February 23, 2011

Thomas with two sweet birds
viviane
jairo
jessica
bowling
luana and joão, baptized by jhonaton and jeferson

hey everyone! how are you all doing?! i hope everything is as great for you guys as it is for me! we had so many miracles this week! This place is the best! everything is going great. so this last sunday was the end of daylight savings, so we got a needed extra hour of sleep. so i think we have a four hour difference now. i guess i will tell you about my week though.

so this week we sure were blessed with elect people! jessica was baptized. she just got here from sao paulo. her whole family are members. she is the only one that wasnt. she went to the congregation which is a really closed church that has a rule to not accept to hear our message. she actually ran away from us when we marked a family night in her house a couple weeks ago. but she has had a very big change. she felt that god didnt love her. and she doesnt have that great of a relationship with her family. the lessons in her house are always difficult with little kids screaming and a dad that always starts talking about things that have nothing to do with the church in the middle of the lesson. but there sure were times when i could feel the spirit talking through us and i could tell she felt it. then she prayed and felt so good about it and she got baptized this last saturday. it was really difficult to get her to accept any kind of message. we taught her for about 15 minutes trying to get her to accept god's invite to go to church. suddenly she said she would do it just cuz we insisted so much. she loved it at church. she finally started reading the book of mormon after a few lessons just about the book of mormon. she was pretty elect. except she still doesnt have that many friends at the church. we need to help with thtat becuase she is a little to attatched to the elders. she is very smart though. she bore her testimony on the day of her baptism and even used the words "i testify that this church is true!" it was the best!

jairo is a members boyfriend. we have taught him for a while but he never has been able to go to church because of his work. he was finally able to though. and he was baptized on saturday too. even with lack of contact with him, he was baptized. he knew that he needed to be baptized and didnt have any doubt the whole time.

viviane may be the most elect person i have ever seen. we are teaching her whole family. she has 3 sons that are all over 17. they all have some difficulties. it is very hard to be able to teach them but when we finally were able to teach the first lesson, they already had lots of friends at the church and they were feeling very good. before i even invited her to be baptized she asked us about the baptism and if she needs to be baptized to enter our church. her family hasnt progressed quite as fast as her because of the word of wisdom and other things. we thought about waiting one more week to try and baptize the whole family together. but when she found out that before the baptism, there is an interview to see if a person is ready to be baptized, she really wanted to be interviewed. then she said, " if he says i am ready, i will be baptized!" she bore her testimony at family nights before being a member. at church, she told everyone that through the baptism she will help the rest of her family become members and live together forever. she was baptized sunday night. her husband will be baptized this week and maybe a couple of the sons. not to mention that her niece really wants to be part of the church. also her sister and brother-in-law (who are leaders in the catholic church) are definitely going to go to the church to see if they want to join too. she will open the doors to many other baptisms. she is a great person. i just wish i could teach her some more. elder castiglioni always teaches her becuase he doesnt know his way around on the other side of the area. so in splits he stays here close to the church and teaches them. they are great people though. we are really being blessed right now!

this week we are going to have a few baptisms. on monday, we had family night with a member family. the grandpa,eloaldo, isnt a member but said he wants "to follow this church until the end." we also are going to have a wedding. Isaias is going to get married so he can be baptized. he reminds me a lot of lonnie for some reason. he is really funny. he has been asking if he can jump in the baptismal font at all our baptisms for the last 2-3 months. he is a great guy! i am very happy for him. we also have donizete(viviane's husband) that is progressing very well. we are being so blessed. we have 3 or 4 other possibilities too! I LOVE BLESSINGS! we might even baptize the bishop's mom this week! i will keep you informed though!

well i love you guys and hope everything is doing great! have a great week!

love,

elder long!

February 16, 2011

hey everyone! sounds like you are all doing great! everything is going great here! did you have a good birthday becca?! i hope it was really good. everything is going great here. i am glad to hear that my friends are doing well back home too. that is crazy to think that they are there already. to bad for them! i am still here baptizing!!! haha. tell them hi for me and figure out what they are going to do for college and stuff.

well i guess i will tell you about my awesome week! it was great! i didnt know how good it was going to be but it turned out great. we had 2 marked baptisms. we didnt baptize one of them but we baptized somewhat that wasnt even planned. so that worked out perfect! our members are really helping us a lot right now. we had 33 lessons with member this last week. i dont think i have ever taught that many with member before. i rarely teach with my companion. it is really great because we are able to teach and help so many other people. mom the only thing you could tell the ward about my mission is that the key to conversion is the members. we are having success right now because of the friendships that the investigators have with the members. there are three things that people need to stay active in the church. they need a testimony first of all. and then to stay strong they need friends, and they need to be nourished by the word of god, then they need a responsibility or a calling. all of us have the calling to be missionaries.

we had the best family night ever on monday. we have a family of five that is progressing really well. they are progressing well because we have had a different couple or member in all of the lessons. on monday, we had family night at their house. the parents are viviane and donazete. they have three sons that are about 20 years old. we had over twenty members at their house. elder castiglioni led the family night. we started with a testimony meeting. every family bore their testimonies to the family about their conversion. all the sisters their were bawling. there were a couple of brotheren that teared up in their testimonies. it was very spiritual. then viviane asked to talk. she bore her testimony of the church and her conversion(we started teaching her a week and a half ago). no one could believe it! it was a great testimony. then her husband also bore testimony. it was the best family night i have ever participated in, and i didnt do anything. we didnt even talk. the members did everything. afterwards all the members were confused and asked how long that they have been members. we said they arent members. they are going to be baptized this week. they were very surprised that they arent members after that.

