Monday, December 14th, 2009

hey family and friends

well transfers have come in and its not that big of a surprise but i will be staying here in olomouc and my companion elder roberts is leaving to be district leader in prague. My companion will be elder andersen, i dont really know much about him so i will let you know more next week about him, he had just been serving in liberec and before that in trebic so we have served in similiar cities.

Well the highlight of the week was saturday, i was allowed to go down to brno to see the ptakovi (husband and wife) get baptized which was amazing. It was my first time seeing a family get baptized together which is a remarkable thing. they have a very strong desire for an eternal family so they will be working towards that. The baptismal service was very well attended and it was great to see all of the members there, lenka gave a talk at the baptism which was a cool site to see and maminka gave the other talk. A cool thing about that was it is almost a year ago that lenka was baptized with maminka speeking at her baptism and now they spoke together at this one.

Friday was a little bit different experience, a woman in the branch died this last week from heart surgery she and her husband were baptized about 6 months ago here in olomouc and she was only 50. The husband wanted us to go sing at her funeral so we went and sang Be still my soul there, the husband was very sad that his wife died but he has that hope and faith that he will see her again. He was probably the most composed out of all of the family, their children are atheists and were completly devasted and mad at the world and he was the one comforting them. At the funeral service the branch president gave a talk on how milos and his wife will be united again which was really good. Czech funerals are alot different from in america and was quite the experience. I am so grateful for that knowledge that families are forever and that although these relationships will be seperated shortly by death they will continue again. Milos the husband told us one of the last things his wife told him was make sure you do everything you can to get to the temple to make sure that happens. The branch president and his family had us 4 missionaries over for dinner which was very kind of them they have a great family and treat us very well.

So this last week my companion and i were asked to help somebody move a big couch into their apartment up quite a few flights of stairs by far the best workout i have gotten in a while. I am glad to hear of your accepting my challenge and reading luke as a family and 3 nephi invidiualy that is great to hear. The work is going well here, we had 6 people at church and the work is moving forward, something funny was this one guy we had at church we havent taught the sabbath day to, and after sacrament meeting he went to a little grocery store and bought a container of ice cream and these plastic spoons and was giving everybody a spoon to eat the ice cream with and he bought a bag of candy for the primary kids.

well i hope you all have a great week and thank you for all of your love and support, its a great life to be a missionary and to serve others

love

elder hatch

Monday, December 7th, 2009

Hey everybody

I hope you all had a good week and that Alyssa and Mom had good birthdays. If it makes you feel better mom everytime i show people pictures of my family they are always like but where is your mom and when i show them they say that's not possible that you look too young to be my mom. Thank you for all of your prayers my ulcer is doing well and not hurting me at all, it sounds like the health problems fell on Ian this week with breaking his wrist.

We had a good week this week, the flu and other sicknesses are going through olomouc right now so quite a few of our investigators were sick this week but we were able to get some good finding in. We were able to get milan to church our man who got hit by the car, it was the first time since the accident and he was there with his son and daughter the wife couldnt make it for some reason. It was pretty funny he looks like he comes from mexico and there was this american woman at church on sunday and she goes up to him after sacrament meeting and starts speaking spanish to him coma estas? como se llamo? me llamo es nicole. and he gets all confused and i start laughing and am like he is czech not mexican and then translated for them while they spoke to each other.

we went to zlin on friday for exchanges, we forgot our gps in brno when we went there for the turkey bowl at the missionaries apartment so all we had was this map that wasn't too great, and to get from olomouc to zlin you have to take alot of little backcountry roads through little villages we got a little lost but we were able to adjust, it reminded me of when i was driving with kamille and nick to colorado to meet up with you at the cabin and we realized 30 minutes late we missed the turnoff. We had some really good success there i went tracting with a pretty new missionary and we were able to find them a really cool young couple to teach.

Saturday we left zlin went to uherske hradiste for this big young single adult activity, it was a volleyball tournament and we had a team from olomouc that we played on, it was great to see so many young people in the church together having fun. President and sister slovacek were there and played on a team it was fun watching them play. We left after a fireside after the tournament from the Slovackovi's but one of our recent converts who we are working with stayed for a dance and other activities and to spend the night, it was so funny calling him later that night before we went to bed, it felt like we were calling one of our kids to check up on him how his date went. He had the time of his life and thought it was amazing being with all of the people and cant wait for the next activity. We had a funny communication error with him, he didnt want to stay for the dance afterwards but we talked him into it and elder roberts was telling him how he needed to polish up his shoes a little bit and then lada the new convert said he didnt have a sleeping back but elder roberts thought he was still talking about polishing his shoes and was like just use a bunch of paper towels or wrap up alot of toilet paper, lada was pretty confused but we got a good laugh out of it once we figured it all out.

