hey everyone! how are you all doing? everything is going well here. today we had a big zone activity so everyone from my zone was here to play football and soccer. it was really fun. i guess i will tell you all about my week really quick. so this week was a great week for me and elder rowley(oh by the way, my companion, elder rowley, was elder stucki's comp in the ctm). we were able to teach a ton. it has been a while since i have taught so many lessons in a week. we were able to do everything that we needed to do. we found lots of great investigators and things are starting to move along great. we had 11 investigators at church this week too so we have some people that are progressing well. this friday we are going to have a double wedding. crueza is going to marry edimilson and gilso and leonilda will get married too. it should be pretty great with 4 baptisms afterwards too. i am pretty excited. everything is going great though. there was another change in our zone and our house. elder silveira was transfered from our zone and now the assistant is living with us. his name is elder hansen. remember. i did an exchange with him 5 or 6 weeks ago. he is the one that spent the 4 hour bus ride from botucatu to campinas sick in the bathroom. that is who is living with us now. i am pretty excited. i will probably be able to learn quite a bit this week!
i hope everything is going great for you guys! love you tons!
love,
elder long
ps i cant believe it is new years already!!!
ya i was able to catch still. we played a little basketball too. elder hansen is really good. he just barely got an email offering a full ride to salt lake community college. we played with a soccer ball thoguh. we are going to buy a basketball to play every morning. that should be good to get back into shape!
oh and i didnt get that package yet. i should be getting it soon though. so dont worry about it.
hello my family! how are you guys doing today? i hope you are all doing great. i am pretty tired again this week but i am alright! sounds like you are doing well. but i guess i will just jump right in to my week because we are planning on playing football today! it has been a while!!
this week was pretty good. just so you know, i am in campinas right now...again! and this is the second trip i have made here since i talked to you last week. i really love botucatu, but no missionary should have to travel over 17 hours per week! but i shouldnt complain because i really love my area and my zone! there was an emergency transfer last thursday, so i had to take a missionary to the office. that was crazy. we were in an exchange and i got a call that this missionary was transfered (it wasnt becuase of anything he did wrong, but something missionaries in another zone did. he was just involved in the transfer). i got the call at 3:30 and the last bus to campinas is 5 in the afternoon! i called him and we hurried to their house. they also work in the same city. we got there before them. they got there at about 4:20. he threw everything in his suitcase and i called our branch president for a ride. we hurried to the bus station but the bus was already leaving. we chased it down. on the last stop in the city, we jumped out of the car and gave the signal that we would catch the bus. it was amazing1 i decided i am really dumb though. i stayed the night at the offices and i stayed up talking with elder manwaring and elder guilherme for a long time! that always makes for a long trip back home. i havent worked in my area that much this week. i felt pretty bad about our week for some reason. i was so happy for the week and i just knew we were gonna have a great week with over 40 lessons. i havent ever done that in this area but i just knew it was going to happen. then i had to go to campinas and that ruined two days of work and i just felt a little bad when we didnt make our goals. we had a great week but i still felt bad at the end, like i didnt do everything i could. but i guess we got another week now. except, i had to come to campinas again so i dont know if we will teach 40 lessons this time either.
yesterday, we had our interviews with president tanner in our zone. it was a pretty good experience. even though it was really short. a little before i was planning on telling him a whole list of things i want to happen in my mission like that i want to train, work with elder stucki at some point in my mission, and also work with elder nothum. but i felt i shouldnt during the interview. i dont think it is right to ask for callings and stuff like that. the Lord knows what is best. president tanner said that our zone and the rio claro zone are the examples of how the work should be done and he said he liked how elder bavender and i are leading the zone. i felt good about that. i talked to president about my cousin though. he said that he has underestimated elder stucki. our mission's second counselor lives in chad's new area. he has been mission president and he has gone on visits with the missionaries once a week for many many years. when president tanner asked how he like the new missionary, brother barbo said "he is the best teacher i have ever seen." i thought that was a pretty good compliment. that made me proud and i threw in a little hint at that point and said, "i really would like to work with him at some point in my mission." haha hopefully it works out!
