Christmas Phone Call

After some phone card difficulty, we were finally able to talk to Thomas on the phone on Christmas at about 9:45am. He sounded very good. It was so fun. We are very proud of Thomas. Hope you all had a very merry Christmas!

December 23, 2009

Well i will tell you all about my week i guess. well in rio claro, we were marking baptisms with everyone!! we marked 12 baptisms last week! most of the are pretty firm and will be baptized i think. but there are a lot of investigators there now! but elder paillo had gotten better because of his calling as district leader but this week he fell back to where he was before and maybe worse. i have been praying for a companion that wanted to work and i definitely got my prayer answered!!! ha we had a mission conference yesterday morning in campinas and on monday at about 10:40, we got a phone call saying i was transfered! So i hurried and packed all my stuff and then the next morning we went to campinas. i left my luggage at the bus station so i didnt have to carry my stuff all the way to the church. well i had a feeling like i shouldnt but everyone told me too. well turns out that was a bad idea. i left it on another missionarys number(like their social security number). well then we went to the conference. it was pretty good. i learned a lot of stuff and felt the spirit pretty strong when president was talking. oh by the way, i can only talk for 40 minutes. but anyways i got called as district leader interviewer. basically, just means that i can interview for baptisms. well i am the companion of the zone leader. his name is elder mendes. he is from curitiba. my new area is called planoalto in jundiai. sweet how i got blessed tons!!! my house is really nice! it is two stories and has a microwave and a real washing machine!! also it has the nicest church in the mission!!! it is so nice! i should send you a pic sometime!!! but ya we rented a bus to take the whole zone back to our area. so i didnt have my luggage. so we stopped at the bus station and the other elder had gotten his and left mine. also he didnt give me the receipt to get mine. so we had to leave them there. then we had to go get them today. it was pretty expensive after going all the way there, paying extra $18 and then returning. but i got some pretty bad news. but first of all!!! i really need to get rid or some of my stuff!!! i dont use most of it haha. but both my bags broke!! one wheel on each of them is missing now!!! freak!! i have plenty of more trips to make with them still too!!! but oh well! everything will work out ha.
but everyone have a good christmas!! i am excited to talk to you all!! i hope that it will work at that time! i will be at the bishops house! also i wanted to thank everyone for the presents and more importantly for the examples!! also the examples of all my friends that are serving too!! jon, jay dee, tyson, james, kyler, eric, zach and everyone else. Thanks!!! well talk to you guys on friday!!

December 17, 2009 (a day late)

Hey everyone!!! so yesterday i went to the temple and wasnt able to use the internet. i got permission to use it really quick today. the temple was really good. really spiritual. i got to sit in the celestial room by myself for a few minutes. it was really cool!! we woke up early to catch the bus and got home after 6, so pday had already ended. so sorry. hopefully you guys werent to busy. but also i am sorry that i still dont know how we will talk on christmas. we will find out on next tuesday. we are going to have a mission wide conference that day. and it should be pretty cool and maybe i will get my other package. i got one from katie and two from you guys this last tuesday. thanks a ton!!! i havent opened the wrapped presents yet. i will save them for christmas. the ties were already pretty much open so i grabbed one to use at the temple yesterday haha. but ya. chad is still in my zone and elder murri is in my district. i stayed here in rio claro with elder paillo. he was called as district leader as well for some reason. he has done a little bit better at following the rules now. now like half the time he gets up on time instead of never hah. but i will tell you really quick about my week! on sunday we had two baptisms!! rafaela and elza. it was kinda sad though cuz rafaela didnt know who her real dad was. she always knew her real dad as her uncle. and she found out at the baptism that her uncle really is her dad and her parents are really her aunt and uncle. her "dad" went to the baptism and one of the family said get a pic with her and her dad. this is her dad you know...we already knnew and so did everyone but her. but she started crying when she found out. but on tuesday we walked an hour and a half to this place we had never been. we taught irmâo paulos friends( he is eujaço and kathleen's dad). we marked 4 baptisms and found 9 nw investigators!!! woohoo! it was really awesome. but then we caught the bus and the driver said he would pass near our house but he really went to the other side of the city so we were outside our area and farther from our house. we had to run home!!! it was a good nights work though!!! well that was pretty much my day!! hopefully you all had a good week. and i hope you all have a good week now!!love you guys!]
love,
elder long

