Another week gone in Tetela

Hey guys!!

Gonna keep this letter super short because Im gonna send a tonnnnnnnn of photos.

Big news! We now have enough people in our group to become a branch. The stake presidency is going to call a branch president very soon. Were all super pumped!!!!!!!!!!!! It's been 7 weeks now of hard work here in this area, but things are going so great. The growth of the church here is incredible.

I'm safe and happy. I'm doing well. I love the area and I have a great comp. I hope you all enjoy the photos. I'm gonna send photos from when I was with Elder Chischille and Elder Avalos, and I'll send a bunch from this cycle.

Love,

Elder William Jacob Long

New Week Down in Tetela

Hey guys,

So I had a pretty great week here in Tetela.

To start off, I received my new companion, Elder Lujano. he's a very incredible missionary, and I feel really lucky to be his comp (maybe I'm secretly a trouble missionary, and that's why president keeps sending me very good comps hahahaha). He's from Michoacan, Mexico. He's the District Leader of our district, which is interesting, because it means we spend a lot of time out of our area. To put things into perspective, our area is about 1 hour and 30 minutes away from Cuautla, so we are always traveling places, sleeping at other companionships' houses, and going crazy, but that's okay. Last night we slept at our zone leaders', on the floor of their house. I probably got four hours of sleep, with probably no REM (kept waking up uncomfortable), but that's life.

Elder Lujano is a good dude. He's a very experienced missionary (he has 18 months in the mission, and 6 months as a district leader, going on 7 and a half). I'm learning a ton from him, and we're working extremely hard in our area. It's been very funny. I feel like this past week, I really started learning just what consecration is in the mission. Basically every thought and action of mind has been completely absorbed and dedicated to the well-being of my area, the growth of the branch, and the progression of the members. It's been a week of hard work, but I've been learning a ton.

I'm going to keep this letter short, because I'm going to send a bunch of photos. But tomorrow, I'm very excited, because we have our meetings with the President. We have a meeting with him every cycle, so I'm pumped.

Actually JK this computer can't read my memory card. That's great.

Anyways,

I love you all. I pray for you all, all the time. Please stay safe! Happy Easter!.

Love,

Elder William Jacob Long

This week and my reflections on conference

Hey everybody,

This week this letter is going to be fairly brief, because I'm going to try to write a lot of people individually.

So I've been in the area of my district leader for 4 days now. I only had four days this week in my own area. The problem is that my area is super far away from everything, and our meeting house doesn't have wi-fi or satellite or any other way to watch conference. So I've been back here in Cuautla sleeping at my district leader Elder Davis's house, so we can watch conference with our stake in the stake center. It's been interesting. But conference was really incredible. I was especially moved by President Uchtdorf's talk in the Priesthood session. He made some really incredible comments about leadership that really stuck with me. Elder Bednar's talk from Priesthood was also really incredible. I was a little alarmed (as you guys probably all were as well) When President Monson didn't attend the second session on either day. It has me really worried for our beloved prophet.

This past Thursday, we held a "Family Home Evening" in the meetinghouse for all the members in Tetela. The purpose was to basically teach all the members how to do FHE. It's been really interesting working in the area, because the members are so incredible, and super eager to learn and work, but they don't know much or understand much about the commandments, ordinances, covenants, church organization, etc. Typically in the mission we only focus on teaching investigators (They changed the key indicators of missionary work in this past worldwide missionary broadcast), but in our area, we have had to really focus on the members as well, because we are basically the only three people in our entire branch that knows about the Church and the Gospel.

Anyways, during this FHE, we did an activity where we say a prayer and then we write down questions that we have about all sorts of stuff, and then we pay attention during conference to receive answers and revelation about our questions (classic). Anyways, this turned out to be a really incredibly spiritual experience for me, because I received several clear-as-glass answers to my questions. It was an incredible experience.

Well that was my week. I hope you guys all had a good week. As always, thanks for writing me. I always read your emails.

Love,

Elder William Jacob Long

PS Sorry about the lack of photos, I'll send some more next week! I should have about ten or so.