October 13, 2010

hey everyone! how are you all doing this fine week! i hope you are all doing well after your long trips and everything! it was probably pretty fun to see the others this week and to see new places. i am excited to go on a roadtrip to arizona sometime! (i probably wont ever go to reno because you guys will be done by school by then). That will be fun. i hope you all had a great time though! everything is going pretty well here. we actually have people that are progressing now so i am pretty excited about that! that has been a problem this last transfer. but now we just got to get them to progress a little bit quicker! life is so much easier with a teaching pool! when there are people progressing, you always have someone to teach (and baptize), members are more excited to go on visits with you, and you get way more referrels and referrels are tons better than people we talk to in
the street. so we are getting there now! the zone is also going very well. we have got the best missionaries here. they are so good! our zone has half as many missionaries than the other zones but we have more baptisms! isnt that sweet! i am pretty happy with their work. there is just one area that is having hard times. that is just because they dont have a cell phone. so we cant talk to them to see if they are working and neither can their district leader. that is pretty annoying but hopefully will change tomorrow! Tomorrow will be our multi- zone conference! Elder Soares is going to be there! He is a 70! I am excited. he is going to interview a lot of missionaries he said. he has like 3 hours set aside to interview missionaries tomorrow. i hope he doesnt tell me that i am the worst missionary ever and that i need to learn how to work ha. i dont think i will! have i told you guys that there will be an apostle here in january? the mission doesnt know yet though! we dont know which will come yet! i am excited! what a blessing! this week went alright in our area. we only had 4 people at church though. we have some elect people now i think. first of all we are teaching maria jose. she is a member's fiance. her fiance, marcos, asked us to go teach her. we ate lunch and they gave us shoe polish and even before teaching they said that we need to baptize her so they can get married in the temple in a year from now. i think we can do that ha. she is an older lady, like dad's age...(haha dad is an older person now jk). she would be baptized this sunday but she went on a trip this last week so we havent been able to teach her. we also were
walking to teach another person and a lady named celia called out elder. elder bavender talked to her and she said lots of missionaries have passed by her house. she was just about baptized like 10 years ago. we taught her and she lives with her grandkids and adopted daughter. she has a hard life now. she has a daughter that uses drugs(the mother of these kids). and cuz celia helps her daughter to live still, the rest of her family left her. we just left a quick message about how the church will bless her grandkids so they dont enter that same path that their mom did. she started crying and said it was true. she is elect too! but that is pretty much what is going on here in brazil. i am learning tons. thanks for everything! you guys are the best! love you!
love,
elder long