Week 2: Email

Hey Family and Friends!

It's been another awesome and long week here at the MTC! (missionary training center) Not to get your hopes up, but one of the districts that came in last week had 3 Elders get their visas! That being said, two of them went through the Houston consulate and the other went through San Fran. No one who went through LA has gotten theirs yet.

This week has been a whole lot of the same stuff. Just lots of studying and class, mixed with cannon center food 3 times a day. Portuguese is coming along; we teach a lesson to one of our "investigators" at least once a day, entirely in Portuguese! A couple days ago I only spoke Portuguese for the entire day! However, my vocabulary consists mainly of church related words, so thats about all I can talk about. If I needed someone to pass me a napkin I had to use hand gestures, or look it up in a dictionary.

Heres some cool things I learned about Portuguese.

1) Instead of CTR standing for "Choose The Right" it's "Conserve a Tua Rota" which means "keep your path." Coincidentally, I was reading in Alma 7 the day that I learned that and "Conserve a Tua Rota" was even cooler when I saw verse 19, which says "For I perceive that ye are in the path of righteousness; I perceive that ye are in the path which leads to the kingdom of God; yea, I perceive that ye are making His paths straight." Keep your path!

2) There is no word for "awkward" in Brazilian Portuguese. That means there's no reason to not open my mouth and talk to people about the gospel!

Our "investigator" "Amadeu" that I mentioned last week turned out to be our other teacher, so now I have two class sessions a day, one with Brother Durfee (from Arizona, served in Brasilia), and one with Brother Pinho (from Brasilia, served in Curitiba). I'll take some pictures with them this week so you can put a face to the name.

I've started to wear my glasses sometimes, and my district says that I look like Clark Kent/Superman. And in case that didn't make my head big enough, they also think that I slightly resemble Channing Tatum. I dont really see that one, but this is the 3rd time I've been told that. Apprently my head needed to be deflated, because I had a 'humbling' experience in the gym yesterday.

Story from gym time yesterday: None of the guys in my district like to go to the gym at gym time, so I went on splits with an elder from the other district in our zone that came in at the same time as us. He is built exactly like Cameron, and is apparently an awesome gymnist. I, having not run for months, ran some stairs with him after our workout. Not to be outdone, I pushed myself to keep up with him. Unfortunately, gym time was right after dinner, and I had eaten 2 plates of BBQ wings and fries. Fortunately, I made it to the garbage can, and didn't make a mess. Needless to say, I'm going to start running to try to get in better shape.

The blessing behind this story is that I was able to lift and run at all.

For those who don't know, last summer I dislocated my shoulder in a tubing incident, and I spent months rehabilitating it back to the point where I could lift weights again. Then in February, I attempted an unintelligent stunt (a backflip over a pylon and off a 10 ft wall into a sparsely filled foam pit) and I "taco-ed" and hurt my back really bad. Rarely a night went by that i didn't go to sleep with a sore and aching back. Lifting and running only made it worse. However, when I was set apart as a missionary my Stake President blessed me that my body would be strong and able and later, when my Dad gave me a father's blessing, he blessed me with the same thing. A couple days into my stay here at the MTC, I realized that my back didnt hurt as the day went on. I spent the next couple days testing it out, and it has yet to give me a single problem, even after handstand pushups! It has truely been a blessing for me.

Thank you for your letters and DearElders! And thanks Mom for the package! :) The poptarts have been my midnight snack (and by midnight I mean 10 o clock. but it sure feels like midnight by that time!) Oh, and thank you to the Riley family and their DearElder they sent me, we all had a good laugh at those missionary jokes.

Love, Elder Carr

P.S. You know that you're a missionary when you quote the movie "The Testaments" (which we watched on Sunday) as often as Remember the Titans is quoted in the Carr household!