October 27th, 2008

Elder Anderson, Jvan, Elder Nowland, Elder Hatch at Jvan's Baptisim

The Liberic Branch traveled to Prague to support Jvan at his Baptisim

Elder Nowland and Elder Hatch on their way to Prague for the Baptisim

Elder Anderson, Jvan and Elder Hatch at Jvan's Baptisim

So the Baptism was a success, it was an awesome experience for everybody involved. We spent alot of time with Jvan this week and he is a stud. We found out earlier this week when we were just sitting around talking that he is only 20, for some reason we had never asked him how old he is and we had just thought he was like 23 or 24 but he is only 20 and has mentioned he is excited to share the gospel with people so who knows he might be goin on a mission in a year which would be sweet.

Monday night we went with him to a members house for dinner and to plan out a program for the baptism with who he wants to give talks and songs it was a good time for him to see the members out of church and that they are normal people. Then friday night elder nowland and I made spaghetti at the church and we had dinner with him and the two other missionaries and we had a good time talking and getting everything ready for the next day. Saturday us 4 missionaries took a bus to prague and got everything set up, the members were meeting at the church and driving down to prague and Jvan went with them. The baptism was supposed to start at 1:30 but the members were stuck in traffic with the baptism and showed up at 2 so it was a late start but everything went well. The mission home has a font in the basement with a big room and the room was full with prague missionaries and all of their investigators, there were supposed to be 3 baptisms together but the other 2 didnt happen so it was just us. Jvan was a little nervous before hand but very excited, we had lukas our mission leader baptize him they have become good friends and are pretty close in age after the baptism Jvan was just beaming he was so happy it was great to see Elder Andersen was there and helped us out quite a bit which was good, our two recently returned missionaries gave some really good talks and everything turned out well.

After the baptism all the members went over to our branch president's house and had a get togethor while Elder Nowland and I tried to figure out a way to get home. Since Liberec is in the mountains there is no direct railways there so if you go by train it is like 3 hours or you can go by bus which is an hour. We didnt know when the baptism would be over so we bought open tickets and you can text in to reserve seats on the bus with them so after the baptism was over at like 3:15 we go to text in our tickets and we forgot on the weekends the buses only go every hour instead of every half hour like during the week so the 4, 5, and 6 o'clock buses were full so we had to wait around till 7 to get out of there but we were more than willing to since the baptism was a success. It is a pretty sweet deal to get to prague with the exchange rate is about 5 bucks each way so its not a big deal at all to travel there.

Jvan was confirmed and given the holy ghost yesterday in sacrament meeting and he was all smiles, the branch was already discussing in branch council what calling they could give him they are taking really good care of him being his friend. So now we get to work helping more people progress, we were supposed to go help a guy we met on the street last week with his garden this morning but it was raining pretty good so he called us up and cancled saying it wouldnt be good work in the rain so we might go play a game of risk at our apartment with the other elders, it is fun having a german with us, whenever we do something dumb or mess up something he is always good for the comment gosh i dont know how we could of lost a war to you guys so we have some good fun with that.

Everybody says the economy is doing pretty bad but the dollar is doing really good here, when i first came in the country 3 months ago a dollar bought you 15 crowns and now a dollar will buy you 20 crowns so all the missionaries are excited about that. That is pretty much all the news for this week everything is going good here im loving the mission and it seems like every week is getting quicker and quicker. I hope everybody has a good week.

Love
Elder Hatch

October 20th, 2008

Hello everybody

Everything is going well here and we are pretty busy all the time which is good. We spent alot of time with Jvan this last week just getting everything ready for him and the baptism he is way excited about it. He even brought a friend from work with him to one of the meetings and we answered some of his questions and hopefully will start meeting with him soon so he is already giving us referrals. We have decided for his baptism it will be held in Prague since its a little too cold to baptize in an outside pond right now but Jvan is such a stud he was like it doesnt matter where i get baptized i could take the cold if i needed too but it will probably be more enjoyable in Prague and the members are getting together to figure out how to get everyone to prague they are very excited about it since they havent had one in 2 years. This week it finally became real to them that he is actually getting baptized they have had quite a few fall through in the past but they did an awesome job of fellowshipping him and people saying they want to teach with him and inviting him over for dinner so that was awesome we are reallly happy about how accepting and welcoming the branch is to him. He has also been to church 6 out of the 7 weeks we have known him so this next week we are gonna be putting alot of focus on making sure it goes through.

