5/16/2011

FAMILY!!

It was so good to hear from mom and dad! And wow, that trip to europe sounds unreal! are you flying from place or what? tell me more details, etc! I hope you told corbin to actually write me, he still hasn´t! And david leaves in two days! Provo will be so much safer once he leaves.

I don´t really know what to write about for this week. Elder Orcohuaranga and I are still working hard every day. He and all the elders in his group call each other while we eat every once in a while and they all are getting trunkie. Right now we´re with two other elders who leave in five weeks too, and they´re all talking about the details of the day they leave and stuff, it´s funny. And it surprises me all the rules missionaries break, a lot use facebook, go places alone, watch movies with members, etc. But don´t worry, i´m a good little boy and i´ve already made up my mind to follow the rules.

Fernando decided to get baptized this next sunday, the 22nd, which is fine and we´re teaching him the bits and pieces he still needs. Anderson´s baptism was supposed to be this last sunday, and we had everything all ready and then he didn´t show up at church sunday morning, and we were thinking uh-oh, but it´s fine, he´ll come soon. So we called him, and he was super sick with a stomach ache, and we had to cancel it after they had announced it in sacrament meeting, and uninvite our investigators who we had invited to attend... it stunk, but he´ll be baptized this next sunday too. We have been challenging people to get baptized like crazy, and one of our new statistics we keep daily is a count of how many people we challenge to get baptized in the first lesson. The baptismal challenge is my new favorite sentence in spanish. it goes like this: ¿Seguirá el ejemplo de Jesucristo al ser bautizado por alguien que posea la autoridad del sacerdocio de Dios? And you´re supposed to say it like that every time because it´s super direct and binding. it´s like saying you will be baptized, not would you be baptized. it´s hard to explain, but i love seeing people´s faces when we challenge them. It´s like the split second where they have to decide if they´re in it for real. I challenged two people this week, and they both accepted, but only one will really go through with it on the date we have planned. Her name is Ruth Fernandez. We gave her a book of mormon a few weeks ago, and she´s been reading it starting at the beginning, but still hasn´t prayed because she told us she knows she´ll get an answer and is scared to change her life! But she is super ready and i´m excited to work with her more.
I got kissed again this week by a 19 year old girl, but i turned my head so she kissed my hair, it was funny. We are teaching her and her dad, who´s an engineer and knows everything there is to know about the bible, but is still super humble and teachable. He read 3 nephi 11 and said he knows the book of mormon is true, but he thinks the book of mormon teaches that God, Christ, and the Holy Ghost are one being, which is a tough point. So we´re getting him to pray about the book of mormon to know by the spirit it´s true, and not just his own understanding, and when he gets his answer he´ll believe that Joseph Smith saw God the Father and Jesus. It´s so awesome how a testimony of  the book of mormon automatically brings a testimony of everything else with it. I´ve really grown to know for sure that the book of mormon is true, and how God has brought it forth as the shining symbol that this is the true church. Any person can go door to door reading from the bible and teach people how to be better people using Christ´s teachings, but the Book of Mormon is so clear in what we need to do, and there´s no way around it. I love it. Elder Holland´s talk on the book of mormon from a few conferences ago is amazing, and that´s exactly how i feel about it. I love you and i hope i get the packages someday :) don´t worry, i´m sure they´ll show up.

Elder Hatch

PS, I saw a 9ish year old girl with a shirt that said in english "my head is in the digital bad".. haha i love it. but im sure that´s how i sound to the latinos here. oh well.

This pic is of ocro with his shaving cream on, he only grows that perfect mustache and little goatee, and doesn´t even shave the rest of his face! classic latino.

This pic is of our zone before transfers:

This pic is of me and Elder Orcohuaranga in the central square of a little town called Túcume like an hour from our area where we went to those pyramids, and of course with the classic catholic church in the background.