Pictures From Last Week

December 9, 2009

well how is everyone doing this week?! i am sure you are all doing great during this holiday season! i cant believe christmas is basically here already haah. it was april jsut a couple weeks ago!! but everything here is going good. it could be better but at least it is good haah. i guess i will tell you a little bit about my investigators right now!!
well this week we are going to have 2 baptisms for sure!!!! maybe more. we cant teach the other two though. one is never home and i think the other is avoiding us ha. thats always awesome! but we are teaching elza. she will be baptized this sunday. she is probably about mid 50s and she is the most perfect investigator in the world! she went to church two times without being taught. she liked it so much she told us she was going to start going to church there every week. she talks a lot though so it is difficult to teach her. but when we gave the baptismal invite she was like "yes! i want to follow christ. what clothes do i need for the baptism?!!" haha pretty awesoem!! she said she will stop drinking coffee and doesnt have a problem with it. she already knew it was bad for her. but she always starts bearing her testimony. we will bear our testimony at the end and she will always say. i know it is true too! and started saying what she knows that is true. we were pretty lucky!!
also rafaela will be baptized this sunday. she is twelve years old. she is pretty awesome. their family is really awesome!! her dad wants to be baptized really bad but he works at a farmers market on sunday. he cant skip out on it either! but they all stopped drinking coffee the day we taught the word of wisdom! the whole family is reading a chapter a day together and then taking turns praying about it! that is so awesome! there is no way they couldnt gain a testimony this way ha. the mom is so so right now. but she cant go to church either cuz or the farmers market. they are trying to get out of it though. they just need to sell their car and then they will be able to stop. so hopefully it happens like today!!!
we are also teaching lucas and chico. lucas is 13 years old and is always working!!! he is never home!!! so it is hard to teach him. his aunt is a member. and he accepted baptism but we cant teach him cuz he is never home. and chico has a friend that is a member. chico accepted baptism but now he is avoiding us. he doesnt understand why we want to talk to him so much! also i know he has a problem with smoking and with drugs. so i dont think he would be baptized this sunday anyways. but we need to find more people to teach so we can start next transfer off good!!
last night we had a meeting with the stake president and all the missionaries in my district. this saturday is the christmas devotional. the catholic church put this devotional as one of the christmas highlights of the city. so the mayor and everyone will be here. also, there will be tons of investigators!!! tons!!! and we are going to give everyone that is interested, a dvd. they just have to write their name and address and the missionaries will deliver the dvd!!! it is going to help so much!!! i am pretty excited!! also it was pretty good to see some other missionaries again. it is hard not to talk about IF when tyson is there but it was really fun last night haha. so this last pday we played basketball agian. my team won but elder paillo has been telling everyone that i am terrible at basketball and he needs to teach me. haha i am like ok whatever. ha its not that much fun playing with people like that. so we will see if we play today. on saturday, i had the english class. not a single soul showed up!! not one haha. so i think we are going to stop offering it now haha. we had a meeting with the bishop also. he told us somethin pretty cool. so you know the scripture about faith can move mountains. well there is also faith without works is dead. he said that he thinks that the scripture about faith can move mountains means that if we have faith that we can move a mountain, we will go to the top and start chipping away!! it is pretty smart. i think we could still just throw the entire mountain into the sea but if we have faith we need to just go and do it. not wait around!! pretty deepp huh!? afterwards, one of elder paillos baptisms had a birthday. they had a fooseball table there!! i played a quick game!!! it was pretty fun. i pulled out a victory against elder paillo and another guy with one hand haha. pretty fun to play agian. you guys should send ours down haah.
well that was pretty much my week!! i got a letter from jay dee yesterday. he sounds like he is doing pretty good! also i was wondering how bonneville did in their games. and if byu has a bowl game or not. this week is the last week of the transfer!!!! woohoo!! so i will let you know of any changes next week!
Tell tyler and grandma long happy birthday for me!!! love you all!!
tchau!
Elder Long

Baptismo!!

December 2, 2009

hey everyone how is it going?! everything is good here!! hopefully thanksgiving was good and your holiday season is going great! haha the missionaries in my mission are probably the only americans in the world that have fasted on thanksgiving haha. not exactly the same thanksgiving but a good fast is always a good thing ha. how was the family? did you have it at grandma long's house? i think thats what you guys said. well i guess i will tell you all about my week this last week.
well our mission was crazy for baptisms this week. we all wanted to break the record of 100 baptisms in a week! thats why we had fasted on thanksgiving! but it was a pretty good week. we didnt quite baptize 100 though. it was like 83 or something like that. but everyone worked pretty hard this week. elder paillo was called as district leader interviewer (that is how you translate it. i dont know if thats the name in english). on friday we had a division with the zone leaders. i went with elder coello. he is a 6'8" 25 year old brazillian. he is huge! but we taught a bunch of lessons in their area. we marked a baptism and she was baptized last sunday! it was also nice having a companion that will study in the mornings and wake up on time and arrive at home at the right time! on saturday we finished the division and then i went to do the english class at the church. as you guys know, we were teaching a family of 5. the dad is ready, knows everything about the church,wants to be baptized, but doesnt want to right now. so the assistants to the president came here to do their baptismal interviews/lesson of faith. a lesson of faith here is a lesson where we try to resolve their problems so they can progress. well josé doesnt have any problems. i think we will stop teaching them though. but anywyas i got left at the church teachng the class. well not really teaching cuz nobody showed up!!! at like 4 (an hour late) people showed up. i had to stay there though cuz i couldnt go anywhere alone! well on sunday we had the baptism. his name is eujaço. ya that is a strange name here as well. but i got to preform the baptism! that was pretty awesome!!! it is hard not to get a big smile on my face as i walk into the water!!!!! he didnt show much emotion, but his dad was so happy!! he pretty much loves us!!! that was pretty awesome! unfortunately, our baptisms next sunday didnt go to church so the baptism fell through until next week. ha she was locked in her house. and the other got called into work! but they are progressing well. we taught rafaela and her family yesterday. we watched the movie of the restoration. her dad would definately be baptized if he didnt have to work sunday mornings. he works at like a farmers market. so if it rains hard they dont go. so its been raining everyday here so i am kinda praying for rain the next few sunday mornings haha. but he already has a testimony of the restoration and is already telling the family that they have to read the book of mormon as a family at night! pretty cool! we also taught a member's friend! he accepted baptism on the 13th. i think he has a problem with drugs though. or at least cigarettes. so we will work on that! but this week was alright. we didnt have very good numbers cuz we couldnt work friday, saturday, or sunday becuase of baptismal interviews. oh ya, elder paillo went to do an interview during church. so i stayed in our ward alone. the pianos here have the music programmed on but it is in english. so they had me find the right songs. the piano didnt work though. but everyone thinks i can play the piano now!! haha they are like thats to bad that we didnt get to hear you play in sacrament. haha. i just say ya to bad haha. but this week hasnt been so great. we have only taught three lessons the last two days. elder paillo is pretty trunky. on monday he finally got dressed for the day at like 1 30 after our weekly planning and lunch. that makes things more difficult. it also doesnt help me to not think about home. but i am doing alright. i think it is a good thing i am not in a place where theer is snow during christmas. it doesn't even seem like christmas is close. it feels like it is still july. haha pretty cool. but everythings good here. love you all! hope you all have a great week!

