Hello family
Things are going well here in Plzen or our two nicknames are the nursery district because of two brand new missionaries or the arizona district because we are 75% from arizona. A funny comment about that zone conference was friday and they always have the new missionaries stand up and introduce themselves and elder mills stood up and said he was in the arizona district which got laughs from everyone and President was like well we will see just how good arizona missionaries are we are expecting great things from that district so we have the arizona pride on the line now.
While we were in prague i picked up a triple combination for vratislav and we had a lesson with him that night where i gave it to him. He had been wanting one for a while and so i called him up while we were on the bus home from prague and i told him i was just coming back from prague and he asked "do you have it"? so he was waiting at the church for us and we sat down and taught about the doctrine covenants and pearl of great price and how to use the index and footnotes, he was just walking on clouds the whole time he was so excited about it. In sunday school we have been going over the doctrine and covenants and so i would always lend him my triple combination but sunday he showed up with his own and was so excited for sunday school to use it. He is also working on learning english, he got rid of his tv because he said there is only filth on tv here and it would waste his time. So now whenever he is not working or with us he reads his scriptures and studies english.
For sports day on saturday all of these people in the park wanted to play against us and our investigators and they were really good but we crushed them 8-0 and our investigators were like its cuz we have the word of wisdom and they all smoke and take drugs.
Hoa is doing good he had to work about 100 hours this week in his factory because they were way behind but we taught him and he brought a friend who also wants to learn about God so he is the referral machine for us.
Last p-day we went out with the Gordon-Smiths they are a couple that go to church here in plzen, he is from england and she is from the czech repulibic and they have a house about 45 minutes away. They took us on a 35 kilometer bike ride up and down all of these hills and i hadnt been on a bike in atleat 14 months so needless to say i was pretty tired after that and a little saddle sore but i survived it was a lot of fun though biking through the czech country side then we came back to their house to a big meal of spaghetti and bread.
A cool experience: we walked onto the town square the other day and it was covered with people but this one guy all the way across stuck out to me so we went and talked to him and it turns out he is from hungray and met with the missionaries there and had gone to church there and really liked it but had just moved here and doesnt speak czech but knows english he was at church on sunday and loved it and cant wait to come again next week. When we went up to talk to him he was like hello elders how are you? sit down with me, so i thought he was a member but turns out not.
Work is going well here i am enjoying myself and working as hard as i can losing myself in the work. I hope you all have a great week and thanks for the emails and support it is always great to get from you. i am also going to send home my camera chip today so you should be getting that in the mail
Love
Elder Hatch
Monday, August 31, 2009
Monday, August 24, 2009
Monday August 24th, 2009
Hey family and friends
Well Vratislav was baptized on saturday and confirmed on sunday which was an amazing experience. The baptism was out at this pond just north of the city and it was a beautiful location and weather. Äfter talking with the branch we had decided that the best time would be at 7 in the evening because all the swimmers would be gone from the lake and it was a cool overcast day so nobody was there anyways. We found this sweet spot on the secluded side where there was a clearing in the trees and a little entrance to the water it was so peacefull and i have to say that i am more of a fan of outside baptisms than inside ones. There was amazing turnout from the branch basicaly everyone under the age of 80 was there to support him and afterwards the branch had food and blankets for a picnic. It was a great experience to see how vratislav was finally able to reach his goal of being baptized he definetly had his week of trials before the baptism. Thursday night his former girlfriend showed up at 2 in the morning buzzing his apartment wanting to spend the night with him but he wouldn't open the door and she finally went away. And then friday night the exact same thing happened with her buzzing and than yelling up at his window trying to get him to let her in but he fought it off like a champ. Another great part about the baptism was it was done exactly as it should be at least in my opinion. His member friend baptized him, the branch president gave him the gift of the holy ghost and all the prayers and talk at the baptism were done by members.
