hey family
great things are happening here in olomouc, Josef was baptized on saturday and got the holy ghost on sunday which was a great experience the other woman andrea wasn't baptized we had to put it off but hopefully in a month or so she can be baptized. Unfortunatly two of his kids were really sick so his wife had to stay home with them over the weekend and couldn't see him baptized or receive the holy ghost but she was very happy to hear of it and see the pictures, his sister came to the baptism and was very interested and she is thinking about being baptized now too.
Sunday was also branch conference so we had President and sister slovacek with us and also the district president and one of his counselors and it was a great meeting all of our investigators loved hearing them talk and Josef was very impressed and is already planing on applying these things they taught into his life. during sunday school the branch worked on a plan on what they want to see in 5 years. They came up with they wanted their main goal to be working towards building their own chapel here in olomouc so we went over the requirements necessary for that, a funny thing was we had this old lady there as an investigator and she thought it was a matter of just raising enough money to get it so she was wanting to start a baking service to raise money for it. I was translating for the slovaceks so it was pretty funny telling them about all the different ideas, sister slovacek got a good laugh out of starting a baking service.
It was a pretty hectic week for us tuesday evening after some meetings we took off to ostrava for exchanges there, we showed up at their apartment and gave them a call and were like hey we are right in front of your building, they said "we are outside and dont see you", it turns out that they had moved apartment buildings and our gps had taken us to their old apartment and they didnt know the address to their new apartment and neither of them knew the city because they were both brand new so it was and interesting experience finding where they lived we had to ask a lot of directions from random people but we finaly found it. we spent the whole next day in their area helping them find new people and then we were back to olomouc for another day of teaching and having josefs baptisimal interview and then friday it was off to brno for leadership conference and back for the baptism and branch conference.
The lord blessed us for all of the work and effort we put in and even with being out of our area so much we still were able to find some cool new people to teach and gave a baptisimal date to this guy named martin, i found his number in the apartment gave him a call we met with him and gave him a baptismal date, he has read the book of mormon one and half times through since the missionaries gave it to him a couple of months ago. the next meeting he brought his wife and 10 year old daughter and we started teaching them as well.
here is an interesting and funny story we were leaving this apartment building last week after teaching a leasson and as we were leaving some crazy 20 year old girl ran and jumped on my companion bear hugging him trying to kiss him, luckily he was able to get her off of him without hurting her and i got a good laugh out of it and was pretty grateful that i was behind him and it didnt happen to me.
i was finally able to see elder hollands talk in english it was pretty intense and good i liked it quite a bit. things are going great here, my companion and i are getting along great he is a real good person and fun too he was way into extreme sports at home.
This work is so amazing and it is so fulfilling seeing how the gospel of Jesus Christ has the power to change lives so powerfully and help people become better and happier but even more important shows them how to return to live with Our Heavenly Father. God lives as does His Son, Jesus Christ and Thomas S. Monson is their called Prophet on earth today.
Love
Elder Hatch
Monday, October 26, 2009
Monday, October 19, 2009
October 19th, 2009
Ahoj from olomouc family
Things are going great here it is a beautiful city and a great branch. When I left plzen Wednesday morning it was snowing so winter is starting a little early here. Luckily it has warmed up a little since then. It was sad leaving plzen and saying goodbye to everyone but that is part of life. I got their contact info so I will stay in contact with them.
I have heard a lot about olomouc because elder chambers served here 8 months and elder nowland had also served here and they told me a lot of good things so I was excited to come. I got in wednseday and elder roberts picked me up and we went straight to work. We have a great teaching pool and a lot of good people we are working with which is a first for me, for a lot of my moves into new places the area was pretty empty with nobody to teach. We will have two baptisms on Saturday and we challenged another couple to baptism last night and they accepted. We are also getting some good referrals from our investigators for other people to teach. In our zone we have 4 different cities across eastern czech republic including olomouc, ostrava, Zlin and uherske hradiste so we also have a car. I drove this last week which was weird since I hadn't driven a car in almost a year and a half but I didn’t crash so hey that’s good news. My companion is a great guy I like him a lot and we get along well and we are both hard workers so things are going great there.
