Week 1

Hello gorgeous family! 

I love hearing from all of you - my district leader makes fun of me so much cause I get the most letters out of everyone! I love it!  I'm leaving Tuesday morning (we have to leave the MTC at 2:30 - oh joy!) and my flight takes off at 7 UT time, so I'll be calling sometime before then - be ready to answer!

So much has happened this week and I feel like I've grown so much! We had an MTC devotional on Tuesday night, it was broadcasted to other MTCs around the world. That was such an amazing experience, we were singing "I Know That My Redeemer Lives" and in walks Elder Anderson - we had no idea he was speaking and it was so cool to be singing about the Savior and have one of His apostles walk in - as you could imagine, I kinda let a couple tears out. We had 1500+ missionaries in the choir, which was the COOLEST thing ever! The camera got me singing way up close a couple times, so awkward. But Elder Anderson was so amazing. My favorite quote from him - "We love the things we sacrifice for and we sacrifice for the things we love!" How perfect?!

Mom, I'm really glad you and Sis. Payne are friends now - Elder Payne's in my district but he's also our zone leader, such an amazing missionary. He came up to me a few days ago and was like "Would it be weird if I told you that I knew who you were before we came here? Cause my mom FB stalked you." You two were so meant to be friends.

  Anyway, the Spirit is so dang strong here, I feel like this place shouldn't be real cause it's so perfect, but it's just a little spot of heaven on earth. One of our teachers told us yesterday that the veil has never been thinner for us and heaven's always so close for missionaries. Holy cow can I testify to that! I have a whole new view on the phrase "the heavens were opened," I always thought it was some Avengers-like, giant hole in the sky thing, but no no no, I have seen the heavens opened many a times. It's a long story, but our district calls them "chair out the window" moments, where we'll be reading our scriptures or role playing and one of us will get this huge revelation or get this amazing insight on a verse or make some insane connection and we'll all just sit there in awe and are like whoa - The Church is true! We've had lots of good, spiritual tears every single day and I can't believe how amazing this gospel is, I've gained so much insight and I look at everything so differently now.

   My favorite thing is being able to teach investigators in this trc thing ( i don't know what it stands for), but real investigators come to the MTC and we get to teach them. With that and role playing with other missionaries, I'm constantly teaching and bearing my testimony to others. It's insane how doing that can increase your testimony so much. I've always known this stuff was true, but telling people about it, you're like holy cow, this is seriously so true! I've relied on the Spirit so much to teach and it's amazing the outcome when I do. We had our last lesson with one of our investigators the other day, and it went so insanely well that my comp and I were smiling so much and we just knelt down right after and thanked Heavenly Father for His Gospel and the Spirit that was in the lesson and just everything. His hand is in everything here - it's amazing to see it in action.

   Our weird color days have been continuing, and we've gotten other districts to do it with us. We had blue day on Tuesday and Wednesday was black in mourning of our favorite teacher leaving and yesterday was red. I've also run into another guy from EFY, there's four of us here who were all in the same company together and now we're all preparing for our missions together. Who woulda thought?

I wish I had more time, I have so much to tell you! Love you so much! 

Love, Sister Carr