Hey family
It sounds like you all had a great week with your different adventures of Havasuipi, Colorado, life guarding and dentistry. It sounds like dad had a great birthday. I got the packages you sent thank you for that, the pink cookies are delicious, there is an awesome article in that church news you sent me about the senior couple who got sent to Turks and Caicos- that is crazy the amount of success they are having. And now I can up my morning workouts another notch with the new cord. Every night after nightly planning my companion and I have a pull up contest which pushes both of us.
We had a big 4th of July branch party on saturday which was a good time, we made hot dogs and pancakes and the Branch President cooked up a big pot of chili and it was a good time to mingle with members and investigators. We were a little worried that nobody might show up but we had 30 people there and everybody had a good time, we played jeopardy with questions about America. Sad to say but this geography bee winner is getting a little rusty on his American geography. For longest river in America I was like oh piece of cake mississippi but its missouri incase you didnt know. Must of had to get rid of that for there to be room for all the czech i am learning.
We taught vratislav about tithing and the 10 commandments and he is still excepting everything like a champ, the branch did a good job of including him in sunday school and making him feel welcome which was good.
So I don't know if i had said this earlier but there are quite a few older women in this branch and we go visit them for home teaching and they love to feed us and tell us all of their stories since they get pretty lonely sometimes. One of the women we visited this week was baptized in 1948 and was the first person baptized in plzen, she basically ran the branch during communism and translated for the first missionaries she is like 85 but speaks English perfectly.
There are university dorms at the same tram stop as us and there is this big music camp going on here for the summer, one day on the tram a group of 3 came up to us and asked us if we know english. It turns out they are from BYU and one of the guys roommates was my first roommate at BYU Blake the super tall viola player, so it is a pretty small world. They came to church on sunday and the branch loved having them there.
It was a little rough of a weekend for us, my companion recieved news saturday that his grandfather died and it was pretty rough on him. But he got up in church yesterday and bore a beautiful testimony about the plan of salvation and that he will see his grandfather again, it was very touching.
Congratulations Jenni and Mason on passing the Dental exam that is great. Safe travels to the beach everyone and i look forward to hearing from you next week. Thank you for all of your prayers and support on my behalf it is very appreciated. I love this work I am doing here and there is no better feeling than serving the Lord.
Love
Elder Hatch
Monday, July 6, 2009
Sunday, July 5, 2009
Monday June 29th, 2009
hello family.
well i just wrote a super long email and lost it for the first time on my mission because the computer froze up which i am pretty upset about but i will try and rewrite everything quickly.
So we just got back from Prague where we were renewing visa work, it used to be a big hassle for visa work you would have to be in line at 2 in the morning and fight with the Ukrainian mafia for spots in the line and then you were there until 4 in the afternoon, but about 3 months ago they changed it so Americans are away from the Ukrainians so now we just went in at 10 in the morning and then we were done an hour later so we lost the adventure but gained the sleep. We had to do the visa work because next month my group will have been in the country for a year which is pretty crazy, it was cool to see my whole MTC group all at once again though it is great to see how we have all grown.
So this last Monday we had zone conference which is always a strong spiritual boost being around the other missionaries and President Slovacek. So we took that spiritual boost with us out onto the streets of Plzen right afterwords and found a sweet 19 year old electrical engineer. We talked with him about the purpose of life and than sat down with him on a bench to talk about the Book of Mormon, we gave him a BOM and recommended Alma 40-42 because he was interested in what happens after death. So at our next meeting on Wednesday he was like well i know the BOM is true, i was like wow how do you know that and he starts talking about how it says in there that for God time doesn't exist and that Einstein discovered some time thing that says the same thing (it is pretty difficult to follow Einsteins time theory in czech by the way) but that the BOM was translated 100 years before Einstein discovered that so the only way the Nephites could of gotten that knowledge is from God. We then shared the Joseph smith story with him and he agreed with it, he left out of town the next day for a week but he sent us a text on friday that he has been talking to his girlfriend about the BOM and now she is interested and wants her own copy.
Other good news is we have another baptismal date her name is veronika and she was at church for the 2nd time yesterday. And it turns out that she and the branch presidents wife were best friends in elementary school and junior high (the branch president was out of town the first time she was there) so there is an automatic member friend. One of the hardest things about the missionary work here I would say is finding a good member friend for our investigators and than lining their schedules up so we can meet with them.