Last week they had district conference so this week we watched general conference in czech again which was nice to hear again. One of the guys we are baptizing on Saturday is named joseph, his wife and daughter were baptized about a 6 weeks ago and he has decided to join them in the Church. He had a problem with smoking which kept him back the first time from being baptized but he has overcome it and is doing great. We go over pretty often to teach him and we are also teaching his sister and cousin so we are getting a good network going with the family.
We have a pretty busy week ahead of us, wednseday we will be in ostrava on exchanges helping the missionaries find some new investigators there and then Friday it is off to brno for leadership conference and then Saturday we have our baptisms. So it will be quite a bit of traveling this transfer I am guessing and a lot of hard work which is good because the harder I work the better I feel.
I am happy to be a missionary and happy to be in Olomouc, it is the greatest work in the world serving the Lord and helping other people. I have a firm testimony of the scripture I'm not quite sure how it goes in english anymore but “if you lose your life in the service of God you will find it, and if you focus on yourself you will lose it”. The greatest joy in life comes from serving others and building lasting eternal relationships. Materialism and selfishness only destroy and bring emptiness and sorrow.
Have a great week everybody and make wise decisions, I'm glad to hear you all got back safely from cancun and had a good time with Jenni and mason
Love
Elder Hatch
Monday, October 12, 2009
Monday October 12th, 2009
Hey family
We were able to watch conference this weekend which was a great experience to hear the words of the prophets. I was able to watch Saturday's sessions in english but I watched Sundays in czech because I was sitting with our investigators. . I could understand the conference in czech but it just did not have the same power because it is not my native tongue. Something funny with it and also disappointing, I was watching elder hollands talk and i could tell he was getting way into it and pretty intense but the translator just had this smooth passive voice.
Well just now while I was writing this email I got a call from President telling me that I will be transferred to oloumoc and I am going to be Zone Leader there with Elder Roberts, he was my district leader when I was in trebic so it will be fun serving with him there. Oloumoc is supposed to be a beautiful city and the zone has some high expectations there so I am excited to get to work. I am sad to leave Plzen and I will always remember this city because this is the place I would say I became the missionary I always envisioned myself being combining missionary skills with langauge ability and working with a lot of great people but life is also about moving on and having new experiences and new challenges for growth.
Vratislav is doing great he was at all the sessions of conference and it was so cool because you could just see that he was hungering after the word of God and soaking it all up, I have great hopes of him serving a mission he is the favorite missionarys person to teach with because he gives good simple testimony and he kind of just tells it how it is and people respect him for that.
Something else cool, Iva the woman Elder Chambers and I found in Trebic at the library was baptized at district conference in brno by my future companion Elder Roberts and from what I hear there was a 70 at the conference and the 70 stood in to give her the holy ghost.
One of our other investigators Pepa is making good progress we found him last transfer but he was gone for a month this transfer but he was at conference and caught 3 talks and they were all on chastity which we knew would be the biggest problem with him since he has had a girlfriend for about 2 years. He had to hurry and run to work after conference but we taught him that night and we were teaching the 10 commandments and when we got to adultery i was like what does this word mean to you and he was like it means i will end the intimate part of my relationship with anna (who is his girlfriend) i was taken a back and it was a testimony to me that you cant beat around the bush but you give it to them with the spirit and they will follow it.
I hope you all have a great week and i look forward to hearing from you next week from oloumoc take care and don't have too much fun in Cancun.
Love
Elder Hatch
We were able to watch conference this weekend which was a great experience to hear the words of the prophets. I was able to watch Saturday's sessions in english but I watched Sundays in czech because I was sitting with our investigators. . I could understand the conference in czech but it just did not have the same power because it is not my native tongue. Something funny with it and also disappointing, I was watching elder hollands talk and i could tell he was getting way into it and pretty intense but the translator just had this smooth passive voice.