November 25, 2009

hey everyone! how is everything going?! everything is awesome here! i still just have the same problem! it is just hard to have a comp that doesnt like to obey the rules. we were pretty late getting home last p-day. but this week was pretty good! we had 3 BAPTISMS! we baptized daiane, cristina, and kathleen! they all have family in the ward! i was pretty worried though cuz daiane and cristina showed up like 30 minutes late! we were pretty stressed! luckily everything went good though! we have 6 other people to be baptized this next week. i dont know about the family of 5. they are all waiting for the dad to be baptized. and he is the worst eternal investigator in history!!! i would have left them like 3 weeks ago but elder paillo wants to try and force it on them i guess haha. we should have had one more baptism this week but he was sick and the doctor said he cant leave his house for 15 days. so this week i think will be about 15 days. we will see haha. last week we had a family night with sergio and sonia. they are members and they love the missionaries!!! they treat us like children! it is the coolest thing! they are so nice! she reminds me a lot of barbara sanchez! its pretty cool! it is the rainy season now! it rains just about every day now! that wouldnt bother me to much but one of my shoes has a hole in it now. so it lets the water in. so i had just one pair of shoes. but dont worry i bought some duct tape and the others are good now too haha. i dont think they will make it til two years though haha. i will have to buy some in the future. for now i am good though. well i feel my portuguese is getting better. daiane and cristina have a little 7 year old brother that always tries to teach me. ha my accent is still like an american tho. but i dont like that elder paillo always tells people how stupid i am cuz i dont know portuguese. he always says "you can pray, elder long doesnt know anything. he doesnt even understand what you are saying. so dont be embarrassed." pretty awesome huh?! haha and also, he really does only want to baptize snakes. yesterday we visited a family and the dad said if he received an answer from god that he needs to be baptized, he would be. ha elder paillo just stopped talking to him and started trying to mark a baptismal date with his daughter. pretty ridiculous. ha but oh well. i will try to not let it bother me and keep learning.

so jay dee said in his letter that they mark baptisms two weeks in advanced there. ha we mark ours 2 weeks and sometimes only one. haha. that is crazy but is probbaly a good thing. it was nice to hear how everyone is doing (tyson, jon, james, and jay dee). it is cool to see what they are doing in their missions! they sound pretty happy! well i guess i will talk to everyone later. love you all!!! thanks!!! have a good thanksgiving!!!
love, Elder Long

November 18, 2009 letter

November 18, 2009

Well, everything is good here in Rio Claro. I will tell you about my jam-packed week. I had just finished this letter up and then I lost it. So I will type it up real quick now. Ha-ha awesome! So last pday after email and going to the center of town. I played basketball. It started to rain so we just shot around in the rain. No one showed up and as we were leaving a brother in the ward showed up so we played around the world. I barely squeeked out a win ha. Then it stopped raining and a kid from the ward that has never played basketball showed up so we played 2 on 2. I was on his team. We won too. He stood on the 3 line and just watched. The times when he had the ball he threw it away. But it was good to play. Felt good, but I was pretty tired afterwards. This Sunday that kid asked me to sign his shoes. Ha but I haven’t yet. We also played ping pong. That was fun. On Thursday we had a multi zone conference. It was really good and president talked a lot about personal revelation. He said that he had been praying that some missionaries receive dreams as revelations. I had three! I haven’t dreamed at all in my mission and I had three that I feel were revelatory. On Sunday I gave a talk on the atonement and talked for 10 minutes. I felt I did all right. I found out, though, that I need to work on my accent a lot! Ha I will start working on that. on Monday we had family night with Irmão Sergio and his family. It was pretty good. Their family is awesome. The message given was about having joy in the journey. Pretty good. Yesterday was our zone meeting and I was pretty excited to talk to someone from Idaho. Did I tell you that Elder Murri is in my zone? he is a lot like Eric, too ha. But maybe that sounded a little trunky, ha. But I wasn’t expecting it, but another Idahoan showed up at our zone meeting. He is from Iona, too! Chad was involved in an emergency transfer and now he is in my zone. So I will see him quite a bit.