Vratislav was at church as well so that made for a successful week having both of our baptismal dates there. A good experience that taught me a lesson I had last night. We were walking home for the night from our tramstop and it was getting later and I had to do call ins, and we saw this old guy sitting on a bench and I had a thought that I should contact him but I kind of fought it because I hate talking to old guys, they are so stubborn and just want to tell you how you know nothing because you are young and haven't experienced life. But I have been talking a lot about going the extra mile in district meeting so I was like well guess I better not be a hypocrite and I started talking to him. It turns out he is really religious which is unusual for a czech guy he has 16 different bibles and we introduced the Book of Mormon to him. It started pouring at that point so we set up a lesson for tonight to teach him more. So just another lesson of go the extra mile and follow those little promptings.
Sad news vojta didn't get baptized, a couple days before the baptism his parents withdrew their consent to be baptize and since he is 17 he needs that, so now they need to get their consent again. Well that is about all for this week i love you and i am glad Alyssa enjoyed EFY and that Ian enjoyed the economics camp for leaders i had that same leader and that is great a professor was from liberec. Have a good birthday on Sunday dad you will have something coming in the mail but it may be a little late.
Love
Elder Hatch
well i just wrote a super long email and lost it for the first time on my mission because the computer froze up which i am pretty upset about but i will try and rewrite everything quickly.
So we just got back from Prague where we were renewing visa work, it used to be a big hassle for visa work you would have to be in line at 2 in the morning and fight with the Ukrainian mafia for spots in the line and then you were there until 4 in the afternoon, but about 3 months ago they changed it so Americans are away from the Ukrainians so now we just went in at 10 in the morning and then we were done an hour later so we lost the adventure but gained the sleep. We had to do the visa work because next month my group will have been in the country for a year which is pretty crazy, it was cool to see my whole MTC group all at once again though it is great to see how we have all grown.
So this last Monday we had zone conference which is always a strong spiritual boost being around the other missionaries and President Slovacek. So we took that spiritual boost with us out onto the streets of Plzen right afterwords and found a sweet 19 year old electrical engineer. We talked with him about the purpose of life and than sat down with him on a bench to talk about the Book of Mormon, we gave him a BOM and recommended Alma 40-42 because he was interested in what happens after death. So at our next meeting on Wednesday he was like well i know the BOM is true, i was like wow how do you know that and he starts talking about how it says in there that for God time doesn't exist and that Einstein discovered some time thing that says the same thing (it is pretty difficult to follow Einsteins time theory in czech by the way) but that the BOM was translated 100 years before Einstein discovered that so the only way the Nephites could of gotten that knowledge is from God. We then shared the Joseph smith story with him and he agreed with it, he left out of town the next day for a week but he sent us a text on friday that he has been talking to his girlfriend about the BOM and now she is interested and wants her own copy.
Other good news is we have another baptismal date her name is veronika and she was at church for the 2nd time yesterday. And it turns out that she and the branch presidents wife were best friends in elementary school and junior high (the branch president was out of town the first time she was there) so there is an automatic member friend. One of the hardest things about the missionary work here I would say is finding a good member friend for our investigators and than lining their schedules up so we can meet with them.
Vratislav was at church as well so that made for a successful week having both of our baptismal dates there. A good experience that taught me a lesson I had last night. We were walking home for the night from our tramstop and it was getting later and I had to do call ins, and we saw this old guy sitting on a bench and I had a thought that I should contact him but I kind of fought it because I hate talking to old guys, they are so stubborn and just want to tell you how you know nothing because you are young and haven't experienced life. But I have been talking a lot about going the extra mile in district meeting so I was like well guess I better not be a hypocrite and I started talking to him. It turns out he is really religious which is unusual for a czech guy he has 16 different bibles and we introduced the Book of Mormon to him. It started pouring at that point so we set up a lesson for tonight to teach him more. So just another lesson of go the extra mile and follow those little promptings.
Sad news vojta didn't get baptized, a couple days before the baptism his parents withdrew their consent to be baptize and since he is 17 he needs that, so now they need to get their consent again. Well that is about all for this week i love you and i am glad Alyssa enjoyed EFY and that Ian enjoyed the economics camp for leaders i had that same leader and that is great a professor was from liberec. Have a good birthday on Sunday dad you will have something coming in the mail but it may be a little late.