after the interview, we went on an exchange with the assistants. i thought that i would be companions with elder hansen a couple transfers ago but he ended up being called as an assistant. i worked with him yesterday though. he is from roy, utah. he lives close to maddox, that restaraunt. he is a lot like me. he loves sports and he has got the same sense of humor. he played college basketball though so he is probably a little better than me haha. but the exchange went great. we found this great guy named juliano. he accepted baptism. he lives alone and looks like he is 35 but he is our age. we didnt have much time to work. i did like giving him a hard time about being an assistant. i told him that he would have to teach everything because he is the assistant so the people will feel the spirit more. i was just joking with him and i dont think he really liked it haha. then i remembered that i am really dumb and we stayed up talking about everything all night. we had to wake up at 4:30 too to catch the bus! it was a good conversation though. he is a great guy. and we got a lot in common. a short night didnt have as bad of an effect on me as it did on him. i think i am used to waking up early to catch the bus. he is not! he made the whole 4 hour trip to campinas inside the bathroom. i am not kidding! he threw up for 3 or 4 hours straight! i felt pretty bad for him!
well that was our week. rodrigo and darci could be baptized this week but we will see. we wont be home tonight and so it will be a little more difficult. we need a really spiritual experience with them this week!!! we got some people that are really good but we also got some that are really lazy. there was a man that the elders before us stopped teaching for some reason (they didnt put him in the area book either by the way). i knew where he lived kind of but never had talked to him. we went there and he said that his family of 5 was just about baptized but the missionaries stopped coming by. he works 2 sundays per month so that is his difficulty. he accepted baptism for next week though!!! miracles!!! but ya that was my week! love you guys, you are the best!
love,
elder long
p.s. mom, my companion is elder bavender now from colorado. this is our second transfer together here in botucatu. and i only received 3 of the songs you sent. thanks though!
p.p.s. is thanksgiving tomorrow? if it is, happy thanksgiving and thanks for everything. you are all the best!
well i guess i will tell you about my week really quick! first of all,
i am in atibaia still which means i will most likely stay here for at
least one more transfer after this one because elder ribeiro heads
home in 6 weeks. our zone grew a little bit but it is very young. we
have 3 new missionaries. 2 americans that just got here (E. hunt and
gardner) and one brazilian (elder pereira). we opened up two more areas in our zone too. now we have 8 areas and 16 missionaries. the
new missionaries in our zone are Elder sorenson, leary, rosemore and
the three new missionaries. it will be a great transfer and i am way
excited to go on a whole bunch of exchanges to try and help the new
missionaries especially the new americans. i think elder hunt is going
to be especially good! we also have two missionaries that are opening
areas as first time seniors. so they might need help too. it will be a
great transfer. elder leary is living with us now. elder nothum was
transfered to campinas. i already miss him ha. elder leary is
different than him ha. he is from kaysville but doesnt know the
andersens. i am excited to do everything i can to help the new
missionaries now!
we met president tanner on monday. he is a great guy. as he and his
wife walked in, we sang called to serve. they started crying and said
we sing very well! i bet you guys cant believe that people say that
about me but i get it a lot haha jk! in his training with the prophet
and apostles, they received a new program. it was already put into
practice in the USA and the baptisms increased by 40%! i am very
excited to start now. the leaders will even havetraining meetings for 3-4 days!!!! that will be intense i am sure! it will destroy that
week but i will learn tons. and in the long run, it will help out the
whole mission!!
it was nice to talk to everyone on monday and tuesday. i was able to talk to chad and all my past comps. i talk tons with elder lima. he is
a great guy. i want him to be in my zone or my comp again!! he said
something that will help me out. he has had problems with his comp too
but it got better. he said "it is better to just be happy, than to
have a reason to be." i thought that was pretty deep ha. i will now
put that into practice! i also am very proud of chad! elder lima was
his district leader. he said that chad might have been the junior on
the paper but he was definitely the senior in the companionship. i
dont know if he is senior now. i think he is senior to a missionary
that has been out for over a year and a half. he has had tough comps but the lord always trusts that he will be patient with these tough
comps. i wasnt able to talk to chad much though cuz he is in campinas
now. so he didnt have to wait for the bus! i really needed to talk to
all my mission friends again. i was needing it. i have a lot more
energy now! this last week was pretty good. we had a goal that everyone would
reach ALL our missions goals. we just about did it(besides the goal of
baptisms). that hasnt ever happened! there were only 6 or 7 numbers in
the whole zone that werent above the missions goals! we wouldnt have
ever made it here in atibaia without the help of elder cavalcante and
elder nothum. we left our area without missionaries for two days. we barely met our goals at about 9:15 on sunday!!!
