7/30/2012

Family, 

I think i'm going to get fat here in the office. Our pensionista cooks really well (not as well as mom, of course) and whenever we go to our area to work, the members give us a ton of food! That plus sitting down most of the day could be a bad combination... But i'm starting to exercise again. 

We were going to have zone conferences and all that fun stuff this week, but last Tuesday when we were in the transfer meeting with all the missionaries, President Risso sat down badly and hurt his back. He's had problems in the bast, but this time was the worst yet. He was in his house all week, had several shots for the pain, and today he finally got permission from Elder Uceda to go to Lima for some better medical attention. So, this week he'll be in Lima and everything we were planning gets postponed at least a week. Elder Chuiz and I got to go to his house one afternoon to talk to him about plans. It was so different seeing him relaxed in his house, in slippers, etc. And Sister Risso made us fresh strawberry juice!! (We aren't allowed to eat strawberries in the mission, but if the mission president's wife invites you to... :) And she made us chocolate chip cookies too! Then President Risso showed me all his church books in English, their pictures around the house, etc. It was a fun afternoon. 

In our area we have one real investigator. His name is Anthony, he's 20, and we met him last week at a ward sports activity. His girlfriend is listening to the sister missionaries who are serving in the same ward as us. He went to church this Sunday and had a good experience. Tonight we're going to teach him the restoration and hopefully invite him to be baptized! Our area is pretty rich and knocking doors doesn't really work, so we are trying hard to get the members to give us referrals. We're also doing lots of ward activities, which i'm generally against because planning takes a long time and the results aren't generally too great, but in San Felipe the members actually take their nonmember friends to the activities! And it's a great chance for us to contact them and set up an appointment. 

Yes mom, i'm writing in my journal. Up until the year mark i wrote every day, then up until two weeks ago i wrote about every other day, and now i write once or twice a week. I want to write every day, but sometimes it just doesn't happen. but in these last few days I've been better and i'm writing every day. 

Here in Peru, the mail system workers have been on strike for about two weeks, and we heard that they set a big post office in Lima on fire so if anyone has sent me anything... I hope it didn't get burnt! I hope they go off strike soon too, because i like getting letters :) 

Today for P-Day we went with a zone of missionaries to a town called Monsefú, and i bought some little souvenirs finally! One is a cool painting of Christ on a piece of wood, and the lady who sold it to me told me she could put my name on it for free, so i said ok, thinking it would be cool... Then she pulls out a sharpie and i got scared but thought, maybe she can do cool calligraphy or something.. Nope. She just wrote Elder Hatch right in the middle of it in normal handwriting! Haha, but now it has a story with it so it's cooler :) And it's hot here today, i got sunburned! 

This week should be pretty normal, we're going to do a few exchanges with missionaries who are having problems, and finish up planning the multi zone conferences, and zone council meeting. 

I feel like i don't have very many cool experiences to write about anymore! Most of my days are kind of boring, i don't get to teach too much, but the thing i really enjoy is getting to be around President Risso a lot. He has so many great ideas, and i feel humbled when he asks my opinion about something important in the mission. We were talking about some problems with disobedience, and president said something i really liked, he said, "We can't follow Satan's plan. We can't force missionaries to obey, we just have to teach them correct principles, and teach them to love the Lord." 

It's great to hear about all the fun vacation in California. Sorry i was a bum and didn't want to go to with you guys a few summers ago. Sometimes i can't believe myself! I just hope that when i get back i can be a better son, like you deserve. 

I love you and hope it's a great week! 

Elder Hatch 

This picture is the view from the office! We're right down town, a block away from the central plaza.

The second picture is from Laquipampa, that little village in the mountains. I don't think i've sent this already.. But there they speak spanish and Quechua! I'm glad that here in chiclayo they only speak spanish..

I hope you can see in this picture, some of the birds have blue feet! this is at the beach in Puerto Eten.

7/24/2012

in the office!

transfers! this is the "tablero" where we move everyone around. 

This is Esther at her baptism. She told us she doesn't like pictures and wasn't very happy when we took this! haha

this is elder chuiz trying out the toilet in the City of God... A fun fact about that town is that there is no water drainage.. The toilet is just a big well with a toilet seat on top. 

