December 29, 2010

hey everyone! how are you all doing? well i guess i will just tell you everything that has happened since lsat time i talked to you. a lot has happened actually. so i told you this week that we have been going to campinas about everyday this last week. well we didnt have any time to work. we worked about 15 hours in our own area and i thought that our week was pretty decent for such little work. i guess that they didnt think that it was that good though. elder lopez hasnt done his street contacts for a long time. and we didnt have time to do very many this last week. also elder lopez was asked to help in jundiai. so he was transfered to jundiai. i am with my new companion, elder rowley. he is from washington the state. i am excited to work with him but i am a little down at the same time because we didnt have any time to do anything and we didnt really get a chance too. elder rowley is a great missionary too. i think everything is going to be good. i didnt know what to think about the new zone. it is huge and i dont know anyone. i dont know any members and i dont know our investigators that well. this next month is going to be amazing. we got at least 8 baptisms for january. they are all just about ready already! pretty much all the members loved elder lopez alot. so now i am sure we are going to come in and the members wont like us as much. yesterday we had district meeting so i felt better about stuff after getting to know the missionaries. i think we gained their confidence from the meeting today. i am excited for the month and the work here. president tanner wants us to move hortolândia (thats the name of the zone) back as the example for the mission. he called me in for an interview and asked if i was up to it or if i need a break for a bit before another test. i just thought well now that i am in the area i always wanted to serve in he is asking if i want to leave. i just told him that i am so excited to work here. it is going to be great!!! i guess i will keep you informed on the progress in the zone.

this week we got a baptism. his name is joão. he is a great guy. he has a few problems with the word of wisdom but he wants to quit. he will be baptized if we just visit him everyday. i am excited. so remember him in your prayers!

well love you guys a lot! it was really nice to talk to you guys on the phone. i am glad that you are all doing well. it was suprising to hear jacoby and johnnys voices for the first time ha. i thought that was cool! well love you guys!

love,

elder long

December 23, 2010

hey well i dont have that much time to talk today. iguess we can just write to tell you the number to call and everything. i was transfered. i am now in jardim amanda. there have been many other idahoans that have passed through this area. it is the best area in the whole mission! yup i am really lucky. elder hillam baptized over half of his baptisms here. so if you talk to him maybe you could tell him that i am here. my new companion is elder lopez. he is really funny. he is probably the only person in our whole mission that isnt from brazil or the united states. he is from gautamala. he has lived in centerville, utah for the last 7 years of his life though. he arrived in the mission three weeks after me. i never thought i would be his companion but i ended up here in the best area of the mission with perhaps the best missionary in the mission. we are getting along great so far. but this christmas is pday. so we will probably do that call at 4:30. that would make it 11:30 your time. i can talk for 40 minutes like last time and katie can go listen if she wants but i cant talk to her. thanks!!! you guys are the best!

love,

elder long

December 15, 2010

this is the great botucatu zone!!! yeah!!
Well hey everyone! how you all doing? i am hope you are all doing great! I guess my package has gotten here. i dont know why dad decided to send me another one but thanks! i will get it next week. well i guess i will tell you about my week now.
So this week went pretty well. our zone is pretty great. i love everyone here. we have a small zone with just 6 areas, 2 of which are sisters. so we have four sisters in our zone. that is a large number of sisters for any zone. it usually isnt a problem but they have got plenty of mood swings. they are great sisters though. we had another zone activity last week. so this is the first pday i atutally can talk to you guys and maybe i will be able to take a nap. last week we just hung out at the church talking and playing games like uno. the brazillian rules are pretty fun. we also played a little bit of soccer. our zone has worked so hard this transfer. we were supposed to have at least 9 baptisms this last week and every single one fell through. our baptism didnt happen because of the word of wisdom problems. but this week we should be able to get her baptized! the great downfall of our zone is sacrament meeting. we cant get lost of people to sacrament meeting unfortunately! we need to figure out how to help the missionaries to get people to church. then we would baptize tons. i guess i cant complain though. we have had a couple mission meetings the last couple weeks and the leaders seem to like talking about our zone. so i guess i dont have anything to really complain about in our zone. we just need to finalize our baptisms. on saturday we were able to pull off a sweet exchange with the members and missionaries so that i could go to jau to do interviews without needing to close any areas of the zone for the day. we were able to pull that off. unfortunately the baptism didnt happen because there were some difficulties with some members. sunday was great though. there was a family of three that went to church that we have never talked too. but they will be baptized very soon! we also were needing one more lesson with member to reach our goal and we had a miracle. some teenage girl called out "mormons." we usually wouldnt stop to talk to a girl though but this time we felt we should. we returned and there was a huge family in front of the house. they were just messing with us but then her dad got home and he asked us to leave a blessing in their house. he is a member that hasnt gone to church for a long time. his kids havent been baptized yet. i believe we will be able to help that whole family go back to church. we have had some pretty good experiences though. this week started out slow because of trips to campinas. but it will turn out great still!
thanks for everything you guys do for me! you are the best. i hope you all have a great christmas! speaking of christmas...that will be the next time i talk to you. our pday was moved to the 25th. next week we will have transfers and on wednesday we will have our mission christmas conference. i will write you an email on thursday next week to tell you what time you need to call and which number. it will probably be in the morning though. i cant believe i am talking about the christmas call already! time flies to quick!
love you guys a lot!
love,
elder long