Today we got together as a zone and went to the kofola factory in a town called krnov up by the polish border which was pretty fun. It is kind of crazy that this is the last week of the transfer the time has just flown by, good knews is that 3 people that i found in brno when i was there will finally be getting baptized on saturday which was great knews to recieve. Since this is the last christmas of my mission i figured it would be a great time to come even closer to christ focusing on the true meaning of christmas, so i set a goal to read the 4 gospels and 3rd nephi this month, so far it is going great. Its amazing that even though i am reading things that are so familiar to me and that i have read before the spiritual power that comes from it and an even great appreciation for our Savior and i enjoy opening up the scriptures everyday and spending that time reading and coming closer to christ. So my challenge to all of you is to spend some time this christmas season to get to know your Savior even better and to not worry so much about the matieralistic and commericial side of christmas. I am not saying that you have to read the 4 gospels that is probably unrealistic for a lot of you time wise but just find your own personal way to come a little closer to Christ and i can promise you that it will be worth it. I hope you all have a great week and thankyou for all of your emails love and support

love

elder hatch

Monday, November 30th, 2009

Hey family

Well it was a very interesting week this last week full of all sorts of ups and downs. We can start with one of the ups, so Andrea our woman who was baptized a week ago had just about everything that could go wrong in her life go wrong this last week, problems with work with children with a former husband and she started getting scared that she had made the wrong decision to be baptized because all of these things were happening and she started doubting. Well then she had a dream where her recently deceased mom came to her and told her that everything was alright she had made the right decision and is on the right path and then her mom told her that she was also being taught now about everything on the other side. Needless to say that was a very powerful experience for Andrea and she has the faith to conquer all of these problems in her life right now. We were talking to her brother who lived in england with his wife for a couple of months and they told us that they had the missionaries over there but couldn't really understand them but they are reading in the book of mormon now too.

So most of you probably know about 6 months ago I had a stomach ulcer in trebic, well Tuesday night during a lesson I felt it coming back. By the time the lesson was over the drugstores were closed (they close at 8 here) so I figured I would just go home and tough it out until morning time to get my medicine for it since I had unfortunately forgotten my old medicine in plzen. Well it got worse and worse and about 1:30 in the morning my companion thought I was about to die because of all the vomiting and I was moaning like a little girl. So he took me to the hospital where they did their little tests, finally giving me the medicine after 2 hours to make it better. My companion was a true missionary though and while we were waiting he was talking with the nurse about the church at 2 in the morning. So we made it home at 4 in the morning hopped in bed for 2 and half hours and then we had to take off to brno for zone conference where we had to do a training. Surprisingly the training went really well, I didn't get too much out of zone conference however being so tired and with pain still in my stomach.

Everybody from slovakia and moravia (eastern czech repulibc) spent the night in brno that night to have the turkey bowl the next day. They all went out tracting that night after zone conference but my companion and i just went to one of the apartments to recuperate. The funny thing was right after zone conference maminka was there at the building and she was all worried about me and trying to give me all of these suggestions to get better, it was pretty cool she was still wearing the scarf i had given to her last christmas as a present. But there is no need to worry about me now I am all good now with no pain and I have my medicine to take, i guess i am supposed to eat more cabbage? they say that is good for the stomach. So Thursday i did a lot of watching at the football game but that is alright i would rather be healthy than play football. One mistake we did was we forgot our GPS in the zone leaders apartment in brno so right now we are having to do alot of navigating but it is going pretty well.

Other news, our investigator who got hit by a car is doing good. He has some broken ribs and ispretty beat up so he stayed home from church this week with his wife but two of their sons came for the whole 3 hours all on their own.

It sounds like Thanksgiving was a good laid back time for all of you at home and that Jenni and Mason enjoyed coming in from Texas. Has Ian got any of the stuff that i have sent? Sorry Alyssa and mom your stuff will be coming late but i hope that the both of you will have great birthdays this week, eat an extra piece of that cosco cake in my behalf. I hope everybody has a great week and pray for me to be healthy if you can, I hate being sick as a missionary.

