Hey everyone, first week in Cocoyoc

Hey Guys!

So this week has been crazy. So on Tuesday, I had to get up at about 5:25, and head up to Amecameca for transfers, to meet my new comp. Lots of travel, but it was really cool getting to know him. His name is Elder Castillo, and he's from a small town in Puebla, which I'm not quite sure how it's spelled, but its something like Natitluan. He's really sweet. We get along really well, he's really humble, and were working so hard.

So right now we're opening an area, so we didn't know anybody, or the area, or the roads, or anything. We worked so hard to get everything down (lunches, the different colonia names, road names, meeting our investigators, contacting a ton, searching out all the old investigators, and yeah). I'm in an area called Cocoyoc 2, in a town named Cocoyoc (surprise). It's a town in the Cuautla valley, so I'm back in the heat again. It's like 20 minutes from Cuautla. The good news is that it's super close to everything, so I don't have to burn so much money traveling. The area is super small, but super good. We've got a ton of investigators who are listening to us, and are progressing really rapidly. I'm in a ward again, and it's probably the best ward I've seen here in the mission. It's a small ward, maybe 100 active members, but they all work so hard. The bishopric is involved in everything, and they work their butts off. We have a ward mission leader who's so sweet. We've been working closely with him. The members go out of their way to help us in everything, especially being friends with our investigators, talking to them, sitting with them in church, and coming out with us as we do our visits. They visit the less actives and the recent converts as well. The bishopric gives callings to all the recent converts, and the relief society president and the elders quorum president visit them, put their names on the food list for us, etc. It's basically everything a missionary could ask for. It's so awesome being in a ward with such a strong stability, because I've been in a super tiny branch for the last three months. I absolutely loved it, and I would love to head back to Tetela. I miss it there, and it was hard to leave, but I love my new area so much.

The good news is that I have a ton of photos! Well maybe not a ton, but a good amount. It's really hot here, kind of dry, but surrounded by pretty hills and volcanoes, which is so pretty. I'm learning a ton here. I've been falling on my face a ton, and just soaking it all in, learning from all my mistakes and experiences, and it's just been incredible.

I miss you guys a ton. I'm gonna close off by saying one of our investigators has her baptismal interview for tomorrow! If she passes, she'll get baptized this Friday, and confirmed on Sunday, in church. I'm really pumped.

I miss you all a lot. Please stay safe. I pray for you all, all the time.

Love,

Elder Jacob Long

My last week in Tetela :(

Hey Everybody!!!

Well the big news is that this was my last week in Tetela. We got the call on Sunday during church, that I'm headed out. But I'm really pumped because I'm staying in the zone, I'm just headed over to the other district. I'm going to be opening an area with a missionary named Elder Castillo. I don't know him at all, or anything about him, but I'm really pumped to get to be working with him.

The other huge news is that Gabby got baptized!!!!! I'm so pumped! We did his baptism with cold water hahaha. The sisters in Brisas didn't know how to work the boiler, and they filled the font up for us, so it was like ice water. So colddddd. But it was an amazing, spiritual experience. Gabby's mom is inactive. She was born into the church, but she hasn't gone in twenty years, up until yesterday! She came to Gabby's baptism, and then she came to church for Gabby's confirmation, stayed for all three hours, and now she's going to go to church every Sunday! It was like a double baptism hahaha because we baptized Gabby, but as well activated his mom. Well really, we didn't do anything. It was all the holy ghost. But seeing the transformations in their lives was awesome. Saying goodbye to gabby was hard :(

The other cool thing this week was that yesterday, the stake patriarch came to talk to us about patriarchal blessings during the third hour of church (because it was the fifth Sunday, all of us were together). He gave a really great lesson/Q&A session that was really spiritual and informative. I really enjoyed it.

I love you guys so much. I'm really excited to go to a new area. Some of the good news is that I'm not going to have to travel so much in my new area. The bad news is that this new area is like hotter than Cuautla hahaha. But the girl who was going to get baptized, now has everything planned for her baptism this Saturday, so my ex comp Elder Lujano is going to do her baptism with his new comp, which I'm also really excited for.

I love you guys. I included photos of the baptism of Gabby and of my last Sunday with everyone there. I hope you enjoy the photos!!

Love,

Elder William Jacob Long

Another week in the bag in Tetela!

Hey everyone!

Bad news, short letter coming your way. Good news, today I bought another SD card, so next week I'll have more photos!!!!!!!

The big news is that we're going to have a baptism this Saturday! Our zone leaders are headed up to our area tomorrow to do the baptism interview, and everything is all set. I'm so psyched. Our baptismal candidate's name is Gabby. He's been one our investigators from my first day in the area. We finally have permission from his mom to go through with it, and he's finally come to church enough. I'm so happy. Next week I'll send you guys more info on him.

