Monday May 25th, 2009

Hey family

The work continues onward here in the Czech Republic. So the highlight of this last week was definitely the mission conference in Prague. We got up early in the morning and jumped on a bus to Prague, we got there about an hour before the conference started so there was some good times catching up with missionaries i haven't seen for awhile. Elder Briggs who is my best bud from the MTC has been on the opposite side of the country from me my whole mission so we saw each other for the first time since we left the mission home 10 months ago and it was great catching up on all of the things we have done in the mission, he is serving in Liberec now so he updated me on how everybody is doing there.

Elder Oaks is the area president for Europe and his talk was really good it was more of a motivator talk about how good we are doing but how much more there is to accomplish, i guess there is a change going on in Europe for the last 10+ years baptisms have been declining every year all around Europe until 2008 when it went up 5 percent and so far in 2009 it is up 17 percent so they are pretty excited to get the momentum going the right way.

Elder Perry talked about prophets and how they are called and his relationships with the past prophets that he has served with and the emphasis they have put on different subjects of the gospel as they built on each other. It was really interesting to hear him talk about them, he put a big emphasis on how they were all completely different men with different personalities and strengths and compared it to us as missionaries saying there is no perfect missionary, each has their different strengths and personalities just like the prophets. It was interesting hearing the stories he told about them a lot of them i hadn't heard before and just the general workings of the Church at the apostleship level. He is still in great shape its hard to believe he is like 85 years old, something funny he said when he was talking about being the president of the quoram of the 12 and how that is the precursor to prophet he joked and said he has a deal with President Packer where President Packer has to die an hour before him because he doesn't want to be the prophet and needs some buffer space.

Both Elder Oaks and Perry and their wives put a big emphasis on our companions, on building that relationship with them and strengthening it daily by serving them, they said that the foundation of success as missionaries starts with the relationship with the companion which i know is true, the companions that i had the best relationships with i also had the most success and was also the most enjoyable time.

Afterward I had to do some visa work in the office because i have to get my visa renewed pretty soon and because of it we missed our bus back to trebic. Luckily trebic isnt too far out of the way that Elder Anderson was going to get to his city and he has a car so he drove us home which was fun to catch up with him for a couple of hours, he is going home in a few weeks which is pretty crazy for me to think about.

So I got an email from Lenka in Brno and she is giving a talk next week on the blessings that come from missionary week which she is pretty nervous about since it is her first talk but she is also excited for it.

Marcella is the library woman and she loved church. we talked to her for awhile about it and she said she felt so much peace there and got some strength to help her in her week, we gave her a Book of Mormon which she is excited to start reading. she left last Friday on a trip to Italy for a week and a half with her family but we are pretty excited to seeing her when she gets home.
Ana is doing great her parents are starting to soften up so we are just continuing to work with her and strengthen her testimony.

We are working with two other young men who are progressing pretty well, Vojtek is 16 and is this awesome kid, he is a taikwando fighter and is pretty good he had a tournament in Poland and got first place, he is also very humble and his favorite thing about the gospel in the plan of salvation he says it answers all of his questions about life.

Then there is Tomas who is 19 and studying electrical engineering right now, he started off pretty atheist but we have him believing in God now with a strong testimony of prayer and he loves church and loves reading in the Book of Mormon he has already read about half of it and he is thinking about being baptized in the next month or so.

That is great that you guys went up to Utah to support Spencer at his farewell and see him off. It sounds like he had a good talk. I am glad to hear that you are all keeping busy with school and work and still having fun thanks for keeping me updated with everything and happy birthday Mason I hope you have a good day and eat an extra piece of cake for me.

Love,
Elder Hatch