Well, I will hurry and tell you about who we are teaching! Well, we are teaching a man named José Dias and his wife and 3 daughters. They have been investigating for quite a while. Yesterday we went there with a pretty good lesson to teach to mark their baptisms for next week. The mom wasn’t there so we decided to wait. We left a message with them and it was just a scripture, but it was really good. And they started asking questions and stuff. He said he only had one doubt and we solved that so we will see how the lesson goes today. We are teaching a man named Gleides. He is a little strange and is worried that his church will kill him for being baptized. His baptism will be the 28th. We are teaching Diani and Cristina. They both want to be baptized this Sunday. We just need to talk to their dad to make sure they can. We are teaching two children of a member that will be baptized this Sunday as well. Other then that we have Luciano and Janice. They are just waiting for papers so they can get married. Janice works Sundays so doesn’t get to go to church. She has been having doubts lately. Elder Paillo left a message and I wasn’t paying attention haha. he looked at me to bare testimony and I didn’t even know what he had talked about. I just told her that tribulations always show that there will be blessings right afterwards. I was just talking and don’t remember what I said. But she said that’s exactly what she needed. Pretty awesome!

Well, Jay Dee sounds pretty busy as the secretary. I couldn’t handle that. Especially in a different language. Mom, maybe you could talk to the parents of my other friends like Jon and Tyson so I can get their emails too. And dad, the zip code that you usually use is old so 13010-215 would be better and faster. And I was wondering if maybe someone could send me grandpa’s life history. And some maple contract in the next package. Thanks Tons! Love you all!!

Love,

Elder Long

November 11, 2009

well i better tell you all about my week this week. i am trying to hurry cuz i don't have much time and i am playing basketball at 3. well i will quickly tell you about my companion elder paillo. he is from the south. rio grande do sul. it is cold there and even has snow. so he is dying in this 95 degrees with humidity weather as well. he was in the military before the mission. he is pretty cool. he is pretty tall and i guess he used to play basketball for the military team. so should be fun to play today. well the first four or five days here in rio claro weren't that great. i could have sworn this city only had crazy people. i only talked to crazy people or drunks the first two or three days. pretty interesting. but now we are starting to find normal people. we had stake conference this last sunday and we had 11 people there so that was a lot different than in itatiba. that's pretty awesome! there is one 18 year old in our ward and we taught his family. his two sisters really wanna get baptized but the mom is more or less. but we should have at least two baptisms this next saturday. we are also teaching jose dias and his wife and 3 daughters. we were teaching and didn't say anything about baptism but he said he wants to get baptized but isn't sure which church yet. so that's cool. we will see how it goes. also there is a couple that has been waiting for papers for marriage for about 2 months now and will be married during this transfer! there is another man in our ward that is the only member from his family. he has 4 little kids and we know two of them want to be baptized and probably the other two. we just need to find time to teach them. oh and we are teaching another couple named cassio and lucinea. they live and work in a bar. so that could be a problem. but they are getting married so they can be baptized. we will see how they handle some of the commandments. but he is going to play bball today. well that was pretty much my week. it was pretty good and pretty quick. it has been super hot here this week. pretty crappy. luckily it has been raining quite a bit. its cool that it only starts raining at 9:30 when we get home. then we can sleep during the night without dying of the heat! oh and the teenagers here love us. i don't know why. but they would do like anything we asked them. that is pretty good. they are pretty funny too. so it is a pretty sweet area here. except we don't have a bank or a post office in our area. so i will probably only send missionties letters in this area. i cant find a nativity either mom. so i don't know what to send ha. and we don't have anywhere in our area that has cool stuff. only the center of town has that stuff. so we will see. well that was my week haha love ya.
love,
elder long

NOVEMBER 4, 2009

THOMAS AND CHADthis is a pic of me and elder castleton with my paper for qualification

Well i dont have much time to talk today! i was transfered and so now we pay for internet and i only have 1 hour. so i will hurry and type quick. well this week has been pretty good. elder lima and i taught a lot of people again. we almost had a baptism but we decided he should probably visit church one more time. his name is luiz fernendo and we taught everythin to him in one lesson so he could be baptized the next sunday. well we went to church and he didnt really wanna go cuz his family didnt want to. so we decided to wait. we had more people at church this week. leandro brought his friend, eric, again. and he will be baptized on the 14th. we found a lot of new people again this week. and on monday we marked 4 baptisms. that means they are scheduled for two or three weeks in advance. so this week was good. o nthursday elder jensen from the presidency of the 70 was here. he speaks spanish and is learning portuguese. he tried really hard and never got frustrated or gave up. he had a translator too though. i saw chad there but didmt talk to him. just like 30 seconds before the meeting started. then i qualified afterwards. a zone leader has a division with you for a day to see if you qualify. so we had to run to the bus to catch it like always when we have a meeting in campinas. so i couldnt talk to chad. i qualified though with elder castleton. but i am not a senior this transfer. i was transfered to a city called rio claro. my new companion is elder paillo. another brazillian and he has only been here for about 4 months. so that kinda makes it a lil bit of a bummer that i am not senior but whatever. i still dont understand the people so i would have a hard time. i have no idea when i will finally become fluent. thnk i will go crazy if it doesnt happen in this transfer! but anyways, this ward is pretty awesome. we do a lot of activities with the teenagers. and we will play basketball every pday besides today. we have to clean our house this pday!! ya! this week is stake conference and president will be here so he might stop at our house ha. but our house is alright. it is a lil worse than my last one. the shower leaks a lot! thats not good. also we dont have gas for the oven. it is a little long from the church too. oh haha and you cant flush toilet paper down the toilet!!! so which do you guys think is worse now?? using water and your hand like colby or leaving used toilet paper in a plastic bag next to the toilet?? haha. but anyways ha that was pretty much my week. oh last wednesday, i saw a rat!!! the biggest rat i have ever seen!! i thought it was a dog!! it was bigger than any cat i have ever seen! and yes i meant to write cat! with its tail it was over 2 and a half feet long!!! but that was my cool story for the day. haah love you guys hope you have a good week!love,elder long