My companion elder vomocil is doing good he is a great trainee, last night i was doing call ins with the other elders and than with the zone leaders and when i finished up i came in the kitchen and he had made a special little dinner for me. A lot of our investigators were out of town this week on vacation so we did alot of finding one cool story was on sunday after church we had decided we werent going to go home to eat lunch until we had found a new investigator, we were going along contacting and my companion contacted one guy who told us he was catholic and had met with us before but didnt have interest my comp couldnt understand it all so i came in and helped him and i was like well lets just sit down and talk about Jesus for a little bit we have a great uplifting message about him and he was like ok. He told us how he had read in the Book of Mormon before but didnt like it. I opened up my backpack and pulled out a bible and book of mormon and i said well how about you read your favorite vers about christ from the bible and than i can read my favorite from the Book of Mormon. I read with him Alma 7 11=12 i asked him what he thought of it and he was like i dont know i wasnt really listening to you i was too busy noticing that you had the holy ghost glowing around you while you were reading. So needless to say we had a good meeting after that and we are meeting with him again on wednesday.
Well that is about all for this week, it was great seeing Vratislav be baptized and now its back to work progressing other people to recieve that great blessing, being a missionary is the greatest work in the world it is so satisfying.
Good job on time trials Ian and Alyssa work hard and break those swim records and i hope you had a great anniversary Jenni and Mason congrats.
Love
Elder Hatch
Well Vratislav was baptized on saturday and confirmed on sunday which was an amazing experience. The baptism was out at this pond just north of the city and it was a beautiful location and weather. Äfter talking with the branch we had decided that the best time would be at 7 in the evening because all the swimmers would be gone from the lake and it was a cool overcast day so nobody was there anyways. We found this sweet spot on the secluded side where there was a clearing in the trees and a little entrance to the water it was so peacefull and i have to say that i am more of a fan of outside baptisms than inside ones. There was amazing turnout from the branch basicaly everyone under the age of 80 was there to support him and afterwards the branch had food and blankets for a picnic. It was a great experience to see how vratislav was finally able to reach his goal of being baptized he definetly had his week of trials before the baptism. Thursday night his former girlfriend showed up at 2 in the morning buzzing his apartment wanting to spend the night with him but he wouldn't open the door and she finally went away. And then friday night the exact same thing happened with her buzzing and than yelling up at his window trying to get him to let her in but he fought it off like a champ. Another great part about the baptism was it was done exactly as it should be at least in my opinion. His member friend baptized him, the branch president gave him the gift of the holy ghost and all the prayers and talk at the baptism were done by members.
My companion elder vomocil is doing good he is a great trainee, last night i was doing call ins with the other elders and than with the zone leaders and when i finished up i came in the kitchen and he had made a special little dinner for me. A lot of our investigators were out of town this week on vacation so we did alot of finding one cool story was on sunday after church we had decided we werent going to go home to eat lunch until we had found a new investigator, we were going along contacting and my companion contacted one guy who told us he was catholic and had met with us before but didnt have interest my comp couldnt understand it all so i came in and helped him and i was like well lets just sit down and talk about Jesus for a little bit we have a great uplifting message about him and he was like ok. He told us how he had read in the Book of Mormon before but didnt like it. I opened up my backpack and pulled out a bible and book of mormon and i said well how about you read your favorite vers about christ from the bible and than i can read my favorite from the Book of Mormon. I read with him Alma 7 11=12 i asked him what he thought of it and he was like i dont know i wasnt really listening to you i was too busy noticing that you had the holy ghost glowing around you while you were reading. So needless to say we had a good meeting after that and we are meeting with him again on wednesday.
Well that is about all for this week, it was great seeing Vratislav be baptized and now its back to work progressing other people to recieve that great blessing, being a missionary is the greatest work in the world it is so satisfying.
Good job on time trials Ian and Alyssa work hard and break those swim records and i hope you had a great anniversary Jenni and Mason congrats.
Love
Elder Hatch
Monday, August 17, 2009
Monday August 17th, 2009
Hello family
Well i got a new companion here in plzen his name is elder vomocil (which is a czech name) and he hails from sandy utah. His mom works for the government and so he actually lived in prague for 2 years when he was 12 while his mom worked in the embassy. He didn't learn any czech then but his czech is doing pretty well now he is a quick learner.
Wednesday we woke up at 5 in the morning and hopped on a bus to prauge where elder graham met up with the other missionaries who were going home and then i was in training for a couple of hours on how to be a good trainer. After that we went upstairs to Presidents Apartment where President announced who was going to be serving with whom. It was a fun experience, i will be sending some pictures home of everything. We got back to plzen in the evening , we worked all day thursday and had district meeting, then it was back to prague to spend the night and my companion stayed in prague friday while i went to brno for leadership conference. It was a good experience, i was able to see lenka there and she told me she is going on a temple trip next week for the first time to do baptisms for the dead, she was pretty excited about that but a little nervous. We are set up for having a pretty good transfer i am excited about it.
