The Camera Saga

Before Lance left on his mission we contemplated about what kind of a camera to send with him. After purchasing everything else he needed we decided to just send my camera instead of spending more money and I would get a new (and possibly better, haha) one. So we sent him with my Olympus ultra zoom which is an amazing camera. It was a couple of years old but a pretty expensive camera that took great pictures. So we were excited for all of the pictures Lance would be able to take in the West Indies.

Well, that didn't happen. The camera was stolen on his first day at the MTC. Lance felt so bad about it and all of the money that we had spent that he didn't tell us until he left to go out to the mission field.

So we bought him another camera. This one was a smaller one, a Canon Power Shot A470. It had good reviews and everyone said it was a very good camera. We sent the camera to him the end of February. We didn't know how long it would take so everytime we wrote to him we would ask if his camera had come. He always had the same answer, "Nope". By the first of May we knew that it had been stolen. There's two down and about $500 for cameras and postage.

We caught a break the middle of May and the same camera we had sent before was $10 cheaper than the last time we bought it. This time we went to the UPS store and sent it Express with a tracking number and insured it. It cost $65.00 for a small box 5" x 6" and weighing less than a pound. Everyday I checked the tracking number. By May 22 it had arrived in Guyana in customs. On the 28th I received an email from Sister Bullock (the missionaries have couple missionaries who pick up their mail, etc.). She said that Lance's box had arrived. It had the CD's, cables, instructions and a new bank card (a whole other story) in it. Everything but the camera. Stolen again!!! When I asked Lance what he did when he found out, he said, "I said, 'Swear Word!!' ". haha

So then we had to go to the Post Office to find out how to get reimbursed since it was insured. They gave us numbers for the International Postal Service which we have called several times. We are still waiting for the information!

Anyway, a couple of weeks ago, Lance called home and said that everyone in the mission was trying to figure out a way to get him a camera. This is what the President and the Assistants came up with: We put money in Lance's account, he gets the money and gives it to the Assistants who take it with them to St. Martins (which is more Americanized) and buy the camera there. They take it to Grenada and give it to some other missionaries who are going to Trinidad and from there some other missionaries take it to Guyana where Lance will pick it up. Whew!!

This time should be the charm!! : ) We are now up to about $750 in camera costs. We better get some tremendously awesome pictures for that amount!

A Summer Tradition

Gary and I, Scott and Leslie started our summer tradition by going on a few of the homes in this year's Parade of Homes. As usual, we had a ton of fun! We only saw three houses but one of them was in Franklin, Idaho. It's by a big lake and is beautiful! Leslie and I even got brave and went out to the lake and out on to the dock. It must be built on pontoons because it shifted a little bit when we walked out on it. It was awesome! We could hear crickets and all kinds of birds. Gary and Scott didn't even come and look for us. Les and I were trying to decide if we were brave enough to get in the boat at the dock and untie it. We weren't!! Then we went to LaTienda for dinner. It was amazing food. We didn't even gamble. Scott and Leslie are our best friends! Thanks for a fun time, guys!!

Grab A Hankie

Lance told us this story last week. WOW! That's my "little boy". I'm so proud of him!

"We were studying on Tuesday and I get a call from our landlord saying that there is a man that is looking for us. So we invite the man over (he has tattos and looks kind of hardened) and he tells me that he has been in every church possible but none of them are true. So we teach him the restoration. After the lesson I ask him to pray to God to know if this is true. Quietly he says, "No, I don’t need to." I get this weird look on my face and he tells me about this dream he had. He met a man dressed in all white that he didn’t know. He was talking to the man about God and said he couldn’t find the right church. The man showed him a picture of my face and said this man will teach you the truth and help you and your family get baptized in God’s true church. Then he woke up. He had been looking for me for a couple of days then finally tracked us down. It was crazy cool. We have been teaching him a lot this week".

Sweet Crabwood Creek Family

This was my first week in Crabwood. We found a couple of sweet families that I'm hoping will stay cool. I love Crabwood but my heart is in Skeldon. I will want to come back here for sure some other time to serve. We found a sweet family named Persaud that will get baptized. They are a family of 5. We didn't have a baptism this week and really the area was not very good when I got here. They weren't really teaching anyone and it just wasn't a very good situation. But things happen for a reason, so we have had some great time this week to really find out what it is. It was hard for a little while just because of how hot it is but that's mission life. In church we had 6 people there investigator wise and I'm used to getting around 14 so that was hard. I know that things will pick up though.