October 28, 2009

Well hey everyone! how are you all doing? everything is pretty good here. well i guess i will tell you a little bit about this week!
well this last week was pretty good. we marked 8 baptisms! if everyone went to church here, this area would have like 5 baptisms per week! everyone is really excited about getting baptized and everything but then when sunday comes around, they dont go to church. we even go to peoples houses in the mornings to get them, but no one is home ha. it is pretty frustrating! but we found a ton of new people to teach. we had 20 new investigators again this week. thats 3 weeks in a row with 20 new investigators and a bunch of baptisms marked every week. we have a bunch of key indicators in the mission to rate our success. for example: new investigators, lessons with members present, investigators at church, and baptisms, and some other things. but anyways, our numbers are all like the best in the mission or at least pretty far up there. but we aren’t having results like others. i guess it would be an awesome thing for me to learn right now at the beginning of my mission. i need to learn how to get people to go to church ha.
but this last week we went to atibaia so elder lima could do a baptismal interview there. it was a long way from the bus station and the last bus was at 6. so elder lima and the senior companion there went to go do the interview and i stayed near the bus station making contacts with the american that just got here. we stayed there in case the others didn’t make it back in time so we could catch the bus and go to itatiba. well turns out they didn’t finish in time so me (with my 6 months) and elder sorenson (with his 3 months) went to itatiba. we only taught one lesson and we just watched the film the restoration. but i had to do everything and taught the whole lesson. it was probably a pretty good learning experience. i think i helped elder sorenson a little with some things i questioned at that time in my mission. we also had a division with marcos and pedro. some members in the ward (ward mission leader and pedro is the one i baptized a couple transfers ago). i went with marcos but he was sick and couldn’t really talk so i taught the whole lesson too. it is kinda cool to talk more often and i should probably start doing that when elder lima is with me too. but tomorrow i will have another division with elder nunes, the zone leader and ex-assistant. this is the division to see if i will qualify as a senior. so i will let you know how it goes. also tomorrow we have a mission conference with a 70! i am kinda excited and i believe it is with the entire mission so i will be able to talk to chad! i will let you know about that as well.
well thats what is going on here. let me know what you are all up to. oh and since you just got a new mustang, you guys should look up the only car that is made in brazil! it is called Gurgel! it is awesome hahahahaha. but yup i will talk to you guys later! well love you! Tchau!
love,
elder long

October 21, 2009

this last week was really good. we had 20 new investigators with 6 baptisms marked! unfortunately they all fell through because nobody went to church this sunday!!! i think we may have figured things out though! we are going to have a member with a car that will go with us to pick up the investigators in the morn! i cant believe it is already pday again! this week went by way fast. also the transfer is just about over too. one and a half weeks is all. i thought i just barely got elder lima as a companion haha. but things are going really well! i am teaching pretty well now. i need to work on all the lessons a lot still but it is coming! i am at about 6 months now and unfortunately i am not fluent! ha hopefully not to far off though!!! we haven’t really gotten too far into teaching anyone this week but we are teaching tons of people. hopefully that means we will just slowly move through the lessons with everyone! haha then baptize everyone the same day! to bad we are almost at the end of the transfer cuz maybe ill get moved before everyone is baptized. we will see how everything goes! we are teaching a mom and daughter and they are pretty awesome. we taught the word of wisdom and they don’t have a problem with that. also we taught paulo and his wife. they arent married so we invited them to get married first and they accepted. the wife said she felt the spirit so strong while we were there and when she read and prayed, so she left the book of Mormon open on the headboard of the bed to try to keep the peace there. pretty awesome!! the temple was a pretty good experience. i pretty much understood everything. unfortunately i didn’t receive a really big revelation about the investigators or myself ha. maybe next time! but everything is good here. sweet how you bought a new mustang. i am excited to see it. and i sure hope it is there in a year and a half. oh and i guess now that olivia took over the taurus that just leaves me with the mustang haha dang! ha well have a good week everyone. sorry i didn’t have more time to tell you about everything in more detail. i will do better next week. love you!!!