I don't really have a funny story to share, but some cool things that have been happening to us. I think that we're seeing lots of blessings in our area because of the sacrifices we're making. Last week I only had two full days in our area to work, but yesterday, one of our other investigators told us that she wants to get baptized. She's been coming to church forever, and knows everything, but never wanted to be baptized. It completely surprised me, but it looks like we'll be able to go through with her baptism this week as well. It was so nice.

I love you all so much. Please stay safe. I hope you guys have a fantastic week.

Love,

Elder William Jacob Long

Hey Everyone!

Hey guys,

Don't worry, no Spanish this week hahaha! To be honest, I'm going to be very brief, because i don't have a ton of time.

Its been an interesting week. After writing last Monday, I got my memory card stolen. I left it in the computer, realized, ran back, and the computer was gone. the cyber cafe manager took the computer out to do "repairs" and he told me that my card wasn't there. Kind of rough, but I learned my lesson that I need to be more careful with what I do with my card.

So there won't be any photos for a while, because next week I need to buy a new card :/

The other bad news is that we didn't have the baptisms this week either. The mom changed her mind, and didn't give us permission to do the baptism. So that fell through. All in all, it was a rough week. We only worked in our area for two full days. But in these two full days, we found 6 new investigators, and 5 of them accepted baptismal dates. Some of them didn't show up to the church, but one of our really important investigators, Gabby, did, and he's going to be baptized on the 20th of May. I'm really psyched for that.

I learned a lot from this week, from the troubles, the ups and downs, the lack of work in my area, and the opportunity to do so many divisions and work with different missionaries. I learned from their examples, and I had a lot of fun to be honest.

I love serving the Lord. I love serving a mission. It really is incredible.

I miss you guys a lot. I always pray for you. Please stay safe.

Love,

Elder Jacob Long

If I Had a Clever Subject Line Title, I Would Put It Here

Buenas tardes a todos!!!!!!!

Les voy a escribir este primer párrafo en Español, para que no me puedan entender jajaja. Pues, pónganlo en google translate o algo. Bueno, tuve una semana muy, muy buena. Tuvimos muchas lecciones, pero lo chafa es que nosotros tuvimos que poner el bautismo (que íbamos a tener esta semana) en este martes, mañana. Entonces no tengo fotos de bautismos para mandarles :( Pero esta bien, próximo lunes les voy a mandar.

[I'm going to write you this first paragraph in Spanish, so that you can't understand, ha ha ha. Well, put it in Google translate or something. So, I had a good, good week. We had lots of lessons, but the bummer is that we had to reschedule the baptism that was planned for this week, to tomorrow- Tuesday. So, I don't have any baptism photos to send you all. :( But it's ok, I'll send them next Monday.]

Well I hope y'all understood that... Writing in Spanish still takes a bit of work. But yeah, I had a good week this week. We found a pretty decent amount of new investigators in our area. We have tons of people to work with, which is really nice. We have a lot of people who should be getting baptized in the next two to three weeks. What's really neat about being in a branch without a church building (we hold our services in a house of one of the members here) is that we are going to hold all of our baptisms, starting tomorrow, in rivers, and lakes, and pools, instead of traveling an hour and a half to the closest church building. So there should be some pretty cool photos heading your guys' way this next Monday.

The language has been really interesting for me. I can talk pretty much fluently (I've been working a lot on ironing out my grammar mistakes and my gringo accent), understand everything, but my accent is what gets me. A lot of the times people don't understand me very well, because I still have a pretty thick accent. My comp right now is from the state of Michaocan, but he has a very, very strong Chilango accent (the accent from Mexico City, which is a very interesting accent). So for the past four weeks I've been speaking hard core chilango. It's been fun learning this type of spanish, because it's the accent native to my mission.

It's been pretty crazy running all up and down, all over the place. This past week I was only in my area for five days max. This week, I'm going to return to my area tomorrow at about 3. Then this thursday we have to travel to Brisas (one of my old areas) to do baptism interviews. Then Friday we have to go to the center of Cuautla (2 hours away from my area) to go to a leadership meeting. Since I'm not the district leader, I'm going to go on divisions with the comp of the other District leader in our zone, for half of the morning. And then I'm going to head over to Casasano (another area in our district) to do divisions and train the Elders there. And then we're going to head back up to our area on saturday and do divisions with other elders in our area as well. It's been an exhausting schedule, and it's going to get even more busy. But I've learned a lot about sacrifice in this cycle, and it's really been fantastic.

I love you guys so much. Thanks for always writing me and making time for me. Please stay safe.

Love,

Elder William Jacob Long

PS I've got some fotos to send you guys! This one is of my old district! The others are my area and how hilly it is hahahaha.