Mark your calanders!

Mark your calendars so you can be at Sky Harbor Airport to welcome Jordan home. He will arrive:

Tuesday June 15th
, 2010
at 5:30 pm

on British Airways to Phoenix.

Everyone is invited to welcome him off the plane!

Monday, December 8, 2008

December 8th, 2008

Hey everybody, i am safely here in Brno and it is a sweet city. Wednesday morning elder nowland and i made omlets than i got on a bus to prague, Elder Andersen picked me up and helped me get all my suit cases through the subway to the mission home (he takes good care of me) where i waited around for a couple of hours since we had a big group heading from prague to brno, the old ap is headed there as zone leader and 2 missionaries who were serving in prague also, so we went through the subway together and barely caught our bus to brno we had to do some running and i worked up a little sweat but we made it. My apartment is sweet they just moved into it a week before i got there because their old apartment needed to be remodeled, so i dont have an address for our new place yet we are going to try and get it this week and ill send it to you next week. It is just me and my companion in it, we are in a part of brno called bohunice which is translated as land of the Gods. It takes us about 35 minutes by tram to get to the church building which is quite a bit different from the 2 minutes it took in liberec but i am adapting, we do part of our language study on the trams so we dont waste time. So my new companion is a stud, he is that guy who that woman told you about mom. He has been out 14 months so he has been in the country for a year, he broke his foot but luckily he was in the office as the computer guy when that happened so he didnt have to go home but he had to spend a couple of months on crutches. He came to Brno 2 months ago he is from provo and before his mission he studied graphics, Sister Perez from my group is serving here in my district too which is cool, we have a really good district here there are 8 elders 2 sisters and a senior couple. Church yesterday was good it was alot different since there were about 70 members there instead of the 15 we had in liberec but i got to meet a bunch of them. Tuesday before i left we went over to the toplansky the family with the twins that we found and i took a picture with them, last night i got a call from elder nowland and the wife is going to be baptized and hopefully the husband will be right behind. Elder Gagon and I are working hard here to find a family and we have done quite a bit of tracting the last couple of days. On friday they had a leadership conference here with all the district leaders and zone leaders in the mission, they do it here because it is kind of the middle point of the mission between the czech repulibic and slovakia. It is kind of weird meeting the slovakian elders because we never serve with them or see them, but it is pretty cool because i have met basically every missionary serving in the czech repulibic one of the nice things of serving in a small mission. That is about all from me for this week, i am going to send home my picture card next week with some pictures of here and my new companion plus all the ones from last transfer. Congrats on being made swim captain Ian and being the most improved swimmer Alyssa that is awesome.

Love
Elder Hatch
Jordan with Elders Nowland and Lukas who was just baptized
The Liberec Branch before Jordan leaves on Transfers

Elders Hatch and Nowland with Pepik Zeman


Jordan as he is getting on the bus on transfer day leaving Liberec



Monday, December 1, 2008

December 1st, 2008

Elders Hatch and Nowland with Lukas at his baptisim in Prague


Hey Family

We had an awesome week here in Liberec, on saturday we had 2 baptisms 1 from our area and 1 from the other area which we are very happy with. Our baptism was Lukas he is 23 and we found him at the beginning of the transfer, he is the nicest guy and very outgoing with forming relationships with the branch. The other baptism was Dan and it was cool for me to see his baptism because i found him when i was on exchanges in the other area. I just went up and asked him what he thought the purpose of life was he said he didnt know and i asked him if we could go to our church building and talk about it and he was like sure why not, that was on halloween day so less than a month he was very prepared. He has a cool job, what he does is he works for this online clothing store and he is basically walking advertisment they give him really nice clothes to wear like dulci and gabonna, lacoste and a bunch of other stuff and he just walks around the city to show it off, he is 21.

Jvan got the priesthood on sunday which was awesome he leaves on the 4th to go back to moldova. It was supposed to be a double baptism at 2 on saturday but lukas couldnt get off work so he came down later and we had his at 5, it was kind of crazy getting everything worked out but both baptisms were awesome. We brought our investigator pepich zemon who has a baptismal date for the 3rd of january and he loved it, he was there for both of them and said they were perfect and beautiful. With our meeting with him this last week we asked him how it was going reading the book of mormon for the 2nd time and he was like well actually im reading it for the 3rd time and its really good, so right now he is setting a pace of reading the book of mormon every week and a half. We talked about following the prophet and showed a talk from president monson at conference which he said was amazing so he is doing awesome.

I put my piano skills to good use at the baptisms, the other 3 missionaries and a member sang while i played the piano for a musical number that we performed at both of them. I was pretty nervous but it turned out great so thanks for making me learn and practice.

So i ate it walking down an icy hill last week but it was a good fall all i had was a bruised ego, i would say send me some strap on things for the bottom of my shoes but here comes the next news i am leaving liberec for brno which is a much warmer city. Its sad leaving this beautiful city with the members who are so awesome but im excited and ready for a new adventure in another city. Brno is in the other half of the czech republic moravia and is the 2nd biggest city in the country about 500 000 people i think? Its gonna be a big difference going to the big city with a big branch, on the phone this morning president told me that brno has the biggest branch in the mission even bigger than prague with their own building. My companion is Elder Gagon he is the district leader there and there are 10 missionaries in brno so it will be cool being able to serve around more missionaries. I have met Elder Gagon a couple of times he seems like a real cool guy i am excited to serve with him there. This transfer has gone by very fast and it has been a good one and our area here in liberec is set up for another good transfer.

We went and visted with the family with twins sunday night and they want us to come back tomorrow night so i can say goodbye to them, it is definetly a different challange teaching a family with young children exspecially if the twins are fussing but it is definetly worth it.

I had some people asking how much gas costs here, it is 30 krowns a liter so like a $1.50 per liter so like $5.75 a gallon i think if my math is right? For thanksgiving we went to this sweet restaruant and had a big feast, i ate fried cheese which is delicious but probably not too good for the arteries. I have had to cut back on how much i eat lately because we have started teaching a lot so i am walking around a lot less trying to find people but dont worry im not getting fat.

It sounds like your thanksgiving was good, nice and relaxing. I am loving my mission and loving the work and the people here and i am thankful for the opportunity i have to serve. I hope you all have a good week and i hope Alyssa and Mom have some good birthdays, happy birthday to both of you.

Love
Elder Hatch