Vratislav is set up to be baptized this next saturday and the branch is way excited about it, and Hoa is still working towards it, he was at church yesterday. Elder Kartchner in our district is also training and his companion is Elder Mills and he is from chandler arizona with the crossroads of ray and 101 on the west side by the toyota center. I didn't know him at all before hand but what a small world that is like a mile from our house. So our district is 75% arizonan which is i'm sure a definite first in the czech republic to have that.
We eat once a week at this members house and she gives us huge portions, and as most people know i don't have the biggest stomach and cant eat a lot of food at once but she is definitely helping me to expand it. I think by the time i leave plzen i will be able to be a competitive food eater, that chinese guy is going down next year i will eat more hot dogs than him.
It was fun going shopping for food today with my greenie because it is such a whole new experience going from the mtc where food is just provided to you, to a grocery store in a forgein country and now you have to make your own food. I am taking good care of him though and helping him out with it all. It feels like i was just with elder andersen getting trained and now i am training it is a very weird feeling.
I got packages from home and grandma j today so thank you for that. Work is going well here and i am happy to be a missionary, i am way excited for vratislav's baptism he has come so far since i met him 2 months ago. We are having a member brother kyncel baptize him in a pond north of plzen and than do a branch picnic afterwards. A lot of the branch priesthood was out of town on sunday for vacation and i was assigned to teach priesthood. In our class there was an englishman, an american, two brand new missionaries elder kartchner and vratislav, so only one czech speaker but i still did it in czech anyways and just translated for everybody else.
Well i hope everybody has a great week and i want to share my testimony that i know without a doubt Jesus Christ is our Lord and Savior and through him people have the power to change their lives, no matter how bad they are to the better. The wonderful thing about the gospel is that you don't have to be who you are. Keep on doing the great stuff that you are doing at home and I will be continuing to work hard here. Until next week
S Laskou
Elder Hatch
Well i got a new companion here in plzen his name is elder vomocil (which is a czech name) and he hails from sandy utah. His mom works for the government and so he actually lived in prague for 2 years when he was 12 while his mom worked in the embassy. He didn't learn any czech then but his czech is doing pretty well now he is a quick learner.
Wednesday we woke up at 5 in the morning and hopped on a bus to prauge where elder graham met up with the other missionaries who were going home and then i was in training for a couple of hours on how to be a good trainer. After that we went upstairs to Presidents Apartment where President announced who was going to be serving with whom. It was a fun experience, i will be sending some pictures home of everything. We got back to plzen in the evening , we worked all day thursday and had district meeting, then it was back to prague to spend the night and my companion stayed in prague friday while i went to brno for leadership conference. It was a good experience, i was able to see lenka there and she told me she is going on a temple trip next week for the first time to do baptisms for the dead, she was pretty excited about that but a little nervous. We are set up for having a pretty good transfer i am excited about it.
Vratislav is set up to be baptized this next saturday and the branch is way excited about it, and Hoa is still working towards it, he was at church yesterday. Elder Kartchner in our district is also training and his companion is Elder Mills and he is from chandler arizona with the crossroads of ray and 101 on the west side by the toyota center. I didn't know him at all before hand but what a small world that is like a mile from our house. So our district is 75% arizonan which is i'm sure a definite first in the czech republic to have that.
We eat once a week at this members house and she gives us huge portions, and as most people know i don't have the biggest stomach and cant eat a lot of food at once but she is definitely helping me to expand it. I think by the time i leave plzen i will be able to be a competitive food eater, that chinese guy is going down next year i will eat more hot dogs than him.
It was fun going shopping for food today with my greenie because it is such a whole new experience going from the mtc where food is just provided to you, to a grocery store in a forgein country and now you have to make your own food. I am taking good care of him though and helping him out with it all. It feels like i was just with elder andersen getting trained and now i am training it is a very weird feeling.