President Slovacek and his wife came to our branch for church on sunday which everybody was excited about he and his wife are trying to tour around and go to a different branch every week to see the members and the missionaries. Somebody asked but there are two districts not one there is the prague district which i am in and the brno district which includes all of slovakia.

We had zone conference on thursday which meant another trip down to prague it almost feels like im going there once a week. It was a really good one we learned lots of new stuff which is good we worked alot on trackting approaches since contacting is alot harder in winter. A big focus is on using the family home evening program, talking about how it strengthens families and holding one for the people so me and elder nowland are practicing our family home evening's and we are even gonna make a dont eat pete board and use that we think the little kids will love that since we both loved it when we were little. It was fun to see everybody at zone conference and talk with Elder Andersen i have been blessed with two very good companions to start out my mission here in the czech republic. Elder Andersen has a baptisim this saturday as well so we are gonna combine them which will be fun.

The food we had at the returned sister missionaries was really good it was meat cooked serbian styled i think and it was really good, we were running late from a meeting so we showed up late but she was very kind since she knows all about that we ate and then had to take off running back into the city since no bus was coming for a while and we had a meeting with Jvan but it all worked out well we had a good meal got in some good exercise and had a great meeting so what more can you ask for. Saturday we had a game night at the church from 4-6 and had food games and ping pong it was good for our investigators and members to mix and have fun together and the weekends are so dead here that it is a good use of time. I was able to put my czech skills to good use yesterday and translate for sister slovacek a little bit as she was talking to Jvan which was fun luckily she spoke very simply, i can actually talk to him and understand him better then czechs because since he is from moldova he speaks pretty crappy czech and i speak crappy czech so it mixes well its funny because sometimes i can understand him better then my companion and my comp can understand czech's very well so its a good match up. I think that is all for this weeks letter i hope everybody has a good week thanks for all of the love and support you give me.

Love
Elder Hatch

More Pictures from Liberec

We received 90 more pictures from Elder Hatch today.

Here are three to get you started.

Click on this link to see the entire album

Click here to see the entire album

October 13th, 2008

Hello Everybody

Sorry about my emails cutting out i dont know why that has been happening if it happens again this week ill start writing them in word and attaching it and send that out. Our Week here has been good the weather warmed up quite a bit so it was nice not having to wear a coat and have the sun shining. We had general conference this weekend which was a big success, the church burned them onto dvd's and sent them out to all the branches. They were going to try and hook up two tv's so we could watch them in czech and english in separate rooms but that didnt work out so i saw all the sessions in czech but me and my companion were able to watch most of the priesthood session last night in english after everybody had left which was really good. I couldnt understand anything watching the czech sessions i could hear words i knew but the translators were talking super fast so i didnt get too much out of it.

One of our investigators Igor was there for all 4 sessions of conference and loved it he said that all of the talks were about things he needed to hear, he told me he is excited to be baptized. with him the one thing we need to do is get him to stop smoking, he told us earlier this week without us bringing it up that he knows he needs to stop so we will start that this week, i guess the church has a great stop smoking program that works really well so we are going to get that started with him.

Jvan our investigator from moldalvia caught a session and a half and enjoyed it. he told us that he is excited for his baptisim that is coming up, he works alot 6 days a week doing construction so we meet with him at like 8 at night. He isnt the suns fan i dont know what happened to that guy his cell phone was turned off so i dont know if he had to go back to serbia quickly or what.

The branch here has a cool tradition on general conference sundays they cook gulash and have lunch together for a break between the two sessions i guess they have been doing it for a while but i really liked it. My companion had leadership conference in brno so i spent a night and day with the other campionship we did some split contacting where we were all on our own in the namesti (town square) i was able to talk to a guy get his interest and get his phone number to call him later and set up a time where we could meet all on my own. I could only understand like 30-50% what he was saying but i was able to ask him and tell him some things that interested him so he gave me his number and told me to call. I definetly had the lords help on that one.

