January 13, 2010

January 13, 2010

Hey everyone! How are you all doing!?? Hopefully you are all feeling better now! How was your week and everything? How did Blake’s talk go? Anything else cool happen? And how’s Bonneville doing? Who is playing? How’s the district? Do you think they will make it to state? Well I guess I will let you guys know about the week. It was pretty amazing! Ha pretty cool! Have I told you all about how we asked for a miracle per day in our "plan with the lord?" well he always fulfills his part and we have problems decided which miracle was the biggest in the day! It is super awesome ha. but we are teaching so much!!! I have never taught so much in my mission! this week(just Monday and Tuesday) we have taught 17 messages! That is so many! The level our president gave everyone or how many lessons we need to teach per week is 25 and we are like almost there! We taught 31 last week. But the best part is that we had 15 investigators at church on Sunday and two baptisms! The bad news is that our ward mission leader is crappy! He doesn’t like anything we do! We baptize a man and he complains, we baptize a member's two kids and he complains. We cant do anything right. And he was complaining cuz he didn’t know that there would be baptisms on Sunday after church. So he was making us hurry and I went to get hymn books for the baptism and he took the picture of the kids (without me) and started the meeting. So I don’t have a picture of two of my baptisms now. And also he gave a crappy message where he talked a little bad about their dad because he wasn’t at church because his horses got loose! Then afterwards he got mad at us cuz we baptized two kids and he was saying this with them there too. The little 9 year old girl was looking a little sad. But other than that the week was amazing and the best week of my mission. we have 5 baptisms ready for this next Sunday. but we might wait because the mother of two of the kids cant be there on Sunday. so maybe we will just hold it off for a week so we can teach a little bit more and so the mom can be there and then we will have like 9 or 10 baptisms next Sunday!!!! I hope nobody has a huge problem with the word of wisdom!! But I think I told you guys about this family already. During an exchange I messed up on a number and ended up at this lady´s house that had been praying for help from god. Well turns out they are perfect investigators and we always have spiritual experiences there. Her sister lives in the house behind and we are teaching them all together. Lilian has two sons (one with age for baptism) and Marcia (the sister) has two kids. So they will be baptized. Marcia unfortunately isn’t married yet so it will be a little longer for her! But there is also another woman that lives in front of Lilian’s house that will be baptized on the 24th and she is really special too. The lessons are always awesome! They liked church tons and the kids are fighting over the Book of Mormon that we left and said they will go to church every Sunday from now on. One even said as he entered the church, "I have already been here before. I know it!" he never has been there his mom said. I guess it just feels like home for him. but we are also teaching a very special guy on the other side of town that will be baptized. he smokes two packs a day though so we will see if he can be baptized this week or next. also there is a family of 4 that is really liking everything about the church. and their baptism is also marked for the 24th. The woman´s parents live next door and their baptism is marked for the same day. So the next couple weeks will be full of baptisms!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Hopefully everyone will continue like they are and no one will have any major problems!! We have tons of other investigators too so we are pretty busy every day. We almost marked lessons during pday cuz we are so busy. But everything is good! I got bad news though. I have to talk in church again on Sunday!!!!!! i dont really like that! I definitely am not comfortable talking in Portuguese by myself for 10 minutes about something other than our lessons. so it is probably a good thing to do! If you are comfortable, you aren’t progressing. So hopefully it helps me out a little bit. I also got a letter from the president this week saying that he has a lot of confidence in me. I was wondering if he even knew who I was haha. But that was nice to hear. He said he is proud of our work too. So this week was pretty great! Well love you all! Talk to you all later!

Love,

Elder Long