Does that have anything to do with the block explorer not working or the wallet not showing the address a transaction was sent from?
No, if you have the wallet working with the main net and someone sent you CREA, you should see it.
That's what I thought. But I've both received and sent coins successfully and none of them show up on the block explorer.
This is the block explorer I found, maybe there is another one working better?
https://search.creativechain.net/search