Love,

Elder Hatch

Monday, November 24th, 2009

hey everybody,

well myldsmail is down so I am writing from gmail, I wasnt able to get any emails from anybody, if people can just start writing me from now on on my gmail account it would be a lot easier since myldsmail has a lot of problems.

Well we had a good week this week, we baptized Andrea on Saturday and confirmed her on Sunday at church and everything went great with that, Josef junior wasn't quite ready his parents want him to be more prepared so he will probably be in a couple of weeks. Andrea is already getting started on missionary work she had us meet with her friend yesterday after church and she brought her brother to church which he really enjoyed and he kept on telling us how great the talks were at church and how inspiring it was to be there and her cousin was at the baptism and church and wants to be baptized now so things are progressing along well here.

We spent Tuesday and Wednesday in Ostrava going on exchanges there to help teach the missionaries and help them find people and we had some good success there, there are 25 missionaries going home in the next 3 months so we are working hard to help the younger missionaries out so they can step up. We have some good young missionaries here which helps.

Friday we went to Brno for a zone leaders council which was very inspiring, President Slovacek is a great mission president and he always knows exactly what the mission needs to take the next step forward, plus we got a good ol' American lunch from Sister Slovacek consisting of pork chops rice and peach cobbler which was definitely a meal i hadn't had in awhile. Coming back to Olomouc after that there was a ton of fog and we got stuck on the highway for a long time but we made it home.

Some crazy news, I called the dad of one of our families to set up a meeting and it turns out he was riding his bike and got ran over by a car and got pretty messed up but he is out of the hospital now and doing alright we are going to go try and visit him today, today is a different p-day it is just to email and shop because we have zone conference on wednesday and after that we are staying and on thanksgiving we will have a turkeybowl like last year.

I hope you will have a good 18th birthday Ian i sent you a package last week and i just dropped off a letter in the mail to you so hopefully you will be getting those soon, I will be sending home my picture chip so hopefully you will get that some time soon, the BMW M3 is pretty good looking i am pretty sure it is quite a bit faster than our Skoda Fabia with its 1.4 liter engine, I was looking in the manual for it and it does 0-60 in about 13 seconds but gets great gas milage which is perfect for us. Well that is about all from me this week sorry I cant respond to any of your emails hopefully next time have a great week and a great thanksgiving eat an extra portion of fried turkey for me and don't worry about me, I am doing great

Love,
Elder Hatch

Monday, November 19th, 2009

Hey family and friends

i enjoyed hearing from you today it sounds like you are doing well. Things are going great here, we had 11 non members at church yesterday which was great and we got some more we are working on coming next week. So i have a calling here in the branch in olomouc i am now the official branch pianist, my fingers are a little rusty but we show up early to church so i can practice some of the songs and it hasnt been too bad the last two weeks and you may be surprised but i havent even had to bust out a rendition of sweet hour of prayer which many may remember as a classic of mine when i played in priesthood.

Funny/cool news of the week we have this 22 year old guy who is investigating the church and also this 18 year old girl who is investigating, and they didnt know each other at all but they met at church and now they are dating which is a first for me but so far it is turning out pretty good and as a plus we were a little worried she had more interest in us as missionaries then the gospel but now we dont have to worry about that which is always good.

Another funny story we are teaching this family with three boys who have been at church twice, this last sunday they were coming back from brno so they couldnt come to church but at the start of priesthood i saw one of the boys come in, his name is milan and he is almost 10. he was all out of breath and i was like hey milan hows it going, he replied huffing and puffing we just got back from brno and i ran to make it to primary so he stayed for the last hour of primary and then afterwards i was talking with him and he was dissapointed it was already over but left home happy cuz we are going to visit them on tuesday. he is a really cool kid when we were teaching them this last week we taught them how to pray and he brought out a paper and pen and asked me to write down how to pray just the 3 steps 1. Address heavenly father 2. speak from the heart with him thank him for things which he gives us and ask questions or for help and 3. End in the name of Jesus Christ. I had never seen a little kid so excited to pray it was a great experience.

