Chapter 25 - Novos Treinando Novos

Olá, mundo! Sorry I didn´t write last week. Elder Plummer got sick and we had to stay home for about five days. And you´d think that with two weeks, I´d have something to write about, but I´m kind of drawing a blank. I read the scriptures a lot. I´d love to share what I´m learning, but literally, in the last two weeks I recieved inspiration and some huge revelations that have changed my whole view on life, taking care of my body, church service, and being a true follower of Christ and a leader of others, and I can´t even start to explain it in an email. I´ve already started making plans for putting it all together in a book. If anyone really wants to know, just send me an email and I´ll try to put a few thoughts together for you.

I can´t beleive this trasfer already passed! It feels like it started yesterday. This has been the best transfer so far. I´ve learned tons, and grown tons, too. The Samuel Lofthouse that existed before the mission is gone. Like, never ever coming back gone. It´s great. I still have tons of weaknesses to overcome, but I have no doubt that by the time Elder Lofthouse returns home, me-right-now will also have died and been reborn even better. I can´t explain anything. Being here is just the best thing ever. I don´t know how anyone could think to face life without going on a mission. It´s just the best thing ever. I love trials. The scritpures talk a lot about the refiner´s fire, and I always saw it as something that was needed to help us improve, but still undesirable. Now I just want to get thrown right in, becuase trials do nothing but make us better. That´s it! All the pain, misery, and suffering really is just to help us achieve our goal of celestial glory. I love trials! When I really on the Lord and obey Him, I always come out feeling stronger. It´s great! And when we fail, it doesn´t matter, because Christ already atoned for us! We just get to get back up and keep going! Repentance is so great! And it´s as simple as, "Yesterday I saw the rain clouds and complained, but today I´ll just enjoy the rain." And then we´re happier and better and closer to Christ because we decided to leave something behind to recive something better! The something could be thoughts, actions, attitudes, or anything, but when we sacrifice these things to the Lord, He pours out miracles upon us. I love it!

What more can I say? I´m going to be staying in Alverca for another transfer. I´ll be training a new missionary (which is a little weird since I don´t even have six month here in Portugal) and it should be good. Just a little more refinement.

I love Christ! I love the scriptures! I love life! I love the fire of trials!

Fiquem bem!

Elder Lofthouse

Chapter 24 - Hello Elder...oh, wow that's a long name!

Wow. I can´t remember this week at all. Literally, I just sat here for five minutes thinking, and I can´t think of anything that happened. So, I guess it´s time for another session of, "What did Elder Lofthouse find in the scriptures this week?"

Oh, I just remembered! As I was thinking of cool things I learned this week, I remembered that we learned some cool things in Zone Conference, and then I remembered that we had Zone Conference this week! So here´s what we learned that was so cool.

Let´s start in 3 Nephi, chapter 3. Gidiâni (I only have my scriptures in Portuguese, and I can´t remember any of the names in English any more. Sorry.) is writting a letter to Laconeu, telling him basically that he has a big army that is going to come and destroy everyone if they don´t submit themselves to the robbers.

Now let´s look at 1 Samuel 17. The people of Israel are under attack, and the Phillistiens sent out a giant named Goliath (I remember his name) and all the people are too scared to fight him.

Daniel 3. King Nabucodonosor builds a big idol, and three young men are refusing to worship it. The king can´t look weak in front of his people, or they won´t respect him. So he tells them that if they don´t worship it, he´ll throw them into a fiery furnace.

Now, in all three of these situations, we can see the power of men. Armies, phisical strength, worldly authority, and all manner of earthly power, being used against convenent people of God. How often do we face the world? Every day, I think. But how is it that we ought to see the world? Well, in D&C 3:7 the Lord told Joseph that he shouldn´t fear men more than God. And it seems that the heros of the past knew this well.

3 Nephi 3:12 - Laconeu was a just man, and coud not be scared by the threats of a robber.

1 Samuel 17:26,45-5 - David knew that Goliath was nothing and had no power to challenge God, and putting his faith in Him, he slew the giant and saved the land.

Daniel 3:16-17 The three young men say that it isn´t even neccesary for them to respond to the king. God can save them, but even if He chooses not to, they will only worship the True God of Israel.

All of these heros understood this one great truth: The Lord can conquer anything, and the strength of men is nothing. My personal favorite is the response of Nephi to his brothers. In 1 Nephi 3:31, Laman and Lemuel say, "Laban can command fifty, even slay fifty; then why not us?" to which Nephi replies, (and I´m going to put this the way I hear it in my head), "What are you guys talking about? The Lord commanded us to do this, and we´re going to do this! Laban has fifty men? So what? Let him come. Even if he had ten thousand men under his command, they wouldn´t have any power to stop the Lord. Laban is nothing compared to The Lord! So let´s do this!"

Do we trust in the Lord enough to say that? "I´m going to church, even if I have to fight my way through an army of ten thousand men to get there. I´m going to pay my tithing even if it means I´ll get thrown into a furnace for it. I´m going to do my home teaching, even if it means sacrificing the only free time I have in a week, because The Lord God of Israel is my King, and Him only will I serve."