the family is progressing well but their sons hve a few problems and difficulties that they are working to overcome. it will work out well. THIS WEEK IS GOING TO BE AWESOME! ...stay tuned...

we have some other possibles. we had a kid named kauê that was going to be baptized. he ended up moving to são paulo though. that was sad. we baptized joão. he has been going to church since i got here. he received permission from the first presidency to be baptized, and he is doing great! there really is forgiveness! he has completely changed his life.

we also had a girl that was going to be baptized. she left though and hasnt been here in hortolândia. she came back on saturday. i figured that since she has been gone so long she would be down about the baptism. i was with our ward mission leader. i invited the whole family to go to church. her grandparents are recent converts (crueza and edivaldo). she is a really shy girl and she whisper something about baptism. i couldnt hear her. her grandma told her to tell me that she wanted to be baptized on sunday. of course i told her that would probably be ok...haha i was so happy!!! her name is Luana. she was really happy too. she is a shy girl though and it is hard for her to go make new friends but i am sure that will change soon.

our zone did great this week. it was the best in the mission. but what can you expect....president made life pretty easy putting a bunch of great missionaries here in this zone. i dont have to do anything. they are all very self motivated. all of them already have the desire to have success, and they are just happy to work in the best stake of the mission. so pretty much life is good right now!

well i love you guys! you are all the best! i hope you all have a good week! love you!

love,

elder long

Release Date

Elder Long got his release date. It is
April 19.

February 9, 2011

well how are you all doing? i hope you are all doing great. everything is going great here. my companion and i are having lots of success now. we are going to have a lot of miracles now. the ward and stake are so ready to work right now since the stake just got divided. the 1st counselor in the stake is probably the best local leader i have ever seen for missionary work! his name is president molina. he has so many great ideas and everyone trusts him so much, especially the people from our ward! this last week we had tons of investigators at church and the members went crazy. they were like running around and telling people to sit by the investigators and help them with their questions. there were two members for every family of investigators. there wasnt an investigator that wont progress very well. they are all elect. we also had a family of five (that is actually married by the way) that couldnt go to church because the grandpa got really sick and had to go to the hospital. they are set to be baptized here in a couple weeks too. but i am really happy now. we have a great zone. it is small and full of northeastern brazillians. there are 5 americans and 7 brazillians that are all from the northeastern part of brazil. they all get along very well and everyone is always laughing and having a great time. our zone has a bunch of baptisms for this week. i believe all of the areas will baptize so we are all excited about that! our goal for the zone in the next 3 weeks is 30 and i am pretty sure we are going to make it! everything is going great and i love my mission!

we have a family of 5 that went to church and they are referrels from our past ward mission leader. they are progressing so well and actually bore testimony of the church to us this last visit. unfortunately, yesterday was probably the worst day of my mission. i ate something and was sick when i woke up. luckily we had a split with the members the whole day so we could still work. i worked almost the whole day but had to stop every once in a while to sit down. i am back to normal now! this ward is great though. there were members that called to see if i was doing better this morning. i am great now. it passed really quick.

that was pretty much our week. everything is going good here in brazil! i am super happy and wouldnt want to be anywhere else at this time in my life! i guess that most of my friends are home now. jay dee will get home tomorrow and then there is only a few of us left. tell jay dee and james hi for me and let me know what there plans are now. i love you all and i hope you all have a great week!

love,

elder long

oh and to answer you questions dad. i dont have a car or a bike here. the only car that we have is the hi lux that president tanner has. we just ride the bus and walk. there have been lots of time when the bus is really jam packed! i think there was only one time though that i was pretty much outside the door though.

well i gotta get going. i will talk to you all next week! catch ya later! love ya

February 2, 2011

hey how are you guys doing today. I am doing great. This last week was a pretty good week. as you know, i went to pouso alegre. that was nice. i went with elder hansen, the assistent. that was pretty fun. i was able to work with a couple of new missionaries and help them out a bit. that was nice to be able to do some different parts of the work. it was really weird leaving my area for so long though. i didnt work in my area for 4 of the 7 days last week. but that is alright. at least we still had an alright week. i guess to answer dads question about my duties: as a zone leader, we just go to meetings monthly with the other zone leaders. then we exchanges with the missionaries in the zone. we also help with district meetings. we are in charge of keeping track of the numbers in all the areas. whatever questiong the zone has, we answer or fid answer out. it isnt that complicated. we just take care of the missionaries in the zone and get them to work. i dont know why i was asked to go to pouo alegre. that never happens as a zone leader.

yesterday was the start of a new transfer. I stayed in Jd Amanda. elder rowley was transfered and is the new traveling assistent. my new companion is Elder Castiglioni. He is brazillian for Bahia. He is a really spiritual guy. he is a really good guy. i am excited to work with him this transfer. it was nice to talk to everyone yesterday. they divided our zone. it was the biggest zone in the mission with 23 missionaries but now we have 12! that will be so much easier. i have got a great companion too. we are training two district leaders though. i was told to prepare elder castiglioni to be an assistent too. so i guess i will try my best even though i have no idea what it means to be an assistent or what he needs to know to be qualified to be an assistent. he has less than a year on the mission. he has got a lot of potential. he already has been a zone leader for 6 months so he really knows what he is doing. it will be a great transfer!

well that is about all that happened this week. i need to accept the spring track. i was hoping to do that now. thanks! you are the best!

love,

elder long