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!

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

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