Greetings from São Paulo, Brazil!  This past week has been fun and I'm acclamating to Brazil.  I was able to see three members of my original MTC district, which was nice.  It was good being able to catch up with them after a year apart in the states.

Went to one of the Mission Councils this week.  There I saw Elder Nissinen and Elder Jacobsen, two of my friends that were serving in Rancho Cucamonga with me.  We ate lunch together and had a good time laughing and reminiscing about the good ol' days of California.

I gave a talk at the meeting for new missionaries this week.  I attended because my companions were giving a training.  The talk went as well as you could expect a talk given by some with one week of Portuguese would go, haha.  But it was cool because at that meeting I ran into my very first companion in the Provo MTC, Elder Thomas.    It was good to catch up with him.

I did exchanges with one of the Assitants, Elder Sales, and we worked all day in a Brazillian favela, which was good fun.  The people here have very open hearts, especially when it comes to the Gospel.  The people were very hospitable and kind to us.

Yesterday was my birthday and I spent it in the hospital, haha.  While working in the favela I got bitten by some weird sort of mosquito and had an allergic reaction to it.  I was covered in TONS of red spots for a day or two, which I thought were just normal mosquito bites at first.  But then I noticed that I kept getting lumps without mosquitos so we left church early and went to the hospital, which is fortunately in our area.  The doctors informed me that it was nothing serious and that after a few shots and pills that I'd be completely fine.  The medicine made me super sleepy though and the doctor said I had to rest for the day, so in the end I got what every missionary wants for their birthday, a seven hour nap!  It was pretty awesome.

That's about if for this week!  Até mais!

Seu amigo,

Elder Morgan

November 10, 2014

I'm leaving the office tomorrow to open a new area in the city of Osasco!  I'm excited!  The office has been fun, but it's time for me to spread my wings and fly.  I'll be living in a house with two other Brazilians and my companion, who's from Ecuador.  I'll be the only American so my Portuguese is going to get really good, haha.

Had to speak English a couple times this week because of Americans that came into the mission office.  We only have one other American here and he's kind of forgotten how to speak English.  It's pretty funny, haha.

Thing about Brazil:

- Dryers aren't really a thing down here.  Clothes lines for us!

I don't have a ton of time to write today.  The church is true, the book is azul!  Dang it, that doesn't have the same ring to it in Portuguese.

Ate mais!

Your friend,
Elder Carter David Morgan

November 17, 2014

Greetings from Osasco, São Paulo!  Elder Guamangallo and I arrived in the new Novo Osasco B area this Tuesday and have been working hard ever since!  Opening a new area has definitely been interesting, but Elder Guamangallo has served around her before and knows a little bit about the layout of the streets, so that combined with our trusty map and the natural sense of direction I have that comes from my slight resemblance of a Native American has really helped us out a lot.

Elder Guamangallo is pretty sick.  He has roughly the same time on his mission as me and is a super tall, super chill Ecuadorian.  Also, absolutely no one in Brazil can pronounce his name.  I´ve looked up all the Portuguese words that begin with "gua" and have begun introducing him as various objects during contacts.  It´s pretty fun.

My companion:  Elder G. 

Me standing awkwardly in Osasco

We arrived in the Novo Osasco B area to discover that we´re rooming in an apartment the size of a shoebox with two other elders and one bathroom.  Four elders.  One bathroom.  The mornings are always interesting, but good.    I´m a regular speed demon when it comes to the shower now.

In my move from the office to Osasco I accidentally left my sandals, so I had to bust out the white temple slippers and wear those around the house.  They look pretty sick.  But you may be asking yourself, "Elder Morgan, what do you do when you´re in the shower?"  Well folks, that´s what grocery bags tied around your feet are for.  Brazil has only upped my level of class.

Since we opened an area, we didn´t really have any investigators.  Like, at all.  But we found a lot this week!  Among them are a woman named Silva, who´s Catholic and deals with a lot of health issues but we had a great lesson about the Book of Mormon and we should be meeting with her again tonight.

