Monday August 17th, 2009

Hello family

Well i got a new companion here in plzen his name is elder vomocil (which is a czech name) and he hails from sandy utah. His mom works for the government and so he actually lived in prague for 2 years when he was 12 while his mom worked in the embassy. He didn't learn any czech then but his czech is doing pretty well now he is a quick learner.

Wednesday we woke up at 5 in the morning and hopped on a bus to prauge where elder graham met up with the other missionaries who were going home and then i was in training for a couple of hours on how to be a good trainer. After that we went upstairs to Presidents Apartment where President announced who was going to be serving with whom. It was a fun experience, i will be sending some pictures home of everything. We got back to plzen in the evening , we worked all day thursday and had district meeting, then it was back to prague to spend the night and my companion stayed in prague friday while i went to brno for leadership conference. It was a good experience, i was able to see lenka there and she told me she is going on a temple trip next week for the first time to do baptisms for the dead, she was pretty excited about that but a little nervous. We are set up for having a pretty good transfer i am excited about it.

Vratislav is set up to be baptized this next saturday and the branch is way excited about it, and Hoa is still working towards it, he was at church yesterday. Elder Kartchner in our district is also training and his companion is Elder Mills and he is from chandler arizona with the crossroads of ray and 101 on the west side by the toyota center. I didn't know him at all before hand but what a small world that is like a mile from our house. So our district is 75% arizonan which is i'm sure a definite first in the czech republic to have that.

We eat once a week at this members house and she gives us huge portions, and as most people know i don't have the biggest stomach and cant eat a lot of food at once but she is definitely helping me to expand it. I think by the time i leave plzen i will be able to be a competitive food eater, that chinese guy is going down next year i will eat more hot dogs than him.

It was fun going shopping for food today with my greenie because it is such a whole new experience going from the mtc where food is just provided to you, to a grocery store in a forgein country and now you have to make your own food. I am taking good care of him though and helping him out with it all. It feels like i was just with elder andersen getting trained and now i am training it is a very weird feeling.

I got packages from home and grandma j today so thank you for that. Work is going well here and i am happy to be a missionary, i am way excited for vratislav's baptism he has come so far since i met him 2 months ago. We are having a member brother kyncel baptize him in a pond north of plzen and than do a branch picnic afterwards. A lot of the branch priesthood was out of town on sunday for vacation and i was assigned to teach priesthood. In our class there was an englishman, an american, two brand new missionaries elder kartchner and vratislav, so only one czech speaker but i still did it in czech anyways and just translated for everybody else.

Well i hope everybody has a great week and i want to share my testimony that i know without a doubt Jesus Christ is our Lord and Savior and through him people have the power to change their lives, no matter how bad they are to the better. The wonderful thing about the gospel is that you don't have to be who you are. Keep on doing the great stuff that you are doing at home and I will be continuing to work hard here. Until next week

S Laskou
Elder Hatch