I had a few realizations this week about why I should have been more greatful for things before my mission. One evening as we were heading home, I was thinking about how as a missionary I felt like a wandering vagabond. I live out of this little apartment, I plan my whole day on my own, and basically no one around really knows whats going on for me. And then I realized that that is probably more like real life than my past! I always had home as kind of a home base to live out of. But it wasn´t always like that. My parents had to put that all together for me before I got to enjoy it. Basically, I was blessed with a very solid life, because of my great parents. I always had a real home to go back to (not just a little apartment that lacks emotional connection) and that was my place in the world. So I guess I´m saying, Thank you, Mom and Dad, for making such a great home for me.
My second realization had to do with something that happened this month. It´s one of those things that I coulnd´t tell while it was happening, or my mom would have freaked out, but now that it´s past I can tell the story. Basically, for some reason, I wasn´t switched from the Spokane, Washington system to the Portugal, Lisboa one when I came here, and because of this, I didn´t get any money in October. I wasn´t really worried, because the members are awesome and my companion is, too, but for the last few weeks I´ve really been watching my funds, and it has been a great budgeting experience. But anyway, I got through to the 15th, and was kind of surprised that I had made it through half the month on last months money, and then things started getting really tight, but then just before I ran out, the finacial secretaries were able to get some money on my card. But what´s funny is, I went through most of October on September´s money, and then I got my money for October this week, and I´ll get my money for November pretty soon, too. So basically I´m going to have a bunch of money once November starts. I was thinking about this, and I think that in our lives, blessings can kind of be like this, too. At some points in life, we feel like we haven´t recieved our "allotment" and we´re just barely scraping by on what we have. These times can be rough, but I can say now from experience that if we just hold on, blessings are just right around the corner, and pretty soon we´re going to be swimming in more blessings than we know what to do with.
So there are some thoughts for this week. In terms of actual stuff that happened, we started teaching a new investigator who is awesome. There are a bunch of members here who moved from Brazil, and there are a bunch more coming. A few single men are here, working until they can bring their families, and the members are being amazing people and hosting a lot of these people. Our new investigator is one such man, who is currently living with the ward mission leader. So basically, he walked right into our trap, or rather, God put him right in our trap. He´s super open and humble, and I can´t wait to see him progress.
I´m going to add more pictures to my mission pics folder. If anyone doesn´t have access, email me.
I love you all! Keep being awesome!
Elder Lofthouse
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