11/13/2012

Hey fam, 

This week was nuts! I feel like every week is nuts lately though. 

Tuesday was the zone leaders council- we talked about a new sheet we made for all the missionaries to track their progress in their personal studies, and about how to be more effective in the first lesson. 

Wednesday we went to the Chiclayo Perú zone's zone training meeting and they asked us to talk about the first lesson and do practices with the zone. That afternoon we planned a new special conference for only the sister missionaries in the mission on Thursday. We talked about basically the same things, but a little different, to keep building on what we talked about in the zone council. So that meeting was only for the sisters in Chiclayo, 16 sisters. That night one of our investigators we've had for a while, Stefani, told us she doesn't have any plans to be baptized, and that she only goes to church because she doesn't want to make her uncle feel bad and she feels obligated because she lives with them.. Bummer. But it's her choice! I'm glad she was honest with us. 

Friday at about noon we started off to Jaen- we got there in the evening, and Elder Infante got sick from the drive and was all barfy, but he bounced back quick and we went to a ward mission night in the zone leaders' ward. Saturday morning we gave the same special conference for sister missionaries to the 6 sisters in Jaen. In the afternoon we drove to Chachapoyas. Sunday morning in church i played the little electric organ in sacrament meeting- i'm getting used to playing without a pedal.. In the afternoon we went out with a member of the branch to visit less active members and ended up trekking all over the hills in chachapoyas and only visited one person. It was fun though because Chachapoyas is beautiful and it was lightly raining- it's seriously paradise there. The only problem is that the nasty mattresses we throw on the floor to sleep on when we visit them are definitely infested with fleas, because i always wake up scratching myself. Monday we had p-day in Chachapoyas! there are a million sweet tourist attractions around chachapoyas, and president and sister Risso chose to go the third tallest waterfall in the world, Gocta. It's about an hour driving from Chachapoyas, then three hours hiking in and three hours hiking out. It was pretty tough for me, and my companion and president and sister risso were basically dead half way through. I didn't think they were going to make it. But it was so so pretty there! We even saw a really rare almost extinct parrot type orange bird. We had a tour guide who told us all the myths and showed us the plants, etc. The entire day i had flies trying to land on my head. I was about to go insane. Oh and the tour guide showed us a huge boulder on the side of the pathway that has fossilized seashells in it. I don't know how the ocean got to gocta.. It's not even close to any ocean or lake or anything! 

Then, when we were all dead tired we drove to Jaen for the night, pres Risso put in a Beatles cd.. not too bad :) and elder Infante and i got to stay in the hotel where pres and sister risso stay over night. It was SO hot though, and our air conditioner didn't work- the one night in my entire mission where i have an air conditioner in my room and it doesn't work.. haha. So i didn't sleep too much but today in the car ride back i slept like four of the five hours. We just got here to the office, and now this week we actually have some time to work in our area! yayyyyy. 

I'm really tired and kind of out of it right now, and can't think of what else to write! So that's all for today. Have a good week :)  

Elder Hatch

Here i am on the trail to Gocta!

And this is Leila's baptism!