Monday, November 9th, 2009

hey family

this last week was an amazing week here in olomouc, one of the best of my mission. so last week the ap's challenged elder roberts and i saying they could teach more lessons this week than us, well we got into teaching mode and blew them away. now as a consequence they have to eat olomouc cheese which is famous here for being the stinkiest cheese ever it stinks up a whole room as soon as you unwrap it. then yesterday at church it was like great, we had 10 people there. one of them Andrea who is our baptismal date was out of town because of some family issues she had to take care of but got up early sunday morning and took a bus 60 kilometers to get to church on time and she has fallen in love with reading in the book of mormon and has a goal to finish it before her baptism in two weeks as of yesterday she is in alma 5 .

Joseph got the Aaronic priesthood yesterday which was great to participate in. Also we are working with joseph's 11 year old son and joseph should be baptizing him in 2 weeks which will be a great experience.

I have gained even more respect for all of the mom's in the church and all they do to get their kids ready for church and bring them and take care of them. We were teaching renata, joseph's wife and she was telling us how it is just so hard getting 6 kids under the age of 11 ready and go by bus to church by 9:30 and trying to keep the kids quite and just how it is so much work and isn't a spiritual experience for her with all the kids. we got them all to church on sunday and got some help for her and all the kids behaved which was nice and turned out to be a great experience for her. the Branch Presidents wife is very sympathetic and helped talk to her about it because she has a couple of little kids as well so hopefully it will be a better experience for her in the future.

Something funny is our investigator milan came with two of his sons age 9 and 12 and they were in primary, milan had to take off after sacrament and sunday school but his kids were still in primary and didn't want to go so they stayed an extra hour after their dad left and then walked home, always a good thing when the kids like primary.

We had a meeting at joseph and renatas place where they invited all these members of their family to come. We were teaching a room full of 19 people with all of these kids running around, it was pretty hectic but also amazing to see how all of their family members are having interest in the gospel as well. milan is renata's cousin and he was like hey next time you go over there you have to call me i want to go again, we are teaching him and his family separately as well we have already taught them three times and they are progressing well. it is such a great experience to teach families i am so grateful for the opportunity to do so and to see the changes it makes in people when they truly begin to apply the Gospel of Jesus Christ into their lives, there is no better thing.

i hope everybody has a great week and i love you all, it sounds like ian and alyssa did great in state congratulations on that and i look forward to hearing from everybody next week.
Love
Elder Hatch