Saturday, January 3, 2009
January 2nd, 2008
Hey family it was good to hear from you guys sounds like you are still doing good. So this last week was new years which is pretty crazy here in the czech republic we had to be inside by 6 pm because people start partying all over the place nice and early. President let us all go over and spend the night at the zone leaders apartment which has a good view of the city. It was a fun time one of the elders had the game bang so we played that for a couple of hours and enjoyed each others company.
They sell to everybody here those big fireworks that they use in like the big professional firework shows and at midnight they started going off like crazy all over the city the skyline was just filled with fireworks, we were on the 5th floor of a pannolock that was on top of a hill so we had a great view. Unfortunatley fireworks are against the rules so we couldnt light any off ourselves but we had some martinellis like drinks to celebrate.
Yesterday was dead the whole day people were pretty much just sleeping off their hangovers. I made my first ever new years resolution, one of the zone leaders only has 3 months left until he goes home and he decided that he is not going to speak any english the next three months so elder williams and i decided to join in and then the rest of the district made new year resolutions with us to not speak english for this whole year except during interviews with president and talking with people who dont know czech. I have made it two days so far its a little rough at times but hopefully it will help me get my czech down really good.
It snowed here new years eve for the first time and it must of been pretty cold because a little river that goes through town was frozen over yesterday. Lenka is doing awesome we taught her tithing the other day and she was like it might be kind of hard at times but she is excited to do it, in her prayer at the end of the meeting she was thanking God for the opportunity she has now of paying tithing and telling Him that she is very excited to do it. It is a really cool experience seeing people learn how to pray and than truly pray from their hearts and talk with God like its a conversation and not just some rote sayings.
So the other day the sisters were pretty worried about their weight and bought a scale while we were shopping for stuff for lunch before district meeting. Turns out all the elders have lost weight or stayed the same from how much they weighed before coming here and the sisters are the complete opposite i guess people like feeding them more than us. That is about all from me this week i cant really think of anything more i hope you guys all have a great week and a great new year you will be hearing from me soon on monday.
Love
Elder Hatch
They sell to everybody here those big fireworks that they use in like the big professional firework shows and at midnight they started going off like crazy all over the city the skyline was just filled with fireworks, we were on the 5th floor of a pannolock that was on top of a hill so we had a great view. Unfortunatley fireworks are against the rules so we couldnt light any off ourselves but we had some martinellis like drinks to celebrate.
Yesterday was dead the whole day people were pretty much just sleeping off their hangovers. I made my first ever new years resolution, one of the zone leaders only has 3 months left until he goes home and he decided that he is not going to speak any english the next three months so elder williams and i decided to join in and then the rest of the district made new year resolutions with us to not speak english for this whole year except during interviews with president and talking with people who dont know czech. I have made it two days so far its a little rough at times but hopefully it will help me get my czech down really good.
It snowed here new years eve for the first time and it must of been pretty cold because a little river that goes through town was frozen over yesterday. Lenka is doing awesome we taught her tithing the other day and she was like it might be kind of hard at times but she is excited to do it, in her prayer at the end of the meeting she was thanking God for the opportunity she has now of paying tithing and telling Him that she is very excited to do it. It is a really cool experience seeing people learn how to pray and than truly pray from their hearts and talk with God like its a conversation and not just some rote sayings.
So the other day the sisters were pretty worried about their weight and bought a scale while we were shopping for stuff for lunch before district meeting. Turns out all the elders have lost weight or stayed the same from how much they weighed before coming here and the sisters are the complete opposite i guess people like feeding them more than us. That is about all from me this week i cant really think of anything more i hope you guys all have a great week and a great new year you will be hearing from me soon on monday.
Love
Elder Hatch
December 26th, 2008
hello everybody
Christmas was great here in the brno, it was different experiencing christmas in a different country but a good experience. Thanks to everybody for all of the gifts and packages you guys are awesome. Christmas here in the czech republic is a 3 day holiday today is the 3rd day and everything is closed and nobody is out so we have spent the day as a district playing games.
