September 15th, 2008

Hello family and friends im writing a day late because of a zone activity we had yesterday. Our Zone leader organized a vylet for us all to go on to build some unity and to get to know each other a little bit better since we are so far away from each other because of the way things work out our zone is kind of stretched out we are 2 hours away from hradec kralova and 4 hours away from ceska budeouvice which are the two other cities with elders. We went to a city called Kutna Hora and visited a couple of old churches there one of them is this massive catholic cathedral which was pretty cool and another was a bone church that had the bones of 40,000 turkish soldiers in it, it was a fun trip it was good to get to know the other elders in our zone better since our mission is so small i will probably be serving with one of them eventually.

We had a great week this last week and were able to find some cool people to work with. right now we have a wide variety of people. we have a guy from serbia who is here doing construction work he had been meeting with the missionaries in serbia before they had been kicked out of the country then saw us on the street one day and came up and contacted us, he comes to our english class. It is kind of hard to teach him since he isnt great at english or czech but we use a combination and get by.

This last sunday a 20 year old guy showed up at church and we started talking to him he is from moldavia was walking down the street to the grocery store, saw our sign and decided to come up and go to church and now he wants to meet with us. At church this sunday we had an interesting combination we had 5 members 4 missionaries and 4 people investigating the church since some of the members were out of town. The members have alot of faith and dedication I cant imagine how hard it would be to grow up in the church here, some people have asked if it is like silverton. it is but younger and not as much experience in the church. also nobody comes here to speak from other cities like they do often in silverton. We have a pianist it is the branch presidents wife who is also the relief society president, I played one time when her son was fussing and she had to take care of him i have also played the prelude music a couple of times so it has been good for my piano skills practicing a little bit.
As we were contacting along through some panaloks which in america would basically be the projects that is how they are set up but that is how everybody lives so its not dangerous. people are usually pretty nice and friendly. we were walking along and some old women on a bench yelled at us what we had to offer so we went over and started talking to them and they started asking us all these questions about what we do, where we are from, why we are here as missionaries and so forth. they all said they were too old and didnt want to change but they were like your nice boys we will help you so they started yelling at people walking by if they believed in God it was pretty funny. Thats probably the thing we talk about most that God does exsist since most people here dont believe, most of the people who are interested in talking to us havent believed in God and are interested in finding out if there is a God so we spend alot of time teaching about God and how we can use prayer to find out he is there and loves us, so it is probably different then alot of other peoples experiences on their missions.

Here is a quote from President Monson that I read this week and thought I would share he said that "faced with the spiritual and emotional plagues of our day, to many of us tend to criticize, to complain, to blame and adopt the negatives of life. But we can lift ourselves, and others as well, when we refuse to remain in the realm of negative thought and cultivate within our hearts and attitude of gratitude".

We have zone conference on thursday that I am excited for it was really good last time. Fall is here for sure it has been freezing the last couple of days I am gonna have to go buy a couple of sweaters to go with my suits so I dont freeze. I hope you guys all have a great week and that everything goes well for you. keep up the good work in school and swim Ian and Alyssa.

Love,
Elder Hatch