10/17/2011

First of all, thanks so much everyone in the family for your amazing emails! Whenever i read your emails i just have to try to not cry.. sometimes i succeed.. Love you guys.
This week has been so amazing. There are so many experiences to tell about, i´ll be brief and try to tell a bit about them all.
i´ll answer mom´s questions. the email is stinky and i cant open two pages at once, so i have to choose one email to reply to and answer all the questions from that email because i can´t remember the ones that other people ask me.. so sorry.
First of all, tuesday we did working visits with the zone leaders. I went to Las Americas (their area) with elder Nicaragua from nicaragua. he taught me a lot of good stuff, and tuesday night we had Cesar´s baptism. Elder Morales and i went to fill up the font and there was absolutely no water in the chapel. And all the toilets were full of "stuff", so we could tell that there hadn´t been water for a while. My mind started racing and i was thinking, do we go to another chapel? or reschedule? i was super bummed, but we decided to go into the utility closet and see if we could go into the attic to see if we could open a valve or something. There wasn´t even any water in the big water tanks in the attic. So, elder Morales was up there and i was standing at the bottom of the latter.. I started praying, and asked that Heavenly Father would help guide us to know what to do. Mid prayer, i heard rushing water... i stopped praying, and yelled to elder morales asking if he had done something.. he said no, and asked what i did. I just said that i prayed. I felt the spirit so strong as i realized that the Lord had just taken over because he knew we couldn´t figure it out. The font filled up perfectly in time for the baptism, and Cesar´s baptism was awesome. A future missionary, Ivan, baptized him.
Long story short, Yeiner and Jorge´s baptisms fell through. Yeiner wasn´t completing his commitments to read the BOM, etc. So i decided to postpone it a week. and Jorge goes to Piura every weekend with his dad apparently, so that´s not going to work out.
Cesar was an investigator from a while ago. He hadn´t been baptized because his dad wouldn´t give him permission. we contacted his dad once, he gave permission, so we baptized him. easy. We contacted Yeiner and his family because cesar invited Yeiner to church, and he showed up alone so we made an appointment with him and visited him.
We had interviews with president Risso, and he basically told me i would be training this next week, but in a very inderect way. Last night the zone leaders told me that yes, i´m training. My new companion will be here on wednesday. He´s one of 3 americans that´s coming into the mission mid transfer because of visa problems! But it´ll be so fun! Elder Morales will be in Los Incas with a missionary who only has one transfer in the mission, and i´ll be re-opening the barrio Los Amautas.
We spent the whole week changing our room with the family where we live. Now we´re in the room they were living in, which is a bit bigger so 4 missionaries can fit. We painted, put in carpet, moved everything, etc. So we only proselyted half time this week.
My birthday was great! Hna Graciela made the cake mom sent me, and it was so so so so good! Everyone loved it. And i didn´t get any eggs cracked on my head, which was a nice surprise.
As district leader, i´m in charge of four companionships now i think. Yes, district meeeting is every week, and i taught the first lesson on the Doctrine of Christ. Now i´m delegating the teaching responsibility to the other elder in my district. The zone leaders put me in charge of teaching spanish to the gringos. I taught english to the latino elders last week, that was fun. And yes, i can express myself pretty normally in spanish! I want to be a lot better, but i can get by fine! To the point that i´m not scared to speak with no planning. I´ve been so grateful that i studied a bit of spanish before the mish! It´s been so helpful.
Who is byu´s new quarterback now?
Take care, have an amazing week, and thanks so much everyone for the emails. They make my P-day and week so much better!
Elder Hatch
PS, sorry no photos, the computer is stinky, but i have a bunch of awesome ones! I´ll try to send a lot next week, and pics of my new companion!!!