Monday September 8th, 2008

Hello Family and Friends,

We have had another eventful week here in liberec with plenty of up's and downs. A bunch of you have been asking about our baptisimal date for this last saturday. unfortunately it did not go through. shortly after we extended it 3 weeks ago the woman has fallen off the face of the earth and we haven't had any contact in 2 1/2 weeks we have stopped by her apartment a number of times and her cell phone is always off so we will see if we can ever get back in contact with her. The baptism was going to take place at this beautiful little pond up in the mountains me and elder andersen went and checked it out a couple weeks ago and i took a bunch of pictures so you will see them the next time i send them home. The good news of the week is that we made a bunch of good connections with the local rotary club, one of our long time investigators is the former president and he invited us on an outing with them it was the liberec club then a club from drezden germany together. It was a big hike through a mountain range by us and we were able to talk to alot of really nice people one of the women we talked to actually went through the frieburg open house for the temple 25 years ago. A lot of them all they had heard about us was that we each have like 20 wives so it was good to clear that up. they loved talking to us they all wanted to know why we were so different from the other people our age and are friendly and kind, not rebellious like everybody else so that was cool to hear, if nothing else comes of it we gave a good impression to a bunch of people.

Something i just found out this week was that porsche was started here in liberec ? I dont know if that is true or not just what we heard. There is a ton of construction going on since the world championships for skiing will be here. they are upgrading a lot of transportation and building new stuff but they are getting pretty close to finishing it all. You asked about the stamps on the letter, elder andersen found a shop here in liberec where you can custom make them so i got one there, only a few people in the mission have them.

Here is another story from the week, last tuesday we walked in to our apartment building and i saw i had two packages one from grandma J and one from Kamille sitting on a little ledge since they were too big for our box, i had something in one of my hands so i went to grab the two packages with my other hand and kamilles package which was a big envelope slipped and fell, it turns out the ledge had about a two inch gap between it and the wall and the envelope fell down to the bottom which was like 4 feet so i had like an inch of dry wall between me and my package we started divising ways how we could get it out i thought all hope was lost but luckally my companion came to the rescue and came up with the idea to attach a clothes pin to a golf club the land lady gave us to help get it out and the day was saved and i got my package needless to say i will be much more carefull now.

It sounds like swim is going great for both Ian and Alyssa their times sound really good which is awesome. I saw one of my MTC teachers this last week which was cool he is from jablonec which is right next to our city and his grandmother had died so he flew over with his wife for the funeral and we got to talk to him for a little bit. The work is pretty tough here the investigators we have right now arent really going anywhere so we are going to be spending alot of time this next week trying to find new people. I hope everybody has a great week it is good to hear from everybody i love to recieve your email's and letters. I hope you all have a great week.

Love
Elder Hatch