7/25/2011

Elder Hatch has issued the following statistical report:
As of July 25th, 2011, he had served in two missions, the Perú Piura mission, and the Perú Chiclayo missions, respectively. He has been assigned to a total of one area, and two wards, Campódonico and José Balta. The number of people contacted and taught a mini lesson was 260, lessons with members, 99. Other lessons 177, with the total number of new investigators being 174. A total of 10 converts were baptized and confirmed.
(I modeled that after the statistical report they do every conference, and i actually added up all the numbers today, hope you enjoyed it :)
I can´t believe a fourth of my mission is already in the books. Lately the days seem more like hours, and the weeks like days. I guess it´s a blessing, because it would be miserable if the days dragged on, but i don´t want it to go by too fast!
The new glasses are great, and mom thanks so much for getting the shoe stuff all figured out! The work here in Campodónico is great. The stake mission leader is getting on the ball and working a lot with our ward mission leaders, because we have had absolutely no member support, and there are no ward missionaries in either ward. But we´re chuggin along. We have seven people with baptismal dates now, and five of them will probably actually do it. Two of them have to get married, and there are no massive marriages coming up, so it would be pretty rough for it to happen.
This morning we played water balloon volleyball with towels with our zone, and soccer too, it was really fun. i´ve gotten to be really good friends with the other gringos who have been here for a while with me, it will be tough to leave here in a month (i think i´ll be transferred in a month), and elder rigby is going home at the end of this transfer.
Not too much happened this week, just a solid week of work! we had liver and intestines again.. intestines for lunch today, yum. but i didn´t eat them, because i want to send the message that i don´t like them! it´s so gross.
I gave my talk on sunday on a talk by president monson in the fall 2009 conference called have i done any good. it went really well! We were nervous because the night before they told us elder Hooker, an area 70 was going to be there, but he didn´t end up coming. Oh, and saturday night was a ward party that they invited us to with a bunch of typical peruvian dishes and i tried all of them! they´re all good, but they have these super bitter purple olives that are hideous. Other than that it´s all great.

Last night we taught a little lesson to the Floreano family, the family with four people i´ve baptized. We watched a video about sharing the gospel, and after we talked about it. I was sharing my testimony about missionary work with them and all of a sudden i just felt really overwhelmingly happy for having shared the gospel with them, and that they are all members now. They are such a special family, and i got a little taste of what it would be like having joy with them in the presence of our Father, like it says in D and C 18.
Repentance is real, and the Savior is always there waiting for us to come back to Him. I love this Gospel and the change is makes in people´s lives.
Elder Hatch

I took a glamour shot of myself with my new glasses, i hope you enjoy it.
The second picture is of a plaza by the stake center in Latina. This week they´re celebrating peru´s independence day and there were tons of schools with marching bands, etc there.