July 28, 2010

welll sorry i dont have to much time to write today. i was in vinhedo
yesterday and when we finished the exchnge in itatiba we all decided
to play basketball. it was pretty fun. 3 on 3! but i really am out of
shape haha. i am pretty tired now. i hope it doesnt affect the work to
much. it was a pretty fun day even though we just played with a flat
ball ha. we didnt have a pump or R$40 to buy a pump! elder cook,
sorensen, pereira, hunt, pedroso and i played! it was fun. we played
for about 3 hours. it has been forever since i played and i was pretty
embarrassed with myself haha. but oh well! i will learn how to play
again after the mish. this week was pretty good. last week we had
interviews with president tanner. it was a good experience. i thought
it was weird that he just wanted to get to know us and it wasnt like a
normal interview is. but i think he resolved some problems in our zone
or at least helped! unfortunately, elder leary was transfered right as
i was getting to know him good and getting to be good friends with
him. but now elder cook is here. he is really funny and we are getting
along really well already! he is a twin to the cooks from
bonneville(will and mike cook). he doesnt know anyone from idaho
though. this week was pretty intense. elder ribeiro has gotten pretty
lazy and decided that he wont leave the area of atibaia anymore. so
whatever exchange that we do, the elders have to come to atibaia and
then i go to the area with them. then to finish up, we have to go to
atibaia again. he has been pretty upset about something. he is a very
emotional person. he is a great guy but it seems like he hasnt learned
a lot of things in the mission that i learned very early in the
mission(if i didnt learn as a kid). he doesnt want the best thing for
the zone but the best for him. but i wont complain. i think i have
complained a lot about him. and i dont think there is any reason worth
complaining in the mission. at least in the exchanges i have been able
to help the new missionaries. they seem to look up to me...dont ask me
why. i felt like i helped them but i dont think i am a better
missionary than their trainers. but i still like helping them. i guess
maybe i have a different point of view and other things to teach. i
dont know.
i went on an exchange in my old area, itatiba. i have never walked so
much in itatiba in one day. and i served there for 4 1/2 months!!!! we
went to every side of the city for baptismal interviews. when i was
serving in itatiba, i was still in good shape. so i never understood
why everyone complained about the hills. but now i know!!!! wow!!!
itatiba is made of just hills!!!! there is no level ground!!! i need
to go running in the mornings or something. (that probably wont ever
happen ha).
this week was a lot better. we found some great families. and i was
very surprised when none of them went to church! we will have a
marriage tomorrow and he will be baptized on sunday. his name is
emerson. he is the only member of the family that isnt a member. so it
will be great! he is pretty happy. oh and about these three families.
none of them are married either...so we will do a little bit more
marrying here in atibaia! since sunday, it has been an alright
week...but tuesday was hard on all of our areas. we have more
missionaries this transfer so it is alot harder to get to the district
meeting on time. we have to wait and then a lot of the areas cant
arive on time because of the buses. so everyone ends up getting home
really late.we will have to find a solution to that! but i am doing
alright. i am feeling more confident as a zone leader. it would be
easier if my companion was confident in me or at least in himself. so
that will move here in a couple weeks. he is just counting down the
days ha. dang...i started complaining again.
but really i am doing great. i am excited to start baptizing again!!
it has been a while. i think it has been over a month. i hope that
gives us some more of the spirit and more energy to find more of the
elect!
well love you guys. thanks for everything!
love,
elder long

