stick with the plague or mono or mad cow disease or appendicitis or something, we try and guess which disease it is, and we've listed them all by now. After...

First of all, Christmas in the field is very different, but holy cow it was a day to remember. It's also crazy that I've already had one of my two Christmases in the field. So in reality, I'm halfway done with my mission! Anyways, I guess I'll go over the week before I share the Christmas festivities with all of you.        Honestly this week was kind of a drag, but also flew by. That seems to be a fairly normal thing as a missionary and it weirds me out, but it's cool. We had a very memorable lesson this week with a member named Deborah. She is in her 30's, is married, and has 3 kids. She's the only member in her family, her kids are holy terrors, and her husband is a stay at home dad, while she works 2 jobs. So it's a rough situation. Anyways, we are over there one night, watching "Prophet of the Restoration", and having a discussion as we watch. At about halfway through the movie, I hear a car screech up, and some dude bursts in the f...

    New area, new comp, new apartment, new everything. Pretty crazy week around here. My new companion is Elder Richardson. He has severe dyslexia, so he can't really read or write. This poses a fairly significant problem, because reading and writing is incredibly vital to locating investigators, planning lessons, navigating an area, etc. So, I'm trying to learn the area and meet all the investigators while "flying blind" in a sense. It's a unique challenge. But the area is really awesome, and the WARD, yes it's a WARD, is full of awesome people. We have a super solid investigator on date for  January 20th , she's been an investigator for nearly two years, and has been coming to church pretty much the whole time, but was worried about leaving the Catholic Church, because of what her family would think. But just last Friday she received her answer, and is very excited to be baptized on the 20th! So that's cool, walking into a baptism right when you get ...