I'm gaining weight from eating so much delicious food.... I'm up like 1.5 kilos heh heh heh.....
I've started thinking in Portuguese... It's super weird, and it just happens haha... I was writing a note to myself and meant to write it in English, but it came out in Portuguese woops... My English is getting worse too. I have to stop and think about words quite often, but it's great!
Elder Hughes and I are Zone Leaders now, and so we're responsible for all of the English speakers (our branch is almost all American). It's fun because now we get to plan Sacrament Meeting and there's an Elder from England here, so we asked him to give the closing prayer this Sunday because we like his English accent in Portuguese hahaha... That isn't abusing our power, is it?
Last Sunday the Area President of Brazil came and gave our devotional. It was awesome, and I understood almost all of it! (There's always live English translation, but it was easier to listen to the Portuguese haha. I'm getting more and more blessed with the language every day.
So the best part of the whole entire CTM happened on Wednesday-- We got to go to a part of São Paulo and give out the Livro de Mormon to people!!! You definitely can't do that in Provo haha. It was absolutely amazing. We were all scared beforehand because we actually were going to go teach real people (not just our instructors) in Portuguese. We got 3 Livros each, and Elder Hughes and I gave our 6 out in 20 minutes. It was so cool, because people were just so engaged and so interested when we said "Somos representantes de Jesus Cristo, e nós temos um mensagem sobre Dele" ("We are representatives of Jesus Christ, and we have a message about him"). When we were all out of books, we went up to people and just taught them, since we had like an hour left. We were talking to this man and I felt prompted to talk about the Plan of Salvation, and so Elder Hughes and I started teaching this guy on the street a 10 minute version of God's plan for us, and then a little bit of the Restoration of the Gospel. It was so indescribable because whereas I usually struggle to find my words and my sentences are choppy, while we were teaching this man the words flowed out of my mouth effortlessly. I knew all of the words, but they had never come so easily as they did then. The whole time, I was guided exactly to what I needed to say, and I could feel how important this message is and how much we all need to understand it in our lives. At the end, I felt compelled to ask him if he would like to be baptized, and he said he would! We wrote down his address, and hopefully the missionaries in his area will be able to teach him. It was so amazing, and I know that was the Spirit. Super awesome.
We got to go to the São Paulo temple again today, and it was just phenomenal, like always. I love the Temple, and I'm so grateful to the Lord for all of the wonderful blessings I'm receiving.
Love you all!
Elder Merrill
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