Skeldon, Guyana - My First Baptisms

The bottom picture is a lady named Grace. I didn't baptize her and she wasn't even our investigator but she speaks dutch so she wanted Elder Sorber to baptize her in dutch. It was cool. The skinny one is Elder Sorber, and the bigger one is Elder Warhurst. He is the one who came out with me from the MTC. The next picture was actually my first baptism. Her name is Amanda. She is 15 and just a sweet funny girl. Her dad is crazy and thinks that he has seen Christ 3 times, so i just thought in my head, "Alright ya freakin weirdo." I love the girl to death she is sweet. The top one is a lady named Bibi. She is great. She has 11 kids and some are really bad. Two of her sons will run away and just live on the street for weeks at a time. Her husband is a drunk but she is great. She is a really strong active member.

Lance - PLEASE answer my questions!

1. What do you eat?- I eat a lot of rice, chicken, roti, and just sandwhich bread haha. not a whole lot of variety here but I like it.

2. Do you walk everywhere? -yes we walk every where and when we don't we ride in something called a tapeir (tap ear)

3. What is your house like? our house is really big. it has 2 bathrooms, and 3 bedrooms, a big couch and table so it's really nice.

4. Who is the senior couple who you deal with? Elder and Sister Larsen are the couple that's over us. I like them a lot.

5. Do you ever get close to monkeys? ya monkeys are really sweet here. I've held one or two but a lot are scared of people and scream at you when you try to pet them

6. Do you ever see other wild animals? I don't see a lot. I've seen monkeys, parrots, and alligators. I mostly see dogs cats and cows and goats.

7. Has your camera come yet? nope still waiting on it. also I'm watching out for my sweet ties to come.

This week was awesome, we baptized 4 people. I did them all then confirmed 2 of them. It was a lot of fun. We did it at the beach and the water was really warm and nice. I would have so many good pics to show you all but first I need a camera. President Robison talked with me at zone conference which was 2 weeks ago, I think, and told me that I would be staying in Skeldon til I had been out 6 months. I'm pretty stoked for that. Me and Elder Sorber have been with the traveling assistants a lot and they are sweet. Last week I was with Elder Dayton who is just a stud. I would love serving with him. Anyway, I was showing him this basketball court by our house and these two big black dudes were playin ball. We challeged them and played them just in our missionary clothes. haha beat them bad. and they were pretty good, so it was really sweet.

We are teaching some cool families but no one really sweet. We baptized this lady named Ashmon who is like 24 and has a girl that's already 9 that we also baptized. She only has like 6 teeth and one of them is a gold one. She is really really weird. but she is funny.

Last Wednesday, we were out in the morning running and we came home at 7 and in front of our house there is an old car that just sits in front of our house but no one uses it. Inside we look and there is a little boy from a family we have been teaching that ran away from home a week earlier and had just been living on the streets for the past week. We called his dad and he came and got him. He probably gave him bad lashings. I guess that's a big problem here. Kids will run away for weeks and just live on the streets and thief people to eat.

Guess that's it for the week. I hope everything is good.

I love you all.

Monday, March 23, 2009

Hello Everyone,

This week we had 2 more baptisms. The first was named Steve Solomon and he is a retired guy around the age of 60. I like him a lot. We have been teaching him for a while now and I just like him a whole lot. We are thinking that he is going to be our branch president. Saturday we baptized him in black water (the water has nutrients from the rainforest).