October 14, 2000

well i will hurry and tell you about my week. we are teaching a lot of people and i think i will just tell you all about them. first of all on last p day we visited maria gloria. she is 81 years old and in her death bed. she is really sick and we gave her a blessing. i did the annointing. we taught a man named davi and he lives in the back of a tattoo parlor. it was pretty interesting to have missionaries knocking at a tattoo parlor. we marked a baptism with him. also we messed up on an address and ended up teaching elza and marking a baptism with her. also we marked baptisms with luiza and aline. and also with roberto and sara. we taught some pretty good lessons this week and have a lot of new investigators. i went on a division with elder swenson my district leader. everyone says how awesome he is but he taught the one lesson terribly that we were on. he taught everything he knew. started talking about mary and the ressurrection during the message of the restoration. i guess i still learned alot from the division. also we had a district meeting yesterday and i learned a lot about pride. we didnt even talk about pride though. there is an elder that things he is all that. and during one of the practices i was the investigator and he said to his native companion, maybe you should teach cuz i talk really fast nd he probably wont understand. that made me pretty mad. ha he talks slower than any other american missionary that i have talked to. but i will try to be more humble. well have a ood week. love you guys.

love,
elder long

October 7, 2009

well this week was pretty good. i was really excited for conference! we had a lot of people that we have been teaching and we were thinking about moving a baptism up to in between the two sessions of conference instead of waiting until saturday. we also found a married couple that is pretty awesome and then a mom and two 25ish year old sons. they were really awesome. well conference was at 1 and 5 here. so we hurried and ate lunch andust in time to head to conference. the zone leaders called and said we could only go to the ones on sunday. i think cuz we didnt have investigators there. so i was a little bummed about that ha. then on sunday morning there was a rebroadcast of the priesthood meeting we thought but turns out it was the second session of saturday. it was good but i like conference a lot better in english. in between sessions they kept playing elder hollands talk about christ from last conference. it is called none were with him. it was in english too by the way. but they put it to music and video too. you should try to find it. it was awesome. i remembered that talk. it was awesome!you guys should try to find the video! but i couldnt understand much about conference. elder holland had a cool book of mormon that had a page folded by hyrum i think. thats about all i got out of the last session ha. i also understood about elder andersens son going to that new area that he prayed would open. oh and some more bad news. the baptism we were thinking about moving up to this sunday, well he moved to vinhedo...he was awesome he read to alma in like 5 days or less. i hope that the missionaries there can find him and baptize him. so now we probably wont have any baptisms this week but i am pretty sure we will have 3 next week and maybe 4 or maybe even 5 haha. we will see. i pray that we will!well that was pretty much my week. pretty alright i guess.
well i hope you all have a good week this week! love you!
love,
elder long

September 30, 2009

well this week has been pretty awesome!! Elder Lima is awesome! he is more like me than any of my other comps by a long ways! its is pretty good and he is one of the only brazillians i have met that are sarcastic haha. and as you know our family is pretty sarcastic ha. we get along pretty well. so thats pretty good! we are also teaching so things are a lot better with just this. we have already taught half the lessons elder garcia and i taught all last transfer ha. that rocks!! but ya we are teaching more people now but none of them are really progressing really fast except for adenilson. we taught him the word of wisdom on saturday i think maybe it was tuesday. he doesnt have any problem with that. and he really liked church on sunday and is going to watch conference this week! pretty awesome1 so he will be baptized on the 10th if things go well. thats awesome! i hope things are good with him still. we had a multi-zone conference this week. i didnt see chad though. i got my package! thanks a lot! i liked it a lot! so it adds up to 100 things!? what will you guys do when i reach day 600 or something ha. that will be a huge package haha. just kidding. but ya at this conference we heard about the importance of the book of mormon and the importance of getting references. so president told a story about a missionary in chile that started a program there. in this program they entered into houses and kneeled down and blessed the house and then they knew who was ready for the gospel by who felt the spirit. haha sound familiar to anyone?!! pretty cool that i am in south america and people are talking about my dad haha. and dads always complaining about how he is always introduced as the dad or the brother of someone. haha people in brazil know stuff about him and he hasnt ever even been here. well that was about all this week. thanks for the packages. nobody is getting letters in brazil. i dunno all of whats going on but i am sure you guys are still sending them! thanks for the support! mom i was thinking that maybe you could send me a couple of shirts. a jazz shirt like for elder lima and either another jazz shirt or a byui shirt for elder garcia. they are having stuff sent here for me too i guess ha. but i would appreciate that a lot. probably like a large for elder lima and medium for elder garcia. thanks! oh and another missionary that i really like, he is awesome, wants peanut butter and i said that i would ask for some haha. thanks alot! love you!!
Love,
Elder Long

