"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
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