Serving with a Smile : MARAVINCRIVEL!!!!

I said during class this week that fofa (cute) is my favorite word in Portuguese but I changed my mind, it's maravincirvel! This is a mixture between marvelous and incredible and i think it's the only word that can even come close to summing up my experience in the CTM! Other than supercalifragilisticexpialidocious that is haha

In all honesty, I can't believe my time in the CTM is over!! There were some hard days for sure, days when I sat in class for 20 minutes wondering what in the world my teachers were talking about, but there were even more days where I was nodding my head and raising my hand to answer questions, questions I didn't realize I could understand until I was in the middle of answering them! None of this is my own doing, I'm not a great studier and I definitely haven't memorized all the words and phrases I meant to, but because I was trying my hardest to do what the Lord asked of me, He has blessed me with even the smallest bit of the gift of tongues! Tonight we had a CTM wide devotional on Zoom, and one of the benefits of Zoom is being able to change the language translation (in certain meetings that is haha), but after listening to the first few minutes in English I saw my teacher was the translator for Portuguese! I thought I'd seen him for the last time the day before so I couldn't help myself and I listened to the rest of the devotional in Portuguese with my teacher translating in his native tongue. I didn't understand everything that was said, not be a long shot, but I was able to ponder more my testimony of the gospel and to feel the Spirit bear powerful testimony to me of the truthfulness of this gospel and the Lord's love and plan for me!! I KNOW that plan includes learning Portuguese even if I don't know how He will have me use it yet and I'm so excited to see what the Lord needs me to do and learn in St Louis! It was a tender experience for sure and one that I won't ever forget :)

This week was probably the craziest of the CTM! Our teachers encouraged us to use as much Portuguese as possible this last week so class became a little crazier trying to explain and understand everything fully in Portuguese but I learned so much!! I'm finally starting to understand the grammar, at least I think so haha, and one of our fun activities this week was learning about the food in Brazil! So if anyone has any good recipes or restaurants for me to try when I get home, regardless of if I go to Brazil or not, I am now super hyped about Brazilian food! I am sad to be leaving my mom's cooking and to be leaving my family, but I know that we will all be blessed by this time apart! I'm so lucky to have gotten an extra 6 weeks of laughing with my sisters and walking around the neighborhood with my parents, and even though this isn't the experience I was expecting it was exactly what I needed! Man this is getting sappy, sorry guys haha but I love my family so much and I'm so so grateful for all the sacrifices they have made for me while I've been doing online MTC as well as each of their shining examples to me of living the gospel every day!!!!

My biggest take away from classes and devotionals this week was to strive to be a little better every day! We can't be perfect in this life, and we can't fix all of our faults in one day, but we can make tiny adjustments every morning to be a little more loving, a little more patient, and little better at listening, a little more diligent in our scripture study, a little more like the Savior. I know that as we strive to become a little better, Christ will strengthen us through His Atonement and help us to become the person that we want to be AND EVEN MORE!!!! I've seen Christ multiple my efforts not just in the CTM but throughout my whole life and I know that He will do the same for you if you ask him!!

Finally I couldn't complete this email without saying how much I love and am going to miss my district. I was pretty skeptical about how close we would get only doing zoom classes twice a day rather than being around each other 18 hours a day, but luckily I was proven wrong! I absolutely adore each person in my district for different reasons and all of them have helped me become a more devoted disciple of Christ and taught me about how to be a better missionary!! And we have had some GREAT times full of laughter and broken Portuguese and story sharing and absolute confusion as well hahaha wouldn't have wanted it any other way :) peep the video at the end for a look at how much we've all changed in just 6 weeks ;)

Hope you all had an amazing week and were able to see God's tender mercies in your own life!! Little things from pretty sunsets to glitter tattoos to jimmy johns take-out in the mountains :) I love you but God loves you sooooo much more!!!!

<3 Sis Mill