*Elder Hatch returns home from his mission the last week of February and he will report on his mission on March 10th. More details will be posted as it gets closer.

Monday, August 29, 2011

8/29/2011

So, last tuesday in the morning i said my final emotional goodbyes to the nasty red floor in my old apartment that stained everything i own, and to the smelly burning piles of trash outside, and we went to the institute building for the new fancy transfer meeting! All the missionaries who are getting transferred go to this meeting so it´s pretty intense! President Risso talked to us and then the assistants read all the transfers by zone. I got transferred about five minutes away from my old area haha! But to a new stake, the stake Chiclayo Perú, and my area is called Los Incas! It´s two wards, Los Incas,  and Los Amautas. Our set up is so amazing here! We live on the second floor of a member family´s house, and they give us our pension too! It´s basically like living at home. We just go downstairs to eat, go back up to study, etc. Love it! The family is a mata de risa! Super funny! The dad´s name is Jesus, and it´s still weird to hear people yelling Jesus across the house.. But the mom and dad both have callings in the stake, and they have a son out on a mission, great family.

My companion, elder Morales and i, had a lot of problems from the start. He doesn´t work, and is on the verge of leaving the mission early. I didn´t know what to do and was really struggling for a few days. I opened up my scriptures as usual to find some advice.. I went right to 1 Nephi 4:12, and followed the advice... (Look it up, i don´t know how to say it in english and it will be better if you look it up :) An elder told me that joke this week and i thought i wold share it with you :)

My new companion is Elder Morales, from Costa Rica- the only Costa Rican in the mission! It´s still hard for me to understand him, he just talks weird. I guess i had gotten used to a paraguayan accent. He has seven months in the mission too, and he had been in Los Incas for two changes before i got here. He was with a super lazy elder at first, and after that elder finished his mission he got put with a mini missionary and they didn´t do any work, just visited recent converts and less active members. So, getting here it was like well elder Hatch, what do we do? We started from square one, and it´s actually been an amazing week. I started going through all the old teaching records and we´re revisiting them. We haven´t found many of the actual people they taught before, but we find people next door, their family members, etc. and we found 19 new investigators in five days!

I got a ton of emails from all the fam this week, and it took a really long time to read them, so i´m all out of time now! But I´m doing great in my new area, and it feels like a new life, i´m loving it! This next week we have a multi zone conference with pres risso, i´m excited for that!

I still haven´t gotten the shoes, but i´ve heard word that they´re in the office so i should get them soon.

Elder Hatch

Pictures..

Saying goodbye to the Floreanos :(  It was so hard to say goodbye to campodonico!

Me, Jean Pierre, Frank, and Elder Morales, my new compie! these two members just followed us into our room last night haha.

