March 16th, 2009

Hey guys

So another great week has come and gone here in Brno and there were definitely some memorable events this week with the highlight being Adam's baptism on Saturday and confirmation on Sunday. He is one of the nicest guys i have ever met. So Saturday was another early morning to head on over to the church and get the font filling for the baptism, while we waited on that we sat around watching church history movies and the movie The Testament. Adam had asked me to baptize him so i was super nervous about that going over the prayer in my head all morning. The baptism was scheduled for 12:30 and at 12:20 we were missing Adam, the person giving the opening prayer, the presiding authority from the branch and the person giving the talk so mormon standard time exists in the Czech Republic also :) that caused some stress but everybody showed up in time and it was good. So for the actual baptism itself lets just say that the third times the charm haha luckily Adam is a good sport, the first time he was all the way under but i had a mistake in the prayer i declinated father wrong and said otce instead of otci, then the 2nd time part of his elbow didnt go under but the 3rd time was perfect. When i was talking to him after we had finished changing and before we went back into the chapel i asked him how he felt and he was like i feel so clean and he had the biggest smile on his face, then he asked me if it would be alright if he could get up and bear his testimony and i was like of course and i talked to the branch president who invited him up to bear his testimony. There was a good turnout from the branch to support and he was suprised and asked me what all these people were doing here for the baptism and i said they were here to support and welcome him into the church and he was like wow that is very nice of them to do that.

After the baptism when somebody asked him how he felt he said i feel reborn which was cool. Elder and Sister Woolie the senior couple here invited Adam over for dinner sunday after church and we went over there with him for that, he speaks perfect english so he could communicate with them and he really enjoyed it there and thought it was so nice of them to think of him to invited him for dinner, we talked with him about the Aaronic priesthood after and he is excited to start working for that. He baked a czech cake and gave it to Elder Gagon, Elder Strupp and I as a thank you for helping him to progress towards baptism.

We had interviews with President this last week and it looks like i might be leaving Brno so probably by the end of this week you will want to start sending stuff to the mission home and not to here anymore. Interviews are always a good spiritual boost in the transfer.
One of our progressing investigators Andrej was at the baptism and he really enjoyed it, we had brought a change of clothes and after the baptism we played basketball with him and a bunch of the young members there. It was a fun time and he enjoyed it a lot, he is from Russia but speaks czech and english and there is this family here that just moved from Russia so he was able to talk with them in Russian.

This last week I was on exchanges with Elder Fruehan from Gilbert AZ and i found out that Ukrainian is pretty similiar to czech. They have an investigator from the Ukraine and we were teaching him, he understands czech very well but doesnt speak it too well so there was a member there who served a mission to the Ukraine who would translate for us but i could catch about 30% of it in Ukrainian before the translation.

We watched mountain of the Lord with Lenka and she really enjoyed it, now it is her goal for a temple to be here in the Czech Republic. It was funny because she really doesnt like Germany and didnt want to have to go there to go to the temple. But i was like they count where people come from and the more people that come from the Czech Republic the more likely a temple will be here one day so after that she was like ok im ready to go. We took her over to a members house for dinner on friday who is a family history expert and now they are going to help her with her family history so she is excited about that.

I got the package from Brother Lambson so thank you for all of the goodies they are much appreciated, nothin better than coming home from a long day and having a gordita and some cookies and fudge. Tell Darcy thanks for the ties they are sweet, my tie collection is growing quite large, i think i can go more than a month now without wearing a tie more than once.
Thanks for keeping me updated with everything i hope you all have a good week and that trek will go well good luck with that and everything else.

Love
Elder Hatch