I, thankfully, still have 2 more weeks to throw myself into the Lord's service

We had Zone Conference this week. That was a sleep robbing adventure. Wow, we left the Azores at 7 or so Wednesday, and we didn't get back until midnight Thursday. Needless to say I was wrecked. Zone conference 1 - Elder Fogg 0. Elder Fogg was eliminated. We usually have our zone conferences here, and President comes with the assistants but what happened this time is that the seventy came (Paul V. Johnson). So we all had to go to Lisbon. 

It was crazy, first of all, we didn't get to Lisbon until about 10 ish and we didn't make contact with the Elders we were staying with until 11 o'clock. But better yet, we walked by a less active on the way home. (Why can't they be found in the normal hours of the day? Why do they have to hide until the dark hours of the night to come out?) Well the Elders with whom we were staying decided to stop an talk to him. Let me tell you again, it's 11 at night more like 11:15 or something because their house was not close to the train station either, and they decided to talk with him. I'm not saying «hey dude what up, it'd be cool if you'd go to church» type of thing, but no more of a «here let's sit down and have a cup of tea, *sip* *sip*, with the pinky extended»type of thing.  (I don't have any hard feelings towards them.... why would you say that?)

Somehow in the wee hours of the morning someone realized that it was actually time to sleep, so someone proposed that we all go home and sleep. I was the first one to second it! Their house was really good but they only had two fans. We were stuck in another room with out a fan. Better yet there was also a street light directly outside our window. What a blessing. Needless to say elder Fogg got no sleep that night. And in the morning we didn't eat breakfast.  The Conference was very spiritual. The spirit was talking so strong that at times I was overcome and had to close my eyes and bow my head. 

I saw every Elder from my group that went to Lisbon that is still on a mission right now. It was fun to talk with them and see how they were doing. I also saw, due to the recent merge of the missions, many other people I haven't seen since the MTC that went to Porto. It's was incredibly funny seeing them and being like «Hey it's been a while, almost 2 years... how was your mission?»

Coming home was even better. We didn't leave Lisbon until 9:00 and that means we didn't get home until midnight. The good thing is that I drove the car home because I have a license from here and the other elders had to stay in Lisbon for one more day.

Going back to Lisbon just showed me a early wake up call. It's ending. The next time I go there will be the last time as a missionary. I, thankfully, still have 2 more weeks to throw myself into the Lord's service with all my might.

Élder Fogg