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Monday, August 22, 2011

8/22/2011

Whelp, the day finally came. This morning we went to the Zone Leaders´house to find out what changes are going to happen tomorrow and dun dun dun...... I´m getting changed, and i will be co-companion again. But they´re doing the changes differently now. They just tell us we´re getting changed and what our assignment will be, but not where or with who! Mean huh?! So this morning i started packing my bags and i´m almost all packed now. Tonight i´ll go say goodbye to all my baptisms and some investigators and members, then tomorrow at 8 in the morning all the missionaries in the whole mission who are having changes will go to the institute building with the president, etc. There we´ll find out where we go and with who! The suspense is killing me! haha but i only have to wait a day, but you´ll have to wait until next week. sorry. But i´m sad to leave all my friends i´ve made in my Zone, and my new pensionista, Socorro is super awesome even if the food she makes is pretty sketchy sometimes. But the mission is all about change and i´m super excited for it!
So, i was a little nervous to teach my lesson in district meeting with pres and sister Risso there, but there was still a little hope that they wouldn´t come to my class, because the other district in my zone was having their meeting too in the room next door! So, we started the meeting and we were talking about our investigators, etc. and they weren´t there so i figured i got lucky, then like a minute before the class was going to start, pres and sister Risso walked in and i got nervous! but the class actually went really well! it was on extending commitments. Because President Risso was there, everyone wanted to participate in the lesson a ton and show him how awesome of missionaries they are, plus he had a lot of really good insights, and the class was awesome! After that i did a work visit with Elder Rigby in his area. Tuesdays the zone leaders do all their administrative stuff, so i got really bored. I read a little of Jesus the Christ in spanish while i was waiting for him. Then we went to the mission office, and we were there F o r e v e r. I lost my desires to be an office elder, because it would get boring pretty fast. I watched a talk by Elder Holland on the computer there though. Elder Rigby finished his mission today, and now he´s with his dad going around Chiclayo and they´re going to cuzco in a few days.
I had a number of experiences where i felt the spirit really strongly this week. I studied the church Christ organized during his earthly ministry in Israel, and i found scripture after scripture that confirmed that our church is true. It was seriously like a game and i was so happy, i felt like a little kid searching for candy. The next day i studied the apostasy, and the experience was the same. I read the chapter on the apostasy in Jesus the Christ too which is amazing. I have studied christ´s church and the apostasy probably 15 other times, but this week so many things popped out to me and i loved it!
Also, we were knocking doors one afternoon, and not having much success. we went down a street i´ve walked down probably 10 times and never thought to knock doors there because there aren´t many houses, and i don´t know what i felt but i just walked straight to one house. A couple little girls answered the door and we told them to call their mom, which they did. She came to the door, smiled, and said hold on a second, came back a minute later and invited us in! We were thinking what? we didn´t even say anything and she invited us in! Turns out missionaries visited her a few years ago, she even went to church a couple times, but the missionaries got changed and stopped coming to her house. It was a great experience with being guided by the spirit!
This letter seems really long, so i´ll stop now! it´ll be an exciting week getting to know my new area and companion. Pray for me!
Love,
Elder Hatch

Monday, August 15, 2011

8/15/2011

Mi querida y amorosa familia! 

I loved all the emails from the fam! It sounds like the week was great, and that was so fun to hear all about little baby Holland! She´s so cute, thanks linds for the pictures! I have to admit i´m super jealous that you took the name holland. I have absolutely fallen in love with Elder Holland in the mission, and as soon as you said you were going to name her that i almost screamed NOOO. Almost. That´s how badly i wished i would have claimed it. Oh well, maybe i´ll just name my first daughter Bednar.. haha. Sorry if last week´s letter sounded like i was a little down! Probably because i was, and still am a little bit.. Don´t get me wrong, i´m fine, but we just haven´t had too much success this month. We were working a ton with Soledad, Esmeralda, and Jose, and when they decided not to get baptized it was really tough for me! Then Evelyn waited until thursday to make her decision to wait too...... Ahhhhhhhhhh. So, since transfers are this next week and i´m very likely to get changed, it looks like the baptizing in Campodónico has come to an end. There are a few who have had baptismal dates in the past and just decided to wait, so i´ll see if i can get at least one to do it this week! There are a bunch of people who are so great here but just want a little more time to prepare and get to know the church a little more before they get baptized. Sometimes i get frustrated, then i think about how i would feel in their situation. I would never completely change my life and get baptized in a matter of two or three weeks! So, i´m working on my pacience, and i know things will all work out! 

We taught a 50ish year old lady last week. There are like a million people living in her house.. 13 of her 15 grandchildren and their parents live there. She can´t read, which makes teaching super rough, but we taught her a little and she accepted a baptismal date. A few days later we went to teach her, and when we were walking down the road to her house she was sitting out front in a chair, then she ran away into her house and wouldn´t come to the door.. Don´t think she´ll get baptized too soon.. 

We are still working with Evelyn, who wants her friends to listen to us too. She´s super great and will get baptized here in a few weeks for sure. Just not with me probably :( Her dad, a 50ish year old man, was there yesterday when we taught. He always tells the most ridiculously long and irrelevant stories about the history of peru, etc. He also has a strange fixation with Germany and the USA. He just rags on peru and their government. It gets really frustrating when we´re trying to teach and he just starts in a 15 minute story, but such is the joy of missionary service. Which reminds me of Gilberto! He´s a schizophrenic man who we´re teaching. He is the definition of you never know what´s going to happen next. I´ll start talking, and half way through the second word i say he cuts me off to talk about who knows what. It´s to the point where we have to tell him every few minutes that he needs to listen to us and stay on the subject. He really wants to learn and stuff, but his sickness gets in the way and we get pretty frustrated sometimes. 

