October 28, 2009

Well hey everyone! how are you all doing? everything is pretty good here. well i guess i will tell you a little bit about this week!
well this last week was pretty good. we marked 8 baptisms! if everyone went to church here, this area would have like 5 baptisms per week! everyone is really excited about getting baptized and everything but then when sunday comes around, they dont go to church. we even go to peoples houses in the mornings to get them, but no one is home ha. it is pretty frustrating! but we found a ton of new people to teach. we had 20 new investigators again this week. thats 3 weeks in a row with 20 new investigators and a bunch of baptisms marked every week. we have a bunch of key indicators in the mission to rate our success. for example: new investigators, lessons with members present, investigators at church, and baptisms, and some other things. but anyways, our numbers are all like the best in the mission or at least pretty far up there. but we aren’t having results like others. i guess it would be an awesome thing for me to learn right now at the beginning of my mission. i need to learn how to get people to go to church ha.
but this last week we went to atibaia so elder lima could do a baptismal interview there. it was a long way from the bus station and the last bus was at 6. so elder lima and the senior companion there went to go do the interview and i stayed near the bus station making contacts with the american that just got here. we stayed there in case the others didn’t make it back in time so we could catch the bus and go to itatiba. well turns out they didn’t finish in time so me (with my 6 months) and elder sorenson (with his 3 months) went to itatiba. we only taught one lesson and we just watched the film the restoration. but i had to do everything and taught the whole lesson. it was probably a pretty good learning experience. i think i helped elder sorenson a little with some things i questioned at that time in my mission. we also had a division with marcos and pedro. some members in the ward (ward mission leader and pedro is the one i baptized a couple transfers ago). i went with marcos but he was sick and couldn’t really talk so i taught the whole lesson too. it is kinda cool to talk more often and i should probably start doing that when elder lima is with me too. but tomorrow i will have another division with elder nunes, the zone leader and ex-assistant. this is the division to see if i will qualify as a senior. so i will let you know how it goes. also tomorrow we have a mission conference with a 70! i am kinda excited and i believe it is with the entire mission so i will be able to talk to chad! i will let you know about that as well.
well thats what is going on here. let me know what you are all up to. oh and since you just got a new mustang, you guys should look up the only car that is made in brazil! it is called Gurgel! it is awesome hahahahaha. but yup i will talk to you guys later! well love you! Tchau!
love,
elder long

October 21, 2009

this last week was really good. we had 20 new investigators with 6 baptisms marked! unfortunately they all fell through because nobody went to church this sunday!!! i think we may have figured things out though! we are going to have a member with a car that will go with us to pick up the investigators in the morn! i cant believe it is already pday again! this week went by way fast. also the transfer is just about over too. one and a half weeks is all. i thought i just barely got elder lima as a companion haha. but things are going really well! i am teaching pretty well now. i need to work on all the lessons a lot still but it is coming! i am at about 6 months now and unfortunately i am not fluent! ha hopefully not to far off though!!! we haven’t really gotten too far into teaching anyone this week but we are teaching tons of people. hopefully that means we will just slowly move through the lessons with everyone! haha then baptize everyone the same day! to bad we are almost at the end of the transfer cuz maybe ill get moved before everyone is baptized. we will see how everything goes! we are teaching a mom and daughter and they are pretty awesome. we taught the word of wisdom and they don’t have a problem with that. also we taught paulo and his wife. they arent married so we invited them to get married first and they accepted. the wife said she felt the spirit so strong while we were there and when she read and prayed, so she left the book of Mormon open on the headboard of the bed to try to keep the peace there. pretty awesome!! the temple was a pretty good experience. i pretty much understood everything. unfortunately i didn’t receive a really big revelation about the investigators or myself ha. maybe next time! but everything is good here. sweet how you bought a new mustang. i am excited to see it. and i sure hope it is there in a year and a half. oh and i guess now that olivia took over the taurus that just leaves me with the mustang haha dang! ha well have a good week everyone. sorry i didn’t have more time to tell you about everything in more detail. i will do better next week. love you!!!

