The Astonishing Adventures of Sister Hannah Hiatt

This week has been one of goodbyes, and also of hellos. Today I was transfered and I've been saying goodbye to a lot of friends, but I'm also eager to get to know new faces too. Goodbye Sister Larsen, our roommate and STL who went home to Utah after serving the Lord 18 months faithfully and diligently. Hello Sister Sales, the novinha of Sister Larsen, who was my roommate a while back. She will be my new companion and I'm super excited because she's awesome! Goodbye Sister Medrano, who has been my companion and amiga for about three months. We get along really great and have not as of yet done Companionship Inventory (which is impressive, given that I am a potato who likes to fight people and am not exactly an easy companion) Hello Rudge Ramos, my new Zone (aside: I've been moving steadily in a line. If you find my areas on a map, I go straight from city to city in a linear progression towards the big city of São Paulo. My next area will be São Bernar...

So this week was pretty wild. I saw John (he's entering the CTM here and in a few weeks will serve no Missão Brasil São Paulo Oeste, which is awesome) and my mission president let me go to the airport to meet him (que foi um pouco trunky mas eu gostei). He's going to do awesome things on the mission, I know. Boa sorte, amigo! (In this picture he looks taller but that's because I'm behind him and the picture was taken at a weird angle. I am in fact taller, thank you very much) We had an awesome Zone Conference this week and I wanted to share with you some of my notes. I think sometimes we reach a certain point and then stop progressing. We're not as desperate to learn, we're not as humble, we think to ourselves, 'well, I'm not perfect, but I think I'm doing okay,' and use that as an excuse to stop changing. But in reality, we're here to change. God wants us to be perfect and when we stop repenting of the little things each day, we make H...

This week was pretty awesome! Our zone is doing a 40-day fast, where each companionship takes a day and we fast trading off for 40 days with the same purpose in mind. One of the purposes is to find families that are ready to receive and live the gospel (i.e. be baptized) and holy cow it's working. We met an awesome family with a mom and six kids (yes, six, with 4-year-old twins. What a brave woman) and they *love* learning about the gospel. We have lessons that go from everyone laughing to really spiritual to everyone sharing stories. They're a really fun family and the ones who went to church yesterday loved it. Also we found this super cute park and took a bunch of photos They have a really neat pond thing with turtles and huge fish things (like, half the size of my leg. It's kind of terrifying)  My companion has the answers to the secrets of the universe.... approach if you dare There's also a really snazzy tree thing that would be super fun to climb if you ...

This week wasn't super eventful but we ate a lot of food, so I thought I'd send some pictures and make y'all jealous. Next week we'll have baptism photos and stories of adventure and awesome spiritual experiences and maybe some self-discovery and stuff. But for today, let's take a look at the food. So there in the United States, we're pretty basic when it comes to hot dogs. Usually there isn't much more than ketchup and mustard, but here in Brasil, they're a little more creative. Here we've got mashed potatoes, tomato sauce, guacamole (which they don't really eat in Brasil but I'm american (like, seriously, they mix avocado with sugar and eat it like a dessert)), and on top these little small baby french fries. The other day I was craving cookies but have not yet been able to find all the ingredients here, so I decided to just go for it and it turned out decent. They're not quite as good as they'd be with, like, brown sugar, but t...

You know that time when Jesus visited the Americas? You know, right after he was resurrected but before he returned to Jerusalem? He taught them the doctrine of salvation and called apostles and administered the sacrament and cured the sick and diseased. And then he called the children forth and blessed them one by one. When he finally ascended into the skies to return to the Middle East, the people cried and wanted him to stay. But he said that he passed his authority to the apostles he called and that they would continue to minister unto them. Christ didn't come to Brasil this week (at least, not in the body), but he sent his representative: the prophet and president of his church, along with one of the apostles. We had the privilege to hear from President Nelson. When he got to the pulpit he asked for all of the children to stand up, and for them to sing "I am a Child of God." He then explained how important it is that we know (and believe) in this. We are literally ch...