July 21, 2010

hey guys thanks for all the new music everybody and keep sending it
this week haha. but i guess i had better tell you all about my week!
this week was an alright week. it went better than last week. we didnt
have as much success though. as you guys know, i was in an exchange
pretty much the whole last week. elder manwaring and i were having a
great week. but when elder ribeiro got back, we didnt find any new
investigators and just returned to teaching the same people so that
was kind of a bummer for me. but this week(since monday) is better. i
dont know if you guys know this but in the mission there is a weekly
planning session every monday. and at the end of the planning session,
there is an inventory, where we talk about what we like and dont like
about our comp. haha. well it really is a good thing. i probably would
never say some things if there wasnt a time set up exactly for that
type of thing. he has been trunky so i told him that he needs to get
better at that and he has been better. i dont have very many cool
experiences to tell you this week. i am enjoying being around elder
ribeiro a little bit more but he wants to have everything perfect but
it isnt willing to change anything about himself. just i need to
change. but oh well ha. things are getting better now. i just need to
figure out what it is that the lord wants me to learn with him.
the greatest experience that i had this week was last night. i
interviewed an eternal investigator here in my area. i havent ever
taught her so i am able to do the interview. i felt like the spirit
was really guiding me. this lady hates the world though!!!!!! she
hates her family and she hates where she lives. she was arguing with
her mom and was in a fight with her mom as she was dying. and she
doesnt even feel bad about it....i didnt even know what to say. how
can someone hate their mom say much that as she is dying they can
argue and yell at them, and then not even feel bad about it
afterwards!!!! that is so crazy. it made me realize how much i like my
family though!!! you guys are great! hehe. but it was a good
experience. when people complain that god hates them and doesnt ever
give blessing, it is easy to see the blessings that i am receiving!
but that was about all that happened this week. we have marked 3
marriages. one will be married and baptized on the 29th and then the
others will be next month haha. i have got a lot of experience with
marraige!! i am marrying everybody hahaha. it is a great thing to
marry while on the mission!!
well love you guys. sounds like everyone is settling in long from
home. that is good. i am excited to visit you guys at your new homes
in nevada and arizona!! that will be fun. but love you guys!!
love,
elder long

