July 14, 2010

hey guys how are you all doing? well my week was quite a bit different

today. not like the normal week in the mission. sounds like you are
all doing good and sounds like olivia had a good 16th bday! and i
guess everyone is pretty sad to have missy moving away too. but i
guess i will tell you about my week real quick. i am at a bus station
right now waiting for my bus that will be leaving at 12. so i gotta
write you guys and to president.
well on friday night, we had an exchange. i went with elder leary in
my area and elder ribeiro went with elder cavalcante in imperial.
little did i know, elder ribeiro had a plan. he called the assistants
while we were in exchange and he asked for a transfer. he told them
that he feels that he is holding me back and that i can progress a lot
faster without him here. i was kinda upset when he told me this
afterwards. i should have been the first person he told. that is what
inventory is for each week! but anyways, the assistants thought that
this wasnt a good of enough reason to have an emergency transfer, so
they told elder ribeiro to go to Louveira(another area in our zone).
elder ribeiro stayed there for 4-5 days and we just finished up the
exchange just now. i was with elder manwaring the whole week and i was
the only zone leader. so i had to do everything alone for the whole
week(as far as planning and the zone stuff is concerned). i feel like
he just doesnt want to be here because it is hard to be a zone leader.
but i have no idea. i guess i will learn more about patience and
enduring to the end in this transfer. but i hope things are better
now. but i will tell you about the exchange with elder manwaring. he
is from st george. he is a good missionary that just needs a good comp
that will help him to gain confidence and get better at his teaching.
the exchange didnt start out very well! i asked eder manwaring, "does
this bus go to atibaia?" he said yes. we caught the bus and fell
asleep because it was early still. when i woke up, we were entering an
iddy bitty town that no one has heard of called jarinu. i didnt think
anythin of it because i have already caught a bus from jundiai to
atibaia that passed through that city. so i just started to try to
sleep again. about ten minutes later, a lady said, "this is the last
stop!" i had no idea what to do haha. i just started walking back to
the bus station of jarinu (that was about 45 minutes away by foot). i
decided to ask someone and we ended up getting a ride. this whole
time, the members were waiting for us to have lunch. ha we got there
at about 2:30 for lunch. that was an adventure.
our exchange was pretty good after that. sunday was great. we were
able to reach a lot of goals that we had set and there were quite a
few people at church. monday was hot and crappy! we walked a ton and
didnt teach very much. a good missionary uses his head and not his
legs. so i wasnt to happy. everything fell through in atibaia so we
went to perdões. elder manwaring was just about asleep durin the first
lesson we taught. have you guys ever seen the best two years? there is
a part where the new elder is showing all the wrong pictures in the
flips. hahaha it was exactly like that with elder manwaring. i taught
the first part about prophets and everything and passed to him so he
could teach about christ's example. he skipped a flip and went to the
part about joseph smith. in our mission we have a pic of joseph and on
the other side there is a pic of the first vision. he was really tired
and opened up to this part. he looked at the pic of joseph very
confused and then looked at the other side where it was the first
vision. then he held up the first vision and started to explain about
how christ was baptized.hahahah it was hard to not laugh. and then
about two minutes later, he dropped the flips and it went clear to the
other side of the room haha. i felt bad for him. he felt bad too. but
yesterday was pretty tough too. it wasnt raining when we left but then
it started to rain. we didnt have umbrellas. so that wasnt a good
thing. especially since everyone in our zone is already sick. we erent
able to teach anyone during the afternoon and there was no one in the
streets to do street contacts. we finally decided to go get our
umbrellas. we had a split with a member yesterday. we are always
blessed when we go with members. his name is jetterson or "deto." he
is a great guy and one of the best members to teach with. he served a
mission and he still acts like a missionary, probably because he
married a returned missionary too. but he is a great guy and we taught
two really good lessons without any flip problems ha. deto bore a
strong testimony that helped tons. at the end of the split, he gave me
his umbrella. the one i had was a piece of crap and i was basically
walking in the rain anywyas haha. but that was really nice of him. i
thanked him and then we ordered a pizza to celebrate our hard day ha.
it had chocolate filled crust. weird but good!
the zone is doing good. i felt pretty good about the week considering
i was all alone. elder ribeiro finished up his holiday break and maybe
we can work together now. our investigators have gotten better but we
had a great family that would have been baptized this week. yesterday
the mom came out with the book of mormon in her hand. that is always a
bad sign. she tried to return it and said she doesnt feel good at
church even though she already told us that she liked it. her
boyfriend moved back in with the family and put a different idea into
her head. so that is to bad and i was a little sad for them and that i
wont be able to help them anymore!
well that was about all. it was a pretty exciting week. tomorrow we
will have a multi zone conference, so i will talk with president and i
will get some letters and my scripture cases (finally! it has only
been a year since i oredered them). but i hope you guys are doing
great and that this week is good and everything goes great with the
move :( well love you guys!
love,
elder long