Guess why it’s called that - so my clothes are all dirty now. It was just very spiritual. He bore his testimony on how he came to know this was the true church was by reading the Book of Mormon. It was soo amazing. The second one was a little boy whose mother we are teaching and she reminds me a lot of Aunt Toni. She is just that funny type. She is great. Her son is around the age of 11 or so. Sunday we walked out to the river and baptized him before church. We didn’t have time to do much for him service wise so we just prayed, sang and baptized. It was still very spiritual. i still haven’t gotten my camera yet so I’m hoping that will come any time now. I’m so vexed about that. Hopefully it didn’t get stolen this time too. I’m glad to see that you saw some pictures of me and the elders I’m serving with. Some of my favorite elders are Elder Mundy, Dayton, Duncan, and Temerono. They are all older but they are sweet guys. We play basketball a lot with the locals on P day. Today we are in Georgetown, which is like 3 hours from Skeldon, we are going to the most famous and best resturant in Guyana. It’s like Rodizio Grill. Just lots of meat, so I’m stoked. Its expensive. Speaking of money, they use 1000 dollar bills which is like $5 US. I took a picture of one million dollars in 1000 dollar bills, I’m gonna title it " what do ya think about that?!?" So the grossest thing happened, I found a spider in our house that was bigger then my whole hand. hahaha I made Elder Sorber kill it cuz I wouldn’t. Things are just really good right now, I really am enjoying what I’m doing.

I love you all!!

Hello Everyone!!!

I had 2 more baptisms this week. I have some sick pics of it but no my camera hasn’t come yet. So I’m hoping to get it anytime now. I hope you’re all reading each others letters cuz there are things I tell to one that I don’t say to the other. Hahaha so everyone here has horrible grammar and I’m starting to pick up on it. This morning I was praying before we left and I said to the Lord, "Please bless we that we be protected today." and it wasn’t til later that I noticed it. Horrible horrible. I’m gonna have to go back to school when I’m home. Well things here haven’t really changed a whole bunch. I’m losing tons of weight. I’ve lost around 20 pounds I’m guessing. I’m stoked about it. I know you guys have sent me so much already but would you mind buying me a pair of running shoes and sending them. I don’t have any. Oh in your next letter make sure you write me back and tell me if my other stuff got sent home alright from the MTC. I bought some shoes here but they suck. Hahaha it’s so funny to me, cuz no one has many teeth so since mine are goofed up I feel right at home. It’s funny. Really for the most part things are great here. Every day I love what I’m doing. I’ve already been out for a whole transfer in the field in like a week. And today is my one month anniversary in the West Indies!!!! Hahaha so I heard that my dad just found out how to open my phone. When I call you guys I’m gonna have to talk really slow. Everyone here talks so fast I’ve picked up on it and just slur words together really quickly so its not good haha. I hope everything is well for you all.I love you!!!!

Happy Birthday, Ernie!!

Today's your birthday, Mr. Ernie

It's been 10 years today.

My life has never been the same

Since you came here to stay.

You've gotten in the garbage,

Chewed up cords and clothes,

Snatched food from off the table

Climbed on the couch to doze.

You've caused so many problems

And made many a mess

Why we all love you so

Is anybody's guess.

Happy Birthday, Fattie!!

I've Been Out For 3 Weeks!

yo yo yo what up.... BAPTISM!!! My first was on Saturday! We took this 15 year old girl named Amanda down to the river and baptized her. It was sweet. Her dad is really hard to get along with. He is big into the Bible and we were kinda arguing about religion and honestly I don’t know how I did it but somehow I was just pulling scriptures outta my pocket and throwing them at him and he didn’t know what to say to me after I told him stuff about the Book of Mormon. I felt bad though after making him look kinda stupid just cuz it didn’t accomplish anything. Well, you’re gonna be so proud of me. I know now how you feel about having a clean house. That’s something that me and my comp do all the time is clean so we have a clean room and house. We just found a new apartment so we will be moving out tomorrow. I’m stoked. hahah the devil is playing a huge part in trying to get me to come back. I don’t know if you have heard but blink 182 is back 11 days or something after I get out on the mish. I’m furious. It’s cool though it can wait, even though I honestly called that happening like a year ago. My companion speaks dutch because he went to Suriname and so I’m learning dutch. Shrebe sweetie means sleep good. I love it. The days here some seem long and I just don’t want to do it anymore but before I know it I’m waking up next day ready to start again. Think about this, in 6 days i will have been in the West Indies for a month. crazy crazy. 2 weeks I will be done with my first transfer. Our houses are all stone and we have water filters, it’s a requirement. But I’m going crazy over here because they just listen to Akon and R&B and I hate that junk and I’m starting to enjoy it now cuz i hear it all day. It’s so sweet here I love it. One thing that I thought was awesome was I was bearing testimony the other day about the Book of Mormon and the spirit took over and i didn’t mean to say any of the things I said - it was amazing. I will email you when my camera gets here. Also, will you go and buy me some cool ties, let Scott pick them out cuz he knows what I will like :) hahaha make them colorful and send them to me.