7/23/2012

Hi family :) 

It turns out that i´ll have some time to write today! Today we´re sending the missionaries who finish their missions home and then at night we get a new group of 7 missionaries, 6 elders and 1 sister! Today two of my companions are going home, Elder Lobato and Elder Cox! Two really great missionaries who taught me a lot and who worked hard up until their last day in the mission. Right now all the elders who are finishing the mission are eating lunch in the mission house, at 4 we take them to the airport, then at 9 tonight we receive the new group of missionaries. 

This last week was super busy. Every day we went to different perspective new areas, we were planning on opening 3 and had 5 perspective areas. So, tuesday we went to a little town called Illimo. The member family who was supposedly going to help the work get going in that town fell through- the mom is going to Trujillo for a few weeks and her daughter moved to lima, and we couldn´t find a house for a chapel either, so illimo got scratched off the list. The next four areas went great though. Two of the other cities are called City of God. One is here on the outskirts of chiclayo and one is about two hours south of here, in what used to be part of the Trujillo mission. The other two areas are Mórrope and Cayaltí. Both areas are being opened because of one strong family sealed in the temple in each town. We went to Mórrope with President Risso and it was so cool meeting this family and seeing their teenage son and everyone in their family being so happy made me so excited for all the amazing experiences they´re going to have, being the backbone of the church there in their town! It made me think a lot about the difference one righteous family can make. I want to come back here in 20 years and see how these new little family groups have grown! So, after all the visiting and searching houses and members to help the missionaries get started, etc., we had four areas we wanted to open. We couldn't rule one out, and neither could President, so we're opening all four! 

After we got all that figured out was TRANSFERS! President did all the changes then told us to meditate about them and the companionships, etc, and let him know what we thought. We made some changes with president, then he made more changes, and then our job was to arrange everything, inform the missionaries Sunday night in our reports, etc. It was a crazy weekend! i always feel like there´s a ton to do! We´re also planning for the transfer meeting tomorrow- we have a few hours to train the trainers, then we have this week to plan the zone conferences that are coming up. We had very little time to work in our area this week.. We only taught about three lessons, and one of our investigators told us she likes her old church better.. But it´s her choice... 

Dad asked about the other office elders' jobs.

Elder Karl from Utah is the financial secretary. He´s in charge of everything that has to do with money (obviously) 

Elder Navas from Costa Rica is in charge of all the material things in the mission. From bunk beds to contact cards and books of Mormon.

Elder Olmos from Guatemala is the personal secretary- he's in charge of visas, passports, keeping us all legal here, medical problems of missionaries, and transportation for transfers

Elder Chero from Peru is in charge of all the records of the mission, baptismal records, numbers of companionships, etc. 

Also, about going back to school.. 

I think i want to live at home.. i´m not sure though! And i'm still not sure if i want to go home early or later.. I don't like these decisions! I need to pray about it all. 

I'm still getting used to the office life, and the new kind of work i'm doing. I think i'll have a little more time to actually work in our area this week, and i hope we can find some good investigators! 

The Gospel is true and i'm so happy and excited for the people in these new places that are going to have the chance to accept it! 

Elder Hatch

7/22/2012

It’s late at night and we´re still in the office doing everything for transfers!! I don´t think i´ll have time to write on Monday because we´re receiving new missionaries, etc. So President Risso told us we can take little bits of p-day when we need it! Since i´m on the computer a lot i can finally send pictures! 

The first one is of me eating Cuy!! (Guinea Pig) at a member´s house today. YUMMMY

The second is of a sign by the beach, i´m pointing to where it says temple! (must be an Incan temple...) 

The third is me in a different style of mototaxi in a member´s house in Chepen, a city about an hour south of Chiclayo

The fourth is me being spiderman by a sweet river in Laquipampa (where we went a few weeks ago with my old zone) 

Love, Elder Hatch 

7/16/2012

Family,

I don´t know where to start... 

