The Astonishing Adventures of Sister Hannah Hiatt

So I've officially survived my first transfer (6 weeks)! I've advanced from Charades to Taboo in terms of communication, my feet have calloused up, and I'm really loving it here. This week was special because we had Nova Forca, where the group of missionaries I arrived with and their trainers met together to debrief. President Acosta, the mission president, spoke about weaknesses and the atonement and the power of Christ, and it really spoke to me. We are given trials so that we can learn, and when they seem too hard for us to conquer alone, it's because they are. But if we humble ourselves, sincerely ask for help and then go forth and do the best we can, God will magnify our efforts and with His help we can overcome anything. I mentioned before that this week was the end of the transfer, which means that things are changing a little. I'm staying here in Riberão Pires with Sister Gomes, but our area is splitting and we'll be working and living with another comp...

Howdy y'all! Hope everyone is doing well. Nothing huge happened to me this week except that we had interviews with the Mission President, which was wild. He gave me some advice that honestly really helped, about patience, hard work, and faith. The language is coming along, but slowly, and it's easy to get frustrated. I've been getting better at focusing and keeping a growth mindset, and I've honestly learned so much already. It's funny because sometimes we'll be talking to people on the street and they'll ask where I'm from and I'll make them guess and they say somewhere weird and not English speaking. I've gotten Germany a lot, and Argentina, Mexico, Australia, and of course the USA a ton but it's comforting to know that my accent isn't *that* obviously American. The plan for today was to show y'all some pictures but I honestly cannot figure out how to connect my camera's drive-y thingy into the computer, so maybe that'll wai...

*Woot woot!* Tomorrow marks one full month here in Brasil, and what a month it's been. I still don't understand everything (some days it feels like I don't understand anything) but I know I'm learning and I've definitely seen the Lord's hand in my life. So I could tell you about the Zone Conference we had this week (where I heard from the Mission President and his wife along with like 60 other missionaries, including some Americans who could actually, like, communicate, which gave me hope), or I could tell you about how we had 8 investigators at church Sunday (including two teens, a brother and a sister, who are about the sweetest people ever. They're not sure about baptism yet, but they love the gospel and we've had some really spiritual lessons with them), but I think y'all would enjoy hearing about my grandest adventure for the week. It started when my companion got a call and then proceeded to tell me that we needed to go to the police station, n...

It's been three full weeks and I finally found the apostrophe on the keyboards! (Thanks Elder Wright... it's been keeping me up at night) So I think I've finally settled into a routine here. We study the scriptures all morning, we have lunch with a member (and I always eat waaaay too much), and we talk with people in their homes and in the streets about Christ until it's dark and my feet feel like they're about to fall off. It's a pretty a-okay life. This week was wild, though, because we got to do Splits, which is where you swap companions for a day. I spent the day with a sweet Sister in the next town over, which was awesome because we had lunch and spent the evening with another companionship who lived in the same apartment (four girls in one house. It was like BYU-I all over again, except in Portuguese). Also one of the other girls was from the States and we were able to talk about some things, and she understood my position a little better than the other gi...