We´re teaching a 20ish year old guy who just moved in with some members, he´ll get baptized in a few weeks too. Ah they´re all going to get baptized as soon as i leave! But it´s ok, it´s awesome to have played a part in their conversion, and i´ll get to work with new people too. 

About food now. 

Mom and dad, and everyone else for that matter, you HAVE to try avocado with sugar and lime juice! it´s so good! i love avocado now, salty and sweet. Apparantly they eat avocado sweet like a fruit in Paraguay, and i love it. A thought i had this week during lunch. You know i´m a changed human when i´m using onions to wash down the cow stomach i´m eating. Also, the floreanos told me that i ate (without knowing) cow tongue, and the inside of the cow´s udders.. If i would have known i don´t know if i could have stomached it! But i actually liked it haha! 

As for a birthday present, all i ever want is candy. any kind is great! But i really don´t need anything, i just love your letters and support! 

I know this work is the Lord´s work and that He really does support His missionaries! Even though i´m so far from home, and everything i ever knew to be normal, I´m so happy! I love serving Him and knowing there´s nothing i could be doing that would please Him more than being here and giving it my all. 

Elder Hatch

Ps. Tomorrow i´m giving the lesson in district meeting and President Risso is going to be there! i´m kind of nervous but it should be great! 

The pictures are from today, we played soccer at a sweet place with turf and there are a bunch of advertisements on the walls. I really loved the GINORMOUS beer ones, so i made everyone come take a picture there :)

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And since I (Lindsey) put up these posts I wanted to include a picture of Jacob’s new niece, Holland.  She was born last week, and her older sister Carly wants to hold her ALL THE TIME.

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Monday, August 8, 2011

8/8/2011

Family!

This week was full of ups and downs...

I feel like i´ve been in my area f o r e v e r! And feel like I know everyone and sometimes wonder if there are any more people to find and teach, but we keep finding new people somehow! We´re teaching a youngish couple with a few kids, who is actually married!!!!!! it´s a miracle, and we found them knocking doors. They are excited to learn and we just gave them books of mormon, we`ll see how they do with that! This week a family of three, Jose, soledad, and esmeralda, were going to get baptized (this coming saturday) but yesterday they told us they don´t want to do it. I was so frustrated because they set their own date for the 13th over a month ago. As soledad was explaining why they didn´t want to do it, i felt like she was just piling a bunch of bricks on me and i was so bummed! but they´re going to keep going to church, and i know they´ll get baptized eventually, just not with me.. :(  We still have one, Evelyn, who is a possibility of being baptized this saturday. Oh yeah, now we´re baptizing on saturdays instead of sundays so they don´t have to wait a week to get confirmed! Elder Insaurralde and I are getting to be good buddies, we joke around a lot and we always joke with our pensionista. When we walk in to eat i ask her if i can use her sink to wash my hands and she always says no, so i say whelp, i don´t care and i´m going to use it anyway! she´s really funny and we have a great time there. We watch church movies there sometimes too. Oh, and speaking of the pension, this week i ate goat again, and it´s actually one of my favorite meats! And today for lunch we had octopus.. not one of my favorite meats. But i ate it! it tastes fine, i just don´t like the consistency.

There was a meeting for the new missionaries and their trainers, and since elder insaurralde is still in his second change, we went. It was with president ans sister Risso, the assistents, etc. They had some really good advice, and I was the only one training with six months in the mission... haha for part of it we divided up with the new missionaries and the trainers. I felt like i should be with the newbies, but president risso said i´m technically training even though my title says i´m a co-companion, so i went with them. Saturday there was a missionary training activity for the youth of another stake here in chiclayo, and we were invited to go. I didn´t really know what was going to happen there, but we got divided up with a few youth each and did practices of how to contact people in the street, then went and knocked doors for two hours! One of the 17 year old kids i was with was awesome at teaching, he´ll be a great missionary. The other barely even said anything, and reminded me of what i would have been like two years ago. It´s amazing how much quicker you learn and progress in the mission! I can honestly say i have no fear of going up to anybody and starting to talk to them. Ever since being a missionary it just seems normal to me. The Lord definitely expands and enlarges the abilities of His missionaries.