October 14, 2000

well i will hurry and tell you about my week. we are teaching a lot of people and i think i will just tell you all about them. first of all on last p day we visited maria gloria. she is 81 years old and in her death bed. she is really sick and we gave her a blessing. i did the annointing. we taught a man named davi and he lives in the back of a tattoo parlor. it was pretty interesting to have missionaries knocking at a tattoo parlor. we marked a baptism with him. also we messed up on an address and ended up teaching elza and marking a baptism with her. also we marked baptisms with luiza and aline. and also with roberto and sara. we taught some pretty good lessons this week and have a lot of new investigators. i went on a division with elder swenson my district leader. everyone says how awesome he is but he taught the one lesson terribly that we were on. he taught everything he knew. started talking about mary and the ressurrection during the message of the restoration. i guess i still learned alot from the division. also we had a district meeting yesterday and i learned a lot about pride. we didnt even talk about pride though. there is an elder that things he is all that. and during one of the practices i was the investigator and he said to his native companion, maybe you should teach cuz i talk really fast nd he probably wont understand. that made me pretty mad. ha he talks slower than any other american missionary that i have talked to. but i will try to be more humble. well have a ood week. love you guys.

love,
elder long

October 7, 2009

well this week was pretty good. i was really excited for conference! we had a lot of people that we have been teaching and we were thinking about moving a baptism up to in between the two sessions of conference instead of waiting until saturday. we also found a married couple that is pretty awesome and then a mom and two 25ish year old sons. they were really awesome. well conference was at 1 and 5 here. so we hurried and ate lunch andust in time to head to conference. the zone leaders called and said we could only go to the ones on sunday. i think cuz we didnt have investigators there. so i was a little bummed about that ha. then on sunday morning there was a rebroadcast of the priesthood meeting we thought but turns out it was the second session of saturday. it was good but i like conference a lot better in english. in between sessions they kept playing elder hollands talk about christ from last conference. it is called none were with him. it was in english too by the way. but they put it to music and video too. you should try to find it. it was awesome. i remembered that talk. it was awesome!you guys should try to find the video! but i couldnt understand much about conference. elder holland had a cool book of mormon that had a page folded by hyrum i think. thats about all i got out of the last session ha. i also understood about elder andersens son going to that new area that he prayed would open. oh and some more bad news. the baptism we were thinking about moving up to this sunday, well he moved to vinhedo...he was awesome he read to alma in like 5 days or less. i hope that the missionaries there can find him and baptize him. so now we probably wont have any baptisms this week but i am pretty sure we will have 3 next week and maybe 4 or maybe even 5 haha. we will see. i pray that we will!well that was pretty much my week. pretty alright i guess.
well i hope you all have a good week this week! love you!
love,
elder long

September 30, 2009

well this week has been pretty awesome!! Elder Lima is awesome! he is more like me than any of my other comps by a long ways! its is pretty good and he is one of the only brazillians i have met that are sarcastic haha. and as you know our family is pretty sarcastic ha. we get along pretty well. so thats pretty good! we are also teaching so things are a lot better with just this. we have already taught half the lessons elder garcia and i taught all last transfer ha. that rocks!! but ya we are teaching more people now but none of them are really progressing really fast except for adenilson. we taught him the word of wisdom on saturday i think maybe it was tuesday. he doesnt have any problem with that. and he really liked church on sunday and is going to watch conference this week! pretty awesome1 so he will be baptized on the 10th if things go well. thats awesome! i hope things are good with him still. we had a multi-zone conference this week. i didnt see chad though. i got my package! thanks a lot! i liked it a lot! so it adds up to 100 things!? what will you guys do when i reach day 600 or something ha. that will be a huge package haha. just kidding. but ya at this conference we heard about the importance of the book of mormon and the importance of getting references. so president told a story about a missionary in chile that started a program there. in this program they entered into houses and kneeled down and blessed the house and then they knew who was ready for the gospel by who felt the spirit. haha sound familiar to anyone?!! pretty cool that i am in south america and people are talking about my dad haha. and dads always complaining about how he is always introduced as the dad or the brother of someone. haha people in brazil know stuff about him and he hasnt ever even been here. well that was about all this week. thanks for the packages. nobody is getting letters in brazil. i dunno all of whats going on but i am sure you guys are still sending them! thanks for the support! mom i was thinking that maybe you could send me a couple of shirts. a jazz shirt like for elder lima and either another jazz shirt or a byui shirt for elder garcia. they are having stuff sent here for me too i guess ha. but i would appreciate that a lot. probably like a large for elder lima and medium for elder garcia. thanks! oh and another missionary that i really like, he is awesome, wants peanut butter and i said that i would ask for some haha. thanks alot! love you!!
Love,
Elder Long