Love you all!
Elder Lundberg

You're Going To Do What?!!!!!

Things are great here, every day is a better day it seems like. today we are going alligator hunting and I'm stoked! I haven't seen one yet but hopefully I will today. Every day my comp and I grow closer. I love that guy a lot. He leaves in June. Right now there are some sweet families we are teaching. There is a family here that is named Truman and it's just a bunch of people that live above a shop here. They are probably my coolest family here so far. they are just really good to us. they always give us free lemonade and order us food and what not. they won't take no for an answer. Then there is this other family, the Solamen's. It's this older guy and his wife. They just give us tons of fruit when we go over there so that's great. I've had mango and passion fruit and a bunch of others but i haven't tried pineapple yet so hopefully i can get that soon. I guess its not in season yet. I haven't had to get any boots yet because we are in the dry season but it still rains every day. We don't do anything with the rent, that's totally handled by the senior couple, if you and mom ever plan on coming on a mission then you should put in a request to come here. they recruit senior couples like none other and i love it, they are like our grand parents. today is only my second P day out here but last week we just wrote home and then we went to the senior couples house and played games and just hung out with all the other missionaries it was a blast. the only thing that sucks about it is its such a far drive. we live in Crabwood Creek (we still haven't found a place to live yet in Skeldon) and we have to drive like 2 hours to get to new Amsterdam cuz that's where the senior couples live. but I hope everything is well. I'm excited for my camera!! I love you all.

Elder Lundberg

In case you're wondering why he is so excited for his camera, the one we sent with him was stolen at the MTC! Can you believe it? That's like getting your shoes stolen at the temple hahaha!

I'm In Guyana, South America!

Wow, I don’t even know where to start. It's so sweet here. I love it so much. I honestly don’t even know where to begin. Missionary life is pretty sweet but it has its hard times. When I first got off the plane it was just like a wave of water hit me. It was bad! But now I love it. It's so awesome. I’ve seen a couple monkeys and that was sweet. My comp is named Elder Sorber. He is a stud. He is from Salt Lake I think. He went to Mountain View High. I love him lots. All the elders here are just sweet dudes. My first area is a place called Skeldon. That’s in Guyana. It’s a brand new area that Elder Sorber and I opened. People are golden there. In one week we found over 50 new investigators. So it's just sick there. I LOVE the lemonade here. It's to die for. I'm going to try and send one home for you to all try. The best thing about them is that they are like 40 cents US. Money here is weird. We have to get our money exchanged for Guyana money and their biggest bill is 1000 dollars, which is 5 dollars US. So it goes 1000, 500, 100, 20. The area that I'm in is very poor. We aren’t allowed to eat at members houses because they don’t have good food preparations. The cars are just crazy. Everyone drives like papa, and the honking here is insane. They honk all the time. But they don’t use it like how it is in America. They honk to let people know where they are on the road and whatnot. We always ride in a thing called a tapear (pronounced tap ear) they are these little van type things that are really small. They are only supposed to have like 5 people in at once but they don’t. I've been in one that has had over 9 people. And its really small. People sit on your lap everything. When we come here in 2 years I don’t think you would like this place. Dogs just roam all the West Indies. I have seen over 500 dogs since I arrived. No one really has dogs as pets they are all just kind of strays. And cows, pigs, donkeys and goats just roam the streets. There isn’t any hot water in Guyana so we have to take cold showers every day. That sucks. I love the food here though. It's so good. I really can't believe how much I have to tell you and won't be able to. It's really dirty here. Lots of garbage all over the place. People live in just little huts here. Instead of knocking you just call “inside.” People here talk horribly fast and use bad grammar. They don’t make the “TH” sound. So for instance when you say let's meet tomorrow at three, they say let's meet tomorrow at tree. They just string all their words together. It was hard the first couple days for me to understand them but now for the most part I can hear them. One thing that’s crazy is the other day we were robbed by a little girl!!!! She came up to me and Elder Sorber and asked if we had change for 1000 and so we split it. I gave her 400 and he did 600. Later that day when we tried paying with that 1000 bill, it was a fake! I was so mad! haha. But oh well. How is everything at home? Good? We have a dog that lives in our backyard who when he was a puppy the elders before us just fed him so he is kinda like our dog. We feed him and stuff like that. But he is even more of a pig then Ernie. All the dogs here are. I saw a dog eat poo the other day! It made me sick. It rains almost everyday here, but only for like 10 minutes but it’s the dry season. Wet season is from May to January. I'm so happy to be here, though at times it's hard. I love you all.