Well just now while I was writing this email I got a call from President telling me that I will be transferred to oloumoc and I am going to be Zone Leader there with Elder Roberts, he was my district leader when I was in trebic so it will be fun serving with him there. Oloumoc is supposed to be a beautiful city and the zone has some high expectations there so I am excited to get to work. I am sad to leave Plzen and I will always remember this city because this is the place I would say I became the missionary I always envisioned myself being combining missionary skills with langauge ability and working with a lot of great people but life is also about moving on and having new experiences and new challenges for growth.
Vratislav is doing great he was at all the sessions of conference and it was so cool because you could just see that he was hungering after the word of God and soaking it all up, I have great hopes of him serving a mission he is the favorite missionarys person to teach with because he gives good simple testimony and he kind of just tells it how it is and people respect him for that.
Something else cool, Iva the woman Elder Chambers and I found in Trebic at the library was baptized at district conference in brno by my future companion Elder Roberts and from what I hear there was a 70 at the conference and the 70 stood in to give her the holy ghost.
One of our other investigators Pepa is making good progress we found him last transfer but he was gone for a month this transfer but he was at conference and caught 3 talks and they were all on chastity which we knew would be the biggest problem with him since he has had a girlfriend for about 2 years. He had to hurry and run to work after conference but we taught him that night and we were teaching the 10 commandments and when we got to adultery i was like what does this word mean to you and he was like it means i will end the intimate part of my relationship with anna (who is his girlfriend) i was taken a back and it was a testimony to me that you cant beat around the bush but you give it to them with the spirit and they will follow it.
I hope you all have a great week and i look forward to hearing from you next week from oloumoc take care and don't have too much fun in Cancun.
Love
Elder Hatch
Monday, October 5, 2009
October 5th, 2009
Hey family
The work is continuing onwards here in Plzen. Transfers are in a week so don't send anymore stuff to my apartment here in plzen because i may be leaving so if you have anything to send just wait a week to see what happens. The good news of the week is that our investigator John is going to start working towards baptism, (he is the one from the car crash). He was telling us that since we first met last transfer his life has changed and he has more joy in life now from a renewal of his faith. We have been wanting to talk with him about baptism for 2 months now but he lost his phone so we weren't in contact with him for 2 weeks, then a week after we got back in contact with him he got in a car crash and was in a coma and in the hospital for a month, so there have definitely been some things popping up to interfere but he is still continuing onwards.
It's interesting how we are led to help people as missionaries even though they don't end up being interested in the message we still help them quite a bit, it is a big testimony to me for God's love for all of his children even if they don't end up accepting the message.
For example, we met this one guy this last week, contacted him and sat down on a bench and he started telling us his story about how a week ago he came home from work an hour early and walked in on his girlfriend with another man. She promptly kicked him out of their house and locked him out and he had nothing with him, he didn't have any money because it was all at home, he still had work which he went to every day but wasn't getting paid for 2 weeks and he had already been living outside for one week. And his girlfriend told him he would never see their 2 year old daughter again. He wrote a last letter to everybody and was going to go jump off a bridge to end his life, we talked to him for awhile and he ended up changing his mind and decided to give life another shot, he has a book of mormon he is reading in but right now doesn't think it is for him.
I went on exchanges with Elder Kartchner this week so the two greenies got to spend a day together doing missionary work which they were pretty scared for but they ended up doing a good job and we had set up some meetings with english speakers to even it out a little bit. We met some scientologists and they want us to come to their seminary class so I told them that if they come to our seminary class this week we will go to theirs so we shall see what happens, I really have no idea what scientologists believe,I just know that Tom Cruise is one so we will see if they end up coming to ours.
President and Sister Slovacek came to church yesterday which is always fun. They sat up on the stand and they have these little translator sets so I sat in the back and translated for them, I am pretty sure a couple of czech words slipped in but they understood it all.
I ate rabbit for the first time on Saturday, we did service for this one woman and afterward she gave us lunch which consisted of rabbit. Also this last week we ate intestine soup which actually wasn't too bad just pretty chewy. Well that is about all for this week I hope you have a great week in San Antonio together.
