Servi no Templo EM PORTUGUÊS!

Boy, am I jazzed! That is, if it's OK to be spiritually jazzed!

Campinas, São Paulo, Brasil Temple - Not the one I served in tonight, but it felt like it.

Tonight was my Friday to serve in the Bountiful Temple, and while my Welshman friend wasn't there, I heard the shift coordinators talking about doing some temple work in Portuguese. I let them know that I could help if they needed. I had done it in Spanish before (in a bit of a panic), but Portuguese was my No. 1 second language.

They let me study the card and I had it all down pretty well. They let me take the card just in case. The big surprise was that they said there would be one Temple patron needing Portuguese and then I would switch back to English. But the next guy started off in Portuguese too. I had just dropped the card which I hadn't used anyway, so I went on in Portuguese full of confidence and spiritual power.

It was out of the norm because I make it a serious business to speak very distinctly in English. Enunciating all all the vowels and clicking all the consonants as I had been taught in choir. Portuguese doesn't work that way. One word flows into another in a musical poetic, well, Welsh way. But with more tropical rhythm.

Concentrating on the memorization, which is a gift, helped keep me out of the usual discussions of the older Temple workers. One guy was going on tonight about his prostate surgery, then (thank heavens) his heart, and finally Lyme disease which he caught at the Johnson Farm near Kirtland, Ohio, "So don't go on any Church History tours!" he said. I honed in harder on the Portuguese repetition.

Português - a língua dos céus!