I got packages from home and grandma j today so thank you for that. Work is going well here and i am happy to be a missionary, i am way excited for vratislav's baptism he has come so far since i met him 2 months ago. We are having a member brother kyncel baptize him in a pond north of plzen and than do a branch picnic afterwards. A lot of the branch priesthood was out of town on sunday for vacation and i was assigned to teach priesthood. In our class there was an englishman, an american, two brand new missionaries elder kartchner and vratislav, so only one czech speaker but i still did it in czech anyways and just translated for everybody else.
Well i hope everybody has a great week and i want to share my testimony that i know without a doubt Jesus Christ is our Lord and Savior and through him people have the power to change their lives, no matter how bad they are to the better. The wonderful thing about the gospel is that you don't have to be who you are. Keep on doing the great stuff that you are doing at home and I will be continuing to work hard here. Until next week
S Laskou
Elder Hatch
Monday, August 10, 2009
Monday August 10th, 2009
Hello family and friends
It has been another busy and crazy week here in plzen, you may be wondering if i am staying here in plzen or leaving and who will be my companion. I got a call from president this morning telling me i am staying here in plzen as district leader and asking me to train this next transfer, so i have no idea who my new companion is but i am going to go to prague on wednesday to pick him. I am excited for the new adventure of training but also a little nervous because i dont want to screw up but i know the lord will help me. Also i get to help Elder Graham take all his stuff in to prague for his trip home and i will get to see elder chambers before he goes home as well.
So i have good news and bad news this week about vratislav, the bad news is that he had his baptismal interview on tuesday and we felt like he was so close but just not quite there so we decided to push his baptism back by two weeks to prepare for it more. I was scared how he was going to take it but the good news is it gave him even more motivation and he is even more dedicated to being a life time member of the church and helping it grow. He was there at church again on sunday 10 minutes early for the full three hours i think it was his 7th week in a row being at church.
We gave a baptismal date to our vietnamese investigator hoa this week we read a scripture with him where we are commanded to be baptized and recieve the holy ghost and we said hoa will you keep this commandment and follow Jesus Christ to be baptized he thought about it and was like yeah i want to be baptized, so he is comitted to coming to church every week to be prepared for his baptisim on september 12th.
I was asked this last week to give a talk again, and they must of liked my first talk because they asked me to talk on the same topic again on how the members can help the missionary work. After wards one of the members came up and asked us for a book of mormon so she could give it to her friend who she has been thinking about sharing the gospel with so I guess the Lord helped at least one person understand my talk well.
John is doing well he had to go to Germany for his uncles funeral but we were still able to meet with him, he wasnt able to make it to church which he was dissapointed about but said he will be there next week.
We worked really hard this last week to finish off the transfer strong we were 1 new investigator away from accomplishing our weekly goals so we set the goal we werent going to go home sunday until we found that new investigator and at about 7 oclock last night we found him, a guy from bulgaria that we are meeting with again tonight so with persaverence and help from the lord anything is possible.
Haha alyssa kindly informed me that my sunglasses are pretty girly but dont worry i knew that myself it was kind of a running joke but i found some new ones in the apartment so no worries i now have some cheap aviators which hopefully are less girly looking.
Our man who loves the bible and pseudophriagaia (as you can see my spelling skills have not improved) asked us this week if we could baptized him. He had been baptized before but was reading in the book of mormon about how we need to be baptized by proper authority and he was like i believe that your church has that authority which was a shock for us because when we first met him he thought as long as you have faith God gives you authority by the spirit. Now the next step is we need to help him see the importance of church he thinks he can just take the sacrament on his own but he has already come so far I am sure the Lord will help him conqure this concern.
well that is about all for this week oh and we are back up to 4 missionaries here in plzen Elder Kartchner from snowflake arizona will be training a missionary here too, he is from the Kartchner caves family that is his grandpa or great grandpa i think.
Love
Elder Hatch
It has been another busy and crazy week here in plzen, you may be wondering if i am staying here in plzen or leaving and who will be my companion. I got a call from president this morning telling me i am staying here in plzen as district leader and asking me to train this next transfer, so i have no idea who my new companion is but i am going to go to prague on wednesday to pick him. I am excited for the new adventure of training but also a little nervous because i dont want to screw up but i know the lord will help me. Also i get to help Elder Graham take all his stuff in to prague for his trip home and i will get to see elder chambers before he goes home as well.