Love
Elder Hatch
The work is continuing onwards here in Plzen. Transfers are in a week so don't send anymore stuff to my apartment here in plzen because i may be leaving so if you have anything to send just wait a week to see what happens. The good news of the week is that our investigator John is going to start working towards baptism, (he is the one from the car crash). He was telling us that since we first met last transfer his life has changed and he has more joy in life now from a renewal of his faith. We have been wanting to talk with him about baptism for 2 months now but he lost his phone so we weren't in contact with him for 2 weeks, then a week after we got back in contact with him he got in a car crash and was in a coma and in the hospital for a month, so there have definitely been some things popping up to interfere but he is still continuing onwards.
It's interesting how we are led to help people as missionaries even though they don't end up being interested in the message we still help them quite a bit, it is a big testimony to me for God's love for all of his children even if they don't end up accepting the message.
For example, we met this one guy this last week, contacted him and sat down on a bench and he started telling us his story about how a week ago he came home from work an hour early and walked in on his girlfriend with another man. She promptly kicked him out of their house and locked him out and he had nothing with him, he didn't have any money because it was all at home, he still had work which he went to every day but wasn't getting paid for 2 weeks and he had already been living outside for one week. And his girlfriend told him he would never see their 2 year old daughter again. He wrote a last letter to everybody and was going to go jump off a bridge to end his life, we talked to him for awhile and he ended up changing his mind and decided to give life another shot, he has a book of mormon he is reading in but right now doesn't think it is for him.
I went on exchanges with Elder Kartchner this week so the two greenies got to spend a day together doing missionary work which they were pretty scared for but they ended up doing a good job and we had set up some meetings with english speakers to even it out a little bit. We met some scientologists and they want us to come to their seminary class so I told them that if they come to our seminary class this week we will go to theirs so we shall see what happens, I really have no idea what scientologists believe,I just know that Tom Cruise is one so we will see if they end up coming to ours.
President and Sister Slovacek came to church yesterday which is always fun. They sat up on the stand and they have these little translator sets so I sat in the back and translated for them, I am pretty sure a couple of czech words slipped in but they understood it all.
I ate rabbit for the first time on Saturday, we did service for this one woman and afterward she gave us lunch which consisted of rabbit. Also this last week we ate intestine soup which actually wasn't too bad just pretty chewy. Well that is about all for this week I hope you have a great week in San Antonio together.
Love
Elder Hatch
Monday, September 28, 2009
Monday September 28th, 2009
hey guys
another good week has come and gone here in plzen with some great experiences. The highlight was yesterday where I blessed the sacrament with vrata and he was all dressed up in a white shirt and tie. He didnt know how to tie a tie so he came early to church and I gave him one of my ties and taught him how to tie it, he was nervous about blessing the sacrament but we took him through it the night before and explained how everything works so it went well. There is a cold or flu going around plzen right now and half our branch was home sick so it was a smaller sunday but went well.
One cool experience was saturday night we had a meeting with our polish investigator which I wasn't really looking forward to because he speaks about 40% polish 30% czech 15% english and 15% mumbling and just mixes all the words together where you have czech language structure and random english and polish words thrown in and it usually just gives me a headache. Well today he brought his roomate with him a cool guy named pavel who is from poland but knows czech well. As we were talking with him he told us that he has been searching to find out if God really is there or not so we talked about faith with him and the restoration and the book of mormon and we challenged them to both come to church the next day which they did. At the end of the lesson I said the closing prayer, and prayed for both Pavel and Hubert by name and afterwards pavel sat for a while and than started thanking me profusely telling me that that was one of the nicest things anybody has ever done for him and telling me that the only other person who had ever prayed for him was his mom when he was a child. And then he started talking about how he had this interesting feeling during it so we talked about the holy ghost and little and after sacrament meeting he told us he has that same interesting feeling that he can't describe and that they are both going to be back here next week for church.
