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!

Saturday, March 27, 2010

Saturday, March 27th, 2010

Hey family,

Well we just completed a successful week of zone conferences, traveling and exchanges. Samuel was confirmed last Sunday and is doing well he is excited to get a doctrine and covenants, we are all out of English ones here so we have to order them up.

Last Sunday afternoon we left to Slovakia and spent the night with the zone leaders there in Zilina, they are some really good missionaries and are doing great things in slovakia, funny story with that though, we got to their apartment at like 9:20 at night and we were bringing up all of our stuff from the car in case it got broken into. I knocked on their door and this 23 year old Slovak girl answered the door with a big smile and i saw the zone leaders in the background busy doing something and they looked up and were like hey whats up, you could say I was very confused about what was going on with a woman in the apartment of our zone leaders at 9:20 at night but I quickly found out why, their washer machine had blown up and water was coming up and she was the land lady and was there with her husband who was fixing it, that brought a quick sigh of relief to me.

Zone conference went well there it was the first one but our training turned out really well, it was on teaching people on benches with the book of mormon. When the zone leaders there were doing their training Sister Slovackova was talking with me and Elder Mittanck and was like i have something important to teach you and started teaching us all the different names for womens shoes, President came over and he started naming them off too and told us that sister's had trained him well and that we should pay attention it may help us out in the future.

After conference we headed off to a town called Banska Bystrica to work with the missionaries there and it was crazy because I saw mountains for the first time since I was in Liberec and we were driving through all these canyons and it reminded me of driving in Colorado or Provo Canyon. The work went really well in Banska, we had only about an hour to work that night before it was time to go back to their apartment for the night, we headed out tracting and we got let in to an interesting teaching opportunity. It was an apartment of 5 college girls with 2 strong Catholics, 2 agnostics and an atheist but we were able to teach them all something which they really enjoyed and they went back to teach them two days afterward.

The weather here is finally getting better the sun is shining and its warm out, the elders there didnt have anybody to teach so we spent the whole day finding with them and headed off to brno to spend the night with the zone leaders there and have zone conference the next day, after conference we headed off to ceske budjovice to work for 24 hours with the elders there. Its a beautiful city there but has a reputation of being a "hard city" to serve in, 2 years ago there were probably 8 of those but now it is just down to them. All of the other reputations of hard cities have been broken. We were greatly blessed there and found a lot of cool people. There was one named Miroslav who I am particularly excited to see how it goes. I hadn't had such a powerful first lesson on a bench in a long time with him. After a long day there on Thursday we headed home exhausted, constantly driving and going on exchanges is exciting but very exhausting. We drove 1200 kilometers in 5 days; Elder Mittanck compares it to a life of a rockstar.

We had zone conference here in prague yesterday and its good to not have to worry about that for a little while now. At the end of zone conference the missionaries who will be going home at the end of the transfer give their final testimonies and it was pretty big reality shock because my group will be the next one up there giving their testimonies in 2 months. Time is short so I must work hard. I bought a new study journal on Monday to start over with taking notes. It sounds like everybody enjoyed sea world and six flags there in Texas. have a great week everybody.

Love,
Elder Hatch

Life of a Rock Star

Jordan and the other Assistant to the President, Elder Mittanck traveled 1200 kilometers (about 750 miles) over 5 days this past week. His companion compares it to "the life of a rock star."

krajina

"In between Brno and Ceske Budjovice we stopped for a picture"

Monday, March 22, 2010

Elders Hatch and Mittank are the assistants; and Elders Fruehan and Vivona run the office.

Sunday, March 21, 2010

Saturday, March 20th, 2010

Hey family,

Well samuel just got baptized about 4 hours ago and it was a great experience. There was a big turnout from the branch and he was baptized by the branch president which was great to see, along with him was a nice young woman baptized who was czech so the services were in czech and english. We just got back from playing soccer with samuel and a bunch of our "african brothers" who all came to the baptism. We have a group of about 5 guys from aftrica in their 20's who we are teaching here, they are all from nigeria and are studing international relations here for masters and phd's and love coming to church with us and learning from the scriptures with us. Last sunday we watched the talk "safety for our soul" by elder holland and it finally clicked for them why the Book of Mormon is so important so they are all reading in that and trying to find out if it is true.

