Chapter 36 - How to Trick an Elder Lofthouse

Bom dia, tudo mundo! Como estão?

This week was full of miracles. We started the week closer than ever to reaching our mission´s goals, and so we all went to work with tons of faith and excitement. All week long, everytime a miracle happened, we sent a message to our Zone Leaders, and they sent it to everyone else, and it was just super cool. We found a young man that is super ready for the gospel, but God had to trick me a little to get me to work right. I will explain.

On one day, we went to a little town called Ribeirinha (side note: the first bull fight will be there, tomorrow. More on this latter) visiting our investigator Fátima. She is super amazing, super obedient to all the commandments (she told us she feels guilty sometimes because she wakes up at 3 or 4 in the morning, and she´s thirsty so she gets a drink, and then realizes that she didn´t say a prayer first) and she is the best member-missionary we have that isn´t even a member. She just needs to get married to get baptized, but legal issues are slowing the process down a lot. But anyway, we were there, and she told us that he daughter had a lot of pain in her ear and had been home from school a few days because of it. Now, I think I must be having little sister withdrawls or something, because I love all the little girls here in Terceira, and always want to help them. So we offered a blessing, but she was sleeping so we didn´t do it then. So instead we started knocking doors nearby, and found José. He´s super cool. This story is taking forever. Basically, Saturday, I got sick, and we didn´t have anything planned, and we were having trouble getting back into contact with José, so we decided to stay home and I would just rest and recover. But then Fátima called and asked if we could give that blessing to Tatiana, and I was like, okay, let´s go, because I didn´t want to leave her suffering. So we went, gave the blessing, and then Elder Tanner suggested that we try to pass José. So we did, and he was there! During that lesson, he found out the Book of Mormon was true, we found out that he´s already living all the commandments (somehow, he already has a testimony of tithing and he´s never even payed it, but God already helped him with money in the past) and it was just super awesome. God just had to trick me into leaving the house so that I did my job.

Anyway, I have more to say, but don´t have time to write it. Sorry!

I love you all!

Elder Lofthouse

Chapter 35 - Feticeiros

Hey everyone! Sorry I didn´t write last week. I didn´t feel like. I have a real problem with what we call in Portuguese, "Preguiça." If I don´t want to do something, I don´t.

Well, life here in the middle of the Atlantic ocean is the same almost eveyday. It rains, and then gets really sunny, and then rains while the sun is shining and there´s not a cloud in the sky. When that happens, the locals say, "Looks like the witches are getting married." I don´t know the story behind that phrase, but I like it.

As I´ve studied this week, I´ve been thinking a lot about humility, and one of my favorite examples in the Book of Mormon is Pahoran. Pahoran was the Chief Judge of the Nephites during a time of many wars against the Lamanites. But if that wasn´t enough trouble for him, a rebelious group of kingmen rose up and drove him out of the land of Zarahemla and took over the government. And then what happened? Captain Moroni, the leader of all the armies sent him a lengthy note, telling him that he was a selfish, lazy, ignorant, leader that didn´t love freedom of God and that he was going to raise armies and take away Pahoran´s power to rule. I can´t even imagine! Pahoran was in a super dificult situation, and then someone who ought to have given support just ripped him apart verbally, and without any justification! But what was Pahorans reaction. Did he wirte back and say, "You traitor! How dare you talk to me that way! You don´t know what I´m going through, the battles I´m fighting here. You think the Lamanites are tough? Try fighting against your own people. I love God and liberty, and I´m fighting like crazy to save it! So next time get you facts straight before you mock me, or I´ll see to it that you never lead an army into battle again!" No, he didn´t say this at all. He said, "And now, in your epistle you have censuredme, but it mattereth not; I am not angry, but do rejoice in the greatness of your heart." (Alma 61:9). Pahoran was full of humility, and knowing that Moroni didn´t know the whole story, easily forgave the unneeded criticism, and rejoiced that Moroni was still committed to the cause they both loved. That is humility. This is the kind of person I want to be.

If anyone has any other scriptures they love about humility, I´d love to hear them! I love you all! I keep forgetting to bring my camera on our hikes, so I don´t have too many new pictures to share. Sorry!

