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
Monday, December 8, 2008
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
Sunday, November 30, 2008
November 24th, 2008
Hello Family
I just got back from an exciting day in Prague, we had a zone vs zone turkey bowl today with Prague zone vs my zone Hradec Kralova and then afterwards we headed over to the Mission home for some kfc fried chicken and some pie provided by sister slovacek. It was a good time to catch up with all the different missionaries, have some fun and eat some good food. We lost 14=7 in the snow but it was still good. Liberec has gotten about 6 inches of snow in the last two days and it is still coming down slowly, it is a little difficult walking down steep icy cobblestone streets in dress shoes but i am starting to master that ability.
We had an awesome week here and were able to see some really cool things happen with the work here. The members in this branch are awesome we taught with every single member multiple times this last week they are always so willing to help us with the work.
Something amazing happened on tuesday, we had 4 meetings set up with investigators and we worked the phones and were able to set up to get a member to be at every single one but every single invistigator cancled on us which was very unusual since these were 4 of our most reliable so elder nowland and i were pretty discourage but we decided to keep on keepin on and went tracting instead. And it payed off we found a sweet family, we were in this pannalok and saw this massive double wide stroller sitting outside one of the doors we knocked on it and this guy came and answered and started talking to us, he apologised and said he couldnt invite us in because his wife was gone and his daughter was sick but he would stand and talk with us there so we were talking with him for a couple of minutes and then his wife showed up which we thought would end the contact because that is what usually happended but she went in dropped off her grocerys and than was like honey why dont you invite them in to talk? So we sat and talked with them they have a 4 year old daughter and 4 month old twins a boy and girl. I taught him about the BoM and showed him moroni's promise while she was changing diapers and than he called his wife over and started teaching her about the BoM how it goes along with the bible as another testament of Christ and than he asked me to find that verse again so she could read it. They are about 30 and he used to be a priest but than met his wife and decided he would much rather have a family. We are going to go visit them this week we were supposed to go again on friday but the wife got really sick and had to go to the hospital, it was just a really cool experience to see that the blessings come after the trials.
Lukas hasnt smoked a cigarette in over a week and now has a baptismal date for January 3rd, Zemon also has accepted the invitation to be baptized January 3rd he is the man, there was a huge snowstorm sunday morning and he was still at church 20 minutes early. The other lukas is still on for this saturday being baptized so we are being very blessed up here in liberec with the work.
Thursday i had to teach a lesson by myself which was quite the experience, we had a new investigator show up right after we found somebody on the street so i taught the one we just found for about 10 minutes and than a member came in and helped me but it was nice to see how far along my czech skills had come to where i could speak and teach. People say that the Czech Republic is the 3rd most atheist country in the world and the pope said it is the most abominable country in the world but we are finding plenty of prepared people to hear the good word. I hope everybody has a great week next week i will let you know if i am staying or going i personally think i am staying but we shall see what happens.
Love
Elder Hatch
I just got back from an exciting day in Prague, we had a zone vs zone turkey bowl today with Prague zone vs my zone Hradec Kralova and then afterwards we headed over to the Mission home for some kfc fried chicken and some pie provided by sister slovacek. It was a good time to catch up with all the different missionaries, have some fun and eat some good food. We lost 14=7 in the snow but it was still good. Liberec has gotten about 6 inches of snow in the last two days and it is still coming down slowly, it is a little difficult walking down steep icy cobblestone streets in dress shoes but i am starting to master that ability.
We had an awesome week here and were able to see some really cool things happen with the work here. The members in this branch are awesome we taught with every single member multiple times this last week they are always so willing to help us with the work.
Something amazing happened on tuesday, we had 4 meetings set up with investigators and we worked the phones and were able to set up to get a member to be at every single one but every single invistigator cancled on us which was very unusual since these were 4 of our most reliable so elder nowland and i were pretty discourage but we decided to keep on keepin on and went tracting instead. And it payed off we found a sweet family, we were in this pannalok and saw this massive double wide stroller sitting outside one of the doors we knocked on it and this guy came and answered and started talking to us, he apologised and said he couldnt invite us in because his wife was gone and his daughter was sick but he would stand and talk with us there so we were talking with him for a couple of minutes and then his wife showed up which we thought would end the contact because that is what usually happended but she went in dropped off her grocerys and than was like honey why dont you invite them in to talk? So we sat and talked with them they have a 4 year old daughter and 4 month old twins a boy and girl. I taught him about the BoM and showed him moroni's promise while she was changing diapers and than he called his wife over and started teaching her about the BoM how it goes along with the bible as another testament of Christ and than he asked me to find that verse again so she could read it. They are about 30 and he used to be a priest but than met his wife and decided he would much rather have a family. We are going to go visit them this week we were supposed to go again on friday but the wife got really sick and had to go to the hospital, it was just a really cool experience to see that the blessings come after the trials.
Lukas hasnt smoked a cigarette in over a week and now has a baptismal date for January 3rd, Zemon also has accepted the invitation to be baptized January 3rd he is the man, there was a huge snowstorm sunday morning and he was still at church 20 minutes early. The other lukas is still on for this saturday being baptized so we are being very blessed up here in liberec with the work.
Thursday i had to teach a lesson by myself which was quite the experience, we had a new investigator show up right after we found somebody on the street so i taught the one we just found for about 10 minutes and than a member came in and helped me but it was nice to see how far along my czech skills had come to where i could speak and teach. People say that the Czech Republic is the 3rd most atheist country in the world and the pope said it is the most abominable country in the world but we are finding plenty of prepared people to hear the good word. I hope everybody has a great week next week i will let you know if i am staying or going i personally think i am staying but we shall see what happens.
Love
Elder Hatch
Monday before Thanksgiving Day P-day Activity
The missionaries of the Prague and Hradec Kralove zones got together on Thanksgiving and had a big football game. As you can see, they really got into it.
Jordan was on the Blue team. No word on who won the game.
Jordan is on the back row, in blue, closest to the red team
Jordan was on the Blue team. No word on who won the game.
Jordan is on the back row, in blue, closest to the red team
Monday, November 24, 2008
More Pictures from Liberec, Czech Republic
The Liberec District Missionaries
The view out of Jordan's apartment window on a snowy afternoon
The view looking out the window the other direction
Here are some pictures of the inside of Jordans Apartment in Liberec.
Tiny Washing machine that sits right next to the shower/tub.
Main room/family room/bedroom combo
The Kitchen
Another view of the Bathroom and shower
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Pictures from Jordan's companion Elder Nowland
The Liberic missionaries on a P-day activity
A castle that the district visited on their p-day
The 4 missionaries of the Liberic District.
Elder Hatch and Elder Nowland
Jordan cooking up a storm in the kitchen of his apartment
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