Elder John Hiatt's Mission Blog

Hello family and friends, I was informed last week that my introduction to these emails has become outdated and needs to be updated. I'll start off with where. I am currently serving as a missionary in the Osasco ward of the Osasco stake in the city of Osasco in the state of São Paulo in the country of Brazil on the continent of South America on Earth in the Solar System on the outer edges of the Milky Way Galaxy of the Local Cluster of galaxies, located firmly in the center of the known universe. (If you try to visit, remember that the big yellow one is the sun.) Now, what. Instead of the typical list of three events with no explanation, I will give actual descriptions of two things that happened this week. First, I had my first time doing companionship splits. This is where two companionships trade companions for a day and experience a new companion and (for two of them) a new area. I got to go with Elder Rodriguez in the Jaguaré ward, which is a bit east of Osasco. I got to expe...

Hello family and friends, This was an exciting week. My companion and I walked around a lot, found some new people that accepted the first lesson who we could theoretically continue teaching if we could ever find them at their house again, and otherwise continued the work here in Osasco. We did get to teach a second lesson to one person, who was never baptized but whose parents are inactive members of the Church. We met his whole family: himself (Johnny), his brother Johnathan, his other brother Michael, his sister, his other very little brother, his parents, his aunt, and one of his cousins, all of whom have names that I don´t remember now. All of them should be members, but I think only the parents and the one aunt are. We also got some work done on the sink in our apartment. A member started to install a filter for the water so that we can drink it, but the sink is really old and the pipes don´t fit together perfectly, so it leaks. Also, the filter was supposed to be a double filter...

Hello family and friends, This week, I left the CTM and entered the real world of missionary work. Terça-feira (or Tuesday for those of you who don't speak Portuguese), the three missionaries from my district who were assigned to the São Paulo Oeste mission (me, Elder Phipps, and Elder Selvage), along with a few Brazilians who are also in this mission, got in a van to the mission president's house. There, we all had a brief interview with President Horsley, ate some crepes, and filled out a few forms about who we are, basic information about our family, and what we think about being missionaries. We also met about eight more missionaries from the Provo MTC. Once all of the interviews were finished, we had a few presentations about health, safety, expectations of the mission, and similar things. Then, we got back in the vans and headed over to the São Paulo temple. The São Paulo temple has a large chapel right next to it, so we met there. There, we found out who our first compan...