Arriving Home

Thomas returned home on April 19th. He started school at BYU-I the next day. He had his report on May 15th. He's doing great and we're so happy to have him home safely.

April 13, 2011 (Elder Long's Last Weekly Letter)

hey everyone. how are you all doing? i hope you are doing great! i am doing good. this week went pretty well. we had a bunch of meetings and that made it hard to visit our investigators everyday. our baptisms fell through but they are pretty sure for this week. i think this week will be great. we are planning on 5 baptisms. we have had a bunch of miracles the last week. we are really being blessed. we had some young men and women take their friends to the church activity and we were able to teach them and mark their baptisms for this sunday. that should be nice. this area is a great area, but it is frustrating too. right now, jardim amanda is the stake house. so the whole stake leadership is here and they always tell me that we need to do something different. that makes me feel like i am not doing a good job. this week is going to be great though. we are going to have lots of baptisms in the zone so that will be great! i am excited. it should be an awesome week. i also went to the temple today. that was a great experience. i love the temple. i will have to go more often! i am going to try to do something fun for pday. so i will talk to you all later. love you all. you are the best!

love,
elder long

April 6, 2011

hey everyone. i am gonna be quick today so i can play soccer for my last time ha. everything is going well here. the work is going very well in our area. we are starting to see the miracles and plan to have 7 baptisms here the next couple sundays. this week has got to be a big one. hopefully we can visit everyone we need to. things are going well with carol's family. they will be baptized. there are some other people that went to conference that really liked it. speaking of conference, it went really well. the zone is doing great and the missionaries are working hard. there are only a couple problems in the zone right now and president blames it on the district leader but that actually isnt the problem at all. that is alright though we will do our best to figure it out. this week the zone will baptize a bunch. that will be great.
thanks for everything. you guys rock!
love,
elder long

March 30, 2011

hey everyone! i guess i will just hurry and tell you about my week. everything is going well. i guess it could be better but it was alright. So since last week, we dont have many new people. we are working with the same people to get them baptized. we didnt have much success in finalizing the baptism of carol's family. we are trying our best to do that this week. we had quite a few people that went to church though. the reason we werent able to confirm everything about their baptism is because on saturday we went to a different area to help them out. the whole zone went. the missionaries that work there didnt show much gratitude. they went to the church. they didnt plan very well and there were supposed to be members for every missionary. there were only a few members. the missionaries in the area didnt do anything and the bishop started to organize the companionships. he tried to put me and another elder with two of the young women in the ward. i told him i wasnt going to go with two girls cuz we cant. turns out he didnt know that because the missionaries in his ward have been going on visits with people of the other sex all the time!!! we finished up all our visits by 10:30 and we were supposed to have a ride home. we finally got a ride at 3:30!!! so we werent able to talk to carol's family and they ended up not even going to church. so i wasnt to happy with those missionaries. saturday was a great day though. most of the members in the ward were at the church saturday night and they visited all of our investigators and tons of inactive members! there were 130 people at church on sunday which is almost the most it has ever been! we had quite a few people at church though and we got a bunch of people that are progressing now. the meetings were very irreverant but the investigators still felt the spirit! things are going good. the last couple days have been a little slow but things we get better and we will get a lot of people at conference this week. i am excited for conference!
one crappy thing happened though. there is a really elect couple that is doing their best to get married as quick as possible so they can be baptized. turns out she doesnt have her birth certificate. we did our best to get it here this week so that they could get married quick. after you take in the paper work, you have to wait 16 days. we werent able to get it in time. there is noway to get it by friday. so i wont be able to see their baptism. that makes me a little sad. they are really elect people! oh well. at least they will be baptized i guess!
thanks for everything though! love you guys
love,
elder long

March 23, 2011

hey everyone. how are you all doing!? i am doing really well. I guess i will tell you all about my week really quick. Things are going really well in our area. our zone isnt doing as hot but it will comeback strong in this last week of the month. this week was a pretty good turnout at church. we didnt find as many people as we would have hoped for last week but the people we found were golden! almost all of the new investigators that we found went to church. unfortunately, they arent married so we are hoping to be able to get the married as quick as possible so that it can happen this transfer. we are going to have to have some good lessons the next couple days.

we also had a baptism this week. i told you all about carol last week. she went to church by herself after about a month since we taught her. she was baptized. it was really good. the baptismal meeting was terrible though. i was so surprised that the investigators said they liked the baptism in the following lessons we taught them. there were not many leaders at the baptism and it was really irreverent. but carol was baptized and she was very happy. her whole family went to church and they enjoyed it as well. the family (edivaldo, adriana and lurdes) are possible baptisms for this week. i hope everything works out though. they are a great family. all the members were happy to have a complete family visiting church. so i hope everything goes well this week and that they are baptized this sunday!