on saturday i saw manoel, vanderlei and vanderlan(a family that i
baptized in jundiai). i was waiting for the bus to atibaia. that was
great! oh and pedro and iracema(the first family i baptized in
itatiba) is doing the temple prep class!! i think they will be going
to the temple in the next month or two. so i am excited about that! i
will get to go and see!
but that is about all that happened this week in brazil!! but thanks
for everything! i hope you guys had a nice 4th of july without me ha.
i guess i should say 3rd of july ha. hopefully next 4th it is warm
enough to float the canal! well love you guys!
love,
elder long
hello my family! this week was another quick, spiritual, exciting and crazy week! i will start from last week. last week i was able to preform two baptismal interviews in jacaré. i was there on friday(my bday). and because we got there late, we werent able to buy any food that night. it is kinda of different when nobody knows it is your birthday ha. but i wanted to just focus on the work. on saturday we had a crazy baptism. do you guys remember marcia? she is alex and samanta's mom. she was able to be baptized now because she got everything figured out with her divorce. that was one baptism i have been waiting for for quite a while! so it was nice to be able to see! but i was in jacaré on friday and the baptism was at 3. i didnt know that until about 12 on saturday! so after lunch we got a ride to planalto. we filled up the font which finally filled up at 3:30. meanwhile, marcia was just waitin. she said that the water better be hot! it still hadnt heated up by that time. so we decided to wait longer. we needed one more witness anyways. so we were just waiting and then the gas ran out!!!! so the water was really really cold!!!! so we decided to just start. we went to go get baptismal clothes for her....but we didnt have any! the bishop had taken the bigger ones to be washed after the baptism of lucas and moisés. so we didnt have baptismal clothes. we had to get a ride with marcia's boyfriend, who is not a member but helped a ton, to get some clothes. when we were returning, the brother that was on his way to the baptism to be the other witness was waiting for the bus still. we picked him up and went for the baptism! we had a quick meeting and then we entered into the cold water. i didnt think it was to bad. it couldnt be colder than the canal water at missy's baptism. it was a pretty special moment. she started crying. then we went to work!!!!! we had to visit everyone so they would go to church the next day. it was amazing how many people we were able to teach in about 3-4 hours of work. we taught 7 lessons!!! that was awesome! Sunday was probably the best group of meetings in my mission...if not in my whole life! the first class was so good about the holy ghost! the teacher did a great job! he really helped with some of our investigators! the second class was a great compliment for the first! our investigators were asking how they would be able to get the priesthood. then sacrament was great!!! the best part was one of the testimonies. it was the first time that i have seen one of my baptisms baring testimony at church. Lilian bore an awesome testimony about how she was prayin for help from god and a sign that He loved her. the next day, i messed up on a number and ended up at her house. it was great! that night we had a family night at Benedito's house. it is an awesome family in the ward! then after passing the numbers for the week, elder mendes called to tell me that i was transfered. i thought i would stay in Jundiaí! on monday i needed to be at the bus station in jundiaí with elder mendes and the other zone leader, elder tomaz. we headed to campinas with a brother in the stake! his name is marcelo. he is probably the best ward mission leader in the mission! we then had a meeting with president. that was really awesome! he talked about the importance of light and truth in our lives and that we need it to have protection from the temptations. he taught a lot about creating a higher standard now so we can in our homes with our future families. (like everyone talked about in the last conference.) i really think this is important and that there may come the day when we wont even be able to go to church because of persecution. so it is important to have this higher standard so that our future families can have this light and truth. Then we found out the transfers!!! I WAS TRANSFERED ALL THE WAY TO JUNDIAÍ! MY COMP IS ELDER MENDES...AGAIN haha. so after taking all my luggage to campinas, i loaded back into the same car and headed back to jundiaí. i only moved from one area to the area next door haha. elder mendes also did that haha. it is a great zone! there is 18 missionaries in our zone. oh and to answer dad's question, elder murri is in my zone now. and chad went to Americana (a city a little north of Campinas). the only problem is that elder mendes rolled his ankle really bad and isnt allowed to work. so i havent even taught this week and i feel like the worst missionary haha. on tuesday, we had transfers. i went with all the missionaries that were transfered to campinas again and brought all the new missionaries of the zone back to jundiaí. then yesterday we just sat at home trying to figure out where we will work this transfer. our area is a pretty tough place to work. it is the center of the city so there are tons of huge building and everything. since this area was dedicated, there hasnt ever been a focus area in this area. so that is our goal for the transfer. president also said that the purpose of this area is to helpthe other areas. so i dont know if the baptisms will be quite as frenquent here....we will see :) but ya it was a pretty exciting week. and pretty crazy that i was only transfered to another part of the zone and that i am with elder mendes again. that is awesome though. there is tons that i can learn with him still! one thing i am studying right now is the atonement! like how it worked and why it had to be how it was. so i was wondering if all of you could try to find a talk that talks about the atonement. i would prefer it to be more profound doctorine if possible. i was reading a liahona(ensign) from 1980. there was a talk by Bruce R mconkie that talks about knowing Christ. there is a difference between knowing Christ and knowing things about Him. and the best way to know Him is through studying the atonement. and maybe it will help bring more light and truth into our home like all the general authorities talked about in the last conference. so could you guys send a bunch of this kind of talk for me?! :) well that was pretty much my week! pretty exciting huh!? well love you guys!!!
