The Astonishing Adventures of Sister Hannah Hiatt

So sharp observers will notice that this email was sent on Tuesday and not, in fact, on Monday. No, this is not fubecagem, I promise. It's because yesterday in our mission all of the Sisters were invited to a special conference that lasted for the whole day. There we learned about politeness and graciousness and stuff like that, and how we can be better missionaries and better people. The thing about the mission is that you have to focus completely on it if you want to have success. I think that in pretty much any other activity or occupation it's fine if you practice it a little bit each day, or pass 8 hours working. That's enough to get it done. But here on the mission, if we want to have success, we need to focus every second of every day for a year and a half. We don't watch TV, we don't use the internet (aside from emails and stuff), and each day we try to spread the gospel in everything we do. Now obviously we aren't perfect and we spend a lot of time, unf...

This week I went on splits with another dupla, and it was pretty awesome. I spent the day with Sister Coyago, who is from Ecuador (which is cool because in one half of the country water flushes clockwise and in the other it flushes counterclockwise. Sister Coyago lives slightly to the north of the equator, in the mountain-y part of the country). She's pretty cool and we met some awesome people that they'll baptize soon. This week we met a guy who has become my new favorite person. You know when you're doing mission prep and you're teaching a bad actor with a lot of deep questions that just happen to be answerable with the scriptures and a firm testimony of the gospel? Turns out people like that truly do exist and we met one of them. So we got to exercise our scripture-chase muscles, and in the end he really understood and had a profound desire to go to church. The Spirit was strong. I'm super excited for the day we show him the Book of Mormon (probably tonight). Thi...

So this week we had a few awesome adventures. The first one was on Wednesday, when we decided to head to the furthest point in our area to see if our Haitiano (who had already gone to church a few times) had returned after New Years. The problem is that he lives super far away (one street more and it would be another ward) and doesn't have a cell phone. So we were truckin´on out and when we were almost there, it started to rain. But not just normal rain. It was as if God decided to break the covenant he made with Noah and drown the whole world again. So we took out our umbrellas and started to run. We managed to find a store that was open and had a covered space in the front where we took refuge. Crossing the street to get to the store was a trip. The water was already rising and was about ankle level, but we ran and somehow made it across okay. But the second we made it to the covered space, thunder boomed and God started up the ultra-power fire hoses He's got hidden in the ...

So a little over a month ago, we were introduced to Beatriz. Her cousin (a guy in the ward) had *just* entered the MTC and she was super interested in the gospel. She wanted to learn more about the church and had a ton of questions for us. The first lesson we marked with her, her super sweet grandpa was there with us and the Spirit got really strong. We invited her to be baptized but she said that she wanted to explore a little more and pray a lot. When we returned a few days later, she explained how she had prayed and how she had felt really peaceful. She still had some questions and some doubts, but had a lot of faith that this was the right decision. She just didn't want to be baptized so soon. E assim ela começou a nos enrolar. First she wasn't feeling ready. Then she went out of town. Then she vacationed for Christmas. Then she went to spend New Years on the beach (this is Brasil, after all). All the while we're trying to save her eternal soul and she just waited a...