July 14, 2010

hey guys how are you all doing? well my week was quite a bit different

today. not like the normal week in the mission. sounds like you are
all doing good and sounds like olivia had a good 16th bday! and i
guess everyone is pretty sad to have missy moving away too. but i
guess i will tell you about my week real quick. i am at a bus station
right now waiting for my bus that will be leaving at 12. so i gotta
write you guys and to president.
well on friday night, we had an exchange. i went with elder leary in
my area and elder ribeiro went with elder cavalcante in imperial.
little did i know, elder ribeiro had a plan. he called the assistants
while we were in exchange and he asked for a transfer. he told them
that he feels that he is holding me back and that i can progress a lot
faster without him here. i was kinda upset when he told me this
afterwards. i should have been the first person he told. that is what
inventory is for each week! but anyways, the assistants thought that
this wasnt a good of enough reason to have an emergency transfer, so
they told elder ribeiro to go to Louveira(another area in our zone).
elder ribeiro stayed there for 4-5 days and we just finished up the
exchange just now. i was with elder manwaring the whole week and i was
the only zone leader. so i had to do everything alone for the whole
week(as far as planning and the zone stuff is concerned). i feel like
he just doesnt want to be here because it is hard to be a zone leader.
but i have no idea. i guess i will learn more about patience and
enduring to the end in this transfer. but i hope things are better
now. but i will tell you about the exchange with elder manwaring. he
is from st george. he is a good missionary that just needs a good comp
that will help him to gain confidence and get better at his teaching.
the exchange didnt start out very well! i asked eder manwaring, "does
this bus go to atibaia?" he said yes. we caught the bus and fell
asleep because it was early still. when i woke up, we were entering an
iddy bitty town that no one has heard of called jarinu. i didnt think
anythin of it because i have already caught a bus from jundiai to
atibaia that passed through that city. so i just started to try to
sleep again. about ten minutes later, a lady said, "this is the last
stop!" i had no idea what to do haha. i just started walking back to
the bus station of jarinu (that was about 45 minutes away by foot). i
decided to ask someone and we ended up getting a ride. this whole
time, the members were waiting for us to have lunch. ha we got there
at about 2:30 for lunch. that was an adventure.
our exchange was pretty good after that. sunday was great. we were
able to reach a lot of goals that we had set and there were quite a
few people at church. monday was hot and crappy! we walked a ton and
didnt teach very much. a good missionary uses his head and not his
legs. so i wasnt to happy. everything fell through in atibaia so we
went to perdões. elder manwaring was just about asleep durin the first
lesson we taught. have you guys ever seen the best two years? there is
a part where the new elder is showing all the wrong pictures in the
flips. hahaha it was exactly like that with elder manwaring. i taught
the first part about prophets and everything and passed to him so he
could teach about christ's example. he skipped a flip and went to the
part about joseph smith. in our mission we have a pic of joseph and on
the other side there is a pic of the first vision. he was really tired
and opened up to this part. he looked at the pic of joseph very
confused and then looked at the other side where it was the first
vision. then he held up the first vision and started to explain about
how christ was baptized.hahahah it was hard to not laugh. and then
about two minutes later, he dropped the flips and it went clear to the
other side of the room haha. i felt bad for him. he felt bad too. but
yesterday was pretty tough too. it wasnt raining when we left but then
it started to rain. we didnt have umbrellas. so that wasnt a good
thing. especially since everyone in our zone is already sick. we erent
able to teach anyone during the afternoon and there was no one in the
streets to do street contacts. we finally decided to go get our
umbrellas. we had a split with a member yesterday. we are always
blessed when we go with members. his name is jetterson or "deto." he
is a great guy and one of the best members to teach with. he served a
mission and he still acts like a missionary, probably because he
married a returned missionary too. but he is a great guy and we taught
two really good lessons without any flip problems ha. deto bore a
strong testimony that helped tons. at the end of the split, he gave me
his umbrella. the one i had was a piece of crap and i was basically
walking in the rain anywyas haha. but that was really nice of him. i
thanked him and then we ordered a pizza to celebrate our hard day ha.
it had chocolate filled crust. weird but good!
the zone is doing good. i felt pretty good about the week considering
i was all alone. elder ribeiro finished up his holiday break and maybe
we can work together now. our investigators have gotten better but we
had a great family that would have been baptized this week. yesterday
the mom came out with the book of mormon in her hand. that is always a
bad sign. she tried to return it and said she doesnt feel good at
church even though she already told us that she liked it. her
boyfriend moved back in with the family and put a different idea into
her head. so that is to bad and i was a little sad for them and that i
wont be able to help them anymore!
well that was about all. it was a pretty exciting week. tomorrow we
will have a multi zone conference, so i will talk with president and i
will get some letters and my scripture cases (finally! it has only
been a year since i oredered them). but i hope you guys are doing
great and that this week is good and everything goes great with the
move :( well love you guys!
love,
elder long

July 7, 2010

Mustache night activity in Perdoes

Elder Lima will be a dad soon (he will train)

Downtown Atibaia

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 have training 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

