Another baptism!

Haha honestly I didn´t even know yesterday was easter... I kind of figured it was, because this last week was the semana santa here in Peru. which means holy week, but they dont even celebrate easter really. all they do is eat fish and something weird, i didnt really understand it.. And no i didn´t get my easter package yet! the only package ive gotten was on the first day i got here to the field from megan! but im anxiously awaiting. When packages arrive to the mission home the office elders pick them up and put them on a bus to the different areas then the zone leaders pick them up and bring them to zone conference. Church here is nutso. We´re always trying to pick up investigators last minute, trying to figure out who is attending, and greeting everybody at the same time. The chapel we´re in has like six rows and this week was so funny, at the start of the jose balta ward like three cell phones went off and the bishop was so mad, he asked everyone to turn off their cell phones, then later that day he was welcoming our claudia (my second baptism!) into the ward and his cell phone went off! technology these days ruining the spirit... Yeah Elder orcohuaranga and i are over two wards, jose balta and campodónico. Oh my goodness i hadnt heard any of those mission calls yet, that is SO AWESOME!!! AHHH there´s nothing i love more than hearing where all my friends are going on their missions! Ah congrats everyone. and yeah im pretty sure the zach´s and cameron freeman are in the same mission! mom haha no i dont need work gloves, i just need to work up some callouses. and yeah i use my soccer shoes every pday. We play soccer a ton here and its really fun except im so exhausted all the time i dont feel like running haha. Elder orcohuaranga has been on his mission for 22 months, and he reminds me every hour basically that hes going home in two months. but tomorrow is my three month anniversary! The time is going by so fast i cant even believe it. Se va bolando! Mom youre going to be disgusted, but no, we cook absolutely nothing for ourselves, we dont do our own laundry either. we go to the pensionista every meal except lunch on saturday and sunday when we go to members houses, and we give our laundry to a member in the ward who does it and irons everything too. but at least i know how to do all that stuff, dont worry mom you prepared me well :). And yes i get to call home for mothers day! im so excited, i dont think ill be able to talk fast enough to tell you everything and answer all your questions though! David, i just got your letter that you wrote on april 5th, that should give you a little time range. im going to send letters to david and brielle and zoe tomorrow, because thats who ive gotten letters from recently, i hope you get them before the end of the summer... goodness. Im still freaking out about everyone and their mission calls!

okay a little bit about our investigators. Jefferson, a 14 year old in a part member inactive family was supposed to be baptized this last sunday but in the middle of the week he got dissanimated and decided not to, but now hes doing a lot better and will probably be baptized the 8th. Maria, an 18 year old whos whole family but her is members, has a date for the first, but she has an extreme fear of leaving her house, so going to church is really tough for her, but she really wants to get baptized, so we´ll see what happens. she has a date for the first of may. Anderson´s date is the 15th of may, he set it himself and im super pumped for him, but the biggest most awesome thing that happened was with Fernando. He is the father of two teenage member kids and his pareja, or unmarried wife is a member too. we´ve been working with them trying to get them married and everything was looking good until when we went to visit them and he wasnt there yet but his ¨wife¨said he didnt want to get married anymore. we were super bummed but when Fernando came from work we gave him an awesome lesson on why we need baptism to arrive in the celestial kingdom as a whole family, and then orco challenged him and he accepted! They are planning on getting married on the 30th, the city of chiclayo has its anniversary that day and they do massive weddings for 50 soles, or like 20 bucks! so then he´ll probably get baptized the 8th! Ah its so fun to be working with all these great people as they work to change their lives and follow christ. Also, yesterday i had my second baptism, Claudia. it doesnt feel like we did that much because shes been going to church most of her life but her parents are inactive and she didnt get baptized at 8 and now shes 9 so we had the easiest baptism of a lifetime! Her uncle, Rudy, baptized her and it was a great service.

