family!
They broke ground on the Trujillo temple and everyone is really excited! but it won´t be done for like two years..
It´s the anniversary of la victoria, so this whole month they have a carnival on the main street of town, which goes through the heart of our area. they play music all the time, and a lot of it is American music, and surprisingly a lot of the stuff i listened to. it kills me when i hear it! hah but i try to walk fast and get the pain over with.
They´re also doing construction on like all the streets. They´re changing them from dirt roads to paved streets with sidewalks that are actually really nice! But right now basically all the streets are completely torn up and have huge holes everywhere to put in the sewage system. In our pension they´re doing construction too. Covering up the brick walls with cement, and in a week or so elder Morales and i are going to paint! And in two weeks, they´re opening up the other ward, los Amautas, that we´re assigned to, and the other missionaries are going to live and pension where we do too! So we´re excited for that.
A few interesting stories from this week:
Tuesday we were searching for a house of someone we contacted in the street a few days beforehand. When we finally found the house, we went to knock on the door, and elder morales started talking to a little skinny kid. Turns out he lived close by, so we took his address and said we´d visit him after we talked to the people in the house we were looking for. Turns out they weren´t there, so we went to his house like five minutes later. Also turns out that his whole family are members of the church except him- a few inactive, but members. He´s 12 and his name is Genardo. He hadn´t been baptized yet because his grandpa who lives nearby is super catholic and very against him being baptized. After talking to the family for a few minutes, we decided to baptize him saturday and try to sneak under the grandpa´s radar. We didn´t have to wait to baptize him because he´s been going to church forever, but somehow elder morales didn´t know him yet and neither did i! So, we started teaching him, and the next day when we went to his house, his older brother had pulled a Judas Iscariot on us and told his grandpa we were going to their house at that time. So, the grandpa shows up and says right off the bat, thanks for coming but my grandson is catholic and i won´t let this go any further. I tried for a while to speak reason to him.. turns out he has never read anything from the bible, he was just really ignorant and super catholic without even knowing what he believes. So, i gave up and elder Morales got really emotional and bore an awesome testimony to him, and even managed to call him a few names haha it was funny. Then there was a long, awkward silence after and i asked Genardo what he wanted.. He said he wanted to be baptized in the Church and likes the Church and a few other things that i can´t remember now, but his grandpa was speechless. We packed up and left. a few hours later genardo went to a member´s house, had them call us and told us he still wanted to get baptized, so we kept teaching him. Saturday came around, and something happened in the family, it was weird, but long story short, we ended up with the font full, district leader there in the chapel, members, etc. and no baptism. We were super bummed, but he still really wants to get baptized! So, we´re going to baptize him this friday, and he asked me to do it!
Next story. Saturday night elder Morales and i were walking back to our apartment feeling bummed about the day.. baptism falling through, having the district leader waste an hour of his day in our area for an interview that never happened.. not teaching many lessons because of it all.. and a lady walks by, we say hi to her and keep walking. then, from behind us we hear "jovenes!" That means young people but it´s what they call us.. so we both whipped around to see what was happening and the lady was motioning for us to come to her. We obliged, and she asked us if we were willing to go to her house to teach her.. We started freaking out and said of course. She said she´s always in her house because she washes clothes for a living. Her husband is nonexistent, and has three kids. She gave us her name, phone number, and address, and said for us to visit her during the week. That all happened with us saying basically nothing except that we would teach her. Then when we got a chance to talk, morales invited her to stake conference the next morning and she said yes, and that she was going to go home right then and leave everything ready to be able to go with us at 9:30 am. We were freaking out, so excited! Sunday morning we go to her house and she was all ready in a dress and everything. We took a mototaxi to the stake center and were some of the first people there. It was such an amazing conference! it was for all of Peru via satellite. All we knew was that it would be presided over by a member of the first presidency so we were super pumped. Turns out it was President Monson! Elder Gonzales of the 70, Julie B. Beck, and elder Cristofferson all spoke in spanish. Sister beck struggled a bit but did really well! and Elder Cristofferson speaks like perfect spanish! and Pres Monson spoke and a translator did the voice over. I was hoping to hear him talk in spanish! They spoke about the book of Mormon, being good wives, how to have a successful family, and reaching out to those in need aka less active members, respectively. Our investigator really liked it and took three pages of notes! She has a lot of questions for us on Wednesday when we´ll see her again.
This letter is super long, but it was a fun week! It just added to my testimony of hard work bring blessings and that our prayers are heard. Love you and hope it´s a good week of school and work.
Elder Hatch
mom sorry i didn´t answer your questions, i forgot. but i´ll answer them next week because now i don´t have time! just remind me.
pictures:
You can´t see it too well, but the mug i´m holding says te quiero mamá, or I love you mom! Happy birthday this week! I sent you a letter, i hope you get it soon!
The second picture is from the baptism that never happened the people are me, eld.er Morales´ mini missionary companion he had before me who´s in the ward, elder morales, and hno wilder, our ward mission leader.
Third is of most of the elders in our zone, after playing a trivia game where when you lost the other person got to draw something with lipstick on your face. I wanted a mustache really bad, and i even was asking elder bohman to draw one on me, but he just drew something random on my face and i was all befuddled as to why he didn´t draw me a mustache so i asked him, and turns out he didn´t know the spanish word for mustache.. haha
Lastly, wheelbarrow races plus hot basketball court outside = giant blisters on my palms that hurt! But i´m fine.
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