So i have good news and bad news this week about vratislav, the bad news is that he had his baptismal interview on tuesday and we felt like he was so close but just not quite there so we decided to push his baptism back by two weeks to prepare for it more. I was scared how he was going to take it but the good news is it gave him even more motivation and he is even more dedicated to being a life time member of the church and helping it grow. He was there at church again on sunday 10 minutes early for the full three hours i think it was his 7th week in a row being at church.
We gave a baptismal date to our vietnamese investigator hoa this week we read a scripture with him where we are commanded to be baptized and recieve the holy ghost and we said hoa will you keep this commandment and follow Jesus Christ to be baptized he thought about it and was like yeah i want to be baptized, so he is comitted to coming to church every week to be prepared for his baptisim on september 12th.
I was asked this last week to give a talk again, and they must of liked my first talk because they asked me to talk on the same topic again on how the members can help the missionary work. After wards one of the members came up and asked us for a book of mormon so she could give it to her friend who she has been thinking about sharing the gospel with so I guess the Lord helped at least one person understand my talk well.
John is doing well he had to go to Germany for his uncles funeral but we were still able to meet with him, he wasnt able to make it to church which he was dissapointed about but said he will be there next week.
We worked really hard this last week to finish off the transfer strong we were 1 new investigator away from accomplishing our weekly goals so we set the goal we werent going to go home sunday until we found that new investigator and at about 7 oclock last night we found him, a guy from bulgaria that we are meeting with again tonight so with persaverence and help from the lord anything is possible.
Haha alyssa kindly informed me that my sunglasses are pretty girly but dont worry i knew that myself it was kind of a running joke but i found some new ones in the apartment so no worries i now have some cheap aviators which hopefully are less girly looking.
Our man who loves the bible and pseudophriagaia (as you can see my spelling skills have not improved) asked us this week if we could baptized him. He had been baptized before but was reading in the book of mormon about how we need to be baptized by proper authority and he was like i believe that your church has that authority which was a shock for us because when we first met him he thought as long as you have faith God gives you authority by the spirit. Now the next step is we need to help him see the importance of church he thinks he can just take the sacrament on his own but he has already come so far I am sure the Lord will help him conqure this concern.
well that is about all for this week oh and we are back up to 4 missionaries here in plzen Elder Kartchner from snowflake arizona will be training a missionary here too, he is from the Kartchner caves family that is his grandpa or great grandpa i think.
Love
Elder Hatch
Monday, August 3, 2009
Monday August 3rd, 2009
hello family
life is doing great here in plzen home of the famous pilsner beer, something funny i learned this week about how much czechs love their beer. There is a spa just out of town here in plzen that is a beer spa, you can take baths in beer and there is a restaurant in the center that has a beer stream flowing through it capped off with a massive beer waterfall. Im pretty sure we wont be going there for a P-day activity.
congratulations on your plane getting 3rd dad it sounds like it was a fun time out there is oshkosh.
We finished teach vratislav everything for him to be ready for his baptism, he should be getting baptized sometime in the next week and a half, it was supposed to be this next saturday but we have to change it to get schedules to allign with members and him so we can get a good turn out so we shall be busy with that. A cool experience with vratislav is that he wanted to stay with us after church on sunday and asked what we were doing and we said we were going contacting and he asked if he could come with us so we were like sure. We went to the town square and we split up but stayed within eyesight and hearing of each other and i contacted with vratislav, we sat down and taught a lesson about the restoration to a russian guy and i turned to vratislav during it and asked him to bare his testimony about a principle and he bore a simple sincere testimony and it really touched the russian guy who we have another meeting with tonight it was a good experience for vratislav and we had a good talk about testimonies afterward and how our testimonies grow from sharing them.
We ran into our lost vietnamese woman whose factory had transferred her and got her information and she will be coming to church this next sunday, she had her book of mormon with her in her purse and was still reading it.
Another cool finding experience this week was a guy named john we contacted on the town square. He is a 20 year old and has started his own roofing repair company and has a couple of employees under him. He speaks perfect english and we already taught him three times this last week, he was going to be at church on sunday but he texted us at about 7:30 saying he had a massive headache and he was going to stay home and just read the book of mormon today. He read the whole bible through when he was 16 so he remembers quite a few of the things we teach him and he just soaks everything up. We also found some good common ground he loves UFC which i watched quite a bit at home with nick and kyle so we talked about that a little bit.
