Week 2
Hello family and friends,
This is Elder Hiatt, currently training to serve a mission in São Paulo Brazil. I will be sending these emails once a week for the next two years. If you don´t want to receive these, know someone else who wants to get them, or have anything else you want to tell me, you can contact me at john.hiatt@missionary.org. If you missed any of my previous emails, they are all posted at https://johnhiattmission.blogspot.com. Thank you!
This past week has been muito bom. For those of you that don´t speak Portuguese, that means very good. I sent the last email on Tuesday. Our preparation day here in the CTM is actually Wednesday, so the day after that email we got to go out and see other areas of São Paulo
First, all of the missionaries had the opportunity to attend the temple. There are actually two temples nearby: the São Paulo temple and the Campinas temple. Last week we went to the São Paulo temple, and tomorrow we will go to the Campinas temple. In the temple, we had the opportunity to do proxy ordinances for the dead so that all people can receive salvation. At the end of that, we go the celestial room, representing the kingdom of Heaven. In that room, I prayed (in Portuguese) and asked for guidance for how to best be a missionary and have the Holy Spirit to be with me. As an answer, my mind was filled with songs: Love at Home, Love is Spoken Here, I Feel my Savior´s Love, and others. Beyond that, the topic for talks in sacrament meeting on Sunday was Charity and Love. I think that I need to practice loving God and loving my neighbor as myself, as Jesus said were the two great commandments.
After we returned from the temple, we got to walk around São Paulo a little bit. We have a small area around the CTM that we are allowed to visit, and the people there are very used to missionaries coming around. Many of them speak English, which is convenient, since most of us don´t speak Portuguese yet. In a guided tour by our teachers, my district was taken to some of the best food places in the area: Mr. Cheney´s cookie shop, a place that sells something like custom giant Hot Pockets, and a place that sells some berry ice cream thing with fruit.
After Preparation day, we returned to classes. I stopped speaking Portuguese all the time, since none of my district understood me, and I think that has reduced my ability to speak Portuguese a little bit. I do pray in Portuguese all the time, which is possibly my biggest time to practice right now. I need to do better. However, I can teach in Portuguese with some success. I know a lot of scriptures from English, and can find them and read them pretty well. My two biggest issues right now are that I don't remember how to say things fast enough, and I don´t always know what to say at all, whether English or Portuguese.
One cool thing that I learned yesterday: Sister May is from Wheat Ridge, Wyoming. For those of you who don´t know where that is, that is where my aunt April lives. They served in Relief Society there together. I don´t know how or why we ended up in the same district, but it is very cool.
Later this week, we get to do TRC, which is an abbreviation for something about teaching real people. With my companion, I will get to teach an "interested person" (actually an instructor) for probably fifteen minutes, entirely in Portuguese. Three times: Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. I will tell you how that goes.
I don´t know what else to say to you this week (as I said earlier, I often don´t know what to say). Please tell me how things are going back in the United States. (But not too much, because I have less than an hour a week to read everything and write this email.)
Thank you,
Elder Hiatt
This is Elder Hiatt, currently training to serve a mission in São Paulo Brazil. I will be sending these emails once a week for the next two years. If you don´t want to receive these, know someone else who wants to get them, or have anything else you want to tell me, you can contact me at john.hiatt@missionary.org. If you missed any of my previous emails, they are all posted at https://johnhiattmission.blogspot.com. Thank you!
This past week has been muito bom. For those of you that don´t speak Portuguese, that means very good. I sent the last email on Tuesday. Our preparation day here in the CTM is actually Wednesday, so the day after that email we got to go out and see other areas of São Paulo
First, all of the missionaries had the opportunity to attend the temple. There are actually two temples nearby: the São Paulo temple and the Campinas temple. Last week we went to the São Paulo temple, and tomorrow we will go to the Campinas temple. In the temple, we had the opportunity to do proxy ordinances for the dead so that all people can receive salvation. At the end of that, we go the celestial room, representing the kingdom of Heaven. In that room, I prayed (in Portuguese) and asked for guidance for how to best be a missionary and have the Holy Spirit to be with me. As an answer, my mind was filled with songs: Love at Home, Love is Spoken Here, I Feel my Savior´s Love, and others. Beyond that, the topic for talks in sacrament meeting on Sunday was Charity and Love. I think that I need to practice loving God and loving my neighbor as myself, as Jesus said were the two great commandments.
After we returned from the temple, we got to walk around São Paulo a little bit. We have a small area around the CTM that we are allowed to visit, and the people there are very used to missionaries coming around. Many of them speak English, which is convenient, since most of us don´t speak Portuguese yet. In a guided tour by our teachers, my district was taken to some of the best food places in the area: Mr. Cheney´s cookie shop, a place that sells something like custom giant Hot Pockets, and a place that sells some berry ice cream thing with fruit.
After Preparation day, we returned to classes. I stopped speaking Portuguese all the time, since none of my district understood me, and I think that has reduced my ability to speak Portuguese a little bit. I do pray in Portuguese all the time, which is possibly my biggest time to practice right now. I need to do better. However, I can teach in Portuguese with some success. I know a lot of scriptures from English, and can find them and read them pretty well. My two biggest issues right now are that I don't remember how to say things fast enough, and I don´t always know what to say at all, whether English or Portuguese.
One cool thing that I learned yesterday: Sister May is from Wheat Ridge, Wyoming. For those of you who don´t know where that is, that is where my aunt April lives. They served in Relief Society there together. I don´t know how or why we ended up in the same district, but it is very cool.
Later this week, we get to do TRC, which is an abbreviation for something about teaching real people. With my companion, I will get to teach an "interested person" (actually an instructor) for probably fifteen minutes, entirely in Portuguese. Three times: Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. I will tell you how that goes.
I don´t know what else to say to you this week (as I said earlier, I often don´t know what to say). Please tell me how things are going back in the United States. (But not too much, because I have less than an hour a week to read everything and write this email.)
Thank you,
Elder Hiatt
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