There were 2 baptisms this last weekend here in Brno and we were able to take our investigator lenka to one of them she loved it and said it was one of the most beautiful things she has ever seen, she is very excited for her own baptism, everytime she talks with us she tells us how many days until the 10th of January. The relief society has done a really good job of welcoming her in, it helps that her member friend is the president of the relief society.
We went out to our branch presidents house on monday night for an fhe which was quite an ordeal we had to take a real train 30 minutes to get to his little town. It was fun though we sang czech christmas carols with their family and played some little games. The elders quoram president here is from england and his wife is czech, its pretty cool he teaches in english and his counsars translate to czech for everybody. Most all of the men know english from having served missions even though they didnt all serve in english speaking places.
Sorry i cant really think of anything else we just spoke last night but i hope everybody had a great christmas i love you guys thanks for all of the support you give me. Its an amazing experience being a missionary.
Love
Elder Hatch
Christmas was great here in the brno, it was different experiencing christmas in a different country but a good experience. Thanks to everybody for all of the gifts and packages you guys are awesome. Christmas here in the czech republic is a 3 day holiday today is the 3rd day and everything is closed and nobody is out so we have spent the day as a district playing games.
There were 2 baptisms this last weekend here in Brno and we were able to take our investigator lenka to one of them she loved it and said it was one of the most beautiful things she has ever seen, she is very excited for her own baptism, everytime she talks with us she tells us how many days until the 10th of January. The relief society has done a really good job of welcoming her in, it helps that her member friend is the president of the relief society.
We went out to our branch presidents house on monday night for an fhe which was quite an ordeal we had to take a real train 30 minutes to get to his little town. It was fun though we sang czech christmas carols with their family and played some little games. The elders quoram president here is from england and his wife is czech, its pretty cool he teaches in english and his counsars translate to czech for everybody. Most all of the men know english from having served missions even though they didnt all serve in english speaking places.
Sorry i cant really think of anything else we just spoke last night but i hope everybody had a great christmas i love you guys thanks for all of the support you give me. Its an amazing experience being a missionary.
Love
Elder Hatch
Friday, January 2, 2009
New pictures from the Czech Republic
Here are a few pictures we received from Jordan this past week. You can see them all by clicking here.
The little Christmas Tree of Elder Hatch and Elder Gogan in their apartment in Brno.
The 4 missionaries assigned to Liberec enjoyed Thanksgiving Dinner at the restaurant at the Soccer Stadium in Liberec overlooking the field. They are drinking Kofola, a soft drink only found in the Czech Republic.
Standing outside of a building in Liberec.
Jordan came home after a service project and noticed that this nail went clear though his shoe. A close call.
The little Christmas Tree of Elder Hatch and Elder Gogan in their apartment in Brno. 
The 4 missionaries assigned to Liberec enjoyed Thanksgiving Dinner at the restaurant at the Soccer Stadium in Liberec overlooking the field. They are drinking Kofola, a soft drink only found in the Czech Republic. 
Standing outside of a building in Liberec. 
Jordan came home after a service project and noticed that this nail went clear though his shoe. A close call. We received over 100 pictures from Elder Hatch in the Czech Republic right after Christmas. We have loaded them all on his Picaso account. To view them, click on this link
Monday, December 8, 2008
December 8th, 2008
Hey everybody, i am safely here in Brno and it is a sweet city. Wednesday morning elder nowland and i made omlets than i got on a bus to prague, Elder Andersen picked me up and helped me get all my suit cases through the subway to the mission home (he takes good care of me) where i waited around for a couple of hours since we had a big group heading from prague to brno, the old ap is headed there as zone leader and 2 missionaries who were serving in prague also, so we went through the subway together and barely caught our bus to brno we had to do some running and i worked up a little sweat but we made it. My apartment is sweet they just moved into it a week before i got there because their old apartment needed to be remodeled, so i dont have an address for our new place yet we are going to try and get it this week and ill send it to you next week. It is just me and my companion in it, we are in a part of brno called bohunice which is translated as land of the Gods. It takes us about 35 minutes by tram to get to the church building which is quite a bit different from the 2 minutes it took in liberec but i am adapting, we do part of our language study on the trams so we dont waste time. So my new companion is a stud, he is that guy who that woman told you about mom. He has been out 14 months so he has