June 16, 2010

Pamela's baptism

Part of the zone

hey fam! how are you guys doing? hopefully you had a good trip to sun
valley and everything. have becca and lonnie moved to reno already? or
are they heading out this week? my week was pretty good. i guess i
will let you know all about it real quick. well this last week was a
little bit rough. we werent able to do everything that we wanted to.
we wanted to find a bunch of new people but the only people we found
were those that dont really progress because they dont want to. so
that wasnt the greatest. we should have had two baptisms this last
sunday but it turned out to be just one. we have been teaching
fernendo. he lives with his aunt and his sister. his aunt has
costudy(i spelt that wrong) of him. his aunt needs to get married
before being baptized but she said signed everything so he could be
baptized. but then he decided to talk to his mom which he usually
never does ha. and she said he cant be baptized. we still havent been
able to go there to talk to her about the baptism. we need to find
time to go there though! but on sunday we had the baptism of pamela at
the branch in Perdões. it is pretty cool in a branch. and the members
are working pretty hard too. they took about 7 investigators to
church. it is nice because we just work with referrells there so
everyone has a friend in the church that helps them to hold strong.
that is great! this is the problem with most wards in brazil. the
members dont ever do there home/visiting teaching. and that is why the
recent converts become less active. but i think that maybe, perdões
will have missionaries next transfer. but i hope the members dont
decide to work less once they have missionaries there! but the baptism
went well. pamela's dad received the priesthood right before the
meeting so he was able to perform the baptism. that was pretty neat.
that was probably the best part of the week. that always is the best
part of the week.
i feel a little bad. i
havent felt so great about myself this transfer but i think things
will get better now. actually, ever since i was called as a zone
leader i feel different. i moved my focus to learning how to help the
missionaries (which i still havent learned haha). but because of this,
i feel like my teaching has gotten worse. i guess i kinda forgot that
i was here to help people to come unto christ. of course i can do that
by helping missionaries have a change of heart, but i feel that when i
am teaching, i am just teaching lessons and not PEOPLE anymore. so i
will have to move that.
Oh ya. so as you guys probably know, the world cup started this last
week. it is pretty different than any sporting event that happens in
the united states. nobody works on game day. everyone is watching the
game. everything is closed and everyone is crazy!! i am in a smaller
city too ha. but during the brazil games, we have to study. there is
no use in working during the game because nobody accepts a message. so
it is nice to be able to study a little bit more but makes it harder
to teach everyone we need to during the day. but i think from now on
we are going to be able to split with the members so we can teach more
people. that will be great!
well, that was pretty much my week. we have been doing quite a bit of
exchanges with the other elders in the zone. i like to do exchanges
but don't like to at the same time. i feel that the missionaries help
me more than i help them. so i like to learn but as a leader i am
supposed to help them too and i dunno if i am doing that very well ha.
but things will get better ha. but anyways, love you guys and thanks
for everything!
love,
elder long
p.s. did you guys get the dvd of pictures yet?!