love,
Elder Long
oh and i did see elder murri and chad. elder murri is in parque da represa, jundiaí and chad is in americana. i talked with both of them quite a bit. there is also another missionary from IF in my zone. his name is elder phillips. this is his last transfer and he is in jundiaí mirim. the weather here is getting a little colder. it is about 15-20 degrees celsius here. i am not sure how much that is. oh and i returned to be the junior in the companionship but that is alright. it will be good to work here!
Hey everyone!!! so yesterday i went to the temple and wasnt able to use the internet. i got permission to use it really quick today. the temple was really good. really spiritual. i got to sit in the celestial room by myself for a few minutes. it was really cool!! we woke up early to catch the bus and got home after 6, so pday had already ended. so sorry. hopefully you guys werent to busy. but also i am sorry that i still dont know how we will talk on christmas. we will find out on next tuesday. we are going to have a mission wide conference that day. and it should be pretty cool and maybe i will get my other package. i got one from katie and two from you guys this last tuesday. thanks a ton!!! i havent opened the wrapped presents yet. i will save them for christmas. the ties were already pretty much open so i grabbed one to use at the temple yesterday haha. but ya. chad is still in my zone and elder murri is in my district. i stayed here in rio claro with elder paillo. he was called as district leader as well for some reason. he has done a little bit better at following the rules now. now like half the time he gets up on time instead of never hah. but i will tell you really quick about my week! on sunday we had two baptisms!! rafaela and elza. it was kinda sad though cuz rafaela didnt know who her real dad was. she always knew her real dad as her uncle. and she found out at the baptism that her uncle really is her dad and her parents are really her aunt and uncle. her "dad" went to the baptism and one of the family said get a pic with her and her dad. this is her dad you know...we already knnew and so did everyone but her. but she started crying when she found out. but on tuesday we walked an hour and a half to this place we had never been. we taught irmâo paulos friends( he is eujaço and kathleen's dad). we marked 4 baptisms and found 9 nw investigators!!! woohoo! it was really awesome. but then we caught the bus and the driver said he would pass near our house but he really went to the other side of the city so we were outside our area and farther from our house. we had to run home!!! it was a good nights work though!!! well that was pretty much my day!! hopefully you all had a good week. and i hope you all have a good week now!!love you guys!] love, elder long
Well, everything is good here in Rio Claro. I will tell you about my jam-packed week. I had just finished this letter up and then I lost it. So I will type it up real quick now. Ha-ha awesome! So last pday after email and going to the center of town. I played basketball. It started to rain so we just shot around in the rain. No one showed up and as we were leaving a brother in the ward showed up so we played around the world. I barely squeeked out a win ha. Then it stopped raining and a kid from the ward that has never played basketball showed up so we played 2 on 2. I was on his team. We won too. He stood on the 3 line and just watched. The times when he had the ball he threw it away. But it was good to play. Felt good, but I was pretty tired afterwards. This Sunday that kid asked me to sign his shoes. Ha but I haven’t yet. We also played ping pong. That was fun. On Thursday we had a multi zone conference. It was really good and president talked a lot about personal revelation. He said that he had been praying that some missionaries receive dreams as revelations. I had three! I haven’t dreamed at all in my mission and I had three that I feel were revelatory. On Sunday I gave a talk on the atonement and talked for 10 minutes. I felt I did all right. I found out, though, that I need to work on my accent a lot! Ha I will start working on that. on Monday we had family night with Irmão Sergio and his family. It was pretty good. Their family is awesome. The message given was about having joy in the journey. Pretty good. Yesterday was our zone meeting and I was pretty excited to talk to someone from Idaho. Did I tell you that Elder Murri is in my zone? he is a lot like Eric, too ha. But maybe that sounded a little trunky, ha. But I wasn’t expecting it, but another Idahoan showed up at our zone meeting. He is from Iona, too! Chad was involved in an emergency transfer and now he is in my zone. So I will see him quite a bit.
