It’s mid-December and I’m sitting in a hot, humble living room in Sete Lagoas, Minas Gerais, Brazil. I’m wearing new shoes, blue slacks, my lucky tie, and a white short sleeve dress shirt that still smells like JCPenney and the food court.
I’m also wearing that iconic black tag with my name and the name of the faith of my fathers:
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
I’m literally sitting on the edge of my chair, locked in, leaning forward, and laser focused on the moment. I’d been to the Mission Training Center, where Latter-day Saints young people learn how to share “plain and precious” gospel truths with love and humility.
I had also spent a few months in Texas waiting for a Visa, and I really thought there was nothing left to learn. I couldn’t have been more confident if I’d been the Apostle Paul.
My trainer is sitting next to me and we’re about to dive into my first lesson on my first morning after knocking — actually, clapping, because of Brazilian custom — on exactly one door. My trainer introduces us both, offers a short prayer, and the lesson begins.
The problem? He’s speaking a language I do not recognize.
Suddenly my mind wanders back to how confident I had felt just a few weeks ago with my 30 word vocabulary, and what I now acknowledge was an imaginary gift of conjugating complicated Portuguese verbs.
Then I’d boarded that plane to São Paulo, chatting it up with other Brazil-bound missionaries and showing off my ability to make small talk in this lovely language I already adore.
Then, I was in our mission home in Belo Horizonte for a couple days, speaking with and understanding the office staff and assistants. Not every single word, of course, but most of them.
We walk the city, file paperwork at a government office, eat the most fantastic food I’d ever tasted, and I’m borderline giddy at how well I’m doing with the language.
But then, I’m back in the living room looking at my trainer speaking like an auctioneer at a cattle sale. After a few minutes of him teaching some gospel principle that I can only assume had something to do with God’s plan for us, my trainer looked at me, grinned and gave me that silent sign that it was now my turn to teach.
Instead of words pouring out of me, tears filled my eyes. I shook my head, studied my feet and listened as my trainer completed the abbreviated lesson.
As we walked away from that home, I looked at him and asked what had just happened. I hadn’t understood a single word. “Elder, o que foi isso? Eu não entendi nenhuma palavra.”
Embarrassed, I asked what language or dialect my trainer had been speaking, because I’d previously understood almost everything since arriving in the country.
With a smile as wide as the Amazon, he looked at me and enunciated these words so carefully and comically that I thought he might be suffering heat stroke. “Elder Wright, we’ve all been speaking very, very slowly for you.”
Ouch.
Throughout the day, and later that night when we returned to our apartment we shared with six other elders, I understood that I couldn’t possibly have become fluent until I’d been surrounded, immersed, even baptized by the language.
That memorable experience was both humbling and helpful.
As my mission progressed, I was humbled time and time again — and not just by the language.
I thought that by dipping my toes in the gospel during high school, by wading in up to my waist during a year of college and by occasionally reading my scriptures, I’d prepared myself. I’d sipped from the Living Water, wasn’t that enough?
Three decades later, as I ponder those hot, hazy days walking those streets I still miss, the more I realize that it wasn’t just nouns, verbs and religious terms I was learning to comprehend. I also needed to become fluent in the language of the Spirit. I needed to become immersed in the scriptures, the life, ministry, and miracle of Jesus, and in his perfect plan for us all.
How simple! The more I fully engaged in the work, the more fluent I felt.
It took time for that young, energetic Elder Wright to find his way, but in time he dove all the way in and immersed himself from head to toe in the gospel. He learned not just what companions, friends and strangers were saying in Portuguese, he learned how the Spirit of the Lord spoke to him. He became fluent, though hardly perfect, in the gospel.
You may have read recent reports that the Church of Jesus Christ has more than 80,000 missionaries serving around the world, an all-time high. No matter your faith background or which pew you choose on Sundays, you’ve almost certainly witnessed their work. And during every hour of every day, those missionaries are learning and practicing that same spiritual fluency.
When you see them on a city subway, scriptures in one hand and their water bottle in the other, they’re probably listening to quiet inspirations on which stranger to chat with and whom to invite to church. They’re privately praying and pondering about who feels alone, invisible and is eager to talk about God.
When you spot them on their bikes, helmets on and backpacks snugly strapped in place, they might be racing to an appointment. Perhaps some friends they’ve been teaching suddenly have doubts that God really lives, loves and knows them. As their tires turn, those missionaries’ minds spin too. They’re inventorying personal experiences, spiritual analogies, and scriptures that might become the balm for those in need.
When a pair of missionaries knocks on your door, or approaches you in a park, or sends you a message on social media, their mission isn’t simply to convert, convince or create contention. It’s to spread the love of God.
Sometimes it might sound clunky, unfamiliar, or like a language you’ve never heard before. But even if their spiritual or literal vocabularies are still developing, their efforts are sincere. They’re simply learning to share aloud what they feel inside.
So whether it’s in poor Portuguese, shabby Spanish, or nervous-kneed English, their exercises in spiritual fluency all point to one language.
The language of love. And in today’s world, that’s something we could all speak a little bit better.