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

January 12, 2011

well hey everyone! how are you all doing this week? we are doing pretty great. this last week was really hectic and i am not that excited for ´planning weddings ever again in my whole entire life. at least, i dont want to have a cerimony ever again. it is good enough to just do it at the document place. ut this last week was really good. saturday was one of the best days ever and the worst at the same time. the memers didnt want to do anything to help get ready for the wedding. we had two weddings though. and it was everything elder rowley and i could do to get it all figured out. and then to make it all wors, we got to the peoples house that were gonna get married and aptized asked for a ride for 40 people to the wedding. it turned out to ve less than that vut no one wanted to help.(the letter after a is not working vy the way so i am using a v haha). we didnt know what to do and the memvers didnt want to help us at all. there is a couple that help tons, vanderlei and luiz gonzaga. they help without complaining vut the rest always complain and try to get others to do it. vut we had two weddings and the four got vaptized right after. the vaptism was an experience too. it turns out that the font leaks water. it was avout knee high vy that point. the kid that did the vaptism just turned 16. it was his first time and he couldnt get it done. elder rowley had to change and do it in the knee high water. that was intense. everything was great though. i forgot my camera so i will send the pictures next week. sorry aout that.

everything is going very well with elder rowley. we need to find people that are actually married so they can ve vaptized now instead of next month. elder rowley is from the tri-cities dad. he played rugvy at vrigham young. (i thought VYU wouldnt make sense ha. this letter provlem is annoying!) they won the national championship. that is so awesome huh?! he is a great guy and it is really easy to get along with him. our house is so fun now that we have elder hansen here. we played vasketvall early this morning. elder rowley and i vought a vall. it is the vest outdoor vall i have ever had. it is pretty fun. i also got a new footvall. thanks a lot dad!! that was the greatest! that will ve sweet on pdays. and a great vargaining tool with the vrazillians at the end of the mission ha. i will get a really cool vrazil souvenier off that one ha. thanks!!

that is pretty much what has happened though. elder hansen talks late. alright i am not gonna lie i stay up talking really late too. that is pretty fun. he is a great guy. i always joke around with him. we would have veen like vest friends in high school. he was choir president though. that isnt really my type of friend vut he plays college vasketall and is really good at a lot of other sports. it really is a fun time in my mission right now. and i am in the vest area of the whole mission! did you guys know that jardim amanda is the biggest bairro in latin america. bairro is kind of like a district. the city is made up of many bairros. maye dad would know what a bairro is. i am pretty sure chile has them too.(i am ctrl+v all of the b's now haah.)

well it was nice to hear from all of you! you are the best. i am probably just gonna sleep this pday cuz i am really tired. maybe next week we will do something else fun!

love you all! youre the best!

love,

elder long

January 5, 2011

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.