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

     Subject line says it like it is. It's literally been a week. A reasonably uneventful, classic "missionary life" week. Some of the stuff that did happen is actually really sad... A couple weeks back we got a call to go with the Bishop of the Owego Ward to give a blessing to a a member of their ward who was in the hospital. She wasn't doing well, neither was her husband, Heinz, who passed away this past week. I've only met her once, but Sis Mueller is incredible. She and Heinz moved here from Germany years ago, and have been awesome members since they got here. Another member, from up in the North, who called me on my first day in NY to find out my favorite colors so she could knit me some slippers, passed away last week. I learned that when I checked my email this morning... That was sad. Sister Stevens has been knitting slippers for missionaries as long as this mission has been a mission. I always thought it was lame how missionaries in their homecoming talks...

 Well, you read it. It's been 7 months. I've been part of 3 Baptisms, served in 2 areas, had 6 companions, done upwards of 12 pushups, received upwards of 50 "aggressive driving" warnings from TiWi, and written 1.8 million letters. Pretty crazy how fast time flies. Missions truly are incredible. You learn so much, experience some crazy stuff, and grow (physically and spiritually.) Luckily, after all the ups and downs, my sense of humor has indeed remained in tact. I'm not sure if this is a good thing, or a great thing. Either way, it's been an exciting and fun and awesome 7 months.       This week has been rather unexciting compared to last, granted it's only been like 5 days since we emailed. But we've been pressing on in faith. We managed to have nearly all of our appointments cancelled, so we had a lot of time slots to fill. Classic NYUM. We did get to go see Millie, our recent convert, she's such a nice lady, and she's so excited to be ba...

   If you couldn't tell by the subject line, this past week has been rather lit. The week began with a rather considerable snowstorm. We were getting pounded, and it was the night before our blitz in Elmira. We talked to the ZL's the night before and decided we'd make a final call on whether or not to make the drive at  noon  the next day. By the time  noon  rolled around, it was still snowing rather heavily, but, as a demonstration of our faith and youthful boldness, we went for it. After a rather sketchy drive to Elmira, we safely arrived, just in time to be pelted by snowballs and bananas. Don't worry though, these were being thrown by Elders Jarman and Hopkins, not an angry mob. And before you ask, yes, this is a fairly normal start to a blitz. Anyways, Elder Hubbell and I worked the day with Elder Jarman. We taught one of their progressing investigators the Gospel of Jesus Christ. This 'gator is the nicest lady ever, she's in her 30's, and is incredibl...

     First of all, I've gotta share an experience that our Ward Mission Leader had. Brother Rogers is an awesome guy, he's the CEO and Executive Producer of some kind of outdoors/hunting TV show. So he has a lot of meetings with some well known public figures. This week he had a meeting with a group of people, and they were at dinner. The host dude asked the table what they wanted to drink (this is not Utah, so he wasn't asking if they wanted root beer or sprite, he was thinking more along the lines of wine, beer, or other alcoholic beverages) Anyways, one of the people at the table knew Bro Rogers was a Mormon, so he spoke up. He told the table that Bro Rogers did not drink alcohol, in fact he couldn't even be in the same room as it. And that Bro Rogers and his band of 8 missionaries go around and use the "Priesthood of the Samurai" to bless the people of the Binghamton area. So, wow. This dude has this awesome image in his head of what Mormons do. We've ...

 Well I got 2 new companions this week. They're both fun, and both have been out more than 3 times as long as I have. The other cool thing is, on Wednesday only 1/3 of our companionship was sick. By Friday, we were all sicker than dogs (probably the flu.) And on Saturday there were only 2 times where the 3 of us were vertical at the same time. On Sunday we only went to Sacrament meeting, and then went home and died. This week, pretty much all I've eaten is about a half gallon of Chobani, 478 cough drops, 14 acetaminophen, 8 doses of NyQuil, and 3 banana Twinkies. I've coughed up 4 lungs, and every time I cough, my headache gets worse. Every time my headache gets worse, I take acetaminophen, and every time I do that, I cough. So this week has been just fanfreakintastic.      Also, last Monday we were able to go take a tour of the 2 historic homes that are about 30 minutes east of us. The Morrey's (the Senior couple in our District) are in charge of the homes for 2 y...