Love
Elder Hatch
Saturday June 20th, 2009
Hello everybody
This email will probably be quitw the surprise for you all, we have zone conference next monday and they moved p-day to saturday and didnt tell us until after last P-day but it is ok you can still write me tomorrow and next sunday.
It has been a pretty packed week for us here in Plzen, the zone leaders came down on Tuesday for district meeting and went on splits with us and spent the night, and then the whole Prague district came down wednesday morning and we had a big flood and street display here in plzen which worked out really good we were able to find alot of good people to work with and teach. We have some really good zone leaders and it was great going out and finding with them and learning new things to advance the work.
Elder Price (Zone Leader) and i had a good experience of not judging people and talking to everybody. We were in a park talking to people and we were about to leave and there was one woman left she was about 30 something and dressed like she wanted to be 18 and had a piercing in her chin, as we were leaving the park we were like what the heck we will give it a shot and go talk to her. As we were talking to her she started opening up about how she has a 12 year old daughter and a boyfriend and they are the most important things in her life but they dont give her any time because all they do is sit on the computer and watch tv. So we talked to her about how she has a heavenly father who always loves her and wants a relationship with her and she just broke down crying and we talked with her about how she could gain that knowledge for herself. We set up to go teach her and her family so we shall see how that goes.
Thursday we were running around all day teaching people who were found the day before and then Thursday night we caught a bus to Prague, i stayed in the office elders apartment and got up early the next morning to head to brno with the AP's for leadership conference while my companion stayed in Prague with the other missionaries there. After a full day in brno learning a bunch of good stuff we headed back to Prague where my companion and i caught the last bus to plzen and got home at 9:30 needless to say it was a very long day of traveling but well worth it from all that was learned there.
I was able to see Lenka in Brno and she got the CTR ring that you sent her and she loved it. It was a good one you sent her it actually said choose the right, its funny because for a long time it was translated wrong and was translated as vote correctly.
I am going back to prague on monday for zone conference and then i have to go back in a week to get my visa renewed, i never thought that i would travel around so much as a missionary.
Vratislav is doing good in our meeting last week he started telling us about how when he met us in the park that he never goes home that way but that when the bus came to his stop a women came in with a stroller and blocked the exit so he wasn't able to get off in time and had to wait until the next stop to get off so he went a different way and met us. He told us that he knew that happened for a reason so he could meet us and get the Book of Mormon, which is music to every missionaries ears.
My companion and I are getting along great he is a great elder and has a good desire to work hard as a missionary. That is about all for this week i hope everybody has a great week and be smart and do good stuff.
Love
Elder Hatch
This email will probably be quitw the surprise for you all, we have zone conference next monday and they moved p-day to saturday and didnt tell us until after last P-day but it is ok you can still write me tomorrow and next sunday.
It has been a pretty packed week for us here in Plzen, the zone leaders came down on Tuesday for district meeting and went on splits with us and spent the night, and then the whole Prague district came down wednesday morning and we had a big flood and street display here in plzen which worked out really good we were able to find alot of good people to work with and teach. We have some really good zone leaders and it was great going out and finding with them and learning new things to advance the work.
Elder Price (Zone Leader) and i had a good experience of not judging people and talking to everybody. We were in a park talking to people and we were about to leave and there was one woman left she was about 30 something and dressed like she wanted to be 18 and had a piercing in her chin, as we were leaving the park we were like what the heck we will give it a shot and go talk to her. As we were talking to her she started opening up about how she has a 12 year old daughter and a boyfriend and they are the most important things in her life but they dont give her any time because all they do is sit on the computer and watch tv. So we talked to her about how she has a heavenly father who always loves her and wants a relationship with her and she just broke down crying and we talked with her about how she could gain that knowledge for herself. We set up to go teach her and her family so we shall see how that goes.
Thursday we were running around all day teaching people who were found the day before and then Thursday night we caught a bus to Prague, i stayed in the office elders apartment and got up early the next morning to head to brno with the AP's for leadership conference while my companion stayed in Prague with the other missionaries there. After a full day in brno learning a bunch of good stuff we headed back to Prague where my companion and i caught the last bus to plzen and got home at 9:30 needless to say it was a very long day of traveling but well worth it from all that was learned there.
I was able to see Lenka in Brno and she got the CTR ring that you sent her and she loved it. It was a good one you sent her it actually said choose the right, its funny because for a long time it was translated wrong and was translated as vote correctly.