September 23, 2009

well i will quickly tell you about my week. we didnt teach to many lessons this last week! it was a pretty long week. we saw marcos and he said that he didnt know if he wanted visits anymore but i think he will still visit church and still progress. he is just a little confused. we had a couple people lie to us haha. it was pretty crappy and i am ready to have some success haha. we are teaching an awesome family! they are really cool and said they are looking for a religion that will bloess their family haha. that is our church!!! so that was good. they said they will go to church this week but i just remembered that this week is conference right? and i dont know what time the sessions are so they might not be able to! i am really excited for conference though! so this week was transfers so i will tell you about the meeting and what happened....oh wait i cant tell you about the meeting cuz i wasnt there!!!! we missed the bus. we finally got there about 2!!! well there were other missionaries there. the new ones, chads group. my comps name is elder lima and we are in itatiba still. he has a really different accent. that might be tough. he doesnt speak any english either haha. what a blessing! haah he arrived in the ctm the day after i did. ha crazy huh?! but ya we had a bus at 4 so i just ate and sat in on the meeting for the new trainers. that was pretty good. i wasnt able to talk to chad because he was in a meeting and then when he finished president started talking. i dont know what area he is in or who his comp is because i missed the meeting. so once president finished talking i had to run for the bus. which of course we missed!! we had to wait until 615 haha. it was pretty crappy missing the bus like 4 times!! but i feel bad that i didnt talk to chad. maybe you could tell debbie to tell him i am sorry and good luck! well i dunno how much i will like this comp compared to my others. he is pretty cool i guess. i dunno if i like how he works. we havent gone out proselyting really though so i dunno really. he loves to talk tho and doesnt stop much haha. that is good becuase i will probably talk more since he is always talking to me! his main goal is like to get me qualified so thats pretty cool. you guys i am sure want a better description of him but i dont know how really haha. maybe after i know him better. i got my letters this week. there was like 7 from dad ha. i didnt know about the mail strike until you guys told me. i wonder if kate and my friends have gotten my letters ha. i guess i will have time to write some of my friends this week. thanks for all the addresses and letters. i didnt get my package becuase for some reason the zone leaders have them. so i will get it next tuesday or at conference. oh so as i was walking here there was a flash flood. it was not raining and then all the sudden it was pouring!!! the wind was blowing really hard and the rain was movin more sideways than downwards. my umbrella broke and i had to run here. ha i am pretty cold now ha. well let me know about your week. thats is terrible that byu lost and that hillcrest is good again... pretty dissapointing! is byu ranked still? well let me know about everything! love you!
Love,
Elder Long

September 16, 2009

Missy thought you guys might like to see this pic of Thomas with Karlee Hill in the CTM.


He said he was being Joseph Smith (sorry, too lazy to rotate the pic--I'll try to change it later).

Love this dorky pic of Tom. I think it's the "I just crapped my pants" face. You can sure tell he's super sad that he doesn't have to wear his hair in a part anymore.

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Hey how is everyone doing this week? hopefully well! so this week was more successful! we taught a lot more lessons this week and found a lot more people to teach. i will tell you about the people we are teaching right now. first of all there is Nilton, aline, and cristine. it is always hard to teach them because nilton is drunk 24/7. he is the uncle of the other two. he never makes sense when he is talking haha. the two girls are really good though. they need to go to church though. we taught a guy named zepadrosa this week too. he talked for about 40 minutes by himself! and then we left a message in about 10. it was pretty long! he was just rambling on. we taught this other guy and his wife. he is the son of a pastor and is helping to orgnize a church here haha. we invited him to pray but he decided that it is better to find answers from the scriptures so he went to the bible. his bible is made for bible bashin with mormons haha. it has footnotes for references in the BOM that dont agree with the bible. except everything he said was wrong or had a reason that makes perfect sense. the church doesnt even have a bible with footnotes in portuguese yet. ha he also asked us to read scriptures in the doctrine and covenants that his bible said were wrong. we didnt argue or anything and just let him talk. we are going to go back there sometime and answer all the questions haha. we also taught a guy named marcos. it is so hard to teach him. we will say one sentence and he will go off for two minutes. then we will say one sentence and he will go again. it is frustrating! i dont have patience for that haha. so we are teaching except the people we are teaching dont make it easy haha. well that was my week ha.

well thats all i got this week so i guess i will talk to you all later. i havent got my package yet. i will either get it this week at transfers or our next meeting with the president. oh this week is transfers so next week i will let you know if i moved. we have transfers every 6 weeks. and that just reminded me of the questions that mom asked in her email.

that food was pastels not pizza ha. and i made them haha. i rock! maybe i will just buy a basketball. probably not today cuz maybe i will be moving anyways.

and as for treats...i like fastbreaks and mini reeses and snickers. and huckleberry cordials and lots of other stuff haha. well love you all. have a good week!
Love,
Elder Long