Monday night at 10:15 my companion, elder santos and i were planning for tuesday when the assistants called us on our cell phone. I answered and it was Elder Kirkland, one of the assistants. He said elder Hatch, are you sitting down? I said yes, and he continued to explain to me that in the upcoming days there would be an emergency transfer in our zone.. and that it was me. He said thursday at 10 am i needed to be in the office with my bags packed to receive my new companion. any questions? I said yes, can i know where i´m going? He said no.. After a few days of wondering where i would be going and saying goodbye to the ward that was sad and mad that i was going so soon, i got to the office with my stuff thursday morning. Four other missionaries had emergency transfers too, and president risso interviewed them one by one, and of course i was last. He called me into his office, and i had barely sat down when he said "Elder Hatch, i need you in the office." Elder Kirkland, who was assistant, finishes his mission in a month and president risso sent him to another area to finish his mission, and now i´m the new assistant to president risso. President Risso explained to me what he expects of me, etc. We talked for about 15 minutes and after it all he asked me "How do you feel?" I have never been so without words before. I said "humbled!" I hope i can do everything and be everything president Risso and the Lord need me for!

These last four days have been CRAZY! My companion is Elder Chuiz from Lima, he´s been assistant for a month now, and we get along great. We live on the fifth floor of an apartment building with the other four elders who work in the office. Our room is awesome! It has a terrace and we have a couch on our roof! In these days i´ve picked up a new missionary from the airport, done emergency transfers, received reports from all the zone leaders late friday and sunday night, elder chuiz told me saturday night that we  had talks assigned in sacrament meeting, so i prepared something quick and it turns out that president risso, his wife, and his daughter´s family who´s visiting from uruguay all came to our ward (they live in our ward, San Felipe, but almost never actually attend because pres risso visits other wards) so i was a little nervous for my talk, but it turned out amazing. 

We´re planning things to talk about in the upcoming multizone conferences in the mission, and this week we´re doing transfers, and opening up three new areas. We're going to be traveling three or four days this week to those areas to find houses, laundry, pension, etc and make sure everything´s set for the missionaries who will be there next week. 

i haven´t gotten in bed before 11:45 this whole week, i´m exhausted, but it´s so fun learning new things and being stretched even more in my new assignment!

a little bit about my schedule most days:

from 8-10 personal and companionship study

10-1 plan for conferences, etc. (whatever president risso tells us to do)

1-2 lunch 

2-4 continue planning

4-9.30 work in our area or other missionaries areas

10-11 reports or transferring missionaries

oh and i talked to president Risso about when i´m going to leave.. It´s up to me, but here´s the deal. either way i´m assistant until one transfer before i go home. He thinks it would be better for me to get back and study, but i´m not sure! If you could find out about me getting into byu etc that would help the decision. 

I love you, family! I hope you keep being amazing and that dad gets better! I´m so ridiculously busy, and loving life. In these next few months i´m going to get to go EVERYWHERE in the mission, work with lots of missionaries, and solve lots of problems. :) 

Elder Hatch  

pictures: the new office. elder chuiz is to my right

this is elder kirkland, the assistant i´m replacing, and me in the office.

7/9/2012

FAMILY!

It was a great week :) 

We had a baptism! And broke the 8 month streak of no baptisms in the Cabrera ward. Esther asked me to baptize her, and of course i did, so i got to use my new tie and socks mom and dad sent me, but i had lent my baptismal pants to the bishop of another ward in our stake for a baptism the same day, so i got stuck with some pants that were too small! But it all worked out. I have my camera here and i´m trying to send pictures, but i don´t think the port in the computer for the memory works.. I´ll send pictures next week... 

Next big piece of news (for mom) was that i finally got up the nerves to play the piano in sacrament meeting. I played all four songs and it went perfectly! I think the motivating factor was how terribly people sing here! They´ve never sung the songs with a piano before, so they all have their own beats they sing to, and the apostasy has even entered into the tunes, so with the piano i´m going to gradually bring them back into the light. 

This week Elder Santos and I were planning like crazy for our sweet trip we took today as a zone! We went to a place called Laquipampa. It´s a town with a population of about 200 in the middle of nowhere in the mountains! It´s the farthest away from chiclayo i´ve been in my whole mission! We rented a van and met at 6:30 in the morning to take the 2 hour trip on dirt roads to Laquipampa. We went on 2 hikes with a guide to some waterfalls that are pretty cool! It was fun, i got kind of car sick though! I´m not used to motion and altitude anymore! I´ll send pictures of that next week too! The highlight for me was seeing TONS of huge spiders up in the trees with their giant webs, and talking with everyone in the van. I love being a missionary :)   

Now i´m almost done with Genesis, i read the second half last night while i was waiting for the district leaders to report.. Everything i´ve always heard is making sense to me now. 