Another one was I was contacting with Elder Kartchner and we had just talked to this really obstinate girl and as we left her walking down I contacted the next guy I saw who was this massive 6 foot 6 guy with forearms the size of my legs with a bunch of tattoos on his arms. At first he tried to intimidate me, he stepped in real close to me (my face was about at his chest) and he started telling me about how he just got out of prison 2 days ago and about all these things he had done. What was going through my mind was I sure hope this guy doesnt punch me. but we started talking to him about that freedom which he had now and how he was going to use it, we sat him down on a bench and he opened up telling us how his sister died a couple of years ago and he has a desire to see her again, we taught him and than prayed with him on the bench and it was crazy to see how much his demeanor had changed during the lesson (although he did almost break my hand shaking it at the end). AFterwards when elder kartchner and I were talking about it, he was like I was sure he was going to hit you and I was ready to run away when it happened, so we shall see what will happen with martin the other elders will teach him, hopefully good things.
Last night for some comp bonding after I did call ins I taught my companion how to make homemade pizza which turned out pretty well and allowed for some good conversation while we did it. That is about all for this week we are still working with Hoa and he has a new baptismal date for the 24th of october the only thing keeping him back is his work so we are hoping and praying that goes well.
I hope you all have a great week and thanks for the emails and support, I am so grateful for the opportunity I have to serve the Lord here in the Czech Republic it is definitely the greatest experience of my life and my testimony of him grows everyday.
Work hard and make good decisions and I will look forward to hearing from you next week.
Love
Elder Hatch
another good week has come and gone here in plzen with some great experiences. The highlight was yesterday where I blessed the sacrament with vrata and he was all dressed up in a white shirt and tie. He didnt know how to tie a tie so he came early to church and I gave him one of my ties and taught him how to tie it, he was nervous about blessing the sacrament but we took him through it the night before and explained how everything works so it went well. There is a cold or flu going around plzen right now and half our branch was home sick so it was a smaller sunday but went well.
One cool experience was saturday night we had a meeting with our polish investigator which I wasn't really looking forward to because he speaks about 40% polish 30% czech 15% english and 15% mumbling and just mixes all the words together where you have czech language structure and random english and polish words thrown in and it usually just gives me a headache. Well today he brought his roomate with him a cool guy named pavel who is from poland but knows czech well. As we were talking with him he told us that he has been searching to find out if God really is there or not so we talked about faith with him and the restoration and the book of mormon and we challenged them to both come to church the next day which they did. At the end of the lesson I said the closing prayer, and prayed for both Pavel and Hubert by name and afterwards pavel sat for a while and than started thanking me profusely telling me that that was one of the nicest things anybody has ever done for him and telling me that the only other person who had ever prayed for him was his mom when he was a child. And then he started talking about how he had this interesting feeling during it so we talked about the holy ghost and little and after sacrament meeting he told us he has that same interesting feeling that he can't describe and that they are both going to be back here next week for church.
Another one was I was contacting with Elder Kartchner and we had just talked to this really obstinate girl and as we left her walking down I contacted the next guy I saw who was this massive 6 foot 6 guy with forearms the size of my legs with a bunch of tattoos on his arms. At first he tried to intimidate me, he stepped in real close to me (my face was about at his chest) and he started telling me about how he just got out of prison 2 days ago and about all these things he had done. What was going through my mind was I sure hope this guy doesnt punch me. but we started talking to him about that freedom which he had now and how he was going to use it, we sat him down on a bench and he opened up telling us how his sister died a couple of years ago and he has a desire to see her again, we taught him and than prayed with him on the bench and it was crazy to see how much his demeanor had changed during the lesson (although he did almost break my hand shaking it at the end). AFterwards when elder kartchner and I were talking about it, he was like I was sure he was going to hit you and I was ready to run away when it happened, so we shall see what will happen with martin the other elders will teach him, hopefully good things.
Last night for some comp bonding after I did call ins I taught my companion how to make homemade pizza which turned out pretty well and allowed for some good conversation while we did it. That is about all for this week we are still working with Hoa and he has a new baptismal date for the 24th of october the only thing keeping him back is his work so we are hoping and praying that goes well.
I hope you all have a great week and thanks for the emails and support, I am so grateful for the opportunity I have to serve the Lord here in the Czech Republic it is definitely the greatest experience of my life and my testimony of him grows everyday.
Work hard and make good decisions and I will look forward to hearing from you next week.
