New Companion--More Flat Tires

Singing with President Blatter

Elder Lund's new companion--Elder Jocelyn

Hello all,

This week has been way fun. Got a new companion. He has been out for 8ish months and is from Hurricane, Utah. Elder Jocelyn is super nice and way funny. We are gonna have a fun transfer. 

We are working with the new area. There is a lot of potential--we are realizing it. But it is straight hills. If only I could listen to the Hills by the weekend while biking them, that might give me some more push in the pedal haha jk, that's apostate. 

I had some more flat tires this week... uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh that ruins the day pretty much. but whatever. Some Elder nearby let me use his bike until I got a new tube Monday....also sorry for not emailing on Monday, our ride got messed up again.

Ill attach pics and explain them. that is pretty much the week though. Love you all!

The Tacoma Stake Has Split and Transfer Calls

For Stake Conference, Elder Lund made Cinnamon Rolls

Transfers are here and so are a lot of other changes. We will start with the most recent going backwards. 

The Tacoma Stake is splitting. There will now be the Tacoma North and South Stakes. This was planned for months but nobody knew until a few weeks ago. The missionaries knew that something big was happening just from the buzz we would hear about transfers and stuff from our bishops and mission president. So each missionary knew different things and we talked so we had it figured out. At transfer we pretty much new that the third stake conference this year had to be about something very big. So yeah. Elder Snow presided, got to shake his hand. 

Because of the stake split, every ward in the stake has new boundary changes. We lost some of the top of our ward, but gained a bump towards the north-east. Elder Turley and I knocked in the new area we got last night.... Its a lot of steep hills... and we are still on bikes... #getbig.

Saturday we got transfer calls! Elder Turley is going to Grey's Harbor which is a Zone Leader Area. So he is gonna be a ZL over there. I am staying in Lincoln and I guess taking over the area (that's a no-brainer). My new companion is Elder Jocelyn. Don't know too much about him yet, heard he is a great missionary though! 

Its been a pretty slow week, work wise, but time wise it flew! Had exchanges again on Friday. Stayed in Lincoln with Elder Bagley! This kid is funny. He is from St. George and has 2 transfers left, he is pretty much dead. What I learned from him is I wish I got a mountain bike. He told me about some of his p-days going mountain biking out in the Boony ares of the mission. We had some fun. He broke Elder Turley's key chain sort of thing that retracts the keys. Comp study the next morning he fixed it by taking it a part, finding the broken piece, heating up a fork and then plastic welded the plastic part back to the base part. He also popped two tires that day. he wasn't super happy.

Shout out to all those at BYU taking finals right now, you are the real MVP.

Love you all

Elder Lund and Elder Turley--Great Companions!

The car that got stuck in the middle of the night.

Coker with the Missionaries--day before transfers

The dogs near Elder Lund's home

Whew^^ 3 months already

Lincoln is still Lincoln. We had a fun week of talking to a few crazy people. A lot of the lessons we set up with some solid investigators got canceled, but for good reasons. We can't be too upset when somebody wants to meet at a different time because they haven't read what we gave them to read, and they want to have read it before so they can think of and ask questions. But it was a fun and eventful week nonetheless.   

Coker, the man we live with, had a minor heart attack and was in the hospital. We didn't hear from him for two nights. We heard that he is also now engaged!!! We love Coker! We were very sad when he left, but now we are very excited for him! 

We went on exchanges again this week. A Spanish Elder came to the area. He is way fun and collects bugs too, we got along just fine! 

Elder Turley woke up at 3:30 in the morning to a car revving and rocks spraying everywhere against our house. Turns out this guy tried to turn around in the alley by our house and got stuck in the gravel. There are some dogs that live by us too. They were going crazy when the car was making all that noise. Turley had a hard time falling back asleep.

The transfer is almost done. So we took transfer pics this morning. our caption is going to be parts of D&C 75:9 (I think).