Yesterday Elder Orcohuaranga and i were knocking doors and he makes me take the lead every once in a while. This one door where i took the lead was a really interesting guy whos catholic but thinks praying to saints is idol worship but still thinks the catholic church is right, it just needs to be reformed... i wonder if he knows theres like a million reformed catholic churches... haha. but anyway i ended up explaining baptism to him and we had a good discussion slash arguement, but i tried to keep it calm, and we have an appointment with him this next weekend. I love hearing from everyone and thank you so much for all your support and prayers. When i run into rough times its nice to think that i have a whole bunch of people pulling for me, and of course i have the Lord with me always. Today we went to a place called Túcume, where there are some incan pyramids... haha if you can call them that. theyre more like pronouned dirt mounds, but it was really cool! it was super green there and lots of rice patties if thats how you spell that word.. and we hiked a huge mountain too, and im super sunburned now! but we were there like all day. we played soccer on a super ghetto field, but it was great. Love you!

Elder Hatch

First Baptism!

So, this week was pretty unreal! we worked really hard and now its starting to pay off. As you can see I had my first baptism! Her name is Tania Guevara Bravo, shes 43 years old. we found her, taught her, and baptized her! she honestly didn´t have to change like anything in her life. she was already living the word of wisdom etc. and totally ate up all the commandments and lessons.  it was such a cool experience, especially saying the baptismal prayer in spanish, and we have two more this sunday coming up, and one more the next sunday. Just for the record, i still totally dont feel old enough to be on a mission and baptizing people! This week also had a few other firsts. Im sorry Kelsey Berges, you might want to shield your eyes, slash dont let her see this, but I ate Cui (guinea pig)... that was quite the experience. we were sitting in an investigators house, waiting for them to al come in and the lady starts getting in her fridge and i was like oh no what are we going to eat... and then she asks us if we like cui... haha i was so scared! she said she just killed them earlier that morning. and the way it went was that I got tails and elder orcohuaranga got heads... they still had the legs on there and all. all fried and crispy. and his still had the head. yuck. but honestly, the meat was good! it was better than that rabbit i had at scout camp. Then the next day we had working visits, so i spent 24 hours with one of the zone leaders, elder rigby, in his area. That was really fun and we talked a lot in English which wasnt the best, but it was really good for my morale haha. And that night for dinner he took me out for anticuchos, which are cow heart kabobs! and im dead serious, they were the best meat ive had here so far. that next morning while i was still on exchanges we did some service for a member family. first of all we shoveled a big pile of dirt from in front of their house, which was confusing because i didnt really know where the pile ended and the street began... but we moved it in a wheelbarrow down the street and filled in divots that were made by mototaxis driving through the street after it rained. then we went into his house and shoveled like a billion pounds worth of dirt out from his house. in this huge room there used to be an oven, and this pile of dirt was the size of his house once we got it all out, it was crazy and my hands got all blistered. blisters are a big part of my life these days haha.

i figured i´d tell you a little about what ive done on pdays, i always forget to! we always wake up at 6 and go play futsal with a bunch of missionaries and a few members in the mornings for a few hours, then go back and shower and shop for stuff we need, do laundry, etc. then email. last week we had a zone activity where we all went out to a chifu, aka a chinese restaurant. that was really fun! today elder orco and i walked around for like an hour looking for some soccer shoes for him to no avail. but i love pdays, its always a nice rest. last night when we were eating dinner at the pension, american idol was on in english. i cant even explain how hard it was to not watch it! but i mostly succeeded. like we were sitting on a couch waiting for dinner and it was just on in front of me! so to avert my attention i got out my little white handbook and read the rules about not watching tv. what a good missionary i am :) their tv is always on and elder orcohuaranga always watches it in the mirror because he faces away from it. its so funny! he has a few little trunkie things he does like that, but hes still going strong! I love it here so much and im having a great time! if im ever down i just remind myself that im living in nacho libre and i start laughing immediately. and on a more serious note, i know that what im doing is the Lord´s work. Everything we do in the church is so right, and makes so much sense just to the intellectual mind. Elder Orco is pretty good at burning people with baptismal doctrine and last night he did an awesome one. he always gets them to realize they werent baptized like christ and asks them if they would follow christ, then asks them if they would be baptized like christ if they had the opportunity and they start freaking out when they realize theyve never thought of it and get mad at us and shut the door in our face haha. its great. I feel Christ´s love so strongly, and im starting to feel like a real missionary more and more every day as i align my life more and more with His will. Have a great week and write me letters! Love you

