Baptismo!!

December 2, 2009

hey everyone how is it going?! everything is good here!! hopefully thanksgiving was good and your holiday season is going great! haha the missionaries in my mission are probably the only americans in the world that have fasted on thanksgiving haha. not exactly the same thanksgiving but a good fast is always a good thing ha. how was the family? did you have it at grandma long's house? i think thats what you guys said. well i guess i will tell you all about my week this last week.
well our mission was crazy for baptisms this week. we all wanted to break the record of 100 baptisms in a week! thats why we had fasted on thanksgiving! but it was a pretty good week. we didnt quite baptize 100 though. it was like 83 or something like that. but everyone worked pretty hard this week. elder paillo was called as district leader interviewer (that is how you translate it. i dont know if thats the name in english). on friday we had a division with the zone leaders. i went with elder coello. he is a 6'8" 25 year old brazillian. he is huge! but we taught a bunch of lessons in their area. we marked a baptism and she was baptized last sunday! it was also nice having a companion that will study in the mornings and wake up on time and arrive at home at the right time! on saturday we finished the division and then i went to do the english class at the church. as you guys know, we were teaching a family of 5. the dad is ready, knows everything about the church,wants to be baptized, but doesnt want to right now. so the assistants to the president came here to do their baptismal interviews/lesson of faith. a lesson of faith here is a lesson where we try to resolve their problems so they can progress. well josé doesnt have any problems. i think we will stop teaching them though. but anywyas i got left at the church teachng the class. well not really teaching cuz nobody showed up!!! at like 4 (an hour late) people showed up. i had to stay there though cuz i couldnt go anywhere alone! well on sunday we had the baptism. his name is eujaço. ya that is a strange name here as well. but i got to preform the baptism! that was pretty awesome!!! it is hard not to get a big smile on my face as i walk into the water!!!!! he didnt show much emotion, but his dad was so happy!! he pretty much loves us!!! that was pretty awesome! unfortunately, our baptisms next sunday didnt go to church so the baptism fell through until next week. ha she was locked in her house. and the other got called into work! but they are progressing well. we taught rafaela and her family yesterday. we watched the movie of the restoration. her dad would definately be baptized if he didnt have to work sunday mornings. he works at like a farmers market. so if it rains hard they dont go. so its been raining everyday here so i am kinda praying for rain the next few sunday mornings haha. but he already has a testimony of the restoration and is already telling the family that they have to read the book of mormon as a family at night! pretty cool! we also taught a member's friend! he accepted baptism on the 13th. i think he has a problem with drugs though. or at least cigarettes. so we will work on that! but this week was alright. we didnt have very good numbers cuz we couldnt work friday, saturday, or sunday becuase of baptismal interviews. oh ya, elder paillo went to do an interview during church. so i stayed in our ward alone. the pianos here have the music programmed on but it is in english. so they had me find the right songs. the piano didnt work though. but everyone thinks i can play the piano now!! haha they are like thats to bad that we didnt get to hear you play in sacrament. haha. i just say ya to bad haha. but this week hasnt been so great. we have only taught three lessons the last two days. elder paillo is pretty trunky. on monday he finally got dressed for the day at like 1 30 after our weekly planning and lunch. that makes things more difficult. it also doesnt help me to not think about home. but i am doing alright. i think it is a good thing i am not in a place where theer is snow during christmas. it doesn't even seem like christmas is close. it feels like it is still july. haha pretty cool. but everythings good here. love you all! hope you all have a great week!