those were the highlights of the week. things are going well. elder north and i are getting along great. things are going good! love you guys!

love,

elder long

March 16, 2011

hey how is everyone doing? i am not going to have very much time today. we went to campinas to buy some stuff from brazil. we got some good stuff though. i will probably only get a few other things. i dont really know what else i will buy but i got a few things. this week was pretty good. last week was a little rough but we have had a few miracles. donizete wasnt baptized last week but we did have one baptism. it was a great baptism too. his name is eloaldo. he is an older guy. he is probably about 65. he was so happy about his baptism. we told him there was going to be a baptismal interview and we told him the questions. he studied for the interview. then afterwards he was so happy because he passed on the interview and answered every question right. haah that was really great. his daughter and her family are really strong in the church. it was a great baptism. he didnt really understand part of the sabbath day and he bought tons of pop to take to his baptism on sunday. haha we explained it to him again and he wont do it anymore he said haha. i guess its a good thing that that sin got washed away in his baptism. haha.
there was a family that we taught about a month ago that accepted baptism very well. they were actually married too. then they didnt go to church cuz they were a litte drunk. then they were embarrassed and started avoiding us. then one time i went there and the dad said something like, you are here in my house bugging me? he said that right in front of his older daughter and then he went into the house. she just looked at us and we bore our testimony about how the gospel can bless her and what our purpose is here in the mission. then we never went back. about a month after that (sunday), the older daughter, carol, went to church. she has been reading the book of mormon ever since. she has received an answer and she pretty much asked to be baptized. she called some members to say that she would be baptized next week. her whole family promised to go with her too. that is 6 in total. she is elect and she will help her whole family!!! that was a great miracle for the week!
we also received a referrel from a member. he was driving and a younger woman passed out and hit her head on the ground. he helped her get to the hospital and then got her address. we went there and she was so happy! she accepted baptism and so did her husband (i should say boyfriend). she was tearing up and so happy that she heard the message. it was a great message too! so there were quite a few miracles!
well i am doing really well and i am really happy. we have a bunch of people to help in the next little while. so that is a good thing! thanks for all your support though. you guys are the best! love you all!

March 9, 2011

well i will hurry and tell you about my week. i dont have much time
today. i will have to be quick. so this week was another slow week
unfortunately. we taught a ton and we found lots of new investigators,
but they didnt all progress very well. we had 1 peron at church this
week. this week was carnival here in brazil. so this was the weekend
that everyone travels and the members go on a campout from friday
until tuesday to keep away from all the troublesome activities. there
were no problems at all because of carnival. i mean there werent any
huge parties or woman walking around naked. that is what happens more
in the north of the country and in the bigger cities. it is a terrible
holliday. all the young men are always so excited because it is the
one campout of the year. i hate it because our members arent here to
help and our investigators arent here to be taught and go to church.
we still had a great week besides the sunday turnout though. we didnt
baptize this week...but dont worry! we will this week! and hopefully
for the next 6 weeks. the ward has a lot of goals for the next couple
months.
so yesterday was the transfers. i told you that i was going to stay
and that i would like my companion. then president had another
transfer meeting with the assistents and he said everything changed.
so i was pretty nervous that i was going to leave the best place ever
and the place i love. but turns out, i stayed here in amanda in the
best zone with the best missionaries. elder north is my new companion.
he is from oregon. he plays football for weber. he is the nickle back.
he is really cool and i guess he plays basketball too. so it will
probably be a preey good time when we all play. he also a great
missionary. we are going to have success together. this week Eloaldo
and Donizete will be baptized. please pray that donizete can stop
smoking. today is the day that he will stop completely. so please pray
for him. maybe donizete's two sons will be baptized too. we will see
what we can do though. i am pretty excited for this great transfer
though. it will be great though!
well i love you guys! you are the best!
love,
elder long