been in the country for a year, he broke his foot but luckily he was in the office as the computer guy when that happened so he didnt have to go home but he had to spend a couple of months on crutches. He came to Brno 2 months ago he is from provo and before his mission he studied graphics, Sister Perez from my group is serving here in my district too which is cool, we have a really good district here there are 8 elders 2 sisters and a senior couple. Church yesterday was good it was alot different since there were about 70 members there instead of the 15 we had in liberec but i got to meet a bunch of them. Tuesday before i left we went over to the toplansky the family with the twins that we found and i took a picture with them, last night i got a call from elder nowland and the wife is going to be baptized and hopefully the husband will be right behind. Elder Gagon and I are working hard here to find a family and we have done quite a bit of tracting the last couple of days. On friday they had a leadership conference here with all the district leaders and zone leaders in the mission, they do it here because it is kind of the middle point of the mission between the czech repulibic and slovakia. It is kind of weird meeting the slovakian elders because we never serve with them or see them, but it is pretty cool because i have met basically every missionary serving in the czech repulibic one of the nice things of serving in a small mission. That is about all from me for this week, i am going to send home my picture card next week with some pictures of here and my new companion plus all the ones from last transfer. Congrats on being made swim captain Ian and being the most improved swimmer Alyssa that is awesome.
Love
Elder Hatch
Love
Elder Hatch
Monday, December 1, 2008
December 1st, 2008
Elders Hatch and Nowland with Lukas at his baptisim in Prague
Hey Family
We had an awesome week here in Liberec, on saturday we had 2 baptisms 1 from our area and 1 from the other area which we are very happy with. Our baptism was Lukas he is 23 and we found him at the beginning of the transfer, he is the nicest guy and very outgoing with forming relationships with the branch. The other baptism was Dan and it was cool for me to see his baptism because i found him when i was on exchanges in the other area. I just went up and asked him what he thought the purpose of life was he said he didnt know and i asked him if we could go to our church building and talk about it and he was like sure why not, that was on halloween day so less than a month he was very prepared. He has a cool job, what he does is he works for this online clothing store and he is basically walking advertisment they give him really nice clothes to wear like dulci and gabonna, lacoste and a bunch of other stuff and he just walks around the city to show it off, he is 21.
Jvan got the priesthood on sunday which was awesome he leaves on the 4th to go back to moldova. It was supposed to be a double baptism at 2 on saturday but lukas couldnt get off work so he came down later and we had his at 5, it was kind of crazy getting everything worked out but both baptisms were awesome. We brought our investigator pepich zemon who has a baptismal date for the 3rd of january and he loved it, he was there for both of them and said they were perfect and beautiful. With our meeting with him this last week we asked him how it was going reading the book of mormon for the 2nd time and he was like well actually im reading it for the 3rd time and its really good, so right now he is setting a pace of reading the book of mormon every week and a half. We talked about following the prophet and showed a talk from president monson at conference which he said was amazing so he is doing awesome.
I put my piano skills to good use at the baptisms, the other 3 missionaries and a member sang while i played the piano for a musical number that we performed at both of them. I was pretty nervous but it turned out great so thanks for making me learn and practice.
So i ate it walking down an icy hill last week but it was a good fall all i had was a bruised ego, i would say send me some strap on things for the bottom of my shoes but here comes the next news i am leaving liberec for brno which is a much warmer city. Its sad leaving this beautiful city with the members who are so awesome but im excited and ready for a new adventure in another city. Brno is in the other half of the czech republic moravia and is the 2nd biggest city in the country about 500 000 people i think? Its gonna be a big difference going to the big city with a big branch, on the phone this morning president told me that brno has the biggest branch in the mission even bigger than prague with their own building. My companion is Elder Gagon he is the district leader there and there are 10 missionaries in brno so it will be cool being able to serve around more missionaries. I have met Elder Gagon a couple of times he seems like a real cool guy i am excited to serve with him there. This transfer has gone by very fast and it has been a good one and our area here in liberec is set up for another good transfer.
We went and visted with the family with twins sunday night and they want us to come back tomorrow night so i can say goodbye to them, it is definetly a different challange teaching a family with young children exspecially if the twins are fussing but it is definetly worth it.