November 25, 2009

hey everyone! how is everything going?! everything is awesome here! i still just have the same problem! it is just hard to have a comp that doesnt like to obey the rules. we were pretty late getting home last p-day. but this week was pretty good! we had 3 BAPTISMS! we baptized daiane, cristina, and kathleen! they all have family in the ward! i was pretty worried though cuz daiane and cristina showed up like 30 minutes late! we were pretty stressed! luckily everything went good though! we have 6 other people to be baptized this next week. i dont know about the family of 5. they are all waiting for the dad to be baptized. and he is the worst eternal investigator in history!!! i would have left them like 3 weeks ago but elder paillo wants to try and force it on them i guess haha. we should have had one more baptism this week but he was sick and the doctor said he cant leave his house for 15 days. so this week i think will be about 15 days. we will see haha. last week we had a family night with sergio and sonia. they are members and they love the missionaries!!! they treat us like children! it is the coolest thing! they are so nice! she reminds me a lot of barbara sanchez! its pretty cool! it is the rainy season now! it rains just about every day now! that wouldnt bother me to much but one of my shoes has a hole in it now. so it lets the water in. so i had just one pair of shoes. but dont worry i bought some duct tape and the others are good now too haha. i dont think they will make it til two years though haha. i will have to buy some in the future. for now i am good though. well i feel my portuguese is getting better. daiane and cristina have a little 7 year old brother that always tries to teach me. ha my accent is still like an american tho. but i dont like that elder paillo always tells people how stupid i am cuz i dont know portuguese. he always says "you can pray, elder long doesnt know anything. he doesnt even understand what you are saying. so dont be embarrassed." pretty awesome huh?! haha and also, he really does only want to baptize snakes. yesterday we visited a family and the dad said if he received an answer from god that he needs to be baptized, he would be. ha elder paillo just stopped talking to him and started trying to mark a baptismal date with his daughter. pretty ridiculous. ha but oh well. i will try to not let it bother me and keep learning.

so jay dee said in his letter that they mark baptisms two weeks in advanced there. ha we mark ours 2 weeks and sometimes only one. haha. that is crazy but is probbaly a good thing. it was nice to hear how everyone is doing (tyson, jon, james, and jay dee). it is cool to see what they are doing in their missions! they sound pretty happy! well i guess i will talk to everyone later. love you all!!! thanks!!! have a good thanksgiving!!!
love, Elder Long

November 18, 2009 letter

November 18, 2009

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!!

Love,

Elder Long

November 11, 2009

well i better tell you all about my week this week. i am trying to hurry cuz i don't have much time and i am playing basketball at 3. well i will quickly tell you about my companion elder paillo. he is from the south. rio grande do sul. it is cold there and even has snow. so he is dying in this 95 degrees with humidity weather as well. he was in the military before the mission. he is pretty cool. he is pretty tall and i guess he used to play basketball for the military team. so should be fun to play today. well the first four or five days here in rio claro weren't that great. i could have sworn this city only had crazy people. i only talked to crazy people or drunks the first two or three days. pretty interesting. but now we are starting to find normal people. we had stake conference this last sunday and we had 11 people there so that was a lot different than in itatiba. that's pretty awesome! there is one 18 year old in our ward and we taught his family. his two sisters really wanna get baptized but the mom is more or less. but we should have at least two baptisms this next saturday. we are also teaching jose dias and his wife and 3 daughters. we were teaching and didn't say anything about baptism but he said he wants to get baptized but isn't sure which church yet. so that's cool. we will see how it goes. also there is a couple that has been waiting for papers for marriage for about 2 months now and will be married during this transfer! there is another man in our ward that is the only member from his family. he has 4 little kids and we know two of them want to be baptized and probably the other two. we just need to find time to teach them. oh and we are teaching another couple named cassio and lucinea. they live and work in a bar. so that could be a problem. but they are getting married so they can be baptized. we will see how they handle some of the commandments. but he is going to play bball today. well that was pretty much my week. it was pretty good and pretty quick. it has been super hot here this week. pretty crappy. luckily it has been raining quite a bit. its cool that it only starts raining at 9:30 when we get home. then we can sleep during the night without dying of the heat! oh and the teenagers here love us. i don't know why. but they would do like anything we asked them. that is pretty good. they are pretty funny too. so it is a pretty sweet area here. except we don't have a bank or a post office in our area. so i will probably only send missionties letters in this area. i cant find a nativity either mom. so i don't know what to send ha. and we don't have anywhere in our area that has cool stuff. only the center of town has that stuff. so we will see. well that was my week haha love ya.
love,
elder long

NOVEMBER 4, 2009

THOMAS AND CHADthis is a pic of me and elder castleton with my paper for qualification

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

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