Love you all

Elder Lund

General Conference Week and Zone Meetings

Bike Problems

Flat Tire--Again

The Lone Cypress picture at the Mission Home.  Sister Blatter told Elder Lund she thinks he is the only missionary who knows where that is.

At the Mission Home

Mt Ranier in the background

The ward where Elder Lund serves does a Missionary Mile in the early mornings where members are invited to run with the misisonaraies--such a great ward with a Bishop and Ward Mission Leader who have been so good to these Missionaries..

Lunch at the Mission Home

A nice sunny day at the Mission Home for General Conference

Some of the Elders watching Conference

Zone Meeting

Hello everybody!

I hope you enjoyed the past week as much as I did. We had Zone Conference this past Thursday. It was sweet. I got a lot out of all the trainings. 

This week was also filled with beautiful weather. Elder Turley and I even pulled out the short sleeve shirts and got sun burnt walking around. Yeah walking because I got another flat tire. Anyways it was a good week to get a flat tire. A lot of meeting and time to sit and listen to people.

Speaking of sitting and listening, it was General Conference!!! We went to the stake center for all of the sessions except for Sunday afternoon. For lunch and that session President and Sister Blatter invited all of the missionaries in the Tacoma and Lakewood Zone to the mission home for lunch and to watch conference. Lakewood Zone was there for the morning session and lunch then we showed up and had lunch with them and then watched the afternoon session. It was awesome hearing from the prophets and apostles. 

Here are some one-liners/thoughts/quotes I liked from each talk:

Sat Morning

Eyring: This is Jesus's conference

Durham: what weight of the world can we kick off

Hallstrom: Our earthly identities are not a problem as long as it does not take away from our eternal identity, a child of God

Stevenson: "Where are the keys!?"

Duncan: Mercy will not rob justice

Snow(Who is actually coming to the Tacoma stake conference on the 17): "Be thou Humble"

Renlund: We cannot assume entitlement

Sat Afternoon

Rasband: Great testimony on prophets and apostles that we sustain

Anderson: Children are very important, we need to love all

Arnold: to the rescue!!

Mazzagardi: great talk I cant wait to read...

Bednar: Missionary work, the Doctrine of Christ and sanctification from the HG and the Sacrament

Ballard: family councils are divine!! also shout out to snapchat for being brought up in #LDSconf

Priesthood Session

Nelson: "He has no power"/ call to arms

Owen: Be the best follower to be the best leader

Uchtdorf: family, to be saved need of charity

Eyring: purity will protect the family

Monson: the priesthood is reallllllll

Sunday Morning 

Monson: Choice and agency. hard right or easy wrong?

Oscarson: Conversion comes from immersion

Waddell: Learn, listen, walk

Christofferson: Honor thy father(and of course thy mother)

Cook: 150 temples! See ourselves in the temple

Uchtdorf: The sheep is ready to be saved primarily because of the love of the good Shepard. 

Sunday Afternoon

Hales: The Holy Ghost respects our agency

Gong: 6 ways to remember

Kearon(the mother of an old sister missionary who served here baptized this man. She was told by many to drop him. She was felt to keep teaching him... wow): The love we need to have for all. I also noted that Uchtdorf got up to announce who was speaking next, he was very moved by that talk

Oaks: There will be opposition

Richards: The power of Temples comes from the Ordinances

Johnson: The resurrection

And last but certainly not least Elder Jeffery R. Holland:

when he was announced all the missionaries cheered and then he got up and just was so strong with the spirit. We had no Idea what he was to talk about when he said "You have no idea." No we didn't. But we could all feel the love from all of the leaders in the church. It was great.

This morning we woke up and had the missionary mile. Got up and ran a mile with some members in our ward

love you all

Easter Week

Matching Easter Ties

Desks filled with Easter Treats

Beautiful Day!

Hard Work Pays Off

Bishop and his wife took the missionaries to The Olive Garden for Lunch.  The Bishop's wife sent us a message saying how nice Christian is and that he asked if anyone was going to eat the last breadstick.  So cute as we all know how much Christian loves those breadsticks.