We can all use a little more faith in the Lord, and a little less fear of men. In the words of my mission president (in respect to other men), "How many of them have the preisthood? How many of them have the Gift of the Holy Ghost? None of them. They are nothing. We are the Host of Israel. Why should we fear?" A newly ordaned deacon has more authority than any worldy king in the Kingdom of God. We are the chosen people of God and nothing can or should come between us and Him. His work will go forth, even if all the nations of the world turn against us and try with every thing they have to break our faith. We were choosen before this life, and we have been endowed with spiritual gifts and powers greater than all the armies, soldiers, money, power, and authority of the world.

So, don´t fear men. Love God, serve Him, and fear not.

Have a great week!

Elder Lofthouse

Chapter 23- Run Around

You all remember how I said that I had a fun time running that one day last week? Well, I guess I expressed a little too much gratitude, because I was blessed with daily oppurtunities to race against the clock this week. I do love running, but it´s much better when you aren´t wearing a suit and carrying a bag full of books. However, one of the races this week was pretty good, and I got to rub it into Satan´s face afterwards. We were switching companions after an exchange, and we had plenty of time to get home. But then, Elder Plummer realized that we still had the other companionship´s phone, and our train was going to arrive and leave within three minutes. So we sprinted out of the station, yelling after the other missionaries. We finally caught up with them, gave them the phone, and sprinted back to the station just in time to watch our train leave. And so we had to wait for the next train to Alverca, and I began to think we weren´t going to get home on time (the rule here is that we have to be in our house by 10:00 pm). That´s when Satan showed up and whispered, "You´re not going to make it home on time. Why try? Just walk." And I said, "Yeah right. Regardless of wether or not we make it in time, I want to show the Lord that I want to be obediente. Thus, we´ll run." And so we did. The train arrived in Alverca at about 9:50 and we ran all the way back home, and when we got inside, we checked the time: 9:59. Get wrecked, Satan!

I honestly don´t really remember much else that happened this week. I have a goal to read the whole Book of Mormon and New Testemant in Portuguese this year, and so far I´ve read what I needed to every day. Oh, we did go visit another castle today. It was super cool. We had to hike for about an hour to get there (because if you build a castle, you build it on the highest point of land in sight) but the view was incredible! It was well worth the hike (especially since hiking is fun).

Yep, that´s pretty much all I remember this week. I found a scripture that teaches that we don´t have to wash our hands before we eat (Matthew 15:20).

The last thing I want to share is my gratitude for everything President Monson did and taught. Every talk he gave filled my heart with the desire to be better, to obey the Lord, and to seek to help others at every opportunity. The armies of Heaven on the other side of the veil recieved a grand warrior. And one thing I know for sure is that he´s still working, right now, along side all the other Prophets of the past. They are doing work we can´t imagine to prepare the world for the Second Coming of Christ. We just need to do our part to establish the kingdom of Zion, and that event will be amazing.

I love you all! 
Elder Lofthouse

Chapter 22 - Miraculous (Simply the Best)

This week was amazing. Miracles happened every day. I don´t have too much time to write, but I´ll try to explain them all.

Monday - Christmas! I got to Skype my family. The fact that we can talk across the world is a miracle.

Tuesday - We had a dinner scheduled, but before we went we wanted to pass two investigators, one of them named João. He wasn´t home, so we visited the other family, and they insited on giving us food. So we ate, even though we were going to have dinner rigt after. Then, as we went to dinner, some how we and the member we were going to eat with managed to call eachother back and forth five times without actually getting a hold of each other. In the end, dinner was cancelled, but because we hadn´t known sooner, we weren´t in the area we wanted to work in. So we started walking, and how came walking around the corner? João, the investigator who hadn´t been home!

Wednesday - Carlos was baptized in August, but never confirmed a member because he went to the hospital for four months. It´s been really hard to get in touch with him because his wife does not like us. But on Wednesday, we managed to talk with him for about five minutes and set up everything for the confirmation. We also had a succesful street contact with a girl named Neide who seemed to have a lot of potencial.

Thursday - We went to find Neide, but no one answered the door at the address she had given us. We had about ten other potencial investigators on the same street, but for some reason we decided to knock all the doors in that building. We went to the top and started working our way down. On one wall the was written 2º Dto which means the door on the right on the second floor. I saw it and thought, "that door must be special." We got to that door, and rang the bell, and the door moved. Elder Plummer then said something like, "this door must be special." A women opened the door and I rambled out one of the worst door approaches ever, finishing with, "Can we come in and share a message?" She replied, "Of course you can!" And we went in Neide was there! The other women, Ernestina is Neide´s mom. They accepted everything we said (except the baptisimal invite) and when I said they should read the Book of Mormon and pray to know the truth, they said, "Oh, we already know that everything you said is true. We just have a little doubt about getting baptized again. But will come to church with you, and if everything is good, we´ll do it."

Friday - All day we were trying to find Adenel and Manuel, our friends who were scheduled to get baptized the next day. But all day they were gone and weren´t answering the phone. We had to be on a train at 7:50, and didn´t have time to walk to there house again. So we ran. Uphill. For 15 minutes. I had forgotten how much I love running. It was awesome. But they weren´t there. But then, at 8:00 (while we were on that train) they called to make sure they could still get baptized the next day!

Saturday - Adenel and Manuel were baptized, and Satan was a sore loser. All day, little things kept going wrong (like us dropping some butter during lunch, or other little things that were annoying, but didn´t stop the work of the Lord).

Sunday - They were confirmed. Unfortunetly, we weren´t able to confirm Carlos, and Ernestina got sick, so they didn´t come. But it was still a good day.

Anyway, this week was awesome.

I love you all!