I am going back to prague on monday for zone conference and then i have to go back in a week to get my visa renewed, i never thought that i would travel around so much as a missionary.
Vratislav is doing good in our meeting last week he started telling us about how when he met us in the park that he never goes home that way but that when the bus came to his stop a women came in with a stroller and blocked the exit so he wasn't able to get off in time and had to wait until the next stop to get off so he went a different way and met us. He told us that he knew that happened for a reason so he could meet us and get the Book of Mormon, which is music to every missionaries ears.
My companion and I are getting along great he is a great elder and has a good desire to work hard as a missionary. That is about all for this week i hope everybody has a great week and be smart and do good stuff.
Love
Elder Hatch
Monday, June 15, 2009
Monday June 15th, 2009
Hello family from Plzen
This past week has been full of many adventures and experiences from saying goodbye in Trebic to getting to know Plzen. So I guess I can start off from Trebic, Tuesday we had like 6 meetings with investigators to say goodbye so we made the best out of the situation and had some good meetings to help our investigators progress. Marcella our librarian friend it turns out has been talking to her son and daughter quite a bit about us. We went over to her apartment for the first time and she had probably a good thousand books but the one lying on her night stand was the Book of Mormon which is always a good sign. She told us that she just feels the spirit radiating off of us which is always good.
Tomas Kouptik we were teaching him and we weren't planning on giving him a baptisimal date but i was feeling the spirit so i popped it out on him and he accepted, he will be getting baptized in 4 weeks and Vojtak is doing awesome he will be getting baptized this Saturday.
My 5 1/2 hour train ride went well, as luck would have it I got on the same train as another missionary from Brno so we were together for about 3 hours talking about how the work is going and what ideas we had for our new areas and districts. Elder Graham was waiting for me at the train station with the rest of the district we dropped my stuff off and headed off to teach a lesson to a investigator and get all settled in.
My first district meeting went well I focused it on helping our investigators have spiritual experiences and had it 2 parts the first part on them having spiritual experiences in our meetings with three points of emphasis to help us accomplish that.
1. Love in the companionship so we can have the spirit with us and so that our investigators can tell that we are completely unified.
2. Testifying and about how that brings the spirit
3. Working from PMG to help improve our teaching skills. The second part was on teaching our investigators how to have spiritual experiences on their own away from our meetings. It went really well and I was pretty happy with how it went. We have a good district here, there is my companion Elder Graham from Oregon, Elder Mcfarland from Utah he grew up on a dairy farm and is a real nice guy and Elder Lance a wrestler from California it makes for a good mix.
Thursday after district meeting we were in this park contacting and there was nobody there and we were like dang there is no body here this is a waste of time we should leave, but then we were like well we put down that we would be here so we will give it a shot. As we continue walking we see this young man walking towards us and we start talking with him and then sit down on a bench and he starts sharing with me about how he wants to become clean and feel good so we taught him about Christ and repentance and then gave him a chapter to read in the Book of Mormon about repentance we set up another meeting for Saturday.
Well Saturday comes along and we are there and here comes Vratislav (thats his name) we sit down and he tells us about how he has been wanting to control his thoughts and lately he has had a lot of bad thoughts even though he wants to have good thoughts. He goes on to explain that while reading in the Book of Mormon he had no problem controlling his thoughts, he read the chapter and quite a bit more. As we started talking with him more it came up that he has never been baptized and as we talked about that he expressed a desire that it would be something he would like. So we set up a date and talked with him about how it would go and now he is working to get baptized on July 18th. I felt like i was in South America with him, find somebody and than two days later commit to baptism.
Saturday we had a service project for the branch. There is a big backyard behind the church and they had all this brush they need to get rid of so we were helping them burn it for about 3 hours, haha it seemed way too fun to be service just throwing wood in a fire it was a good way to start getting to know some members in the branch. Church went well there is a very nice medium size branch here in Plzen. There are a lot of older people who were baptized during communism and are way strong plus two families with young kids. There were 36 people at church on Sunday. I was asked to give a talk about how members can help us missionaries progress the work, which is always a great opportunity and I think the members took my talk pretty well.