Sunday was another translating day, it is the weirdest feeling to completely understand somebody and what they are saying in Czech and than not being able to turn it into English but it is definitely a good brain workout and hopefully i will start to improve with it.
Today is basically elder grahams last p-day so we are going around to buy some stuff he wants to take home . That is basically all from me this week family I hope you all are doing great. Good luck with your patients Jenni and Mason, good luck with school Ian and Alyssa and keep on being great Mom and Dad. Have a great week
Love
Elder Hatch
life is doing great here in plzen home of the famous pilsner beer, something funny i learned this week about how much czechs love their beer. There is a spa just out of town here in plzen that is a beer spa, you can take baths in beer and there is a restaurant in the center that has a beer stream flowing through it capped off with a massive beer waterfall. Im pretty sure we wont be going there for a P-day activity.
congratulations on your plane getting 3rd dad it sounds like it was a fun time out there is oshkosh.
We finished teach vratislav everything for him to be ready for his baptism, he should be getting baptized sometime in the next week and a half, it was supposed to be this next saturday but we have to change it to get schedules to allign with members and him so we can get a good turn out so we shall be busy with that. A cool experience with vratislav is that he wanted to stay with us after church on sunday and asked what we were doing and we said we were going contacting and he asked if he could come with us so we were like sure. We went to the town square and we split up but stayed within eyesight and hearing of each other and i contacted with vratislav, we sat down and taught a lesson about the restoration to a russian guy and i turned to vratislav during it and asked him to bare his testimony about a principle and he bore a simple sincere testimony and it really touched the russian guy who we have another meeting with tonight it was a good experience for vratislav and we had a good talk about testimonies afterward and how our testimonies grow from sharing them.
We ran into our lost vietnamese woman whose factory had transferred her and got her information and she will be coming to church this next sunday, she had her book of mormon with her in her purse and was still reading it.
Another cool finding experience this week was a guy named john we contacted on the town square. He is a 20 year old and has started his own roofing repair company and has a couple of employees under him. He speaks perfect english and we already taught him three times this last week, he was going to be at church on sunday but he texted us at about 7:30 saying he had a massive headache and he was going to stay home and just read the book of mormon today. He read the whole bible through when he was 16 so he remembers quite a few of the things we teach him and he just soaks everything up. We also found some good common ground he loves UFC which i watched quite a bit at home with nick and kyle so we talked about that a little bit.
Sunday was another translating day, it is the weirdest feeling to completely understand somebody and what they are saying in Czech and than not being able to turn it into English but it is definitely a good brain workout and hopefully i will start to improve with it.
Today is basically elder grahams last p-day so we are going around to buy some stuff he wants to take home . That is basically all from me this week family I hope you all are doing great. Good luck with your patients Jenni and Mason, good luck with school Ian and Alyssa and keep on being great Mom and Dad. Have a great week
Love
Elder Hatch
Monday, July 27, 2009
Monday July 27th, 2009
Hey family
Another week has come and gone in plzen and it has been another busy week of teaching and finding like always.
I finally got that christmas in July package thankyou so much for sending that it was great to get from you and i wore the tie to church and everybody loved it. It was quiet the adventure to get the package so it was sent to plzen but the slip never showed up in the mailbox so they sent it back to prague and put a paper in saying i would have to go to prague to get it. Luckily we had zone conference so we were going to be in prague so i could get it we got to prague early to find the postal office but after that everything went downhill, i had called up some missionaries to get directions but they were bad so we ended up lost in this section of prague but i was able to talk to some people on the street and get directions, we got the package but since we had bad directions we ended up being 10 minutes late to zone conference which is always embarrassing and on the subway to zone conference we got seperated- elder lance didnt get on the subway we did but luckily we both had phones so we were able to get back together at the next stop but than our tickets expired by 3 minutes on the subway and we got busted and had to pay 700 krowns. But we got to zone conference safely and even though i was pretty upset about the morning i got in a good mood again from the great conference and everything turned around into an awesome day.
Little did i know but when i had gotten busted on the subway i had to show my passport and i put it back in my pocket or so i thought but i must of missed the pocket because after lunch a missionary came up to me with my passport and handed it to me and said somebody had found it in the metro and brought it to the building and dropped it off because my visa had the address on it i wasnt even able to thank the guy but lets just say my day quickly turned into why are all these bad things happening to me to wow i am so blessed and then after conference we had some great meetings in plzen.
