OYM (Open Your Mouth)

Elder Lund and Elder Turley--Study Station

Outside the Apartment

Elder Lund's bike is the blue one--the owner of the bike store told me, "If it was my son out there, I would want his bike to be visible for safety so I'd buy the blue bike."  I did.  Elder Lund likes it!

Elder Turley--Awesome Companion 

Hello all,

First off expect email from me on Tuesday. P-Day is Monday, but the library here in Tacoma are closed on Mondays. You might also realize today is not Tuesday. Yesterday we had a special training for new missionaries so today we get to email. 

So I am in the Lincoln Ward which is in the actual city of Tacoma. My Companion Elder Turley is From Lindon Utah which is like right by Provo. He has been out for 6 months and he is just an awesome guys. He left for his mission July 2015 so we were like super close but never meet. Hes great and I am learning so much from him. We are on bikes which is kinda crazy. First night we go knock doors and its raining and dark. Glad there was a flashlight on my back haha. But we knock doors everyday 5-7pm. That is officially time dedicated to knocking door throughout the mission. We also knock doors other times during the day. We OYM(open your mouth) to anyone we see on the street. We are constantly finding people to teach... and it works. Already have a baptism this Saturday if Blaine(His name) follows through and can quit smoking, more on that later hopefully I'm short on time. Also met a guy and his wife that are from Marina!!! Yeah crazy, the Lord has sent me here for certain people. That is very clear already. Seen sooooo many blessings and miracles already. Did i not mention that is so satisfying. Also sorry if my grammar is bad. 

Everything is so amazing I love it here! simple as that!

So... Blaine. This guy was praying to find the true church for him. Next day elders knock on his door. They invite him to church, give him a church tour and he commits to be baptized. He's a guy with a troubled past, but has been sober for 10 years. He is a clean and sober home manager and is so willing to learn about the gospel. Before teaching the Word of wisdom, he said he was already trying to quite smoking. We gave him a blessing the next day to help him. He said he felt strengthened. Hasn't smoked since. We also taught him a lesson of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. We focused on Joseph Smith being a prophet. We asked him if he believed that Joseph Smith was a true prophet. He couldn't accept it because he is a logical guy, yet he could not deny based on his feelings with the Book if Mormon. My comp said that God will answer our prayers, so lets kneel down know and prayer. He prayed right there and we knelt there for like 4 minutes after the prayer. He told us that we "had a verse for him... something about many prophets." So we started searching the scriptures and getting off track. Elder Turley brought it back and asked him what he felt during the prayer. He said he felt "peace... and that it was as if time slowed down." Next asked him what he thought that meant. "That Joseph Smith was a true prophet," was his response!!! crazy blessings from the spirit!!! 

That is not even all of them.... more next week. It was great hearing from all of those who emailed me. If I don't respond to your personal email I'm sorry. I'm on a time limit. scripture of the week:

Doctrine and Covenants 28:16

love you all,

Tacoma Bound!

Arrival at Sea/Tac--January 19, 2016

The New Missionaries at Puget Sound

This morning at 6:51 am I received a call from an (801) phone number and was happy to answer the phone and hear Elder Lund on the other end.  "Mom, I'm at the airport heading out.  Someone is letting me borrow their phone so I can say goodbye to my parents." Elder Lund woke up at 2:45 this morning, ate breakfast at McDonalds, where a recent returned missionary came up to him and his companion and offered to buy them breakfast.  How kind.  They then took an MTC van to the FrontRunner/Trax and headed to the Salt Lake Airport for an 8:30 flight. So grateful that we could express our love to him before he flew to Tacoma.  We were able to speak for about 20 minutes and he told us how much he enjoyed the MTC--even the food. He said the first three days were very long and difficult. It felt as if he had been there for a month, but then it went fast.  He is grateful for all that he learned and he also was able to see his Mission Prep teacher from BYU and so he was happy about that.  While at the MTC he and his companion taught an investigator.  Christian said she was such a good actress that they truly believed she had no religious background and knew nothing about God.  When they asked the teacher about whether or not she would get baptized, the teacher laughed and said,  "Oh, she is the Relief Society President in my ward.  She was great though, right?"  Elder Lund and Elder Pipe now know the term "Investi-FAKER."  Godspeed, Elder Lund!

Here is the letter from his mission president announcing his safe arrival in Tacoma,

Dear Parents,

This is just a quick note to let you know that your missionary arrived safely in Tacoma today.