Today we decided to start off the transfer with a district trip to get unity going strong so we headed off to Karlovy Vary. Its this town famous for its spas and natural springs and famous for guys for the fact that the hotel from casino royal (James Bond) with the poker game is in this town. Its probably the most beautiful town I have been in and we met up there with Elder Andersen and his family since he is with them here touring around. You buy these little cups and you walk through the town drinking water from the fountains its pretty fun except for the fact the water doesnt taste good. I guess what you are supposed to do is go see a doctor and he tells you what is wrong and he assigns a certain fountain from you to drink from. They say if you drink from too many different fountains you might get diarrhea but i couldn't resist trying all of them and so far i am fine but i guess we shall see :)
Well that is about all from me this week, I am working hard over here in the Czech Republic and loving every minute of it. Here is my new address for here in Plzen
Jordan Hatch
Elisky Krasnohorske 20
301 00 Plzen
Czech Republic
Have a great week I love you all
Love,
Elder Hatch
This past week has been full of many adventures and experiences from saying goodbye in Trebic to getting to know Plzen. So I guess I can start off from Trebic, Tuesday we had like 6 meetings with investigators to say goodbye so we made the best out of the situation and had some good meetings to help our investigators progress. Marcella our librarian friend it turns out has been talking to her son and daughter quite a bit about us. We went over to her apartment for the first time and she had probably a good thousand books but the one lying on her night stand was the Book of Mormon which is always a good sign. She told us that she just feels the spirit radiating off of us which is always good.
Tomas Kouptik we were teaching him and we weren't planning on giving him a baptisimal date but i was feeling the spirit so i popped it out on him and he accepted, he will be getting baptized in 4 weeks and Vojtak is doing awesome he will be getting baptized this Saturday.
My 5 1/2 hour train ride went well, as luck would have it I got on the same train as another missionary from Brno so we were together for about 3 hours talking about how the work is going and what ideas we had for our new areas and districts. Elder Graham was waiting for me at the train station with the rest of the district we dropped my stuff off and headed off to teach a lesson to a investigator and get all settled in.
My first district meeting went well I focused it on helping our investigators have spiritual experiences and had it 2 parts the first part on them having spiritual experiences in our meetings with three points of emphasis to help us accomplish that.
1. Love in the companionship so we can have the spirit with us and so that our investigators can tell that we are completely unified.
2. Testifying and about how that brings the spirit
3. Working from PMG to help improve our teaching skills. The second part was on teaching our investigators how to have spiritual experiences on their own away from our meetings. It went really well and I was pretty happy with how it went. We have a good district here, there is my companion Elder Graham from Oregon, Elder Mcfarland from Utah he grew up on a dairy farm and is a real nice guy and Elder Lance a wrestler from California it makes for a good mix.
Thursday after district meeting we were in this park contacting and there was nobody there and we were like dang there is no body here this is a waste of time we should leave, but then we were like well we put down that we would be here so we will give it a shot. As we continue walking we see this young man walking towards us and we start talking with him and then sit down on a bench and he starts sharing with me about how he wants to become clean and feel good so we taught him about Christ and repentance and then gave him a chapter to read in the Book of Mormon about repentance we set up another meeting for Saturday.
Well Saturday comes along and we are there and here comes Vratislav (thats his name) we sit down and he tells us about how he has been wanting to control his thoughts and lately he has had a lot of bad thoughts even though he wants to have good thoughts. He goes on to explain that while reading in the Book of Mormon he had no problem controlling his thoughts, he read the chapter and quite a bit more. As we started talking with him more it came up that he has never been baptized and as we talked about that he expressed a desire that it would be something he would like. So we set up a date and talked with him about how it would go and now he is working to get baptized on July 18th. I felt like i was in South America with him, find somebody and than two days later commit to baptism.
Saturday we had a service project for the branch. There is a big backyard behind the church and they had all this brush they need to get rid of so we were helping them burn it for about 3 hours, haha it seemed way too fun to be service just throwing wood in a fire it was a good way to start getting to know some members in the branch. Church went well there is a very nice medium size branch here in Plzen. There are a lot of older people who were baptized during communism and are way strong plus two families with young kids. There were 36 people at church on Sunday. I was asked to give a talk about how members can help us missionaries progress the work, which is always a great opportunity and I think the members took my talk pretty well.