March 2, 2011

hey everyone! how are you all doing today? i am doing pretty well. this week was pretty great. it wasnt the greatest week we could have had but it was alright. on thursday, elder nelson came to talk to our mission. that was really nice. it was a quick meeting but it was great. elder snow and elder godoy were also here from the 70. the three general authorities and their wives spoke to us. it was a great experience. it was a really good day ..unfortunately, our area was closed most of the week. on monday we had a meeting. on wednesday it was pday. on thursday, we had a meeting. on friday, we had a wedding and spent the whole day setting up for that. on saturday, we went to the temple for baptismal interviews, and we had a baptism. it was a pretty full week but we werent able to teach all our investigators and that hurt our turn out in sacrament meeting. on friday, isaias got married to monica. the bishop did the marriage. it was great but nobody really helped set up for the wedding. i guess they did help more than last time. i was really tired by the time we finally got to go teach. we only taught one lesson that day though because we were setting up for the wedding. it was a great wedding though. one of the best that i have seen as a missionary. they seemed really happy. i was assigned as photographer (well actually, we did pretty much everything because nobody else did), so i got lots of pics so dont worry. there was a dance after the wedding. so needless to say, we just got a whole bunch of food and went home haha. on saturday, we had a great experience! we marked all the baptismal interviews to be at the temple. elder castiglioni and i interviewed everyone in the waiting room inside the temple. that was the greatest place ever to do interviews. everyone that was interviewed this week was very sure about the baptism. then we headed home for our baptism. there was no time to interview isaias before becuase of the wedding so he was interviewed right before the baptism. then i got really nervous because it had taken about an hour and a half. then the missionary called us in and said, he has some doubts. we just said alright.... then the missionary asked if isaias wanted to be baptised. he said ya. then the missionary asked him if it was his decission or if he jsut wanted to be baptised because of other people. he said he wanted to. then the missionary said, we can do this baptism today. isaias said that he is willing to keep all the commandments and he said he knows the church is true but he has some problems with his testimony. i have no idea what the missionary felt but when someone tells me they KNOW the church is true and that they are willing to keep all the commandments, that means they have a testimony. then the missionary told us to leave. then isaias came out and asked where he could go change. i thought it was really weird. it seemed like the missionary didnt want him to be baptized. he is a great guy too and has been going to church for about 4 months and he got married so he could be baptized. but it turned out alright.

because the interview and baptism took so long, we werent able to confirm with anyone about going to church. we had a terrible turnout! it is pretty much the worst since i got here! on sunday night, elder castiglioni and i baptized felipe and rodrigo (they were the sisters investigators that we interviewed). that was great. Jessica (our recent convert from 2 weeks ago) prepared the baptismal message. that was great! but it was a good week. i am going to stay here in amanda until the end of my mission. transfers arent until next week but i already know since there is the assistent in our house ha. i will get a new companion though. i will train a zone leader though. haha i am so old on the mish! i remember when this missionary got into the mission. i always wanted to work with him too. so i hope this next transfer goes great!

i love you guys. you are the best!!!

love,

elder long

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

January 26, 2011

hey everyone. i dont have very much time to talk at all this week. i am going to the temple in a little bit and then i am going to pouso alegre. that is a city in another state called Minas Gerais. that is gonna be fun i think. this week went pretty well though. we didnt baptize this week though. and we need a miracle for this week though. but then we should have some more after that on the 6th. i am so happy that clint is leaving for his mission. you will have to give me his mtc address so i can write him. and i am really happy that jared is doing his papers. the mission is awesome and they will both learn alot! it is going to be great for them! it sounds like you had a good week. and i am glad that lolivia is able to cheer again. well what else happened this week? it is really nice living with two assistents now. i know like everything that is going to happen in the mission. and that is pretty fun. this next transfer starts on tuesday. so for now i am with elder rowley still. he is a great companion. i heard that i am gonna have a great comp in the next transfer. i dont know who it is yet though. i will let you next week about the transfer but i will almost certaintly be in jardim amanda for the rest of the mission. but i gotta run though. i love you guys! you are the best. i dont know if i will be able to get on any later today, so i will answer your questions afterwards.
love,
elder long

January 19, 2011

thats my companion elder rowley


i found a picture of elder hansen. it is a really good one too haha

hey everyone. it sounds like everything is going good back home besides olivia getting a concussion. everything is going well here too. this week was quite a dissapointment though. we worked way hard and nobody went to church. i dont even remember another time that me and my companion didnt have a single investigator at church. that will never happen again. that was terrible. we worked really hard during the week to find some good people to teach. we dont have the best teaching pool ever right now. but that will move. we will work on that tomorrow alot. we havent been able to work in our area as much as i would have liked. i am pretty sure i will stay in JD Amanda the rest of my mission now. and i will live with elder hansen my whole mission too. so that will be really fun. elder rowley was a great comp. to bad it was only for 5 weeks. he will be transfered to another area in our zone. . i dont know who my companion will be though. elder rowley will be my companion until the end of the transfer.

we have found some good investigators to teach in the last couple days. there was a man named renato that just pulled up and stopped. he said hey. so we went to talk to him. we didnt know him and he had never talked to the missionaries. we did a normal contact with him and he asked us to go to his house right then. we went and he accepted baptism and everything. he is very elect! there was also a lady and her daughter that stopped us the other day and asked us to visit them. there are about 20 people that live in their house!!!!!! that will be great. we will visit them tonight.

so it has been raining a ton the last few weeks. i have two good pairs of shoes, so it is not a problem at all. there has been lots of floods in brazil but that doesnt ever happen here, luckily. everything is going well though. i am really skinny though but that is fine.

thanks for everything though. you guys are the best even though you all seem pretty trunky haha. love you guys!

love,

elder long