Elder Hatch

His first baptism.  My little brother is all grown up, sniffle, sniffle.

Jacob’s sister, Kristen sent him this cute banner

Week 2 in Chiclayo

Hello family!

Ill start off by answering questions. Elder Orcohuaranga and I are the only missionaries in our room, and yeah my bed is fine! i dont know why they made me get flat sheets because normal ones would work fine... but oh well. dad, my eye is fine! i just always squint that eye in my pictures, i dont know why. ill work on that :) yeah my hair was super long and it drove me insane! but i got it cut last p-day, so now im happy! I didnt go to the saloon, i should have though dang it! i went to this haircut place by our pensionistas house, and it was the most legit haircut ive ever gotten! he was trimming everything all perfect with a razorblade and it cost like two dollars. my companion is great, hes an amazing teacher and im learning tons from him! we dont talk too much in our free time, i think he just thinks a lot haha. we still havent had normal church in our ward because the first week was general conference and this week on sunday were the peruvian presidential elections-at least the first round. theyre compelled to vote here, and things can get crazy, so we werent supposed to leave our apartment really on saturday or sunday except to go eat, but elder orco being who he is had already gotten a full day of appointments set up for saturday by the time they told us that so we had appointments all day saturday and a few on sunday, but sunday we mostly just stayed in our room. but im excited to actually go to our wards this sunday! its going to be crazy because we have both of our wards, campodonico and jose balta, and also we have four baptisms scheduled for this sunday! a week ago we had one baptism scheduled and now we have seven! four for this sunday and three for the next. i dont think all of them will follow through, but im excited for the ones that will! if they would just pray about the book of mormon assignments we give them! they almost always read but never pray! you betcha we have a chapel to meet in. its really nice too, and there are tons of chapels here. the stake center in latina where we have all our zone conferences etc is huge! like as big as our stake center. go on google earth and look up chiclayo! the very center of the city is in my area, with a HUGE catholic cathedral in the main square. you could call it great and abominable... jk. but seriously. and look up jorge chaves and tejada, thats where i live! honestly, learning spanish has kind of come to a halt. im learning a lot still, just by speaking it all the time and hearing it all the time, but elder orco always just wants to go and work and never wants to give me time to study spanish! so ive only gotten to study once since ive been here. but this week im going to put down the iron fist and make him let me study. but other than that im absolutely loving everything here. right now im dripping sweat, but im getting used to it. ok some random stuff from the week:

i can do that finger snappy thing that brad does. my zone leader is really jealous because he still cant do it and i learned it my first day. 

this computer is in english because i changed it to english but it is still underlining every word i write in red because it doesnt recognize them as words, which is super annoying haha. 

we contacted a guy last week who was super catholic and we talked to him about baptism. we were talking all about infant baptism and stuff, which is a joke. then he said they believe that if someone is going to die really soon, any random person can come throw water on them and theyre baptized!!! i almost broke out laughing! the level of apostasy is outrageous sometimes! also, could dad or mom look up on their iphone the weather in chiclayo and tell me what the temperatures have been etc? i want to know how hot it is here. it rained the other day and  the city was basically in shambles. peoples houses are all flooded because their roofs dont keep anything out, and lots of the streets are still completely flooded and so so so muddy! walking was super tough yesterday. 

one of our investigators, anderson, whos an 18 year old guy and super super golden, has his own house and farm that his grandma gave him when she died. it is so legit! he has a room with tons and tons of guinea pigs in it, kelsey would love it! and rabbits too, then he has a horse and a bunch of cows. hes going to get baptized this week i think. he might delay another week though. 

i love so much being in the lords work. there is no way i would be able to be here away from my family and all of my old life if i didnt know the Lord was here with me. My testimony is growing so much as i see the ways the peoples lives are messed up, and see how the church has made mine so much better. ive been so blessed. i love you, im going to try to send some pictures now! 