It started POURING one day this week and we didn´t have our umbrellas so we asked the owner of a small shop if we could stay there for a bit.  Brazilians are super nice and she said yes and we talked a bit about the Bible and some of her favorite scriptures.  We talked about how we have another testament of Jesus Christ, the Book of Mormon, and left her with a copy and a return appointment.  She was a pleasant woman and hopefully we see some progress there.

It turns out I´m the first American missionary in the Novo Osasco ward in about a year, so the ward´s pretty excited.  It´s funny to hear some of the members try to speak English with me, because quite frankly I can understand their Portuguese better than their English, haha.

I´ve been getting a lot of questions about food.  The food here is really good.  Meat, beans, potatoes, rice.  Pretty much that.  Quite frankly, I had more sketchy meals in the states.  Things like "It´s an organic chicken-spinach combination without the chicken!  Instead it´s been replaced with tofu!"  What the heck, people?  We could all learn a little from these Brazilians down here.  Also, lunch is the main meal and we have it with members and they feed you a ton, so you don´t really have to have dinner.  You just stuff yourself at lunch and work the rest of the day.  A big money and time saver.

Things about Brazil:

- There´s about one millions dogs that roam the streets of São Paulo.  They are homeless and I want to help all of them.  However, they will bite you if you try to pet them.  I may or may not know this by experience.  My dream is to figure out a way to charm the dogs, become their leader, and be followed around the streets by twenty loyal attack dogs.

- My first name, Carter, is INCREDIBLY strange to Brazilians.  Like, they´ve never heard it before, can´t even begin to think how you´d spell it, and I have to repeat it several times before it registers with them.  It´s pretty funny.

- Brazilian juice?  SUPER good.  We get it with every meal.

- Guarana, the soda, is the In N´ Out of Brazil.  At first you have it and think, "Why on Earth does everyone love this so much?  It´s not that good."  Then you have it a few more times and realize that it´s the nectar of the Gods.

That´s out it for this week.  Thanks for the prayers, I certainly need them!

Your friend,

Elder Carter David Morgan

November 24, 2014

Greetings from Osasco, SP!  Another good week down here in the land of Guarana and chocolate pizza.  We had the ward primary program this week, which was good fun.  The missionaries were invited to sing the "We are as the army of Helaman" song, which was good fun.  What was not good fun was the fact that I don´t have the words memorized in Portuguese so my wardmate had to frantically scribble them into my planner so I wouldn´t look like a total idiot, haha.  Everything worked out in the end, though.

Our zone is preparing a skit for the upcoming Mission Christmas party.  The skit is Lehi hosting a dinner for various characters throughout the scriptures.  I play Mormon, and I have the killer line (made my yours truly) of looking at the dishes on the table, acting indignant, and saying "Sorry, I only use golden plates." Buh dum, kish.

Apparently all Brazilians think that all Americans are rich and beautiful.  So you can imagine their disappointment when I showed up instead, haha.  I was told by a member that my accent doesn´t seem American, but rather Russian, whatever that´s supposed to mean.  My companion also said that I don´t look American, but European.  I asked him what he thought Americans look like and he said "Red hair, blue eyes."  These people have a lot to learn about America, haha.

I was reunited with my flip flops this week, so I don´t have to use my temple slippers anymore, a welcome change.

There are visa-waiters here too, but they´re Brazilians who are waiting on visas to Angola.  We are a mighty and proud people.  We cannot be surpressed!

The ward had a baptism this week!  It was an older, blind woman and it was really cool!  She´s the relative of an active member and she was so sweet and grateful for the ordinance.

We taught an investigator this week who said that he KNOWS that we´re sent from God because we speak unusually well Portuguese for the time we´ve both been in Brazil.  The gift of tongues is certainly real and it was nice to see it used as a testament of our sacred calling.

Things about Brazil:

- You know how everyone and their dog told me in the United States that I looked like Jacob Black?  Well, Twilight´s not as popular here so now the new thing is that everyone asks me if I´m related to J.P. Morgan.  Also, my zone leader looks EXACTLY like Edward from Twilight.  I´ll have to get a picture.