Love
Elder Hatch
Monday, September 21, 2009
Monday September 21, 2009
Dear Family and friends
Another week has come and gone here in plzen, and although our football teams had a bad weekend things went great here. We had some real great experencies here. I dont remember if you remember our investigator John he was progressing really well last transfer. Well we hadnt had any contact with him for about 3 weeks wouldnt answer calls or text messages so we thought he must of been antied or something and were pretty bummed about it because he showed so much promise. Well i got in contact with him this last week and it turns out he was in a big car crash and was in the hospital for over 3 weeks and in a semi coma for half of that time. But we met with him this week and he came to our branch party on friday and sent us a text message afterwards thanking us telling us it was his most enjoyable night in a very long time.
Also about 2 weeks ago when we were in a park i was approached by a woman to ask if we could teach english classes in a community center in this village outside of plzen to about 30 adults, we talked to her about what we are doing as missionaries and told her that we would love to but that we would also talk about faith with them and she agreed and had us come out last monday for a trial run. The four of us missionaries show up and it turns out that there are these 30 adults there but it is a competition to see who gets to be the english teacher, our competition was this 25 year old czech woman who wanted to practice her teaching skills and she had just finished her 30 minute spil. The woman turns to me and was like ok you have 30 minutes to talk about why you would be the best english teacher, i had no idea i was supposed to have a presentation ready so i spoke for about 2 minutes on our elaborate credentials to teach english (basically we are from America which trumps all other teaching credentials) and then i divided them up into different groups and we started teaching them so they could see how it works. The poor czech woman, by the end of the night they had a vote and it was basically unanimous in favor of us. And then they were like tell us something spiritual so i taught them all about prayer and they all dug it up we are going back tonight and there is some really good potential there.
Another good story from this week is this man named vasil, we were contacting on the namesti and found him and taught him gave him a book of mormon and than we met with him the next day and he told us his experience with meeting us, basically his whole life had been flipped upside down and had almost lost everything and he went to pray in the cathedral on the namesti to ask God to send him help, he left the church went outside and 2 minutes later we contacted him. He had lost his job, his apartment, and had nothing to feed his children. That night a woman gave his family a bag full of food, they found a place to sleep and he has work starting this week. His wife isnt a believer but he is a strong believer and has a daughter and 8 month old twins.
The highlight of the week was vratislav getting the priesthood yesterday, he is excited to bless the sacrament next week i will teach him how to tie a tie this week. He has read almost everything on the aaronic priesthood and wants more to read on it.
We had an awesome branch party on friday well attended by the members and our investigators we had probably 15 non members there and 15-20 members and we played games in the back yard and cooked sausages over a fire. Vrata was the firemaster and everybodies friend which was great to see. The branch here is so cool i love them and everything they do. . I am glad that you all got the photos I sent home. My companion gave his first talk in church yesterday so I helped him translate it out and he did a great job with it. Well that is probably about all for this week thanks for all of your emails and support.
Love
Elder Hatch
Another week has come and gone here in plzen, and although our football teams had a bad weekend things went great here. We had some real great experencies here. I dont remember if you remember our investigator John he was progressing really well last transfer. Well we hadnt had any contact with him for about 3 weeks wouldnt answer calls or text messages so we thought he must of been antied or something and were pretty bummed about it because he showed so much promise. Well i got in contact with him this last week and it turns out he was in a big car crash and was in the hospital for over 3 weeks and in a semi coma for half of that time. But we met with him this week and he came to our branch party on friday and sent us a text message afterwards thanking us telling us it was his most enjoyable night in a very long time.
Also about 2 weeks ago when we were in a park i was approached by a woman to ask if we could teach english classes in a community center in this village outside of plzen to about 30 adults, we talked to her about what we are doing as missionaries and told her that we would love to but that we would also talk about faith with them and she agreed and had us come out last monday for a trial run. The four of us missionaries show up and it turns out that there are these 30 adults there but it is a competition to see who gets to be the english teacher, our competition was this 25 year old czech woman who wanted to practice her teaching skills and she had just finished her 30 minute spil. The woman turns to me and was like ok you have 30 minutes to talk about why you would be the best english teacher, i had no idea i was supposed to have a presentation ready so i spoke for about 2 minutes on our elaborate credentials to teach english (basically we are from America which trumps all other teaching credentials) and then i divided them up into different groups and we started teaching them so they could see how it works. The poor czech woman, by the end of the night they had a vote and it was basically unanimous in favor of us. And then they were like tell us something spiritual so i taught them all about prayer and they all dug it up we are going back tonight and there is some really good potential there.