To answer mom´s question, in the mornings we have 2 hours of study time. From 8 to 9 is personal study, where we can read any of the standard works and preach my gospel and Jesus the Christ. Then we have companionship study where we can study scriptures or teaching, do practices, etc. My companion has some issues with waking up early, so by the time he gets all ready it´s usually time to leave and we haven´t gotten in a good companionship study in a while.. I´m trying to help him with my example, because he only has a month and half left in the mission.. But the result is that i get more personal study time.

Yes i wrote Zach White, i´m waiting for his response, and i´ll write David next week! Thanks for his address :) 

I´m glad to hear the stadium of fire was good! Yes i remember going to the stadium of fire as a kid and hiding under the stadium seats because i was scared of the fireworks! I love the beach boys too, and i remembered you guys were there on the 4th. A sister missionary, sister Case from American Fork in my zone, gave everyone in the zone a little American flag ribbon with a penny glued to it to pin on for the 4th, I felt patriotic. 

I love you and hope everything keeps going well! Get walking dad! 

Elder Hatch

7/2/2012

Family, 

This week was very busy doing things other than working in my own area, but somehow God found ways to bless us with success in the very little time we had. One of the people Jhon gave us as a referral has a baptismal date now. Her name is Tatiana, she´s 16, and her parents are very involved in their Evangelical church. i don´t know why, but she just doesn't want anything to do with their church. But when we teach her she listens so intently and every time we invite her to read something she does it, and understands well too! Yesterday we went to visit her and i asked how her reading went. (i had assigned her Mosiah 3 and the second half of the restoration pamphlet) she said "i read and prayed and i know that the book of Mormon is true" That is my favorite sentence in the world to hear! In moments like that i never know what to say, i just feel so happy for them and get excited to work with them. We taught her about baptism and she accepted a baptismal date for the 28th of July. She really wants to join the church now that she has a testimony, the only problem will be her parents.. I hope they give her permission! 

Our other progressing investigator is Esther. She went to church on Sunday, is also reading her scriptures and praying, and has a baptismal date this Saturday. Her mom has been on vacation for a week though and gets back Tuesday, so she´ll need to talk it over well with her mom so we can get a solid permission from her. 

Wednesday we had a special meeting with president Risso for all the wards in chiclayo that haven´t had baptisms lately. My ward is number one on the list.. There were about 40 missionaries there. We talked about problems and possible solutions in the wards we´re working in. 

Friday, my stake put on a future missionary MTC in the stake center. About 30 future missionaries went. President amd Hermana Risso spoke, i was president Risso´s scribe when he talked, and Elder Santos and I did an example of how to do a contact in the street and teach a principle of the Gospel. That was fun, but we had to leave early to help the sister missionaries with a reactivation activity in their ward!

In the afternoon one of our areas, Picsi, had a baptism in our chapel, the stake center, and president Risso went to that too! (we were there helping set up) Then i had to go work with Elder McAllister while elder Santos sat in their room with Elder McAllister´s companion, Elder Maldonado, because he got surgery on his ingrown toenail and couldn´t walk for two days. 

Saturday the sister missionaries had a baptism, but their font wouldn´t fill up, so we had to have their baptism in our chapel again, and president Risso went to that baptismal service too! Basically every day this week i was with president Risso... life´s different being a zone leader. And in the afternoon it was my turn to sit in the room with Elder Maldonado while our companions worked. I took advantage of the situation and read half of Genesis.. I´ve read all the other scriptures, but never the old testament in its entirety. We´ll see how this attempt goes. 

That was my crazy week. I hope this next week we can have a little more peace! 

I love this work and love the Lord. I hope you have a great week. I love you! 

Elder Hatch 

ps, answers to mom´s questions..

we live with Elder Chub from Guatemala, and Elder Yagual from Ecuador. They´re super funny and crazy. Our house is an apartment with two rooms and a kitchen and an entry room. it´s pretty nice with tile floors. We cook breakfast and dinner, and have a pensionista for lunch. 

David Cusick is in the mission Chile Viña del Mar.

Here it´s cold at night! Elder Santos liked sleeping with the window open, and we both ended up with colds. Mine´s mostly passed but last night i woke up at 2 am and couldn´t stop coughing for about an hour. that was stinky!  But i bought some cough drops and i´m good now :)