We should be having 2 baptisms on saturday, Andrea is a 25 year old single mom who is Josefs cousin and then josefs 11 year old son will be getting baptized. Andrea has a great conversioin experience, her mom died a couple of months ago and than one night she had a dream where her mom came to her and told her how help would be coming to her to show her the right way and the next day she met the missionaries.

The assistants came on exchanges with us this week which was great because it was the first time i was able to work with Elder Briggs my good budd from the MTC, we found a sweet guy together and than we taught Liba the awesome woman we met the gospel of Jesus Christ and she loved it all, we are going to be working with her to be baptized in december, it was quite different from the last time elder briggs and i taught together in the mtc and i would say we have made some definite improvement in our czech from that time. She also has already invited us over for christmas lunch and we have gotten another invitation for christmas eve dinner from one of our investigator families so i guess people must like us.

I am also grateful for the opportunity to help and serve others, at the beginning of the week i was having some hard times but tuesday evening i was with another missionary to train on exchanges and i had to forget about myself and my own wants and problems and lose myself in helping another missionary which helped me out myself. I am a big fan of if you want to be happy try to make somebody else happy and you will find it makes you as happy as well.

Other good news this week, the family i found and taught in brno have a baptisimal date for the 12th of december which was great to hear.

It sounds like stake conference turned out well, I loved dad's talk on missionary work it was good hearing about the successes of grandma jacques mission and grandma ruths i hadnt heard those stories before grandma jacques has sent me grandpa hals mission journal and i enjoy reading through it. Well that is all this week I am happy to be here and serving the Lord it is the best thing in the world and I know with out a doubt that God is there he hears our prayers and loves us, That Jesus is The Christ and is our Savior and Redeemer one of my favorite scriptures i love sharing with people is alma 7:11-12 you should all look it up.

Love
Elder Hatch

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

Monday, November 2nd, 2009

hey everybody

things like every week are going good here. congratulations ian and alyssa on doing so good in regionals both of your times sound great that you got, thats a bummer that the regions all got changed up but good luck in state i am sure you both will do great.

we had zone conference this last week which went very well, elder roberts and my training went well. we trained on getting spiritually and mentally pumped to find i incorupported a few things from my old companion elder chambers so a shout out to him. also on the drive down i got a call asking me to conduct zone conference which was a first but luckily i didnt say anything stupid.

After zone conference on wednesday we went to zlin for the night and the next day and found some cool people for the missionaries there and worked with them and they are all doing great. A cool finding story from this week, we had a lesson at the building with a recent convert and then we had 45 minutes before english started so we hit the streets and started talking to people. i contacted about a 50 year old woman and started talking with her and she was very happy which is unusual for czech people to show on the street so i was like you look very happy can i ask why you are so happy? and she said well my first granddaughter was born 2 days ago, we talked about that and then started talking about faith and we were like well do you have a couple of minutes we can show you our building. we took her to our building and we explained shortly how we meet with people and have a great message we share with people about christ and God's plan for us and how God still speaks with us a day, she replied well thats great where do i sign up? and can i come to church too? of course we answered yes and then as she was leaving she was like also i have never been baptized and i think its something i would like to work on. needless to say elder roberts and i had big smiles on our faces for the rest of the day, she was sick over the weekend but is looking forward to meeting with us this week.

We had a branch halloween party on friday and we were out of town the two days before and didnt know about it on p-day so we just scrounged through our apartment to make our costumes. I just wore my goofy russian hat with these german flag suspenders and my companion dressed up as a white trash american with this old hoodie with the sleeves cut off and some mocasins. i got a good picture of us that i will send home soon. It was a good turn out we had some fun games there and everybody had a good time.

Our heaters werent working and sunday it was below zero needless to say it was a little cold when we got out of bed but luckily we have gotten them fixed and have a nice warm apartment
again.

one of our new investigators is in the czech army and fought in iraq for a little while, he is also a scuba diver for them and in his spare time he is a free diver i dont know if you remember mom or dad but there was an interesting article in sports illustrated about that a couple of years ago, he was showing me his pictures and he can free dive (that means without an oxygen tank) to 40 meters which for all of you americans is like 150 feet i think, he told me his key is this wooden flute he played on which you have to push alot of air through to strengthen your lungs. he has some pretty interesting egyptain beliefs but is willing to listen and try something new so we shall see what happens.

have a great week everybody and good luck ian and alyssa
love
Elder Hatch