Another good story from this week is this man named vasil, we were contacting on the namesti and found him and taught him gave him a book of mormon and than we met with him the next day and he told us his experience with meeting us, basically his whole life had been flipped upside down and had almost lost everything and he went to pray in the cathedral on the namesti to ask God to send him help, he left the church went outside and 2 minutes later we contacted him. He had lost his job, his apartment, and had nothing to feed his children. That night a woman gave his family a bag full of food, they found a place to sleep and he has work starting this week. His wife isnt a believer but he is a strong believer and has a daughter and 8 month old twins.
The highlight of the week was vratislav getting the priesthood yesterday, he is excited to bless the sacrament next week i will teach him how to tie a tie this week. He has read almost everything on the aaronic priesthood and wants more to read on it.
We had an awesome branch party on friday well attended by the members and our investigators we had probably 15 non members there and 15-20 members and we played games in the back yard and cooked sausages over a fire. Vrata was the firemaster and everybodies friend which was great to see. The branch here is so cool i love them and everything they do. . I am glad that you all got the photos I sent home. My companion gave his first talk in church yesterday so I helped him translate it out and he did a great job with it. Well that is probably about all for this week thanks for all of your emails and support.
Love
Elder Hatch
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Monday September 14th, 2009
Hello Family
Life in Plzen is going great and I am enjoying every moment. So the highlight of this week was that yesterday we had district conference in Prague with all of the members from Bohemia. So that meant I got to see the members from the Liberec branch for the first time in about 10 months and I can actually speak czech and talk with them which was fun. It was pretty funny when I was there because I was a greenie and now they were like who is your companion and I introduced my greenie to them. Crazy things happen in 10 months it was almost like deja vu being back there since we had it in the narodni dum (National House) in prague which is this big beautiful building. Last year when I was there we walked around the city with ivan who got baptized right after that. President slovacek gave a really good talk there about how the gospel should be simple basically the two great commandments Christ gave in the New Testament to love God and to love our neighbor and that sometimes we think the gospel is all about just following rules or attending meetings but its purpose is neither of those but to bring us Joy and to help other people. Vratislav loved that talk, President also said something there that dad says. He advised us to meet every body we see even random people with a smile and they won't know what to make of it Vratislav got a kick out of that one and he is excited to start doing that. Us missionarys went by train there and it was great because Vratislavs member friend picked him up and drove him to prague for it, the branch is doing a good job of taking care of him.
The members here are really starting to like us and help us which is good, its almost kind of sad because it seems like by the time I get a good relationship it is time to move on with transfers but i know that the Lord sends me wherever I need to serve and I have no problem leaving and going there.
Hoa is doing good he is still working about a 100 hours a week and couldn't get enough time off to come to Prague which was a bummer but he is staying strong, basically we are waiting for him to get an afternoon off and than we will baptize him.
At sports on Saturday we decided to switch things up and teach the Europeans how to play some American football. So we gathered them around and explained the rules (which is very good Czech practice by the way) and than divided up the teams and played some flag football with a bunch of old ties that were left in the apartment. As my team was kicking off for the first time i turned to E. Kartchner and I asked him who I should kick it to and he replied "one of the europeans he will get scared and not know what to do with it" so the ball went to him and as we started running to him he got scared and threw the ball up in the air. For the first half of the game anytime we ran at an European they got scared and threw the ball to us but then they got the hang of it and stopped throwing it away.