We took our new missionaries to the Puget Sound (photo attached). From here they will have a great lunch. Then they will be interviewed, given a brief orientation, and meet their new companion, who will also be their trainer.  After a very spiritual meeting where the departing missionaries will share their testimonies, they will be off to their new areas.

We are thrilled to welcome them into the out mission. Please feel free to contact either of us if you have any questions or concerns. You are also invited to check out the mission blog at www.calledtoservewa-tac.blogspot.com

May the Lord bless you and your family.

President and Sister Blatter

First Week at the Provo MTC

The Zone Leaders--Elder Lund and Elder Pipe--Elder Pipe is the nephew of a good friend we had when we lived in Sandy, Utah

Food found in their room vent

Hello All,

So after arriving at the MTC last Wednesday we were all rushed around, sent to a classroom and then waited till everyone in our district arrived. That's about all I can remember from the first day. We learned so much so fast, and were trying to get to know everyone, and start to know our purpose here really fast. All I can remember was that day felt very long even though we were only there for like 9 hours but that was an incredibly long time. But none of us were prepared for the next day. waking up at 6:30 wasn't as bad I thought it would be but spending like 13 hours in one classroom was torture for some of us. Me and my companion for the MTC Elder Pipe struggled a bit. But we made it through till the next day. The third day is said to be the hardest, but we enjoyed it. We all grew spiritually and learned about teaching with spirit and how to help people learn the gospel. We had been doing that all along but the third day was just good, and we taught our first "investigator." He is just a teacher pretending to be a non-member, but he is a really good actor. Some of the Elders and Sisters in our group teach our own teacher pretending to be an investigator. They its like she is not even the teacher, but actually like an investigator. I thought that was cool. Saturday we thought was going to be long, and it was. All of this waking up early studying scriptures and trying to prepare lesson for people is demanding and tiring. But it pays off. I'll talk about Sunday later, but keeping with the whole thing about teaching; Elder Pipe and I have two actual investigators we are teaching. One is a girl from Florida who is visiting her older brother for a while who works in the MTC and is a convert. She has no religious background so it was kinda weird teaching her and being some of the first people to talk to her about religion. Interesting experience, but a good one, are lesson went well. 

Sunday was probably my best Sunday ever. We all had to prepare a talk in my Zone because our branch President decides at random who speaks. So we all wrote talks. it turned out that there was some administrative errors and we needed to share a room for sacrament meeting. We shared with a French Speaking Zone. So we heard the hymns, sacrament prayers, and a talk in French. One sister from our zone spoke and nobody in our district spoke. Sorry for those who dont know the order goes Mission(MTC)-> Zone-> District. we have to districts in our zone. we are all English speaking. The district that was here before us just finished their two weeks in the MTC so they left for their missions this morning at like 3 AM. Anyways it was just good because we learned so much about the gospel in the week that finally coming back to church and just being there and partaking of the sacrament was great. just very spiritual.

Now just for some fun stuff. Our district gets along well. We all kinda lose focus about the same time during blocks of class and personal study so thats nice we can all take a break together. My companion Elder Pipe is from South Jordan Utah and is a cool guy. we get along well and teach well together. There is like no personal time at the end of the day, so that is kinda rough, but oh well. Today we get all day to do personal stuff. we are going to the temple today, but nobody at BYU come okay, we get in trouble if family and friends show up just to see us there haha. 

Sorry no pictures today, because the computers are on straight lock down. I tried plugging in my camera but the computer wont recognize anything.(Note from Elder Lund's Mom--he was able to borrow a cord from a sister missionary that worked for these computers) Oh well I'm tired, but learning so much. We watched some videos about the MTC to help us feel better and less stressed out. One kid in the videos said that the "First few days in the MTC is like drinking out of a fire hydrant, you get some water, but most of it just hurts your face." <----To true!!! but we do learn a lot, but its a lot to take it. the first day it was like everyone was throwing up on us. But its better now. Also Me an my companion have been assigned as Zone Leaders. so this makes us responsible of our zone, which is just our district, so our district leader is in charge of us. But there will be 6 elders and 4 sisters coming Wednesday, and me and my companion are supposed to meet with them the first night, calm them and down and just let them know how to survive. That should be fun. Don't have much besides that. If there are typos sorry! The cursor is weird so if you type in the middle of a word the letter you type just throws of so you are deleting then replacing the next letter. So to fix something I would have to just re-type everything. Which as much as I want to be grammatically correct, its not worth it that much, I apologize.

Good luck to you all 103 of 104 weeks to go.

Elder Lund