Oi Mai e Pai!
My week has been a good one. Elder Oaks talk was amazing but his wife was
even better! She is probably my favorite
female speaker. She is amazing!!!
The language is coming along well. Portuguese is
actually a more descriptive language then English and can be confusing
sometimes. You have to conjugate words in a
certain way if you are showing doubt and things like that. I can really understand it well from my teachers. That’s probably because I’m use to their
accents and how they talk. I can easily pick up what they are saying.
I’ve learned that the gift of tongues isn’t what
people think it is. Well at least it
isn’t for me. Everyone thinks the gift
of tongues means you can speak fluent
Portuguese even if you don’t know how to say words and stuff. Out of all my teachers only one has seen that
happen and it occurred just once in his life.
For me, I pray for the gift before I teach a lesson -- and I have to
pray for it every time I’ve learned.
Otherwise, I don’t get it. Then I
am able to think in Portuguese. I don’t
have to translate what people are saying from Portuguese into English and I
don’t have to think of the sentence in English and then try to translate it
into Portuguese. I am not given the
ability to say words I don’t know.
For some reason I’m staying at the MTC for a week
longer then everyone else. That’s OK because the next eight devotionals are
going to be apostles which means I get to see one today. Plus I really love my
teachers. One of my favorite teachers
left because he got an internship. I was
super sad but my new teacher is so awesome! He is from Mozambique!
He is so smart. My first teacher Irmao
Neilson is really cool too! I’m lucky
because my teachers are so profound, deep, and gospel oriented. The down side is my
teachers teach way less Portuguese compared to the others but I’m OK with
that.
Iramo Neilson is way cool. We both have been given the spiritual gift of being able to know how people feel. We ended up talking about it for two hours
yesterday. It was awesome! He
understands exactly how I feel. The gift
is special. I don’t know how to really
describe it. It’s a sixth sense. You are able to tell how people feel even when you don’t know them. It was nice being able to talk with
someone that had it too.
I’m for sure learning a ton about the scriptures!
My teacher taught me how to read the
Book of Mormon using a different perspective and now I can teach a 30 minute
lesson using just the first seven verses.
Those verses are about missionary work and following the promptings of
the Spirit! They are probably the most read verses in the Book of Mormon and
they are actually so profound and deep!