Today we decided to start off the transfer with a district trip to get unity going strong so we headed off to Karlovy Vary. Its this town famous for its spas and natural springs and famous for guys for the fact that the hotel from casino royal (James Bond) with the poker game is in this town. Its probably the most beautiful town I have been in and we met up there with Elder Andersen and his family since he is with them here touring around. You buy these little cups and you walk through the town drinking water from the fountains its pretty fun except for the fact the water doesnt taste good. I guess what you are supposed to do is go see a doctor and he tells you what is wrong and he assigns a certain fountain from you to drink from. They say if you drink from too many different fountains you might get diarrhea but i couldn't resist trying all of them and so far i am fine but i guess we shall see :)
Well that is about all from me this week, I am working hard over here in the Czech Republic and loving every minute of it. Here is my new address for here in Plzen
Jordan Hatch
Elisky Krasnohorske 20
301 00 Plzen
Czech Republic
Have a great week I love you all
Love,
Elder Hatch
Monday, June 8, 2009
Monday June 8, 2009
Hey family
Well today was when all the transfer information came out and I got a call from President this morning. It turns out that my stay in trebic is going to be a short one, I am leaving Wednesday for Plzen, I am going to be serving as District Leader there. Plzen is on the far west side of the country and is the 4th biggest city in the Czech Republic I believe. Its about an hour by car west of Prague i think. I haven't served around anybody in the district before but i have heard good things. My companion is Elder Graham and I have heard he is an amazingly nice and sincere missionary. I am sad to be leaving Trebic and to miss out on seeing these people we found get baptized but I know that Plzen is where the Lord wants me to be so I am glad to go. I have gotten close to the members here too they are pretty amazing. Sunday the branch president had us over and than we had dinner at another members house. Today we got up and went to a city called Telc, it is in between Jihlava and Trebic so we went and met there to read the transfer fax. It is a pretty cool city with a big namesti and all these colored houses it is right in between two lakes so it is completely surrounded by water.
The best news from this last week is that Vojtech has accepted an invitation to be baptized. He will be getting baptized in less then 2 weeks on june 20th. He is 17 and has already asked his parents for permission and they have given it. We taught him about the word of wisdom last week and he loved it, he thought it was the best thing ever that the Lord would bless us with this knowledge long before it was found scientifically to be bad for us, he already lives it all his parents taught him it is bad to smoke and drink which is a pretty unique thing here in the czech republic. He has two younger brothers 14 and 11 so who knows what might happen in the future with them.
Ana went to Prague to visit a friend and when she was there she saw a baptism which was a good experience for her. The members are pretty excited for Vojtech's baptism and are very supportive of helping us teach him. One of the sisters in the branch teaches English at a high school here and we found and taught one of her students this week which she was excited to see. We also found and taught twice this week a 17 year old young man who we found out at the end of the second meeting. He is the 18-and-under Czech champion for the 100 meter dash. He was very humble about it. We have another meeting with him this week since he was gone over the weekend for a track meet.
A funny story from contacting this last weekend is we were talking to this older woman probably about 65 and she was telling us about some problems she has had in her life with health issues and we were talking about how the gospel can help us in all situations when we are happy and life is great and also how it can help sustain us through our problems. She was like, you are such nice young men and than she opened up her back pack and pulled out some oven mitts and handed them to us and than just walked off, so we have a brand new set of oven mitts in our apartment.
The weather has been pretty rainy and cold the past two weeks here, a couple of times I have even be wearing a suit with a sweater so it doesn't feel like June, sometimes the sun will come out for a couple of hours and get pretty warm.
That is pretty much everything from this week, a week from now I will be writing to you from Plzen, I looked it up and its a 5 1/2 hour train ride from here so that should be some good time for reflection.
I love you all and hope you have a great week
Love,
Elder Hatch
Well today was when all the transfer information came out and I got a call from President this morning. It turns out that my stay in trebic is going to be a short one, I am leaving Wednesday for Plzen, I am going to be serving as District Leader there. Plzen is on the far west side of the country and is the 4th biggest city in the Czech Republic I believe. Its about an hour by car west of Prague i think. I haven't served around anybody in the district before but i have heard good things. My companion is Elder Graham and I have heard he is an amazingly nice and sincere missionary. I am sad to be leaving Trebic and to miss out on seeing these people we found get baptized but I know that Plzen is where the Lord wants me to be so I am glad to go. I have gotten close to the members here too they are pretty amazing. Sunday the branch president had us over and than we had dinner at another members house. Today we got up and went to a city called Telc, it is in between Jihlava and Trebic so we went and met there to read the transfer fax. It is a pretty cool city with a big namesti and all these colored houses it is right in between two lakes so it is completely surrounded by water.