Here’s a picture of Jacob’s zone taken this morning, and the second picture is of his room.

A Letter AND a picture from Jacob’s Mission President!

Dear HATCH Family,

The purpose of this letter is to inform you that it is a pleasure for us to have your son in the Peru Piura Mission; we were delighted to meet him. When he arrived here, we found him in good health and willing to labor in the work of the Lord.

Right now he is working in the Area CAMPODONICO of the Zone LATINA and I know he is in very good hands, his first companion and trainer is ELDER ORCOHUARANGA; he will teach him everything about the work: to proselyte, to plan, to teach the lessons, to be obedient, to maintain a positive outlook, and to recognize the promptings of the Holy Ghost.

He is an excellent missionary and comes with great desires to do his best throughout this wonderful time, both you and he will be blessed by the Lord. Thank you for the love and support you give to ELDER HATCH. We sincerely appreciate every one of you, testifying to you that this is a true work, the work of the Lord.

Sincerely

President and Sister Chipman

Peru Piura Mission

I’m alive! And this computer doesn’t have an apostrophe!

Mis Amados!

Wow.. I dont even know where to start. we flew from lima to piura, and on the plane i totally gave a quick first lesson to the lady sitting next to me in spanish, and gave her the first lesson pamphlet but she didnt have an address to give me because her house is under construction or something lame.. at least i tried, and she said she wanted to tell her grandkids about it and seemed super excited. but the piura airport is about the size of our house! then we walked out and saw the assistants and pres and hna chimpan all there waiting for us. we went to the mission house which is unreal, like a huge southern plantation thing but behind ten foot high walls, had meetings and learned all the rules etc, had dinner, then slept at the offices. the next morning we went back to the mission home and had more meetings and met our trainers one by one, it was so intense! we all sat there and president chipman read off the names one by one and you would stand up and run and hug your companion. my companions name is...dun dun dun... Elder Orcohuaranga! good luck with that one. its pronounced or coh wa ran ga and hes from lima, he joined the church when he was 16. hes a super duper hard worker and walks even faster than i do usually. we stay up until like 11 most nights planning, so im always exhausted. so right after that we went back to the mission offices which are like 10 minutes walk away from the mission house and then elder orco and i had to hustle over to serpost where a package from megan conley was waiting for me! thanks megan (smiley face) then we went to a bus depot where we, along with like 8 other elders and sisters went to Chiclayo, my first city! it was about a three hour bus ride from piura to chiclayo and i slept most of the way but when i was awake there was nothing to look at but the occasional donkey powered cart with sugar cane on it. we got to chiclayo that night where the zone leaders, elder rigby and elder baca picked us up and took us to apartment. let me tell you about our apartment... its on the fourth floor above a cevicheria aka raw fish restaurant. our room is about ten by 15 feet, and it has two bunk beds and two desks and a dresser in it, so there are like two feet of walking room among the suitcases, etc. and the bathroom is t i n y. when im on the toilet my knees almost hit the wall in front of me, but its nice to just sit and rest your head on the wall haha. and the shower has no door so whenever you shower the floor gets soaked. and the floor in our room is red and basically dirt. anything that touches it turns red and i feel like im constantly playing that lava game where you cant touch the ground! haha i love it. and so were basically living out of our suitcases because theres nowhere to unpack to! we might move soon, well see. oh, and its in the scariest part of town. there are tons of drunk hobos outside constantly and i cant wear my plastic watch or ill get jumped. to demonstrate the glory of where we live, the mototaxi guys wont even take us there at night. we tell them the address and they just shake their head and drive away! plus our pensionista is like a 15 minute walk away, so yeah there are a few reasons to seek a new apartment. but i love it all. oh and the shower has one knob, cold! im already pretty much used to that though. my area is called campodonico in the latina stake. elder orco and i are over two wards, jose balta and campodonico. jose balta is right in the downtown of chiclayo, and thats more rich. but where we spend most of our time is in campodonico. it is dirt streets with giant holes in them. the houses are horribly layed brick with dirt floors. most people have like four plastic chairs and a table in their house and one single lightbulb. the roofs are tin with wooden boards or bamboo sticks. oh and there are tons and tons of dogs! but theyre nice.