- Milk comes in boxes here, not jugs.  This is actually kind of nice, because it keeps for a lot longer and you don´t have to refrigerate it until a day or two before you use it.  This way you don´t have to buy a whole other fridge just for milk coughcouchMorganscoughcough.

- In case you haven´t already tried it, put maple syrup on your ice cream.  It´s a thing down here and it´s sooooo good.

That´s about it for this week!  Keep the faith!

Your friend,
Carter David Morgan

Brazil's Just a LITTLE Different than CA...

Greetings from São Paulo, Brazil!  It's been an interesting week, trying to get situated to everything.  Brazil's just a LITTLE different from Southern California.  Lots of walking, lots of rain this week.  Stuff like that.

I spend a lot of time in the office working with the referrals as of right now.  Now you may ask, "Elder Morgan, what's the most difficult part of working in an office in a different country?  The new language?  The culture shock?  The strange keyboards?"  Nope, none of those.  It's deciphering the dang handwriting of all these referrals!  People call in with their referrals and the secretaries write the information down, but sometimes it's like trying to read ancient Egyptian!  I think I've got the hang of it now, but every now and again I'll run into a symbol that could potentially be 18 different letters and 6 different numbers at the same time.

Oh, another weird thing about working with the referrals.  Now that the office has a secretary exclusively for referrals it's my job to write everything down when missionaries call about people to teach.  But if you've ever learned a foreign language then you'll know that talking on the phone is super difficult, haha.  It's pretty funny, people will call and we'll talk in Portuguese and I have to say, "Repeat, please" a million times.  People will ask, "Who is this?" And I'll say, "Elder Morgan, the referral secretary."  And they'll ask, "How long have you been in Brazil?"  And I'll proudly reply, "Three days!"

We had a few investigators attend sacrament meeting, which was nice.  One was named Josepi and he's really cool.  He's an older gentleman and is trying really hard to quit smoking.  He asked us to take his cigarettes from him so he won't be tempted, so we did.  I have to say, it felt weird walking through the streets of Brazil with a pack of cigarettes in my pocket, haha.

Things about Brazil:

- Sao Paulo pizza is DANG good.  Like, amazing.  It's a lot different than American pizza, but still really good.  They don't use red sauce, and you can get the crust filled with chocolate.  You'd think it'd be gross, but it's actually super good.

- You can't throw the toilet paper in the toilet.  It has to go in the trash basket.  Weird.

- In lots of places if you ask for water they'll ask you if you want it chilled or at room temperature.  Why anyone would ask for room temperature water is beyond me.

- The President of Brazil is running for re-election and her logo looks a lot like the Chick-Fil-A logo.  Every time I see it I get hungry.

That's about it for this week.  Até mais!

Your friend,
Elder Carter David Morgan

(Once again I can't figure out how to turn this picture--but as Carter says, "this isn't for the weak stomached or cat lovers--I found a completely squashed cat on the road!  Kid still has his sense of humor, that's for sure…)

Greetings From Brazil!

Greetings one and all from the Sao Paulo Brazil West mission!  That's right, after over a year of waiting, the day has finally arrived.  I'm actually in the mission of my original call.  It's been both exciting and and overwhelming.  I have to say, I miss the California sun.  It's currently overcast and a little rainy down here in Sao Paulo.  It feels like home, except everyone is a shade of brown and they all speak Portuguese.  So, in reality, it's not really like home at all, haha.

My brief stay at the Brazil CTM was really good.  The program they've designed especially for visa-waiters is really good.  We were treated really well and not like new missionaries, which was good.

I left the CTM in a taxi this morning and arrived at the Sao Paulo West mission office to find out that I've been recruited as one of the mission secretaries for the time being.  What the heck?  Apparently since I arrived in the middle of a transfer they had a little trouble figuring out where to put me and President Del Guerso said, "Why not keep him here in the office with the other secretaries?" So here I am.  It looks like I'll be handling all the referrals for the mission.  At first I was a little nervous, but I've been reassured that we won't be doing JUST desk work.  We have our own area and ward and all those good things.  So it looks like this next month will be interesting, haha.