Elder Lofthouse

Chapter 34 - I Got Mocked by a Cow This Week

This week was good. We had zone conference, so I got to get on another airplane and visit a different island (São Miguel). It was cool. The zone conference was good, but there wasn´t too much cool doctrine that I feel like sharing. Just mission stuff.

Also, Elder Payne taught me how to make cards appear out of thin air. It works really well witht the new pass along cards we got, so I´ve been doing it a lot. However, as we were walking, we passed a group of cows (there are a lot of cows on this island) and I decided to practice on them, but when I did it, one of the cows scoffed! I didn´t know they could do that, but Elder Tanner couldn´t stop laughing.

Beside this, not too much happened. AS I´ve been studying 1 Nephi again, I´ve noticed that although Nephi was super obedient, it was not his main focus. His main focus was faith in the Lord, and it was because of faith that he was obedient in all things. But the root of it is faith. Faith is the first principle of the Gospel, and thus the base on which all other principles are founded. If you have nothing else to study, study faith. This will increase your knowledge in all other aspects.

Chapter 33 - All Alone

To start, I would like to share a song I know about Jesus Christ with all of you. I´m sharing this because none of the other missionaries in my district knew this song was about Christ until I told them.

"Mary had a little lamb, little lamb, little lamb. Mary had a little lamb whose fleece was white as wool."

If anyone wants to know why we were singing Mary had a Little Lamb, I´m sorry, I don´t remeber how it started.

This week was very strange. As you all know, missionaries are never alone. Ever. Unless you get special permission from the President because you have to return to mainland Portugual to take care of some legal/immigration type things so that you don´t get deported in the middle of your mission. Then, you get to wake up at 3h30 in the morning and go to the airport alone (because it´s expesive to send two missionaries back and forth and not worth it when only one needs to go). So there I was, at 5h00 at the airport, without a phone, without a companion, and then my flight got cancelled because people were going on strike for Easter. Luckly, after some time, I was able to get in contact with the office and the got me on a different flight at 9h40 at night. So I went back to my area. And what do you do if you woke up three hours early and then your flight got cancelled? You go on splits with the zone leaders and work all day! When I finally got back to the air port that night, I was already tired, but I didn´t want to sleep until I was on the plane, because I had no one to make sure I didn´t over sleep. And then, that flight got delayed until 11h40! In the end, I got to Portugal at 3h00 in the morning, and finally got to sleep at 3h30 (so 24 hours awake!) Then, I woke up at 7h30 to do those legal things I said, passed the rest of the day with the finacial secretaries, and got on another flight to return, that also got delayed! In all, I spent a lot of time alone, and awake this week. It was horrible. Well, not really, but it was definately different.

In terms of the work, we only have one investigator that is progressing, and she is amazing! She´s the best member-missionary in the branch, and she´s not even a member yet! She set up a Family Home Evening with us and her friend, and then brought her to General Conference. I hope I get to see both of them become members of the true church of Christ.

I´ve been thinking a lot about faith lately. A lot of other missionaries are always pushing the idea that faith without works is dead, and if we really have faith, we´ll do more works. This is true, but anyone who knows me knows that doing work isn´t a problem for me. And we can work every hour of every day, but without faith, nothing will happen. Works without faith is drudgery. So how do we increase our faith, independent of our works? I still don´t know, but I had a cool experience this week with just having faith. The rain here comes fast and hard, and Saturday we ended up in the road in a down pour trying to get to General Conference. We found a little shelter, and decided to just wait out the rain. Then the thought came to my mind, "If we have faith as a mustard seed, we can move mountains. Why not stop rain?" And then I just had a strong feeling that if I had faith, the rain would stop. So I said to Elder Tanner, "Hey, Elder. The rain will stop in 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1..." And it stopped! It was so cool. Faith really can move mountains. We just have to believe and recieve a confirmation from the Spirit that it is the will of God!

That´s about all for this week. Para bens to anyone who remembers the reason I counted down from seven.

I love you all!

Elder Lofthouse​