a little bit about what ive seen here.. in the streets there are about 90% mototaxis, which we ride around in a lot! theyre like 1.50 soles to go anywhere in town, super cheap. other than that its all motorcycles and mini taxis and busses, barely anyone has cars here. men just whip out their junk and pee in the middle of the street with people all around, and women will walk down the street feeding their babies with their junk just out in the air. haha today i saw an old man with his pants like down to his knees just walking down the street, and a guy peeing right in front of our apartment. i love it here, i think ive found where i belong (smiley face) colons dont exist here apparently. theres a salon right by our house that they tried to name blue salon but its blue saloon! haha i love it and it took me a while to explain to elder orco the difference. one of our super poor investigators, tanyas little sister, zulma, also an investigator, was having a birthday and they invited us in for cake which was unreal! chocolate cake with manjar in the middle. mmmmmm. oh and our pensionista got us kfc a few nights ago which is the exact same if not better here than in the us! elder orco didnt like it though. i loved it. our pensionista is the primary president, her mother in law is the relief society president, and her husband is the first counselor in the stake presidency. talk about a loaded house. oh yeah families here are more like their extended family. they all live together almost always. everything i used to hate in the US ive eaten here on a regular basis. for instance, meatloaf, onions (which i ate alone, like picked up onions with my fork, chewed and swallowed. for real) mushrooms, which we had just mushrooms and rice one night for dinner. yeah totally ate that. and this morning for breakfast we had avocado sandwiches. haha seriously my life has been completely turned upside down. if i was in provo and i had to do everything im doing there would be no way! its really a testimony to me of how the lord blesses missionaries. also i think ive grown up like five years in five days!

random, parents if you send me a package soon, i would love some of those little blue flosser things they give you for when you floss with braces. i cant get under my permant retainer without them. and some facewash, maybe two. they dont have that here. also the conference ensign, and some of those tie things. casey knows what im talking about. where you use the button part from another shirt. just cut up one of my old shirts! i would love those things! mom, hows having an iphone? and do i have a mission plaque yet? oh and ill email pictures next week probably. sorry its taking so long!

a little bit about our investigators. both elder orco and i are new in the area. he has been a zone leader for the last six months in central piura, so we arrived in our area knowing nothing and noone. also, the elder before us was solo, serving with mini missionaries, and didnt like to do teaching records very well or leave notes, so we have been getting to know everyone these last few days. just visiting members, etc. we have run into tons and tons of partial member families, random investigators, etc. people let you into their house before you can even ask to come in. like you knock and they say come in! its unreal. we have two investigators with baptismal dates so far, and one of them, tanya, came to conference on saturday! so shes on track to get baptized on the 17th! i hope it all works out with her. we should have at least one baptism this month. the problem is that there isnt church this sunday because of elections! in peru they have to vote or pay like 100 bucks. so we dont have church. but conference was sweet! we went to the stake center and watched it. me and three other american elders in my zone watched a few of the sessions in english in a separate room which was fun. everything is going great and i love it so much here! let me know any questions you have and ill try to keep you updated on everything! p day is monday.

Love you all!

elder hatch

Where Jacob is right now: