Tuesday, April 29, 2014

Week 4 - Spiritual gifts.

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!