September 23, 2009

well i will quickly tell you about my week. we didnt teach to many lessons this last week! it was a pretty long week. we saw marcos and he said that he didnt know if he wanted visits anymore but i think he will still visit church and still progress. he is just a little confused. we had a couple people lie to us haha. it was pretty crappy and i am ready to have some success haha. we are teaching an awesome family! they are really cool and said they are looking for a religion that will bloess their family haha. that is our church!!! so that was good. they said they will go to church this week but i just remembered that this week is conference right? and i dont know what time the sessions are so they might not be able to! i am really excited for conference though! so this week was transfers so i will tell you about the meeting and what happened....oh wait i cant tell you about the meeting cuz i wasnt there!!!! we missed the bus. we finally got there about 2!!! well there were other missionaries there. the new ones, chads group. my comps name is elder lima and we are in itatiba still. he has a really different accent. that might be tough. he doesnt speak any english either haha. what a blessing! haah he arrived in the ctm the day after i did. ha crazy huh?! but ya we had a bus at 4 so i just ate and sat in on the meeting for the new trainers. that was pretty good. i wasnt able to talk to chad because he was in a meeting and then when he finished president started talking. i dont know what area he is in or who his comp is because i missed the meeting. so once president finished talking i had to run for the bus. which of course we missed!! we had to wait until 615 haha. it was pretty crappy missing the bus like 4 times!! but i feel bad that i didnt talk to chad. maybe you could tell debbie to tell him i am sorry and good luck! well i dunno how much i will like this comp compared to my others. he is pretty cool i guess. i dunno if i like how he works. we havent gone out proselyting really though so i dunno really. he loves to talk tho and doesnt stop much haha. that is good becuase i will probably talk more since he is always talking to me! his main goal is like to get me qualified so thats pretty cool. you guys i am sure want a better description of him but i dont know how really haha. maybe after i know him better. i got my letters this week. there was like 7 from dad ha. i didnt know about the mail strike until you guys told me. i wonder if kate and my friends have gotten my letters ha. i guess i will have time to write some of my friends this week. thanks for all the addresses and letters. i didnt get my package becuase for some reason the zone leaders have them. so i will get it next tuesday or at conference. oh so as i was walking here there was a flash flood. it was not raining and then all the sudden it was pouring!!! the wind was blowing really hard and the rain was movin more sideways than downwards. my umbrella broke and i had to run here. ha i am pretty cold now ha. well let me know about your week. thats is terrible that byu lost and that hillcrest is good again... pretty dissapointing! is byu ranked still? well let me know about everything! love you!
Love,
Elder Long

September 16, 2009

Missy thought you guys might like to see this pic of Thomas with Karlee Hill in the CTM.


He said he was being Joseph Smith (sorry, too lazy to rotate the pic--I'll try to change it later).

Love this dorky pic of Tom. I think it's the "I just crapped my pants" face. You can sure tell he's super sad that he doesn't have to wear his hair in a part anymore.

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Hey how is everyone doing this week? hopefully well! so this week was more successful! we taught a lot more lessons this week and found a lot more people to teach. i will tell you about the people we are teaching right now. first of all there is Nilton, aline, and cristine. it is always hard to teach them because nilton is drunk 24/7. he is the uncle of the other two. he never makes sense when he is talking haha. the two girls are really good though. they need to go to church though. we taught a guy named zepadrosa this week too. he talked for about 40 minutes by himself! and then we left a message in about 10. it was pretty long! he was just rambling on. we taught this other guy and his wife. he is the son of a pastor and is helping to orgnize a church here haha. we invited him to pray but he decided that it is better to find answers from the scriptures so he went to the bible. his bible is made for bible bashin with mormons haha. it has footnotes for references in the BOM that dont agree with the bible. except everything he said was wrong or had a reason that makes perfect sense. the church doesnt even have a bible with footnotes in portuguese yet. ha he also asked us to read scriptures in the doctrine and covenants that his bible said were wrong. we didnt argue or anything and just let him talk. we are going to go back there sometime and answer all the questions haha. we also taught a guy named marcos. it is so hard to teach him. we will say one sentence and he will go off for two minutes. then we will say one sentence and he will go again. it is frustrating! i dont have patience for that haha. so we are teaching except the people we are teaching dont make it easy haha. well that was my week ha.

well thats all i got this week so i guess i will talk to you all later. i havent got my package yet. i will either get it this week at transfers or our next meeting with the president. oh this week is transfers so next week i will let you know if i moved. we have transfers every 6 weeks. and that just reminded me of the questions that mom asked in her email.

that food was pastels not pizza ha. and i made them haha. i rock! maybe i will just buy a basketball. probably not today cuz maybe i will be moving anyways.

and as for treats...i like fastbreaks and mini reeses and snickers. and huckleberry cordials and lots of other stuff haha. well love you all. have a good week!
Love,
Elder Long

September 9, 2009

the baptism of pedro nita and maria luiza

Click HERE to see more pics of Thomas

well i wanna write this letter really quick today so i will try to tell you all the important stuff this week ha. there isnt that much ha. this week went by really fast i cant believe it is already quarta(wed)! i dont even know why time went by so fast this week because it was a pretty crappy week haha. ok so i had the least amount of lessons taught in one week this last week. it was terrible. all we did was walk around all day and nobody was even home!! i was about to go crazy! and not to mention that it was raining the whole time. ha that didnt really bother me. except that i didnt want my ties getting ruined. the silk ones get all messed up in the rain. so that was unfortunate. anyways if you could maybe for christmas or something you could send some polyester ties because it rains alot during the summer here. at church this last sunday we had a lesson on home teaching and so i was just wondering how home teaching is coming dad? are you able to find things to talk about without me there? probably not. oh and who plans the lessons now? haha but how is that going? do you have a new companion? i went on another division on monday. the thing is though i got to vinhedo and elder castleton left me. he didnt tell me anything except that there was kid from the ward that i was going with. so i was pretty much alone. it was pretty hard teaching haha. i taught the ten commandments and probably didnt explain it very well. then she asked about baptisms for the dead and i had to try and explain that too haha. it was pretty difficult. i think she understood though haha. but that was pretty much my week this week.