June 30, 2010

well i guess i will tell you all about my week. i gotta be hurry today
because my email to president needs to be really good since we have
transfers this next week. i think this week was one of the worst weeks
of my mission...number wise. it was pretty crappy. but i still learned
tons and things are getting a lot better now! this week i almost didnt
even work with elder ribeiro. he was always calling me telling me to call and tell someone
something to do instead of just calling them ha. so we ran out of
minutes on both our phones now haha. but this weekend i went on a
roadtrip again ha. it was pretty cool. we went to bragança and socorro
on friday. i went with elder cavalcante this week. it was a pretty
good experience. there were two interviews in bragança and one in
socorro. we got to bragança and then caught a bus to the place where
their investigators live. we had to hurry or we would have missed the
bus to socorro. i cant believe how fast elder cavalcante did the first
interview. the sisters hadnt even talked to the girl's mom about the
baptism yet. this girl's aunt is a member and she has been going to
church for a while. her mom will be baptized in the next couple weeks
now. but anyways, i was talking to her mom about the baptism and elder
cavalcante went to do the interview as fast as he could. he finished
in less than two minutes!!!!! her mom and whole family went to church
and will be baptized now! then we went to the next interview. i
interviewed him. his name is luciano. he is a great guy! he knew all
about the commandment and everything. then i asked him if he was
excited about the baptism. he said he didnt want to be baptized now.
so i gave him a lesson of faith. then he still didnt want to be
baptized. so then i decided that he should pray to ask god if he
should be baptized. so we kneeled down and i asked him to say the
prayer..........he didnt say anything. then i asked him again. he
didnt want to say it without help. i explained how to pray and then i
helped him and he repeated. i said"heavenly father." he said "heavenly
father." i said "we thank thee for" and he said "we thank the for"
then i asked him "what would you like to thank god for" and he said
"what would you like to thank god for." that kinda took away from the
spirit. haha but then he asked if he should be baptized and finished
the prayer. he said, afterwards, that he wanted to be baptized. that
was pretty cool. it was a great experience. then we had to run to
catch the bus to the center of town or we would miss the bus to
socorro. the bus was already at the bus stop so we took off running. i
was just entering the bus and elder cavalcante was about 40 yards away
still and the sisters were about 60! haha. i made the bus driver wait
for them! but we got to the bus station in time. but then the bus
ended up being 45 minutes late anyways! so we got to socorro just in
time to sleep! so we had to do the interview the next morning. i
interviewed her. her name is amanda and she is a basketball player.
she plays almost as much as i used to. actually not really but she
plays quite a bit! that was cool. there arent very many basketball
players here!
but then i worked with elder cavalcante one more day in my area. it
was a good exchange.
on sunday, we had 8 people at church! but elder ribeiro didnt want to
do anything. i wanted to hurry and try to reach all our goals but he
just wanted to take the day easy and go home. that made me pretty
upset!
yesterday, we had our district meeting and the assistants went again.
they always go to my district meeting the last week of the transfer.
it was a great meeting and this week is going to be great!
well that was pretty much my week. sounds like you guys all had a good
week. i guess olivia is at girls camp. i hope they have a
good time. i also got some more of the letters from my friends. they
sound like they are doing pretty great! well love you all! tchau!
love,
elder long

June 23, 2010

hey everyone how are you guys doing? unfortunately today will be
short. this week went by really quick and i cant even believe it is
already pday! this last week was a lot different than any other week
in my life haha. well last week, i was just traveling all over the
place! we had a split with the elders from vinhedo. elder ramos(one of
our district leaders) came to atibaia. it was a good day. we walked a
ton and just made a lot of contacts to try and find people to teach!
so it was an effective day. but then we decided to stay in the split.
so elder ramos and i went to interview the baptisms in the sisters'
areas. first we went to bragança. i interviewed two there. then we
caught a bus to Socorro. we had three interviews there. we ended up
sleeping in socorro. there is a member there that has guest house. we
stayed there. they made us a big dinner and breakfast too. it was
awesome! then we made our way back home. but we tried to interview
another person in bragança but they werent there. so we headed to
itatiba(my hometown). i ate lunch with my old ward mission leader. he
is married now which was a huge surprise to me! i thought he wouldnt
ever get married but i am happy for him. then we had another interview
there. then i finally got to go back to my area. i should say my city
though, beacause when i got back i went with elder nothum. and elder
cavalcante went to interview our baptisms. i helped elder nothum get
everthing ready for their baptism. but everything went pretty well in
our zone! bragança was the only area that didnt have a baptism. last
week every area had a baptism. on sunday, edivaldo and lera were
baptized. they are also from the perdões branch! things are pretty hot
in the branch haha. then yesterday, we had our mission conference. it
was really good. we talked a lot about journals and the example we are
leaving behind. if you dont write in your journal, it shows that you
arent really converted or "born of god." because you wont write
something that you did if it wasnt something you want your future
children to read. luckily i have been writing in my journal everyday.
i was also very happy! i was scared that this last meeting with
president would be a lot of tears coming from president which is very
different from normal because he is always really strict and firm on
the rules and always calling us unto repentance and that is the best
part of the mission. i dont know where i would be right now if i was
in a mission where you can slack off and where you dont have to follow
all the rules in the missionary handbook. but he still called us unto
repentance like i asked for in my prayers this whole week! i learned
tons this week and i am super excited.
there was some bad news though. well my package arrived but i didnt
receive it. so you know how you said that the ankle braces are cheap
there now? well they are really expensive here. they put a R$80 import
tax on it and because i didnt have cash to pay, it will be sent back
home...i tried to pick it up but there was no way to do so because i
still cant get money out of the atm. so i dont
have a package yet. i might go to campinas on friday but if not, you
guys will be receiving the package in return. so i guess you can send
it again without putting the anklebraces on there or you can just keep
the box and eat all the candy haha. i even stayed in campinas last
night to pick it up today but it didnt work out. can you beleive that
after about 1 year in the mission i finally stayed the night in
campinas! crazy huh! i was happy to receive a bunch of letters. you
guys dont write as much as you used to but that is fine because i just
receive letters once a month or so. it was good to hear from my
friends too. jay dee sounds pretty excited to finally be out of the
offices and i think eric is ready to leave the offices too! they have
probably learned tons of patience there! they are good men! well thanks for everything! hope
everything is good back at home....and in reno. i hope you are
enjoying your new house bec! have a great week everyone!!
love,
elder long

