Lofthouse in Lisbon Chapter 12 - Festa Africana, with cake and apostacy

Living in Portugal is hard! I can´t turn on the sink without starting a fire! No, that´s actually true. Every time you turn on the water, the water heater turns on, and it uses a gas burner to heat the water, so when you use the sink, you hear the fire ignite. Here are some other things I have discovered about Portugal:

1-Pedestrians have the right of way. You can practically walk into the middle of the street anywhere and everyone will stop for you, or you can stand on the side of the road looking like you want to cross, and everyone will stop for you.

2-English slang is Portuguese slang. It´s kind of funny how much I hear the word freakin´ used by people here.

3-Portuguese bread is good. Like, really good.

4-There are three cultures here: Portuguese, Brazillian, and African. They´re all awesome and friendly. But the Africans take the prize for being the most open and friendly. We´ve had been come up to us and say hello and ask how we´re doing and if we need any help, and they just do it because they want to ask. It´s great.

And, whenever African members have parties, they invite the missionaries. I actually had no idea what was going on until about half way through (I´m always a little lost) but it was cool. There were about twenty people in one tiny house, and we had cake, and then one guy got out some champane (that´s the apostasy referred to in the subject). I think it was a birthday party for one of our investigators, but I´m still not quite sure. It was fun though.

Now, time for a fun scripture study moment I had. So, one day I was studying in Preach My Gospel, chapter 6, which is all about Christlike Attributes. I was reading the section on virtue, and I started counting the ways it lists that you can increase your virture.

1-focus on righteous, uplifting thoughts

2-put unworthy thoughts out of your mind

3-obey the commandments of God

4-follow the councel of church leaders

5-pray for strength to overcome temptation

6-pray for strength to do what is right

7-repent quickly of any wrongdoings

8-live worthy of a temple recommend.

8 is symbolic of rebirth in Hebrew. So this is like a formula for you to be spiritually reborn, in the sense of you becoming a more virtous person and leaving your vices behind. Then, the next day I was studying other things, and I ended up in D&C 88. Verse 67 talks about having an eye single to God and being filled with light. Verse 68 says, "Therefore, sanctify yourselves..." and I wanted to know more about sanctifying my self. So I looked at the foot note, and guess what it says? Man, Spiritually Reborn. And the way it worked out, this happened on the page next to the page where I had written a formula for spiritual rebirth! So those eight steps to virtue are how we can sanctify ourselves and recieve the promissed blessings in those verses (you´ll have to read them to find out what those blessigs are).

Anyway, that´s all for today. I went to a cool place called Quinta da Regaleira, and I got a bunch of pictures. I´m trying to get everything in a folder in Googel Drive for you all to be able to see. But it was super cool. It´s a big, old castle with lots of cool stuff around it.

Well, I love you all, and hope you all have a great week!