Elder John Hiatt's Mission Blog

Hello family and friends, As I said last week, on Tuesday I got on a plane and around noon on Wednesday arrived back in my house here in Colorado. I have now been at home, still as a missionary, for about a week now. And not much happened. For the most part, I just walk around and sometimes talk to my siblings and help them with not being bored or something. I helped my brother Josh with his homework for his fancy programming class, then listened in on the virtual class meeting today (in which I found a couple bugs in the program they were writing together). On Saturday we went to the park and played volleyball, because apparently I am allowed to leave my house as long as I stay away from other people. And I get to do this for at least another week before I get reassigned. In this time, I would like to bring back the reminder from the first few weeks that if you have anything you want to say to me or know other people that might want to hear from me, you can contact me at john.hiatt@mi...

Hello, family and friends, In case any of you thought that miracles had ceased, here is a story that happened this week that proves otherwise. About a week ago, we got a reference for Adriana from some member who lives in the São Paulo area (but not the Oeste mission). Last Tuesday, we visited her. She was very interested to hear our message, and is otherwise a great person who will probably be baptized sometime when CoronaVirus is less annoying. Some of you may be asking why this is a miracle. For about a week and a half now, we haven't been allowed to make contacts or otherwise find people in normal ways. References are about the only way to do that, and they don't come very often. Lunch that day was close, so we visited immediately after lunch. According to her, we got there three minutes after she got home from something with her son David. Had we come a little bit earlier, we would have missed her. That night, we were told that we could no longer visit anyone other than le...

Hello, family and friends, So, as you know, there's this thing called CoronaVirus, which exists in pretty much the entire world by now, including São Paulo Brasil. Here's what we were told this week: Day 1: Tomorrow you will receive 50 reais (about 12 dollars) to buy some non-perishable food. Day 2: You need to go back to the store to buy more water, hand sanitizer, and toilet paper. Also, you can't touch people (including shaking hands) or knock doors, and all zone conferences have been canceled. Day 3: All church meetings have been canceled. You can only make contacts on the streets if the Spirit directs you. Day 4: You have ten minutes today to talk to your families and tell them to watch the mission Facebook page so they will know what's going on. Also, you have to return to your house at 8:30 every night instead of 9. Day 5: You can't eat lunch in member's houses anymore, you have to either bring the food to your house, have them bring it to your house, or ...

Hello, family and friends, I'd like you to meet Elder Jones. He is from Mesa, Arizona, and has been on the mission for seven months and two days, one transfer more than I have. He plays guitar, and before the mission played in a band and taught children how to play. He has been in four more areas than I have, all out in the country or less urban parts of the city, so coming here to Osasco has been a change. He likes cookies, popcorn, and ice cream, and is in many ways a cool guy. He's also a really good missionary. He explains things in a very clear way, and asks questions to make the people we teach actually pay attention and theoretically learn something. This week we didn't have a lot of opportunities to teach, but we're going to search for more people this week and hopefully bring some people to baptism. And your scripture: Ether 12:27 And if men come unto me I will show unto them their weakness. I give unto men weakness that they may be humble; and my grace is suff...

Hello family and friends, Today is the end of my third transfer here in Osasco. All three of them were with my first companion in the field, Elder Bulkley. We have done a lot of things here together. Here is a list of a few of them: * We accidentally supercooled some water the first week, and possibly a few more times. * We taught an African who lived in New York for several years (and says he joined the church there), and who may or may not have been drunk every time we visited him. We couldn't actually tell. * We met with one of our investigators in the week between a month long vacation and moving out to the country (and across the street from another church building). * We started learning Italian, poichè italiano è buono. (And I started learning Spanish, Creole, and German, and continued learning French and Japanese) * We learned that Giacomo, Jak, Jacques, Tiago, Santiago, ヤコブ (Yakobu), Jakobus, and James are somehow all the same name. * We started teaching at least ten diffe...