So it's my first day in Brazil and I already have five baptisms!  Well, only if you're counting baptsisms for the dead, haha.  Just got back from  the Sao Paulo Temple.  It's interesting attending the ceremonies in a different language, but the same Spirit is there.  I had the privilege of baptizing another elder in behalf of five deceased ancestors.  How wonderful it is to know that there is salvation offered to those who didn't have the chance in this life!

Things about Brazil:

- People down here often don't use the word "we" and its conjugations.  They use the phrase "a gente" which means "the people" and then conjugate it in the voce form.  It throws your ear for a loop.

- Turns out that at this time of the year it's actually not that hot.  Who knew?

- People here are very touchy-feely.  I'm just glad I got here in the MIDDLE of my mission where I've opened up a little more to that stuff, rather than the beginning of my mission where I didn't like human contact.

That's about it for this week.  Keep the faith, folks!  Wish me look!

Your friend,
Elder Carter David Morgan

Farewell California--Hello Brazil!

Greetings and farewell from Southern California.  That's right, folks.  After a long wait, Elder Morgan will be boarding the plane tomorrow for Sao Paulo, Brazil to begin his service in his original call.  I'm super excited, although a little numb to it tat the moment.  I don't think it's quite hit me what I'm about to get into, haha.  I will say, though, today has been one of the most relaxing of my mission.  After coming down the hill from Hesperia I got to say goodbye to a lot of my good friends at transfer meeting and then I've gotten to chill at the office all day without a companion.  It feels nice to just rest for a bit.  On top of that, I got to go out to eat with the Abitos, some members I'm really close with from Chino!  It's been great!

Things couldn't have ended better in my last area.  We found three families to teach in one week and they're all doing super well.  We had an awesome lesson with a woman named Marcy and her daughter and they took really well to the message of the Restoration!  A lawyer from down the hill referred them to us and we were able with him and our bishop give her a priesthood blessing.  She's fallen on hard times recently.  I have high hopes for her.

Our investigator, Lesley, continues to do well.  She came to a session of General Conference and enjoyed it.  She gets a little antsy sitting through long meetings so we were really proud of her for doing a whole session.  She's progressing well and she told us she wants to be baptized soon!  I'm excited for that.

Met a man wandering through the desert yesterday.  As we went to talk to him he flagged us down and yelled "Mormons!" and we had a good discussion.  He was taught in Chino a while back and wanted to be taught again.

The Porider family is still doing well.  We brought our bishop to a lesson with them and the father took well to the message of the Restoration.  He seemed really interested.  My favorite thing about him is the fact that usually when we tell people that there's a prophet on the Earth they respond, "Oh, that's nice."  Not this guy.  He said, "Wait.  You're telling me that there's a guy like Moses on the Earth today who speaks to God?"  Yes sir, there is, and you can know for yourself.  It was great to see him take such an interest.

I'm sad to leave California but excited for Brazil.  What a wonderful year it's been serving in this beautiful state.  I look forward to many return trips with my family, kids, and grand kids one day.  And oh, what a day it will be.

Your friend,

Elder Carter David Morgan 

 Me and Elder Brown

This is who I work for

Me and the Abitos (a super awesome family that takes care of me)

 Roommate Bonding

My Awesome Desert Couch

The Gandalf Principle

What a week it was, ladies and gentlemen!  Prayers are definitely answered and miracles have not ceased!   Let me give you a little background on what this area has been like for the past couple months:

This area used to have sister missionaries in it and they struggled really badly to find and teach people.  They had a car for the area we covered and really weren't able to get a lot of things going.  Well, our mission president is crazy and decided to move the sisters out and move Elder Brown and I in.  Well, that made the ward angry cause they liked the sisters a lot.  Our president also decided that what they covered in a car would now be covered on bikes by elders.  The terrain stunk, the wind never stopped, and it's blazing hot here in the desert.  So pretty much everything was stacked against us.

But then Elder Brown and I thought, "Wait a minute, here we are in an area just full of housing tracts that have never seen missionaries out and about before.  Every missionary before us was in a car.  So we're going to be a new thing to these people.  Why don't we just get to know everyone around here and become the local celebrities?"