December 8, 2010

hey everyone! i will have to tell you about my week really quick today. it was a great day and our zone is going great! i love this zone so much. just about everyone had baptisms this week and the area that didnt will have three baptisms this week! i am really happy with the work that they are doing. everyone is so happy to work and the union in the zone is great! in my area, everything is going well. we are working pretty hard and we are having success. we havent had enough time lately to find new investigators so we have only been getting investigators that arent really progressing that quickly. tomorrow is going to have to be a great day because we have gotten a really slow start this week. we had a meeting in campinas on monday. it was a great meeting. all the leaders said we need to be like the botucatu zone. man our missionaries rock! we had 9 baptisms in our zone with 6 areas and we met about all our other goals too! it was pretty great! this week we have even more baptisms too. it is nice we people think you are a good leader just cuz the missionaries in your zone are so good. we just got to get better at taking people to church. our zone has had a hard time with that!

this last week we had a baptism. we baptized patricia. she is celia's daughter. celia and mayara were baptized about a month ago. of all my baptisms, patricia has probably had the biggest change in her life. she has done a lot of bad stuff in her life and is overcoming a lot of stuff right now. it was nice to help her to enter the church as well. it was also nice to be able to help out the whole family. she wanted me to baptize her. when she was baptized she threw her self back and i hadnt even have time to get my arm under her ha. everyone was giving her a hard time that she had a lot of sins to be washed away so she had to stay under longer. but everything worked out. i have almost killed two baptisms in a row. i am the worst in the whole world.

i got to catch the bus though like right now. i will be back on in about 40 minutes probably. so i will try to talk to you more afterwards. love you guys!

love,

elder long

December 1, 2010

hey everyone! how are you guys doing this week?! i hope you all had a great thanksgiving! Mine was good as well. i was doing missionary work! I guess i will tell you about my week!
OUR ZONE ROCKS! we just about met all of our goals in the whole zone!!! everyone achieved the mission standard. and this week is going to be even better! we already have 13 baptisms that are all ready. then we have 2 other that could work out still. that is amazing for a small zone like ours!!! I am so happy and i love your zone. i love my area and everything is great in the zone.
this week was a great week! we had a baptism this week it was miguel (michael). he is 87 years old and cant talk or take care of himself. his family wanted him to be baptized and he still understands everything. it took three of us to baptize him. he cant close his mouth by himself though. so guess who was in charge of covering his mouth and nose. and guess who was the one that let water into his mouth! i felt like crap! he choked a little bit but he was able to get over it quickly. it was a great experience. we also confirmed him right after the baptism and everyone was wet still. it was awesome!
this week was also district conference(stake conference). it was great. president tanner was here with his two counselors that both used to be 70s, President Cooper and President Barbour. It was so spiritual! it was a great expereience but unfortunately i got to get off becuase this internet place closes right now for lunch. i love you guys.
everything is going great!
love,
elder long