We have this investigator pepa who is a 19 year old electrical engineer student and he lives in a little village and for the summer doesnt every come to plzen but he had to go there for an emergency at work and afterwards he had an hour to kill before his train left so he decided to go check the town square to see if by chance we would be there cuz he wanted to talk to us and sure enough we had gotten to the town square only 10 minutes before hand from prague. we sat down and answered a lot of his questions and taught him from the book of mormon.
a funny note while we were running around prague all morning we had a box full of samurai swords we had to lug around with us because a missionary had left them in our apartment but had suddenly decided he couldn't live without them, we were going to walk into zone conference with them tied to our backs as a joke but since we were late we decided that wouldn't be the best idea.
So we have this investigator named vaclav who is in love with the bible and also the apocrypha and psedouphigira (which luckily kamille's grandpa had explained to me). So at one of our meetings this week he shows up with 2 pages of notes and gave them to us, we look at them and he is like you can use this to show people the book of mormon is true. It was all taken from king benjamins talk and had cross reference with a million bible and other scriptures showing how it agreed with everything from the bible and nothing contradicted it and also all the questions it answers. We gave him the conference magazine and he ate it up, in another meeting this week he started talking and was like "your church... i mean our church explains this really well". Hopefully we will get him a baptismal date soon, we are trying to get him to church before hand because that makes it alot firmer.
Vratislav is doing great he will be baptized in 2 weeks which is the weekend before elder graham goes home. We taught him about fasting this last week and he decided to fast this last weekend for strength to make his baptism.
Our vietnamese hopes got killed off a little bit this week, the two vietnamese woman were transferred by their factory to a little town in the middle of nowhere, so we are going to have to try and figure out where that is and go visit them.
The ptakovi the family from brno were in plzen again visiting family so we met with them and taught them, they want to be baptized but they keep on putting it off so hopefully one of these days they will take the step. Well that is about all for this week family, the threesome is going strong and we are working hard. Have a great week everyone
Love
Elder Hatch
Another week has come and gone in plzen and it has been another busy week of teaching and finding like always.
I finally got that christmas in July package thankyou so much for sending that it was great to get from you and i wore the tie to church and everybody loved it. It was quiet the adventure to get the package so it was sent to plzen but the slip never showed up in the mailbox so they sent it back to prague and put a paper in saying i would have to go to prague to get it. Luckily we had zone conference so we were going to be in prague so i could get it we got to prague early to find the postal office but after that everything went downhill, i had called up some missionaries to get directions but they were bad so we ended up lost in this section of prague but i was able to talk to some people on the street and get directions, we got the package but since we had bad directions we ended up being 10 minutes late to zone conference which is always embarrassing and on the subway to zone conference we got seperated- elder lance didnt get on the subway we did but luckily we both had phones so we were able to get back together at the next stop but than our tickets expired by 3 minutes on the subway and we got busted and had to pay 700 krowns. But we got to zone conference safely and even though i was pretty upset about the morning i got in a good mood again from the great conference and everything turned around into an awesome day.
Little did i know but when i had gotten busted on the subway i had to show my passport and i put it back in my pocket or so i thought but i must of missed the pocket because after lunch a missionary came up to me with my passport and handed it to me and said somebody had found it in the metro and brought it to the building and dropped it off because my visa had the address on it i wasnt even able to thank the guy but lets just say my day quickly turned into why are all these bad things happening to me to wow i am so blessed and then after conference we had some great meetings in plzen.
We have this investigator pepa who is a 19 year old electrical engineer student and he lives in a little village and for the summer doesnt every come to plzen but he had to go there for an emergency at work and afterwards he had an hour to kill before his train left so he decided to go check the town square to see if by chance we would be there cuz he wanted to talk to us and sure enough we had gotten to the town square only 10 minutes before hand from prague. we sat down and answered a lot of his questions and taught him from the book of mormon.
a funny note while we were running around prague all morning we had a box full of samurai swords we had to lug around with us because a missionary had left them in our apartment but had suddenly decided he couldn't live without them, we were going to walk into zone conference with them tied to our backs as a joke but since we were late we decided that wouldn't be the best idea.