Thursday I went back on exchanges to Olomouc which was good to meet with some of my old people and get them back on track towards baptism. A very unfortunate event was that that night, while we were in a nice area of town for an appointment, our car was broken into. They broke the back window and stole my bag which had all of my stuff for zone leaders council the next day, my scriptures, PMG and my study journal with all of my insights and notes from zone conferences my whole mission, that was the only thing stolen from the car and we had a lot of other valuable stuff there. I was pretty bummed. I figured once the thief opened the bag and saw it was just scriptures and a notebook he would ditch it somewhere so I spent about an hour searching all of the dumpsters within a 500 meter radius but with no luck. I am most bummed about my notes because I had a lot of good stuff in there and my markings in the scriptures, I guess I will just need to get a new set and start over.

So the next day we drove down to Brno with a smashed out window and had zone leaders council which turned out very well considering that Elder Mittanck and I had no notes for what we were doing since they were all stolen. Zone leaders council is one of my favorite things as a missionary, I feel like we are like king arthur and the knights of the round table sitting around discussing how things are going. We have a very young mission now and we are the last of the old missionaries so we are trying to keep everything going up as it has been in the past.

We made it back last night and fortunately got our window fixed this morning because we are heading off to Slovakia tomorrow. I have never done so much driving in my life it feels like a giant road trip all the time and President does even more driving, he headed off from Brno today to Kosice which is on the border between Slovakia and Ukriane, about 12 hours away from Prague by car.

My comp and i had a bet with sister slovakia that we could find 10 new investigators and she bet us that she could find 1 in a week, we found our 10 and she didn't find her one so she had to make us a gourmet lunch, so on Wednesday she made us cashew crusted stuffed pork chops with bacon and cheese potatoes and peppery greens with rasberry dressing, home made rolls and apple pie, it was definitely the best meal i have had in the czech republic. After lunch president was like "wow that was the best meal you have cooked in 10 years, you should bet the assistants more often, even I benefit from it." It was nice talking with President and his wife in a casual setting and getting to know them more, their daughter is living with them right now and she spilled all the funny secrets so we had some good laughter, president was asking me about my texas drivers license and he dropped a funny line that Mason can try using, "My daddy always taught me you don't ask a man where he comes from, if he is from texas he will let you know, and if not you don't want to embarrass him" Sister S gave him a good smack for that one she is from Washington, I also found out that their favorite place to be is Sandpoint Idaho, that's where they are wanting to live when they go home and they were quite surprised when i said i had been there before.

It sounds like you are all having a good time in San Antonio with the roller coasters and enjoy Sea World today. The work is going good here and the Lord is blessing us quite a bit with the work. We have a few other people here that we found this transfer that should be getting baptized some time soon. Pray for us to have a good safe trip to Slovakia with nothing getting stolen and see some good miracles there, we have zone conferences this next week monday in zilina slovakia, wednesday in brno and friday in prague so i will probably get home next thursday. for now have a great week

Love,
Elder Hatch

Saturday, March 13, 2010

Saturday, March 13th, 2010

Well Prague is as bustling as ever and unfortunately still cold, one of my favorite ways of starting conversations with people on the metro is asking them when spring is going to come, for some reason that just instantly softens there heart. We had two big events on the plan this week, the first was a visit from Elders Teaxue sp? and Richerdson. Elder Teaxue is in the first quorum of the seventy and is in our area presidency here in Europe and Richardson is in the Sunday school presidency, their visit was for the members and not the missionaries but Elder Mittanck and i were able to interact with them and they are wonderful people and very humble even though they are very successful in life, I guess Elder Richardson teaches religion at BYU and he invited me to take his class and that he hopes to see me there when i return to BYU. So we had to get everything in good shape for that and tidy up our office.

We were also given notice that the area presidency will be coming here after general conference for a big sit down with President to find what has caused the great increase in success here over the past 2 1/2 years for a report they will be giving to the Quorum of the 12.

We started something new here that we call "training camp" or "progression seminar" basically we brought in all the trainers and new missionaries to brno and worked with them, for a big part of it we split the trainers and greenies up and the trainers had a question and answer session with president and his wife while we practiced a lot of different scenarioes with the new missionaries. After lunch Elder Mittanck and i trained on comp study and comp language study and we heard some great talks from president and sister slovacek on building faith and raising our vision to see ourselves as the Lord sees us. This was kind of a trial run to see how successful it was and everybody loved it so we are going to be continuing it in the future.

In our area our man samuel is going to be getting baptized this next saturday, he is from camaroon, he had been taught in brno but moved to prague the same time that i did and one of my missionary friends in brno passed him over to me, he is working on his phd in international relations here and is a very humble guy. We also found this sweet girl from spain named noele, i busted out the 3 or 4 spanish phrases i know, luckily she speaks english she also just moved to prague about 3 weeks ago and she is coming to church tomorrow we should be getting a pretty good turnout to church tomorrow 6 or 7 people, even though we only get about 4 and 1/2 hours of missionary work a day we are still seeing alot of success.