Thus was born the "Gandalf Principle."

We figured that we must become like Gandalf.  No matter where Gandalf goes in Middle Earth everyone knows Gandalf and Gandalf knows everyone.  How hard could it be to do that within seven square miles?  So we set out meeting and talking with as many people as we could.  Anyone who gave us their name, spoke English, and didn't threaten to kill us went on our potential investigators list.  We have literally fifty non-members written on a whiteboard, eight of whom are sincerely interested, many more who are open, and a lot more after that who don't want anything to do with the Gospel, but are more than willing to give us water and shoot the breeze.  So now we're getting to know everyone and everyone knows us.  The local schoolkids all say hi to us and ask us questions, which is weird for the high desert.  People actually know us by name, not just as the Mormons!

And guess what?  It's totally working!

Because we haven't been focused on just getting investigators, but rather building friendships and relationships with our investigators, we've actually gotten more investigators!  Paradox!

The first investigator family we got this week is Julie's family.  She's the mother of five children and is married.  The family just moved to the neighborhood and we met her while we biked past her porch.  She has LDS friends and has been looking for a church for her kids to be baptized into.  We taught her about the Restoration and she took really well to it!  She loves the Book of Mormon and it excited to read it!  Booyah!

The next investigator was a young man named Nick.  We first met his father who wasn't interested, but he was cool so we wrote his name down and planned to visit him another day to get some water and get to know him better.  We went back on Saturday and his dad wasn't there but his dad's friend Tommy was.  Nick was in the garage but Tommy came out and chatted with us for twenty minutes and was totally interested!  He doesn't live in our area but the missionaries where he lives should be teaching him now.  Anyhow, Nick comes out at the end of the conversation and we ask him if he'd like to learn more.  He says sure, we go back Monday, teach him the Restoration in his lawn, and he LOVED it!  He said we "opened a new page" for him.  He agreed to be baptized on October 19th!  He thanked god in his prayer for sending "these two amazing people" to him.  Unfortunately, he's YSA age so we had to pass him off to the YSA elders, but they'll do a great job with him!

Then we found the mother of ANOTHER family named Lesley.  She was taking a walk and we were biking super fast but we slammed on our brakes to talk to her.  We started to introduce ourselves but she cut us off saying she knew who we were and that her aunt was LDS.  She asked why we never came to her neighborhood to teach and we were like, "Well, we can come to your neighborhood if you'd like us to.  We can even come teach just you!"  She jumped at that opportunity and when we went by Tuesday evening we found her anxiously looking out her window to make sure we were coming!  We taught her about the Book of Mormon and she said she's been looking for a church for a long time with good family values.  She seems super solid!

So miracles are still happening, folks.  Along with finding all these people, the ward has really warmed up to us.  We had several members tell us out of the blue this Sunday that they hope we don't get transferred, which is weird because transfers aren't for another month, haha.

We went to the temple today which was great!  Always nice to spend some peaceful moments in the house of the Lord.

We're teaching Priest's quorum this Sunday.  I always love doing that.  We're also doing a mission prep/mission game mutual with them soon.  We also took out some of the young men who are preparing to serve missions to do some missionary work with us.  It was awesome!

Thanks for all the prayers and fasts!  You guys are great!

Your friend,

Elder Carter David Morgan

Aqua duct kids!

Another week in the blossoming metropolis of Hesperia, CA.  We continue to boldly forge through this mysterious country known as the "High Desert."  In very few missions do you have to deal with culture shock when you get transferred from one area to another, but the Rancho Cucamonga mission is just special like that.  It's always a big transition when you move from the valley to the desert or vice versa, but it's almost always a good transition.

This week our stake had its Pioneer Day activity.  I'm proud to say that I bested many in various feats of strength, most of which required lots of pulling or tugging things.  Too bad the pioneers didn't have Magic, that probably would've kept them more entertained.  I also got the chance to shake a little plastic container of cream into butter, but then at the last minute when I was about to open it and enjoy the hard earned fruits of my labor I accidentally let it slip and it got everywhere.  That was a sad point of my mission.

