My First Talk In Portuguese

Monday, January 15, 2018

Hey Mom,

I forgot to bring my paper all organized with the things that happened this week so this letter is gonna be a lot shorter.

The biggest thing that happened this week is I gave my first talk in Portuguese. Saturday night Bishop called and said that the speakers for Sunday had canceled. Elder K, being fluent in Portuguese and an amazing missionary, didn’t have to worry too much about talking to the congregation for however much time he needed to. But Me, being Elder Carson William Sork, was awake until 1 in the morning preparing my talk. I don’t have the ability to really give a talk, I struggled with public speaking in English, now it’s just even more difficult. But, I wrote it all out and just read it to the ward.  It was around 13 minutes, which I am very proud of, about the conference talk by Stanley G Ellis: ´´Do We Trust Him? Hard Is Good´´ I heard this talk while in the CTM preparing for the mission and struggling with my Portuguese. I felt a little like a hypocrite because a lot of the things I spoke about were all things I need to work on as well, but it was also good to be thinking about them and I was glad for the opportunity. 

During my talk I felt like I was getting a lot of blank stares.  One of our investigators got a phone call and was talking on the phone during my talk.  She is really old and was talking pretty loud. You know how it is--pretty funny! I didn’t think that my words would really have an effect on anyone, but I took the time to pray and prepare. At the end of sacrament meeting a member named Emerson, who has two little kids and a wife that have been having some problems lately, came up to me and said that as I was speaking he was strongly impressed by the spirit and had received some personal revelation. He thanked me for speaking and asked for a copy of my talk so he could study it more (maybe because he didn’t understand a lot of what I was saying, LOL). But it was really cool that at least one person, was able to feel the spirit working with him during my talk. 

Circa didn’t come to church again, she was working... so maybe next week.

A continual battle here:  We are really struggling because our leaders are all people who baptize EVERYONE.  They really push the number of baptisms as an indicator of success.  The way Elder K and I are doing missionary work is slower and so we don’t have 5 baptisms every week like other people. It’s really taking a toll on Elder Kozlowski. The mission culture here is really, really messed up and I don’t want to succumb to it. I want to be my own missionary and do what I feel is right, but I am worried about what’s gonna happen when I get a new companion. AT the least, I am super grateful for the time I have been able to learn from Elder Kozlowski.  We are on the same page about making sure the people are understanding and really ready to commit to living the covenants they are going to make.

I am running out of time to respond to other emails, this email was really short and crappy this week –sorry.

Love your son,

 Elder Sork