The best news from this last week is that Vojtech has accepted an invitation to be baptized. He will be getting baptized in less then 2 weeks on june 20th. He is 17 and has already asked his parents for permission and they have given it. We taught him about the word of wisdom last week and he loved it, he thought it was the best thing ever that the Lord would bless us with this knowledge long before it was found scientifically to be bad for us, he already lives it all his parents taught him it is bad to smoke and drink which is a pretty unique thing here in the czech republic. He has two younger brothers 14 and 11 so who knows what might happen in the future with them.
Ana went to Prague to visit a friend and when she was there she saw a baptism which was a good experience for her. The members are pretty excited for Vojtech's baptism and are very supportive of helping us teach him. One of the sisters in the branch teaches English at a high school here and we found and taught one of her students this week which she was excited to see. We also found and taught twice this week a 17 year old young man who we found out at the end of the second meeting. He is the 18-and-under Czech champion for the 100 meter dash. He was very humble about it. We have another meeting with him this week since he was gone over the weekend for a track meet.
A funny story from contacting this last weekend is we were talking to this older woman probably about 65 and she was telling us about some problems she has had in her life with health issues and we were talking about how the gospel can help us in all situations when we are happy and life is great and also how it can help sustain us through our problems. She was like, you are such nice young men and than she opened up her back pack and pulled out some oven mitts and handed them to us and than just walked off, so we have a brand new set of oven mitts in our apartment.
The weather has been pretty rainy and cold the past two weeks here, a couple of times I have even be wearing a suit with a sweater so it doesn't feel like June, sometimes the sun will come out for a couple of hours and get pretty warm.
That is pretty much everything from this week, a week from now I will be writing to you from Plzen, I looked it up and its a 5 1/2 hour train ride from here so that should be some good time for reflection.
I love you all and hope you have a great week
Love,
Elder Hatch
Sunday, June 7, 2009
Monday June 1st, 2009
Hello family
This is another email from brno we are here to do a zone activity on p-day.
This was a good week here in Trebic, we spent 2 days in Jihlava this week helping out the Elders there boost up their area and find some people for them to teach, it went really well and we were able to find alot of good people for them to start working with. We had three people bare their testimonys to us this week about Joseph smith and how they found out he was a prophet and the Book of Mormon is true they are Ana, Tomas this 19 year old young man and Vojetek this 17 year old stud. It is looking like all three will be getting baptized this month.
Tomas has been thinking about baptism and we read this talk with him from conference called you know enough and it really touched him, we asked him what he thought is the next step for him and he established some spiritual goals with us to 1 read the book of mormon 2 pray daily and 3 be baptised. Yesterday after church we came home and knocked on our neigbors door to see how they are doing, they are this older couple he had a stroke about 10 years ago and we have always been super nice to them, well they invited us in to hear about what we are doing here as missionarys and we shared a spiritual thought with them which they really enjoyed and they are excited for us to come back and share more with them.
There is a family here who bought an old house and are rebuilding it so we go over and do service once in a while, this last week we broke up the concrete floor of their living room with a sledge hammer and it was like a half sized sledge hammer so we were pretty sore after that, plus we had to shovel like 30 wheelbarrels worth of dirt so my little forearms were a little sore after that. but i always enjoy getting to do some physical service to mix things up.
We are working with alot of less activis here and we are seeing alot of success from it as their testimonies start to be rekindled, one of them reminds me of an 80’s rocker but he is starting to make some changes.
Here is a funny story, so we see this old guy with a big old beard in leather pants, leather jacket that says white zombie on the back a leather cowboy hat and a big rotwieler, we have seen him a couple of times so we decided to talk to him and we ask him what the most important thing in his life is and he said God we were both taken aback and he goes on to bare his testimony about God and than is like i am sorry i am in a hurry but i would love to talk to you some time, we saw him yesterday while we were hurrying to church and he remembered our names and yelled hi to us from across the street, I guess its true that you cant judge a book by its cover.
I read a article everyday from general conference and i read a great one yesterday about faith, it talks about how we can give our kids piano lessons, sports, toys, fun memories, but all these things add up to nothing if we dont give them Faith in Christ and I want to thank you mom and dad for raising me well and giving me all of those things but most of all for giving me that Faith in Christ.
This is our last week of our transfer here in Trebic so we are working hard to finish out with a bang.
I love you all and hope you have a great week
Love
Elder Hatch
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
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
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
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