Elder Lundberg

I'll Go Where You Want Me To Go, Dear Lord

And I'm sure glad you want me to go here!!

Lance flew out on Monday morning. We heard from his Mission President's wife today. We are so excited for him!

Dear Family of Elder Lundberg,

We had the pleasure of meeting with your son this week. He arrived safely in Trinidad. We fed him a nice dinner and saw that he had a couple of good nights sleep. We were extremely impressed with Elder Lundberg and his MTC group. He was so helpful with the meal and clean up, and worked very hard when he went out finding and teaching. He asked loads of questions when we first met - and I love that. You raised a fine son!I have attached a few pictures so you can see how he looks as one of the mighty West Indies missionaries. He has a wonderful first assignment. He and Elder Sorber, an amazing leader and missionary, who served his entire mission speaking Dutch in Suriname, are going to open up a new area together in Guyana called Skeldon. The work is going so well in Guyana - this will be exciting! It is one of the more humble areas but also a place where we are seeing the greatest success in missionary work. We want you to know that we love the missionaries here in the West Indies. They are an elect group of men and they have tremendous experiences as they scatter throughout our mission and work in South America and the islands of the Caribbean. Your son will soon have the experience of helping someone learn about and embrace the Gospel and that will change his life. He has great peer leaders as well as couple missionaries to help him progress. We will see him at least every six weeks in a Zone Conference. We know that he will continue to grow towards becoming a great disciple of Jesus Christ. Thank you for your efforts in preparing such a fine son. Only the best come to the West Indies Mission!

Warmest wishes,

President and Sister Robison

Elder Lance Clair Lundberg

This is what is consuming my life right now! Hopefully, new posts will follow soon. : )

Preparations!

Twas The Night Before Christmas

What a wonderful day!! I love spending time with my family more than anything else. Andy came up from Salt Lake on Christmas Eve and we all went to dinner at Chili's. This has started to become a tradition because it seems like we are so busy that I end up not having enough time to make dinner. We ate and laughed and visited for a couple of hours and then headed home.

When we got home, Scott and Leslie surprised Gary and me with a present. They had had a 30" clock made with our name and the year we got married engraved on it! I LOVE IT!!!!!!!!!!!

Leslie had recorded The Nativity Story on her DVR so Scott set up the projector in the living room, we started a fire and we all settled down to watch. We had been watching for about 1/2 hour and it was really starting to get good and all of the sudden the screen went black. We don't know what happened but we didn't get to see the rest of the movie. The boys ended up watching A Christmas Story (Leslie and I can only take that movie in short stretches - it's too stupid!)

After the movie was over we opened our Christmas Eve presents - everyone always gets a new book yahhhhhhhhhhhh! Then we ate chocolate cheesecake and now I'm off to bed. What a fun night!

It's The Most Wonderful Night of the Year. . . except

The Progressive Dinner is our all-time favorite Lundberg tradition!! This is year number twenty and it was wonderful except for: Jay and Linda weren't here, I was sick, and Brent and Tiffany witnessed a horrific car accident on the way up. They were held up in the canyon helping the victims and giving statements to the police for over an hour. When they told us what happened we felt terrible - for them to have to see such a thing, but especially for that poor family and the driver of the other car. Brent said that the mother, father, and twelve year old girl in the back were killed, the two year old was taken to the hospital and the five year old girl was life-flighted to Primary Children's Hospital. We're so greatful that Brent and Tiffany are safe - and our hearts go out to the other families.

On a lighter note, the party itself was great!! Gary and I had appetizers, Brian and Marilyn had main course, and Daryl and Melinda had dessert.

Appetizers

Gary and I had appetizers this year. We served Walking Taco, Ramake, Different Chips & Dips, A Relish Tray and Drinks.