This weekend is the youth and ysa temple trip and so they all came into prague and had a fireside and slept in the mission home before heading to the temple early this morning, it was great to see all of the youth and ysa i have come to know well and become friends with, its kind of weird thinking about it i dont really have any friends in america anymore that arent my family or former missionaries here it seems like i have a lot more friends here in the czech republic. Vrata was there last night and he was way excited to be going and doing baptisms for the first time, the youth and ysa have a great bond together here. One of the drivers of one of the vans got sick at the last moment so they needed another driver, i volunteered but unfortunatly that was shot down rather quickly.

My personal study lately has been largely made up of the New Testament and Book of Mormon it is amazing how great those work together and its amazing the power you get from reading your scriptures in the morning that continue throught the day, sometimes because of things we have to do we dont get our personal study until the afternoon and there is a noticeble difference.

I want to thank you all for the love and support you gave me in your emails today it was a great boost and i am working hard every day here. Have a great week everybody and keep on making wise decisions

Love
Elder Hatch

Saturday, March 6, 2010

Elder Hatch and his companion, Elder Mittanck

Saturday, March 6th, 2019

Dear family

I know i say this a lot but this week has been a week full of ups and downs, I probably had my lowest point on my mission and my highest point on my mission separated by a few days. I got dear johned on tuesday which was a pretty big surprise since i thought everything was going great and i will be coming home in 3 months. It was pretty rough for me I must admit but I have a great companion who helped me out and I had a good talk with President Slovacek and he told me about how he was dear johned on his mission and gave me some good advice and support. I have been spending a lot of time in prayer, it's rough but I know I am going to be ok.

Friday evening Elder Kerr a member of the 3rd quorum of the seventy flew into Prague with his wife to speak at a women's conference for the whole mission in Brno, they are from Scotland. President Slovacek and his wife was already in brno for a funeral friday morning so Elder Mittanck and I picked them up from the airport and drove them 3 hours to brno which is quite a great experience. He is full of great stories and told us we could ask him about anything, he told us about the meetings that the seventies have with the first presidency and the quorum of the 12 apostles before conference and shared some good experience from that from hearing from different apostles and prophets. Then he started talking about the process of calling new stake presidents and his experiences with that and how it is such a spiritual process and the different confirmations that come with calling the new stake president and standing up in front of the stake and saying this is who Elder Oaks and I know is called by God to be the stake president and not well we both felt pretty good about this one guy. He bore a strong testimony to us about how God will bless us for giving this time to him on a mission and that we will never regret giving God these two years of our lives and that God will provide for us, which was a great thing for me to hear at that time, even though i already knew that it was a great confirmation.

When we got to brno we were invited to join them for dinner with the Slovaceks, which was great to see them interact with each other and to see a different side of our Mission President and his wife, I know every missionary says this but I am pretty sure I have the best mission president.

I had salmon for the first time on my mission it wasn't as good as yours mom but it was pretty good, then we drove home last night after dinner. The missionary work is going well for us, it is definitely different we are in the office until 4:30 each afternoon and than we get to go out and do missionary work so we have a lot less time but the Lord blesses us and we have seen a lot of great things happen in our area, something that we are doing here is going tracting in the dorms and it has turned out to be really successful. We find a bunch of new people everytime. One night we went on splits each taking a recent convert with us and went tracting, my companion martin loved it and was sad when we already had to leave, he is hooked on it and is always asking us now when we can go tracting again.

I got some different questions about the office. my comp and i live in an apartment building about 100 yards away from the building. In the office there is the Andersens who are a senior couple from Idaho who are great people. Elder Andersen taught at BYU idaho for 20 something years and he is in charge of the fianaces for the mission, his wife is the mission secretary and does a ton of great work for the mission and helps out a lot. There is another office companionship of elders, one is the computer elder for the mission and takes care of all of the electronics and printing for the mission, then there is the office manager who is in charge of all supplies, building care and car stuff. Elder Mittanck and i do whatever the president needs us to do and then we are in charge of visa's for all of the missionaries.

For workouts I have scored here, we have a bench and a lot of weights in our apartment so we can do pretty much any exercise imaginable with free weights.

We had an auditor from france come in, I must say im not a big fan of auditors but I guess they are needed. If there are any other questions I forgot to answer send them again.

I hope every body has a great week and thank you for your support, remember me in your prayers please, I know that with all of the billions of people on earth God knows and loves each one of us and cares for us in so many ways that we can't see, He provides us with many tender mercies and hears our prayers.

Love,
Elder Hatch