The work is going well we have some good investigators who are progressing along that we are looking at giving baptisimal dates to in the upcoming weeks, we have been doing some tracting lately and to make it fun we do district tracting where we will go into the same building to tract and my companion and I will do odd floors and the other companionship will do even floors it makes it more fun and also it helps you have more faith to get let in when you see the other elders get let in. Yesterday we were doing it and the first door that opened for my companion and I we got let in to teach a nice woman about 2 minutes after we got let in I got a text message I looked at it after the meeting and it was like hey did you already get let in? about 5 minutes after we had been let in when the other elders realized we were inside because they couldn't hear us anymore they got let in too. It is always fun to have success as a district.
Well that is about all for this week we were going to go play some basketball again but it is raining so we shall see. Last week we played companionships and elder vomocil and i won and then we played trainers vs greenies first to 10 going by 1's and 2's, elder kartchner and i got down 7-3 when we realized that are greenies were about to beat us and we stopped being so cocky and came back to beat them. All my time playing basketball in the mtc with elder briggs is finally starting to pay off.
Well you all have a great week and i love you all
Love
Elder Hatch
Life in Plzen is going great and I am enjoying every moment. So the highlight of this week was that yesterday we had district conference in Prague with all of the members from Bohemia. So that meant I got to see the members from the Liberec branch for the first time in about 10 months and I can actually speak czech and talk with them which was fun. It was pretty funny when I was there because I was a greenie and now they were like who is your companion and I introduced my greenie to them. Crazy things happen in 10 months it was almost like deja vu being back there since we had it in the narodni dum (National House) in prague which is this big beautiful building. Last year when I was there we walked around the city with ivan who got baptized right after that. President slovacek gave a really good talk there about how the gospel should be simple basically the two great commandments Christ gave in the New Testament to love God and to love our neighbor and that sometimes we think the gospel is all about just following rules or attending meetings but its purpose is neither of those but to bring us Joy and to help other people. Vratislav loved that talk, President also said something there that dad says. He advised us to meet every body we see even random people with a smile and they won't know what to make of it Vratislav got a kick out of that one and he is excited to start doing that. Us missionarys went by train there and it was great because Vratislavs member friend picked him up and drove him to prague for it, the branch is doing a good job of taking care of him.
The members here are really starting to like us and help us which is good, its almost kind of sad because it seems like by the time I get a good relationship it is time to move on with transfers but i know that the Lord sends me wherever I need to serve and I have no problem leaving and going there.
Hoa is doing good he is still working about a 100 hours a week and couldn't get enough time off to come to Prague which was a bummer but he is staying strong, basically we are waiting for him to get an afternoon off and than we will baptize him.
At sports on Saturday we decided to switch things up and teach the Europeans how to play some American football. So we gathered them around and explained the rules (which is very good Czech practice by the way) and than divided up the teams and played some flag football with a bunch of old ties that were left in the apartment. As my team was kicking off for the first time i turned to E. Kartchner and I asked him who I should kick it to and he replied "one of the europeans he will get scared and not know what to do with it" so the ball went to him and as we started running to him he got scared and threw the ball up in the air. For the first half of the game anytime we ran at an European they got scared and threw the ball to us but then they got the hang of it and stopped throwing it away.
The work is going well we have some good investigators who are progressing along that we are looking at giving baptisimal dates to in the upcoming weeks, we have been doing some tracting lately and to make it fun we do district tracting where we will go into the same building to tract and my companion and I will do odd floors and the other companionship will do even floors it makes it more fun and also it helps you have more faith to get let in when you see the other elders get let in. Yesterday we were doing it and the first door that opened for my companion and I we got let in to teach a nice woman about 2 minutes after we got let in I got a text message I looked at it after the meeting and it was like hey did you already get let in? about 5 minutes after we had been let in when the other elders realized we were inside because they couldn't hear us anymore they got let in too. It is always fun to have success as a district.
Well that is about all for this week we were going to go play some basketball again but it is raining so we shall see. Last week we played companionships and elder vomocil and i won and then we played trainers vs greenies first to 10 going by 1's and 2's, elder kartchner and i got down 7-3 when we realized that are greenies were about to beat us and we stopped being so cocky and came back to beat them. All my time playing basketball in the mtc with elder briggs is finally starting to pay off.
Well you all have a great week and i love you all
Love
Elder Hatch
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