This conference was nuts! The office crew decided to watch it here in the office Saturday morning on the Internet. The Latinos, Elders Chuiz, Perea, Chero, and Samame watched it in Spanish while Elder Hemsley and I watched it in English. Even though i understand everything in Spanish it's still way better in English with their real voices. Right at the start when President Monson announced the new temple in Arequipa we were all so happy! Arequipa is way down south in Perú, so nobody here is really that excited, because they´re all still waiting for the Trujillo temple to be built which is only 3 hours away! The Lima temple is about 12 hours south and Arequipa, the third temple in Perú, will be like 20 hours away. But that's awesome because the members in Perú really need temples close because they don't have much money to travel very far. Then when he started talking about missionary work and saying that in some countries missionaries have been going out at 18 i knew he was going to say it was for everywhere now, but when he said it it still shocked me! Elder Hemsley and I started dancing and yelling, and the Latino elders were confused because their conference was a little bit behind, so we just told them to wait and when they heard it they freaked out too. Then when he started talking about the sisters our Internet started lagging, it made the moment SO intense! We were yelling at the computer and finally it worked and when he said they can go at 19 it blew my mind!!! It was definitely my most exciting general conference moment to date. I feel like way more sister missionaries will go now, and that's so great because honestly sister missionaries work harder than the majority of the Elders.. After the morning session ended i watched that part two more times.
Saturday night for priesthood and Sunday we went to the chapel of Los Incas, where i served like a year ago, because they're remodeling our stake center, and that is the chapel where the whole stake went to see it. In other words, i got to see A TON of old friends from Los Incas and Los Amautas (I've served in 3 wards in this stake, i feel like i know everyone!) And it was so great to see Cesar, Stefany and Blanca there too, three people i got to baptize! I talked with them, Blanca is still having problems with her husband who doesn't like that she goes to church... But she's reading her scriptures all the time and is super faithful in the church!
Wednesday was zone leaders council and we talked about how to work better with less active members and how to be "ductile" missionaries. From doing splits with lots of missionaries I've learned that they basically teach the same lessons over and over again. Supposedly we should find the person's needs, satisfy their needs with the Gospel, etc, and be able to adapt and change what we teach. But most missionaries just sit down and teach the lessons, using the same scriptures every time.. I was with a missionary this week and we got into a lady's house knocking doors. the lady told us she only had 10 minutes, and the missionary i was with whispered to me "wow, how am i going to teach the whole plan of salvation in 10 minutes?" i was thinking nooooooooooooooooooooooo!! That's a great example of not being ductile, or flexible, with what we teach. So we're working on that with the mission. After the meeting with the zone leaders we went to a Chinese restaurant and i totally ate a full plate of rice with squid, sea snails, shrimp, and something else chewy. :) I liked it but it didn't fill me up. I think i have an iron stomach as a missionary because no matter what i eat it's always just happy and working great. What a blessing!
Great moments from this week:
So, in our area we have very, very few investigators. It doesn't help that when we finally get somebody who's interested we have to go out of town so we leave them with the sister missionaries to teach while we're gone and when we come back we don't want to take them away from the sister missionaries.. so we end up with nobody. But anyway, we were kind of bummed one day and were knocking doors without success, and a young man comes to the door and told us he was busy but that he seriously wants us to come back and visit him. We set an appointment for Saturday between the afternoon and priesthood session to visit him. We got there and he was actually there waiting for us and let us in (a very rare occurrence). We got to know him a bit and i felt to tell him to invite his parents to listen to us too. After 3 months of basically everyone always telling us they're busy, it's hard to keep the faith up sometimes, so when he came back in with both of his parents we were very surprised and excited to have found a family! We had a great lesson and have another appointment with them in a few days.
We also did a ward talent show and with the missionaries from the ward we did a sketch where a doctor (elder chuiz) made a machine to cure everyone's sicknesses. i was the doctor's mute and weird assistant who had to enter the machine with the people when they came into his office, and when the people came out of the machine healed i came out with whatever they had before. I ended up blind, with a hurt leg, and without an arm, and the sketch ended when a pregnant lady came in and i went running away. Everyone loved it!
i was working with a district leader in his area, knocking doors, and when a lady told him she was busy he said "so am i, but can we come in and teach you about Jesus?" It was great, i started laughing :)
Oh, and I got the papes in the mail telling me that the packages are in customs here in chiclayo and i have to go pick them up but i can't today because it's a holiday and everything is closed, but i'll go get them tomorrow probably, i'm excited!!!!
Thanks for the happy birthdays and all the love :)
Elder Hatch
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