First Letter Home!!

Greetings from the MTC!

I'm doing great here!  The Spirit is incredibly strong and everyday I can feel my testimony grow and my relationship with our Heavenly Father and Christ deepen.  It's like living in a temple, except you get to laugh way too loud with your district.  It's such an amazing experience here and I'm so glad that I chose to serve a mission.  While it's been hard (some days harder than others), it's been the most amazing experience of my life and I'm excited to share the Gospel with the people of Brazil and probably Pocatello, Idaho because we're almost certain we won't get our visas in time.

I mentioned my district earlier and let me say that they're fantastic!  My district consists of Elders Steiner, Carter (I know, right?), and Thomas who are all from the South, and myself, Elder Grondel (our district leader), and Elder McCrea, who are all from the Northwest.  Elder Thomas is my companion and he's a big football player from Tennessee.  Needless to say we aren't exactly the same.  He's got a strong testimony though and he's great to plan a lesson with.  Our district also has four sisters!  They're Sisters Culp, Wood, Skidmore, and Araujo.  I've included pictures of them all in this letter.  I'm so glad that more women have decided to serve missions because the sisters in our district are such a blessing and they inspire us to be our best.  Everyone in our district has an incredibly strong testimony and it's an amazing opportunity to help each other strengthen and grow everyday.

We've been learning Portuguese from day 1 and I'm picking it up really quickly.  My district calls me the "all star" and I've been helping the rest of the missionaries learn it.  I'm learning so much quicker than I did Spanish in school.  We've only been learning for six days and we've already taught three 30 minute lessons in ONLY PORTUGUESE to an actor/investigator.  It's been really difficult because my companion still struggles a bit with the language and none of us can understand what the investigator is saying back to us, but we've had a lot of great moments where we've felt the direction of the Spirit.  I can already pray fluently in Portuguese and it's been a real spiritual strengthener to speak to Heavenly Father in the language of my mission.

We went on a walk around the temple grounds the other day and on route there was a protester with a big cross who was shouting about how he was going "to teach us the power of the cross."  It was my first experience with a real Anti-Mormon protester so it was pretty interesting.

We're on some weird old person schedule here at the MTC.  Since my whole branch is full of visa waiters we have to get up at 6:00 AM, eat breakfast at 6:30 AM, eat Lunch at 11:00 AM, and eat dinner at 4:00 PM.  Bedtime is at 10:30 PM.  Needless to say we get pretty hungry by then and our district has taken all the food from departing missionaries that we can get. 

If any of you are wondering, I've gotten "Elder Lautner" way too many times.  Also, everyone here thinks they're the first person to tell me that I look like Taylor Lautner.  Oh well.  I guess there are a lot worse people to look like in life.  Maybe I can convert some people in my mission due to my vague resemblance.

I know it's only my first week here, but I love the MTC and I don't want to be one of those missionaries who always talks about "just getting out into the field."  This is the only time in my whole mission that I have to focus on my training and my training alone.  I'm excited to be a missionary and a personal representative of Jesus Christ and I'm doing all that I can to give these two years to Him.  I have a testimony of this Gospel and I know that I'm doing the right thing.  I miss you all, but I don't miss you enough to want to go home because what I'm doing here is important.  Eu tenho um testemunho de Jesus Cristo e Seu evanglho.  Eu sei que o igreja e verdadeiro.

From,

Elder Carter Morgan