A Christmas Note

Dec. 25, 2012

Dad,

It's Christmas so I get extra email time! I'm gonna just tell you what's been going on lately since I just sent y'all a long email yesterday. Christmas is way different here.  As soon as the clock struck 12 the whole city went nuts. People were yelling in the streets and fireworks were going off for pretty much the whole night. I couldn't really fall asleep that well but that's okay because we got to sleep in this morning, 8:00 in the morning is when we got to wake up as opposed to 6:30 which was super awesome. They gave us so much chocolate it's ridiculous. I just wanna binge on it so I don't have to eat it ever again. It's impossible to eat healthy here but I figure it doesn't matter for 2 years.

An area seventy came and spoke to us this morning. Of course it had to be translated but it was great. He talked about how every day for a missionary is Christmas because we get to bring Christ into peoples lives. We got jipped of our pday this week because of Christmas so I don't get to send people letters and stuff but, as long as I get to email it's good! We had a great testimony meeting last night and it was a great spiritual experience. Its always good to get spiritually awakened.

The language is still improving I guess. It's hard to monitor growth in learning a language but now that I think about it I've learned so much since the first week. The other day we were talking about how Portuguese has double negatives and that doing it any other way besides that would be wrong. It blew our minds! HOW CAN YOU NOT HAVE NOTHING!! Hahaha. After talking about it for about an hour with deep philosophical conversation we finally came to terms with the fact that we would just have to accept it.

I feel so fat right now, it's not even funny. I know I'm not but they just give us so much chocolate! Something I'm trying to really strive to do right now is 100% obedience. It's kind of hard when there's a rule for anything you could do or are doing but I'm told I will be blessed for it so I'm gonna try hard to improve. It's weird that we only have 3 weeks left in the MTC and kind of nerve racking. People say that once we get out into the field that we will want to come back to the MTC. I don't see that happening. All the Brazilians say Recife is the best place ever. Two of the Elders in my district are going to Recife and we're just getting so excited.

It kind of sounds like the Hobbit wasn't that great. I guess if Landon likes it then I will. We've been listening to Lord of the Rings music so much here. It's one thing we all love. I mean who doesn't love Lord of the Rings! Brings back so many memories. If I'm allowed to listen to that in the mission field I will be asking you to send me a cd or something cause it's so epic.

Tell Ashton to send me an email please and set up the mission ties thing and post on facebook.

I'm really glad to be here even though it's hard to be away from home for the holidays. I've never had to experience that before but, hearing you're stories about your mission makes me so excited (Dallin's dad's stories). I feel like that dog story is going to happen to me here. There are so many dogs here I can just hear them at night freaking out at all the fireworks and stuff.  They use buses and taxis and they drive so crazy here. I just wanna stop talking about bringing people the gospel and just do it already! Its getting redundant and I just want to learn by doing. Having ADD doesn't help that much when you're in a classroom for 14 hours a day but, I feel like when I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing, the Lord blesses me with focus that I would have never had before the mission. I'm definitely the one in my companionship who always has to keep us on task. It's hard to do sometimes when two people are opposing me but in the end they know what needs to be done and they go with it. Good to hear work went well this year and you won a bunch of stuff. That's impressive. Probably the only one at your high school reunion who looks even remotely like they did 30 years ago. Anyways I hope you all are having a good Christmas and that everyone's wishes came true. Let me know how it goes and answer today if you can cause I might be able to get on again today to reply! Thanks for the love Dad. Love you!

Elder Dallin Carroll