So we have this investigator named vaclav who is in love with the bible and also the apocrypha and psedouphigira (which luckily kamille's grandpa had explained to me). So at one of our meetings this week he shows up with 2 pages of notes and gave them to us, we look at them and he is like you can use this to show people the book of mormon is true. It was all taken from king benjamins talk and had cross reference with a million bible and other scriptures showing how it agreed with everything from the bible and nothing contradicted it and also all the questions it answers. We gave him the conference magazine and he ate it up, in another meeting this week he started talking and was like "your church... i mean our church explains this really well". Hopefully we will get him a baptismal date soon, we are trying to get him to church before hand because that makes it alot firmer.
Vratislav is doing great he will be baptized in 2 weeks which is the weekend before elder graham goes home. We taught him about fasting this last week and he decided to fast this last weekend for strength to make his baptism.
Our vietnamese hopes got killed off a little bit this week, the two vietnamese woman were transferred by their factory to a little town in the middle of nowhere, so we are going to have to try and figure out where that is and go visit them.
The ptakovi the family from brno were in plzen again visiting family so we met with them and taught them, they want to be baptized but they keep on putting it off so hopefully one of these days they will take the step. Well that is about all for this week family, the threesome is going strong and we are working hard. Have a great week everyone
Love
Elder Hatch
Monday, July 20, 2009
Monday July 20th, 2009
Hey everybody sounds like the beach went well and everybody enjoyed the cool weather and are not burning to death at home. Life is going well here in the threesome we are working hard and having some good success. This week everybody and their dog gave us a referral which was sweet, we got 4 new investigators from referrals. Our investigator hoa the vietnamese guy brought his girlfriend and girlfriends sister and we were teaching them english and then after a little while of that they were like ok thats enough english teach us about Jesus and God so we started teaching them and neither of them understand english too much so we just show them stuff to read in the vietnamese book of mormon and they soak it all in. Hoa transtlates for us so we might be having a little vietnamese section of the branch here, sacrament meeting will consist of a speaker in czech me translating to english and Hoa translating to vietnamese hopefully too much isnt lost in translation.
Another one of our investigators Pepa the one whose testimony of the book of mormon was strengthened by albert einstein gave us his girlfriend as a referral so we are teaching both of them together.
Vratislav is still doing great we are looking for him to be baptized in the next couple of weeks. I slipped playing soccer on saturday and twisted my ankle so i have been limping around a little bit but its fine, not broken or anything just a little swollen.
I taught the priesthood lesson yesterday in Church and it went really well, its from the Joseph Smith manual and was on prayer and personal revelation which is super important and needs to be how everybody gains their testimony. That's the thing we hit on big time with talking to people on the street that we aren't here to persuade them to believe like us, but we are here to show them how they can find out these things for themselves.
I got a haircut again from a czech haircutter and luckily i didn't get a fohawk like last time, this time she was czech and not ukrainian so we were able to communicate just fine. The zone leaders came down to vist us this last week which is always a fun time to go out and work with them.
I think that is about all for this week sorry nothing too exciting we are just keeping real busy with teaching and finding people. I hope everybody has a great week and remember to choose the right. And thanks for all the cards from everybody I got those today.
Love
Elder Hatch
Another one of our investigators Pepa the one whose testimony of the book of mormon was strengthened by albert einstein gave us his girlfriend as a referral so we are teaching both of them together.
Vratislav is still doing great we are looking for him to be baptized in the next couple of weeks. I slipped playing soccer on saturday and twisted my ankle so i have been limping around a little bit but its fine, not broken or anything just a little swollen.
I taught the priesthood lesson yesterday in Church and it went really well, its from the Joseph Smith manual and was on prayer and personal revelation which is super important and needs to be how everybody gains their testimony. That's the thing we hit on big time with talking to people on the street that we aren't here to persuade them to believe like us, but we are here to show them how they can find out these things for themselves.
I got a haircut again from a czech haircutter and luckily i didn't get a fohawk like last time, this time she was czech and not ukrainian so we were able to communicate just fine. The zone leaders came down to vist us this last week which is always a fun time to go out and work with them.
I think that is about all for this week sorry nothing too exciting we are just keeping real busy with teaching and finding people. I hope everybody has a great week and remember to choose the right. And thanks for all the cards from everybody I got those today.
Love
Elder Hatch
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