The other night I picked up a man in northeast Salt Lake at a restaurant. He had been eating dinner with some friends who were moving the next day. I asked him if they were friends from work and he said no, but we all went to school in the same language arts masters program. I said oh, what languages do you speak? He said, I speak Spanish and English but would love to learn more languages.He said he’d love to learn Portuguese, Arabic and Italian.
He told me that in his masters program he had qualified to be able to teach Spanish on the college level and was going to finish up his summer job and then start applying to schools to get a doctorate. He said that he loved languages.
I started speaking Spanish to him. It blew him away. He said, I totally racially profiled you! I had no clue that this white dude speaks such good Spanish. He asked how I learned. I told him.
I told him that I went to Argentina on my church mission and that I learned to speak down there. He said, he had lived in Chile for a time as well but that he didn’t speak nearly as well as I did.
I told him that I speak better now than I did when I was 20 finishing my mission. He was puzzled and asked how that could possibly be? He asked if I was married to a Latina. I said no! She’s spicy but not Latina! He laughed.
He said if you didn’t marry someone that speaks Spanish and you’re not immersed in it how did you learn to speak so well? I told him that in our church we have apostles and prophets and they speak with God and they speak for God on our behalf. I told him that one of those apostles Elder Packer came to the MTC when I was in the MTC and made us a promise.
He promised us that if we would say our prayers and read our scriptures out loud in our mission language every day we would never lose the ability to speak and that it would be a tool we could use in our lives to bless the people around us.
I told him that since I was 19 I haven’t said a personal prayer in English and I have prayed more than three times a day every day since that time. I told him that when we pray and we’re in the presence of the spirit God he quickens our intellect and makes us smarter than we are and more capable than we are. I told him that when we pray and we’re reading the scriptures we have the spirit of God and we’re in the presence of God and it makes our ability to learn more vibrant and powerful.
I told him that doing this was how God helped me maintain and increase proficiency in my language. I told him that we have gifts of the spirit that we’re given when we’re baptized. When we’re baptized we are pure and we receive the Holy Ghost which fills our soul and makes it so that we can receive these blessings.
He said that is amazing! I have some friends that are Mormons but I never had any idea about this. I told him that after we’re baptized and we get the gift of the Holy Ghost it not only helps us with languages but it helps us so that we can know what God’s will. I asked him what college he was thinking of going to go to. He said the University of Utah to get his doctorate.
I said that I went to BYU. I asked him if he had ever taken the proficiency test for languages where they give you a rating on a scale of 1 to 5. He said yes, I’ve taken it and I’ve given it many times when I lived in Alabama. I asked him what the name of the test was. He thought a minute and said the BYU Proficiency Test and then he said ohhhhhhh.
He asked if that was the BYU down in Provo and I said yes. I said there are so many return missionaries that go to that school speaking many languages that their department is the most advanced language skills department in the world. He asked rhetorically, well why aren’t I applying there? I laughed and said, maybe you should be.
He said that he wanted to learn Portuguese. I told him that one of the best ways to learn and prepare to learn Portuguese is to have a great vocabulary in Spanish. A lot of the words in Portuguese have the same roots as Spanish and or one of the verbs in Spanish are also verbs in Portuguese. Most of them are not routinely used in Spanish and therefore you need to expose yourself to great writing to learn them.
He asked me to run through my daily routine with regards to Spanish and I said I start with prayer and then I listen to the Book of Mormon on the church app. I told him that the Book of Mormon has great writing and uses the kind of vocabulary that expands your capacity to speak very good in Spanish and gives you a leg up on Portugese.
I brought up the church app and played it. It happened to be that I was in Mormon chapter 9 and It was in Spanish when It started to play.It was talking about how the people in the last days would not believe in God but that the people of God would speak in tongues and would have interpretation of tongues and the gift of tongues and that it would be because of the power of God.
I looked at him and said, do you think it was a mistake that this first came up when I hit play? I have to tell you how powerfully the spirit came in the car. It was intense and he said, I don’t think I’ve ever had anything happen to me like that. He said the feelings I’m feeling are incredible and that is just too coincidental to be an accident.
I said God put you in my car today. He put you in my car so that I can give you one of these. I handed him a Book of Mormon in Spanish. One that had been prepared by the Secrists. I told him that the third thing I do every day is I read out of that book in Spanish out loud.
I said that’s how I have the spirit, that’s how it quickens by intellect and makes it so that I can maintain my language for the purpose of serving God. I told him that God gives us spiritual gifts so that we can serve others.
I told him that he was put in my car tonight to receive this book and to understand what I was saying. I asked him what he felt right then. He said he felt like he was having an amazing rush, an incredible level of engagement and on a high. He then said he was tingly.
I told him that was the spirit of God and that this is what he would look for after being baptized. I told him that God would help him develop his spiritual gifts to serve others.
He said first off I think I probably should change my mind and apply to BYU for my doctorate program! I laughed and I said that would probably be an awesome idea! But that’s your decision.
I asked him if he’d ever had anything happened to him like he had experienced that night and he said no. I asked him how close of friends he was with these members of the church he knew and he said very close. I said to him, they’ve had this experience, you should take your Book of Mormon to them and explain to them what you felt tonight in the car.
He said, I will do that tomorrow. I said the other thing is you should say your prayers in Spanish and talk with your father in heaven, you should listen to the Book of Mormon and you should read. He said he would do that. He said there’s something to this book. There’s a power in this book and I want to unlock it.
He asked how he could get the app so he could listen to the Book of Mormon too. We pulled out his phone and went onto the App Store and downloaded the church app. We set it up in Spanish so that he could click on the Book of Mormon and listen to it every day. He shook my hand for about three minutes on his way out the door and said I am going to do these things I promise you.
God gives us gifts of the spirit so that we can bless his children and I am so happy that he gave me that gift so I could bless this man with his knowledge. Who knows, he may show up at BYU next fall.
Sometimes God sends you a lift 