Monday May 4th, 2009

Hey family,

Well another week has come and gone here in trebic and it was a pretty good week again. We had a couple of good things happen. So we have our baptisimal date for Ana who is a 19 year old vietnamese girl who is getting pretty close to baptism, and this last week an 18 year old member girl in prague who is half vietnamese found out that we are teaching her so she decided to come on down for a day to teach her with us and get to know her, and it turns out that they really hit it off and became good friends and Ana invited her to spend the night so she stayed for two days and hung out with our investigator which was awesome because there is a big gap in our branch for girls her age group there is a 12 year old girl and than it jumps to 30 year old woman with kids but now she has a friend and they talk quite a bit they are already planning for the member from prague to come and stay for the weekend when ana gets baptized so that was a highlight.

Another highlight was the branch put on this barbeque+ping pong tournament, the branch here is so awesome and willing to do whatever it takes. We had like 8 investigators there and they all loved it one of them was talking to us afterwards about how it seems like one big loving family and my companion elder chambers was like well thats because it is and its because of our faith in Christ and the investigator was like I am really starting to truly believe that. Haha so they have this event every year and the same member has won the ping pong tournament for the past 8 years i think and everybody was training to beat him but he won again, I got 2nd place which they were surprised at because czechs are really into ping pong so i won some more of their respect :).

So you wanted to hear so more about my companion, Elder Chambers is from Vancouvar Washington 20 miles from portland oregon, he is going home in 3 months so he has been out for awhile, he is a great missionary very hard worker and dedicated, he will be going to Utah State when he gets home and we both have served with Elder Nowland, he served with him 2 transfers before I did.

Some other good news from this week is I got a message from the Ptakovi who are starting to prepare for baptism and the mom told me she will remember me forever as the missionary who taught her family how to pray together, so of course that gave me a pretty big head but it was a good reminder that we are affecting peoples lives so much on an eternal basis and how important this work really is.

And than another highlight from the week is we got news this week that Elder L Tom Perry and Elder Robert Oaks are coming to tour the mission which is a big surprise, because we already had our yearly mission tour but i guess they like whats happening here so they requested to come and visit, they are only going to be here for like 3 days so may 20th there is going to be a big fireside for all of the members in cz republic and slovakia and than the 21st we are having a whole mission conference in prague with them so the whole mission is excited about that, there hasnt been a mission conference in like a year and a half and than with an Apostle I am way excited to how it goes we are pretty lucky and blessed to have such a great opportunity.

Thats pretty much all from this last week, so today we are heading up to Jihlava to go through some catacombs there with the missionaries which should be a fun time, we are staying busy and working hard tonight.

here is a funny story we were over at a less active familys house last night and the 23 year old son challenged Elder Chambers to a pepper eating contest and the results were pretty funny I took some videos so you will see those some time, I sent a chip home last week so you should be getting a bunch of pictures pretty soon. I hope everybody has a good week and stay safe.

Love
Elder Hatch