5/21/2012

Family, 

Before i forget, i want to write Zach White and David Cusick.. Could you maybe find out their mission addresses for me? I miss my friends.. 

This week was one of the craziest of my mission! We had a MAJOR problem with one of the missionaries in the zone. His companion was on a work visit with another missionary here in pomalca, and at lunch he said elder hatch, i need to tell you something. The way he said it made me scared, then he told me that his companion has a cell phone. So we called the assistants and they told us to go get it from him. It was so sad sitting down with him and telling him i need him to give me the cell phone he had. His face turned white and he started talking a lot.. But after all, he took it out of its hiding spot and gave it to us. When we got back to our area i felt like i needed to see what was on the phone. I found a lot of terrible stuff.  A member in his ward lent him their cell phone for a few days.. problem number one.. to be able to communicate with a guy from his old area who owed him money.. another problem (we can´t lend or accept money).. long story short, the temptation got to him and he used the cell phone (which had internet on it) to text girls from his area late at night, use facebook, and i found some emails between him and a girl in his area that were terrible. We went straight to the office to talk to president Risso.. the next day this missionary had an interview with president Risso, and we were sure he was going to get sent home. But the outcome is an emergency transfer and he´s going to be junior companion the rest of his mission.. it was so sad. But anyway, trips to this missionary´s area, baptismal interviews, going to the office, etc, Basically took up our week. 

On the happy side of things we had four baptisms in our area this week! And ten in the zone in one week! Compared to our 6 last month, ten in a week is improvement :) Now elder Lobato and I need to focus in on finding new investigators, because we baptized all our good ones! 

Peruvian chocolate is not very good. Their candy here isn´t nearly as sweet as american candy. The reeses i bought this last week was so so good.

I´m sunburned, it´s still hot here, and i feel like i´m always covered in dirt.. But that´s just part of the fun here in Pomalca. I feel so blessed for all the experiences i´m having here. The people have taught me so much, just from listening to their problems and trying to help them.

On sunday i gave a talk in sacrament meeting based on a talk by pres Uchtdorf called you are important to him (rough translation) from last conference. The microphone wasn´t working, so i had to yell and felt weird! But most of the people were actually paying attention, so i´m counting it as a success. :)

Have a great week!  I love you guys! 

Elder Hatch 

The pictures are of our baptisms in these two weeks! One is of Jorge and Katherine. The other guy in white is our stake president who baptized them. The other is of this last saturday when we baptized Jesus, Anshy, Lesly, and Shirley. The other people are from another ward who did their baptism with us. The other guy in white in that one is Shirley and Lesly´s uncle who baptized them. I baptized Jesus and Anshy.