June 16, 2010

Pamela's baptism

Part of the zone

hey fam! how are you guys doing? hopefully you had a good trip to sun
valley and everything. have becca and lonnie moved to reno already? or
are they heading out this week? my week was pretty good. i guess i
will let you know all about it real quick. well this last week was a
little bit rough. we werent able to do everything that we wanted to.
we wanted to find a bunch of new people but the only people we found
were those that dont really progress because they dont want to. so
that wasnt the greatest. we should have had two baptisms this last
sunday but it turned out to be just one. we have been teaching
fernendo. he lives with his aunt and his sister. his aunt has
costudy(i spelt that wrong) of him. his aunt needs to get married
before being baptized but she said signed everything so he could be
baptized. but then he decided to talk to his mom which he usually
never does ha. and she said he cant be baptized. we still havent been
able to go there to talk to her about the baptism. we need to find
time to go there though! but on sunday we had the baptism of pamela at
the branch in Perdões. it is pretty cool in a branch. and the members
are working pretty hard too. they took about 7 investigators to
church. it is nice because we just work with referrells there so
everyone has a friend in the church that helps them to hold strong.
that is great! this is the problem with most wards in brazil. the
members dont ever do there home/visiting teaching. and that is why the
recent converts become less active. but i think that maybe, perdões
will have missionaries next transfer. but i hope the members dont
decide to work less once they have missionaries there! but the baptism
went well. pamela's dad received the priesthood right before the
meeting so he was able to perform the baptism. that was pretty neat.
that was probably the best part of the week. that always is the best
part of the week.
i feel a little bad. i
havent felt so great about myself this transfer but i think things
will get better now. actually, ever since i was called as a zone
leader i feel different. i moved my focus to learning how to help the
missionaries (which i still havent learned haha). but because of this,
i feel like my teaching has gotten worse. i guess i kinda forgot that
i was here to help people to come unto christ. of course i can do that
by helping missionaries have a change of heart, but i feel that when i
am teaching, i am just teaching lessons and not PEOPLE anymore. so i
will have to move that.
Oh ya. so as you guys probably know, the world cup started this last
week. it is pretty different than any sporting event that happens in
the united states. nobody works on game day. everyone is watching the
game. everything is closed and everyone is crazy!! i am in a smaller
city too ha. but during the brazil games, we have to study. there is
no use in working during the game because nobody accepts a message. so
it is nice to be able to study a little bit more but makes it harder
to teach everyone we need to during the day. but i think from now on
we are going to be able to split with the members so we can teach more
people. that will be great!
well, that was pretty much my week. we have been doing quite a bit of
exchanges with the other elders in the zone. i like to do exchanges
but don't like to at the same time. i feel that the missionaries help
me more than i help them. so i like to learn but as a leader i am
supposed to help them too and i dunno if i am doing that very well ha.
but things will get better ha. but anyways, love you guys and thanks
for everything!
love,
elder long
p.s. did you guys get the dvd of pictures yet?!