Well, I will hurry and tell you about who we are teaching! Well, we are teaching a man named José Dias and his wife and 3 daughters. They have been investigating for quite a while. Yesterday we went there with a pretty good lesson to teach to mark their baptisms for next week. The mom wasn’t there so we decided to wait. We left a message with them and it was just a scripture, but it was really good. And they started asking questions and stuff. He said he only had one doubt and we solved that so we will see how the lesson goes today. We are teaching a man named Gleides. He is a little strange and is worried that his church will kill him for being baptized. His baptism will be the 28th. We are teaching Diani and Cristina. They both want to be baptized this Sunday. We just need to talk to their dad to make sure they can. We are teaching two children of a member that will be baptized this Sunday as well. Other then that we have Luciano and Janice. They are just waiting for papers so they can get married. Janice works Sundays so doesn’t get to go to church. She has been having doubts lately. Elder Paillo left a message and I wasn’t paying attention haha. he looked at me to bare testimony and I didn’t even know what he had talked about. I just told her that tribulations always show that there will be blessings right afterwards. I was just talking and don’t remember what I said. But she said that’s exactly what she needed. Pretty awesome!
Well, Jay Dee sounds pretty busy as the secretary. I couldn’t handle that. Especially in a different language. Mom, maybe you could talk to the parents of my other friends like Jon and Tyson so I can get their emails too. And dad, the zip code that you usually use is old so 13010-215 would be better and faster. And I was wondering if maybe someone could send me grandpa’s life history. And some maple contract in the next package. Thanks Tons! Love you all!!
Well i dont have much time to talk today! i was transfered and so now we pay for internet and i only have 1 hour. so i will hurry and type quick. well this week has been pretty good. elder lima and i taught a lot of people again. we almost had a baptism but we decided he should probably visit church one more time. his name is luiz fernendo and we taught everythin to him in one lesson so he could be baptized the next sunday. well we went to church and he didnt really wanna go cuz his family didnt want to. so we decided to wait. we had more people at church this week. leandro brought his friend, eric, again. and he will be baptized on the 14th. we found a lot of new people again this week. and on monday we marked 4 baptisms. that means they are scheduled for two or three weeks in advance. so this week was good. o nthursday elder jensen from the presidency of the 70 was here. he speaks spanish and is learning portuguese. he tried really hard and never got frustrated or gave up. he had a translator too though. i saw chad there but didmt talk to him. just like 30 seconds before the meeting started. then i qualified afterwards. a zone leader has a division with you for a day to see if you qualify. so we had to run to the bus to catch it like always when we have a meeting in campinas. so i couldnt talk to chad. i qualified though with elder castleton. but i am not a senior this transfer. i was transfered to a city called rio claro. my new companion is elder paillo. another brazillian and he has only been here for about 4 months. so that kinda makes it a lil bit of a bummer that i am not senior but whatever. i still dont understand the people so i would have a hard time. i have no idea when i will finally become fluent. thnk i will go crazy if it doesnt happen in this transfer! but anyways, this ward is pretty awesome. we do a lot of activities with the teenagers. and we will play basketball every pday besides today. we have to clean our house this pday!! ya! this week is stake conference and president will be here so he might stop at our house ha. but our house is alright. it is a lil worse than my last one. the shower leaks a lot! thats not good. also we dont have gas for the oven. it is a little long from the church too. oh haha and you cant flush toilet paper down the toilet!!! so which do you guys think is worse now?? using water and your hand like colby or leaving used toilet paper in a plastic bag next to the toilet?? haha. but anyways ha that was pretty much my week. oh last wednesday, i saw a rat!!! the biggest rat i have ever seen!! i thought it was a dog!! it was bigger than any cat i have ever seen! and yes i meant to write cat! with its tail it was over 2 and a half feet long!!! but that was my cool story for the day. haah love you guys hope you have a good week!love,elder long