The apartment next to ours i have come to find out is owned by FC Slovan which is the pro soccer team here and right now there are two kids 18 and 15 from bosnia living there playing for the teams younger division team, they are way nice kids one speaks english we went and got an ice cream with them once and they told us about bosnia they are only here for 2 months for the season and then they go home.

Also the two missionaries out from the branch returned home, one was serving in germany and he is a cool guy and willing to teach with us, the other was in slovenia and she has already invited us over for dinner, it is good having them back it gives the branch alot more strength. As part of our weekly planning me and my companion set some goals for doing exercises to help us be more diligent with our pushups and pull ups, i have never been much of a person who does exercises in the morning at home it was always in the afternoon so its hard to roll out of bed when you are tired and start doing exercises so we are going to push our selves to do a better job of that.

Thats dumb they ripped open grandma's envelope and took the magnet out ill just save them now. Tell her thanks for the cookies and grandma J for her package. I hope everybody has a good week thanks for all of the emails and letters keeping me up to date with everything you guys are the best.

Here is a quote from President Monson that i found it starts out with a scripture "Be strong and of a good courage, fear not nor be afraid, for the Lord they God, he it is that doth go with thee; he will not fail thee, nor forsake thee." It is this sweet assurance that can guide you and me, in our time, in our day, in our lives of course we will face fear, experience ridicule, and meet opposition. Let us have the courage to defy the consensus, the courage to stand for principle. Courage not compromise brings the smile of God's approval. Courage becomes a livingand and attractive virtue when it is regarded not only as a willingness to die manfully, but also as a determination to live decently. A moral coward is one who is afraid to do what he thinks is right because others will dissaprove or laugh. Remember that all men have their fears, but those who face their fears with dignity have courage as well.

October 6th, 2008

So we ended last transfer with a good time, it was Elder Cranes birthday so Elder Andersen and I got him a ticket to the soccer game for it and monday night we all went to the FC Slovan Liberec Vs Prague Sparta soccer game for P-day it was alot of fun. We won 3-0 which was sweet and i guess sparta is the most popular and best team in the league so it was fun to watch them and beat them. They made all the sparta fans sit in their own section of the stadium and they were locked in their part so they couldnt go fight the liberec fans and then they had to sit in there for and extra half hour after the game until all the liberec fans disperrsed so they wouldnt fight after the game so quite a bit different from Suns games haha although i wouldnt mind if they made laker fans sit in a cage.

My companion is Elder Nowland he is from Georgia and is a great guy we get along well, Elder Andersen was a great trainer and now i have a good follow up trainer. We have a really young district now but it is good we have alot of energy. Elder Hadzik is the other new missionary here he is from Germany and is in the group just in front of me and he is an awesome missionary so im excited for this next transfer.

On saturday we went out and did service for our branch president chopping up firewood and stacking it for winter. I just want to say that the chainsaw is probably one of the greatest inventions ever, it made the work so easy for chopping up firewood the previous saturday we were out there doing service for our branch presidents neighbor chopping up firewood with ax's that is much more tiring and takes a lot longer.


One of our investigators it turns out was in love with elder andersen and that was the only reason why she was meeting with us so that was pretty interesting to find out and probably one of our weirdest meetings she wanted us to call up elder andersen in prague and tell him that she loves him we politely declined so who knows what will happen with her. The rest of our investigators are doing well we had three at church this week and they are progessing along nicely, we have a baptisim set up for the 25th of october with our investigator from Moldova he is a stud and loves the gospel he will make a really good addition to the branch here he is about 23 so we are pumped about that.

Thats about all for this week my czech is doing good Elder Nowland is helping me alot with that so it feels good to be progressing along with that. It sounds like the bahamas were awesome for you guys and that everybody had plenty of that white chocolate bread. Im sending home some pictures this week so