Last night we taught a lady who believes that Hell is here on earth. It was really weird, but i ended up just bearing my testimony to her about the purpose of life, and i felt so grateful for always having known the answers to the questions like where do we come from, why are we here, and where do we go after life? I know that God´s plan for us is perfect, and that Christ is the absolute key to everything. I love him. I love learning more about Him through the scriptures and drawing nearer to Him as I try to be more like Him. He is the ultimate role model and makes everything worthwhile. I´m so grateful to be in His work and to have chosen while I was still young that He would always come first. Seeing other guys my age on the corners drinking, selling drugs, and having kids out of wedlock, I just feel so grateful for the Gospel. I know it´s all true! I love you, have a great week.

Elder Hatch

Monday, August 1, 2011

8/1/2011

Fambly :)

First I’ll answer mom’s questions.
Yes, go to the peruvian restaurant on center street, it´s called se llama peru! Get lomo saltado and inca kola, and you´ll be eating exactly what i eat at least three or four times a week. it´s so so good! basically french fries with sliced beef, onions, and tomatoes, and rice of course. Teaching this week was kind of rough. One of our investigators, a 14 ish year old girl named lorena who had a baptismal date, fell through. We kept going to her house and they would never answer, so we went to ask her friend who´s a member if something had happened. It turns out her grandma forbade her from going to the church and her aunt yelled at her and she doesn´t want to talk to us anymore.. It´s crazy how much the devil works in people sometimes! The same thing happened with other people too- the not being able to catch them home part.. and so we knocked a lot of doors this week, more than i have in any other week or maybe even month of my mission. Knocking doors is basically a waste of time though. This week we´re going to start visiting the members again i think. I´m open to suggestions. But this sunday all our work payed off and 10 investigators came to church! including a family i´ve been working with my whole four months here and hasn´t come, finally came! And on the 13th we should have four baptisms, so we´re excited for that. But in these two weeks we have to do a lot of work to make sure they happen! One investigator has to fix some law of chastity issues with her boyfriend, and we´re waiting to see how that goes.
Yes, a few elders i know will be coming home this month, and one, Elder Wilding, will be going to BYU! Elder Rigby, my good buddy is coming home too this month. He wants all my friend girls´ info, so watch out :) But he is going to utah state, he went to mountain crest in high school and he has a deep bred hatred toward timpview :)
As for birds.... haha the only birds i´ve seen here are vultures, and there are a TON! They´re always circling over where we work all day because there´s always dead dogs, cats, rabbits, rats, you name it, it´s dead in the street in Fanny Abanto. They´re so yucky with their little eyes.
Yes, i definitely feel like i´ve had the gift of tongues. I don´t think i´ve talked much about that, but before i got into the mtc i honestly could barely speak spanish. I could understand alright, write a little bit, but couldn´t talk at all. The first day in the mtc i felt like i could communicate decently in spanish, and from there it has just gotten way better and better. I feel like it has been an incredible blessing as a missionary. Now i don´t even realize i´m speaking in spanish anymore when we´re teaching. I know all the gospel words, etc. but outside of the church world there´s still tons of stuff to learn. Learning spanish is one of my favorite things in the world.  it´s so cool to be able to communicate in a different language!
There´s not much to report on this week, it´s just been a solid week of working hard and doing everything i know how to try to find people to teach! Thanks for all the prayers.
My testimony of the power of the scriptures has grown exponentially lately. I know with all the surety possible that the book of mormon is true. The testimonies of Christ are so powerful and moving. Every day when i´m reading and studying i feel the spirit, and i feel the need to improve. This week i read through part of abinidi´s amazing testimony to king Noah. Wow, what courage to stand up to a king and all his priests! I love it. I hope you´re all reading the scriptures every day. I can´t imagine a day without studying the scriptures, i love them so much!
Oh, and today in the morning we played soccer on a sweet turf field in the centerish of chiclayo, our zone with the office elders, and it was so fun! then we went to a polleria called Rocky´s, and their rotisserie chicken is unreal! it was a great p-day.
Elder HATCH

The picture is of elders: Abregú, Wilding, Me, and Burton about to eat some yummy chicken at Rocky´s. And FYI that is the nicest, biggest room i´ve been in in chiclayo, so appreciate it.

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