I had some people asking how much gas costs here, it is 30 krowns a liter so like a $1.50 per liter so like $5.75 a gallon i think if my math is right? For thanksgiving we went to this sweet restaruant and had a big feast, i ate fried cheese which is delicious but probably not too good for the arteries. I have had to cut back on how much i eat lately because we have started teaching a lot so i am walking around a lot less trying to find people but dont worry im not getting fat.
It sounds like your thanksgiving was good, nice and relaxing. I am loving my mission and loving the work and the people here and i am thankful for the opportunity i have to serve. I hope you all have a good week and i hope Alyssa and Mom have some good birthdays, happy birthday to both of you.
Love
Elder Hatch
We had an awesome week here in Liberec, on saturday we had 2 baptisms 1 from our area and 1 from the other area which we are very happy with. Our baptism was Lukas he is 23 and we found him at the beginning of the transfer, he is the nicest guy and very outgoing with forming relationships with the branch. The other baptism was Dan and it was cool for me to see his baptism because i found him when i was on exchanges in the other area. I just went up and asked him what he thought the purpose of life was he said he didnt know and i asked him if we could go to our church building and talk about it and he was like sure why not, that was on halloween day so less than a month he was very prepared. He has a cool job, what he does is he works for this online clothing store and he is basically walking advertisment they give him really nice clothes to wear like dulci and gabonna, lacoste and a bunch of other stuff and he just walks around the city to show it off, he is 21.
Jvan got the priesthood on sunday which was awesome he leaves on the 4th to go back to moldova. It was supposed to be a double baptism at 2 on saturday but lukas couldnt get off work so he came down later and we had his at 5, it was kind of crazy getting everything worked out but both baptisms were awesome. We brought our investigator pepich zemon who has a baptismal date for the 3rd of january and he loved it, he was there for both of them and said they were perfect and beautiful. With our meeting with him this last week we asked him how it was going reading the book of mormon for the 2nd time and he was like well actually im reading it for the 3rd time and its really good, so right now he is setting a pace of reading the book of mormon every week and a half. We talked about following the prophet and showed a talk from president monson at conference which he said was amazing so he is doing awesome.
I put my piano skills to good use at the baptisms, the other 3 missionaries and a member sang while i played the piano for a musical number that we performed at both of them. I was pretty nervous but it turned out great so thanks for making me learn and practice.
So i ate it walking down an icy hill last week but it was a good fall all i had was a bruised ego, i would say send me some strap on things for the bottom of my shoes but here comes the next news i am leaving liberec for brno which is a much warmer city. Its sad leaving this beautiful city with the members who are so awesome but im excited and ready for a new adventure in another city. Brno is in the other half of the czech republic moravia and is the 2nd biggest city in the country about 500 000 people i think? Its gonna be a big difference going to the big city with a big branch, on the phone this morning president told me that brno has the biggest branch in the mission even bigger than prague with their own building. My companion is Elder Gagon he is the district leader there and there are 10 missionaries in brno so it will be cool being able to serve around more missionaries. I have met Elder Gagon a couple of times he seems like a real cool guy i am excited to serve with him there. This transfer has gone by very fast and it has been a good one and our area here in liberec is set up for another good transfer.
We went and visted with the family with twins sunday night and they want us to come back tomorrow night so i can say goodbye to them, it is definetly a different challange teaching a family with young children exspecially if the twins are fussing but it is definetly worth it.
I had some people asking how much gas costs here, it is 30 krowns a liter so like a $1.50 per liter so like $5.75 a gallon i think if my math is right? For thanksgiving we went to this sweet restaruant and had a big feast, i ate fried cheese which is delicious but probably not too good for the arteries. I have had to cut back on how much i eat lately because we have started teaching a lot so i am walking around a lot less trying to find people but dont worry im not getting fat.
It sounds like your thanksgiving was good, nice and relaxing. I am loving my mission and loving the work and the people here and i am thankful for the opportunity i have to serve. I hope you all have a good week and i hope Alyssa and Mom have some good birthdays, happy birthday to both of you.
Love
Elder Hatch
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