This week was a lot of fun. We had exchanges, and had a blast meeting the crazy people who live in Lakewood, Wa. For sure I have some stories for the journal that will have to wait (sorry). But also had a great lesson with a guy who has the most commitment I've seen here #hallelujah #Eastermiracle #hardworkpaysoff. He just has to get married and then we can help him progress even further! 

The weather was interesting. Had some rain and some sun throughout the week. Decided to take a pic today because its so nice. #spring. 

Easter!!! Easter was great! We had soooo much candy from family and the members here... our desks were just messy with all of our clutter and candy. We had lunch at our ward mission leaders home and then Monday our bishop took us and the sisters out to Olive Garden. We sure are spoiled here! 

Shout out to dad for turning 50 on the first of April. 

Love you all so much!

Treats, Flat Tires, and Keeping the Faith

Elders with Treats

Elder Lund enjoys Red Velvet anything!

Elder Lund made Hawaiian Haystacks for weekly planning meeting

Flat Tires for both Elders

Another Elder Lund Favorite

Making Prayer Rocks for some children they are teaching

Sorry for no email last week. Yes an apology is due. Forgive me. But this week has been pretty fun! Got some packages and my parents even sent me some toothpaste--thanks mom! But all has been good. The rain is stopping, then it's sunny and then its raining again... uh make up your mind. But all is well in Zion right? 

Elder Turley and I are having a hard time finding people who are willing to make and keep commitments, like coming to church or meeting with us when we set up an appointment with them. Oh well. We have the faith to find people here. 

The stake put on the Lamb of God production these past two weeks. Two Sundays ago it was out of the mission so we couldn't go, but this last week it was in the mission boundary. But we had to have an investigator there in order for us to be justified in going there. Our ward mission leader brought a friend so we went with that person. But the program itself was beautiful. So great.

Cant really remember too much else but ill explain some of the photos.

Love you all!!!

Two Months and a Hail Storm

Elder Lund after the downpour

Breakfast of Champions

Elder Turley

Yes it has been two months, crazy... feels like longer, but I feel like I was just home eating Nutella and watching TV. 

But it's been an alright week. Right after emailing last week Elder Turley and I started to bike to an appointment, but he had forgot his planner and I hadn't written down the address so we decided to go home to grab it. Oh man... it started hailing sideways. The Lord seemed to be upset with us... jk but it was crazy. The first pic is me soaked just after maybe a 10 minute bike ride home. The wind was so crazy!!! We just decided to take our lunch out that day and just eat and let our coats dry out. It calmed down a little after that, but man it was crazy. We had to pedal like we were going up a hill, when we were really just going down hill, the wind was that strong. It was kinda fun though. 

We had a hard day on Friday. All 11 of our confirmed set up appointments fell through, it rained all day, when we knocked 5-7's and it rained and nobody was receptive and then last, but for sure not least,  we had a very interesting bash. Most nights we have like 20-30 minutes to go out and talk to people on the streets. Well Friday we had an hour because everybody fell through, and we walked by a bar and started talking to a lady out side. Over  5 minutes, people came out and started talking to us. Ultimately we were "talking" with 7 drunk people that were just surrounding us. Man I wrote about that in my journal. So there was a bar-gang-bash, that will go down in my mission memories. Ultimately the easiest fact about getting over the Anti-Mormon stuff they said was because they were drunk and they wouldn't listen to a single answer we gave. 

But even though that was a bad day, Sunday was great. We had a total of 9 investigators attend our ward this week... so great, a girl we are teaching brought three of her friends, Elder Turley and I just looked at each other and were like "4!" But, yeah great things are still happening.

Shout out to Carmel Basketball, sorry for the loss, but its alright! There for sure is much more to life. Love you joe-curt and weno. 

Also breakfast this morning was bomb... waking up 10 minutes early was worth it.