Tender mercy of the Lord: One of my good missionary friends who I spent three transfers with in Chino, Sister Toolan, was transferred out of Chino two transfers before I was.  She's here in Hesperia and though we're not in the same zone we DO share the same church building, so Elder Brown and I get to see her and her companion (who's also pretty legit) fairly often.  I've included pictures of the three of us.  By the way, in that picture of us and Sister Toolan she looks super awkward and it totally looks like we're super lame and creepy elders that forced a girl to take a picture with us.  But I want ALL OF YOU to know that Sister Toolan LITERALLY threatened to kill us if we left the Pioneer Day activity without a picture.  So it was totally her idea.

Speaking of Elder Brown, he's dang good at taking pictures of me.  I've included a picture that he took of me riding my bike along the road.  He took that picture WHILE HE WAS RIDING HIS BIKE AS WELL.  That's crazy!  We've been compiling an "action shot" series of me while on my mission and it's turning out fairly well.

While wandering through the desert we found a pile of trash and I used some of it to turn me into a modern day stripling warrior.  Pictures are included for your enjoyment.  Also, by that pile of trash there's never ANYONE, especially cars.  Yet while I donned my armor THREE different cars passed by.  That was pretty embarrassing.

The California aqueduct runs smack through the middle of our area.  So anytime we want to cross our area we have to bike through the undeveloped desert, find a gap in the barbwire fence, throw our bikes and ourselves under it, find a bridge that crosses the aqueduct, lower our bikes into the four foot pits that guard the bridges, lift them out again to cross the bridge, and then repeat the whole process except in reverse when we get to the other side.  It's quite an adventure.  But as we were crossing the aqueduct we actually ran into a group of kids sidling along the side of the bridge, which is weird because you NEVER see anyone by the aqueduct.  I made a joke to them that when they fell in I wanted pictures and they stopped us and asked us what religion we are.  We told them that we were Mormons and they said they wanted to ask us some questions.  So we hopped off the aqueduct and were able to teach them about the Restoration which was super good.  They all took copies of the Book of Mormon but most of them were just visiting from out of town so we won't be the ones teaching them.  It was super cool!

Fun fact: I am scheduled to fly home exactly one year from today.  Get ready, everyone.  The time is not far from my triumphant return.

For all you future missionaries out there: Want to be a good missionary?  Be a good home teacher/visiting teacher.  Home teaching is just missionary work to members and missionary work is just home teaching to non-members.  Also learn how to make LOTS of small talk.  I find testifying of the Gospel to be easy, it's the small talk on the streets that's harder.

Have a great week!

Your friend,
Elder Carter David Morgan

PS--From Carter's Mom:  Carter just heard this week that his visa should be arriving in the next 6 weeks!  He is VERY excited!

One Year Mark!

Greetings from Hesperia, CA!  Fun fact about Hesperia: There's a place that gives missionaries free hair cuts.  My hair looks great now!

This week has been rather eventful!  First off, I hit the big one year mark this week!  Woohoo!  It was an awesome day!  Some of my good friends from my old ward in Chino came up and we went out to dinner at Steak n' Shake.  By the way, Steak n' Shake is AWESOME.  It's seriously rivaling Chick Fil-A as my favorite mission restaurant.  We had an awesome time together and it was great to see them again.

This week I also got the privilege to ordain a young man that we've been working with to the office of a Priest.  His dad isn't around very often and he asked me to do the ordination.  I was very flattered, particularly because that was the first time I've ever performed an ordination to a priesthood office.

This week we found, taught, and were dropped by a family.  We taught the mom in her garage for about forty minutes while we were out biking around, but when we went back the next night to teach the whole family the dad was there and he was super born-again.  He couldn't understand the idea of living prophets or additional scripture.  It was super frustrating to watch someone completely not comprehend the message of the Restoration, but we were grateful that Heavenly Father allowed us the chance to teach some of His children.

That's about it for this week.  This upcoming week is the last week in the transfer so we'll see what happens.  Our mission president is crazy when it comes to transfers so pretty much everything is on the table.

Your friend,

Elder Carter David Morgan