but i got some big news haha. so i weighed myself about 6 weeks ago and then i weighed myself this last week....I HAVE GAINED 30 POUNDS IN THE MISSION!! haha and i am still really skinny. my goal is another 30 or so haah. isnt that awesome!? mom you will have to send this letter to my friends like jay dee and jon. i know they wont believe it haha. but that was pretty much my week haha. not very exciting.

love you guys. the church is true! but it is a lie that olivia did that good on her driving test! and BYU is #9
Love,
Elder Long

September 2, 2009

ok well i will quickly tell you about my week this week. it is pretty lame again! well for you guys. i thought it was pretty crazy. well first of all we had a division with elder swenson and elder lins. elder lins came here with me. he was my roommate in the ctm and is a brazillian obviously. we went and ate at this older ladys house. she lives forever away. she thinks that she has to feed us so much. she is a little crazy too haah with the food i mean. she makes tons. then she serves us! she will give me more food before i finish my first plate. i ate 4 plates!! next time i wont sit in the chair next to her haha.

on saturday we had an activity at the church. we were on the other side of the city in a place called pedro costa and the church is downtown. the ward missionaries called us and asked where we were. they decided to wait for us cuz there were only 15 people there. we RAN there!!!! it was like 5 miles and this city is only hills. it doesnt have a straight road in it. i was pretty sweaty when i got there. i thought i was playing basketball. it was crazy!! then we played a game there where someone says a name then the next person has to say the names previous and adds on a new name and then so on and so on. that is pretty difficult with portuguese names!! i got like 5th tho surprisingly! i got a few people out with american names. haha.

we had a family night on monday with irmã terezinha. it was pretty fun. we just had a quick message and then ate pizza. she made like 3 pizzas and they were pretty good for a brazillian pizza. not papa murphys tho haha.

so we got a new assistant to the president. which is crazy! the assistant thats been assistant for 11 months was moved to zone leader in our zone! crazy! Elder hillam was an assistant but is a zone leader now too. that was 2 months ago though. he and our now new assistant had 21 baptisms in the month of august! that is so much!! but our zone leader, elder nunes, will help our zone a lot i think!! i really hope so! i really miss have people to teach! it has been a while!

oh i passed off a whole bunch on my qualification to be a senior comp. i am not very close though. i probably wont make it. oh well. i think i learned more about the language this week than any other week. which is awesome!! it is coming way quick now!! i have started reading pregar meu evangelho(preach my gospel) from start to finish. i like it alot because i can understand it more than the scriptures. and i learn a ton! i should finish in the next 2 weeks or so.

well thats about it for my week! hows everything going there?? Happy Birthday Devan this week. hope you have a good one. see ya later
Love,
elder long

August 26, 2009

hey everyone! this week was pretty good and quite a few things happened this week. on thursday, elder stanley g ellis came to campinas and we had a meeting with him. it was really good. he talked about receiving revelation and faith. i liked it a lot. we taught quite a few lessons this week but still not at out goal of 25 per week. we need to do better with that! one family we taught is a family of all girls. a mom and 3 daughters. they were so amazed that i was an american. they asked me about 100 questions probably and i understood almost all of them surprisingly. one question she asked was pretty funny, "lá, tem intranet?" haha or there is internet there? haha who doesnt know that the US has internet. it was pretty funny. but ya that was pretty much my week. oh marcos and sandra liked church a lot. exceot how unreverant everyone was. which is true, it is terrible!

this week i found out that there is a bunch of stuff to do in itatiba. they have a really big zoo and i am sure that is awesome. and there is a planeteriam and a park with tenis and basketball and volleyball and a bunch of other stuff to do and i think it is like 1 real or 55 cents in american money ha. so pretty awesome.

dad and others have asked about workouts in the mornings. it is only 30 minutes but i just stretch pretty good first of all, do some push ups and then we have dumbells and i will do quite a bit with that. we can run around our block as well but i never have. dad asked about soccer too, it is against the rules to play soccer in our mission unfourtanately. we can play basketball and every other sport though. i might play one of these p days with some members.

i think winter has finally hit. it got all the way down to 60 earlier this week!!! can you believe that! a winter that is so cold it is almost in the 50s! but everyone complains about the cold and i just tell them they should experience neve(snow).

you guys have asked about the language a lot. it is coming. i dunno how fast it is coming. at the meeting with elder ellis i could finally understand almost everything. it is hard for me to speak and i am finding that there are a lot of words that i dont know. i am learning quicker now than before tho thats for sure! i feel like i cant quite teach people from my heart though because i dont know the language so it is somewhat memorized. i dont really like that. hopefully i can learn it quickly. i like it a lot better when i know what is going on

well that is about it. i hope you all have an awesome week and awesome birthdays missy and johnny! and i will talk to you guys next week. love ya!
Love,
Elder Long