Elders Hatch and Mittank are the assistants; and Elders Fruehan and Vivona run the office.Monday, March 22, 2010
Sunday, March 21, 2010
Saturday, March 20th, 2010
Hey family,
Well samuel just got baptized about 4 hours ago and it was a great experience. There was a big turnout from the branch and he was baptized by the branch president which was great to see, along with him was a nice young woman baptized who was czech so the services were in czech and english. We just got back from playing soccer with samuel and a bunch of our "african brothers" who all came to the baptism. We have a group of about 5 guys from aftrica in their 20's who we are teaching here, they are all from nigeria and are studing international relations here for masters and phd's and love coming to church with us and learning from the scriptures with us. Last sunday we watched the talk "safety for our soul" by elder holland and it finally clicked for them why the Book of Mormon is so important so they are all reading in that and trying to find out if it is true.
Thursday I went back on exchanges to Olomouc which was good to meet with some of my old people and get them back on track towards baptism. A very unfortunate event was that that night, while we were in a nice area of town for an appointment, our car was broken into. They broke the back window and stole my bag which had all of my stuff for zone leaders council the next day, my scriptures, PMG and my study journal with all of my insights and notes from zone conferences my whole mission, that was the only thing stolen from the car and we had a lot of other valuable stuff there. I was pretty bummed. I figured once the thief opened the bag and saw it was just scriptures and a notebook he would ditch it somewhere so I spent about an hour searching all of the dumpsters within a 500 meter radius but with no luck. I am most bummed about my notes because I had a lot of good stuff in there and my markings in the scriptures, I guess I will just need to get a new set and start over.
So the next day we drove down to Brno with a smashed out window and had zone leaders council which turned out very well considering that Elder Mittanck and I had no notes for what we were doing since they were all stolen. Zone leaders council is one of my favorite things as a missionary, I feel like we are like king arthur and the knights of the round table sitting around discussing how things are going. We have a very young mission now and we are the last of the old missionaries so we are trying to keep everything going up as it has been in the past.
We made it back last night and fortunately got our window fixed this morning because we are heading off to Slovakia tomorrow. I have never done so much driving in my life it feels like a giant road trip all the time and President does even more driving, he headed off from Brno today to Kosice which is on the border between Slovakia and Ukriane, about 12 hours away from Prague by car.
My comp and i had a bet with sister slovakia that we could find 10 new investigators and she bet us that she could find 1 in a week, we found our 10 and she didn't find her one so she had to make us a gourmet lunch, so on Wednesday she made us cashew crusted stuffed pork chops with bacon and cheese potatoes and peppery greens with rasberry dressing, home made rolls and apple pie, it was definitely the best meal i have had in the czech republic. After lunch president was like "wow that was the best meal you have cooked in 10 years, you should bet the assistants more often, even I benefit from it." It was nice talking with President and his wife in a casual setting and getting to know them more, their daughter is living with them right now and she spilled all the funny secrets so we had some good laughter, president was asking me about my texas drivers license and he dropped a funny line that Mason can try using, "My daddy always taught me you don't ask a man where he comes from, if he is from texas he will let you know, and if not you don't want to embarrass him" Sister S gave him a good smack for that one she is from Washington, I also found out that their favorite place to be is Sandpoint Idaho, that's where they are wanting to live when they go home and they were quite surprised when i said i had been there before.
It sounds like you are all having a good time in San Antonio with the roller coasters and enjoy Sea World today. The work is going good here and the Lord is blessing us quite a bit with the work. We have a few other people here that we found this transfer that should be getting baptized some time soon. Pray for us to have a good safe trip to Slovakia with nothing getting stolen and see some good miracles there, we have zone conferences this next week monday in zilina slovakia, wednesday in brno and friday in prague so i will probably get home next thursday. for now have a great week
Love,
Elder Hatch
Well samuel just got baptized about 4 hours ago and it was a great experience. There was a big turnout from the branch and he was baptized by the branch president which was great to see, along with him was a nice young woman baptized who was czech so the services were in czech and english. We just got back from playing soccer with samuel and a bunch of our "african brothers" who all came to the baptism. We have a group of about 5 guys from aftrica in their 20's who we are teaching here, they are all from nigeria and are studing international relations here for masters and phd's and love coming to church with us and learning from the scriptures with us. Last sunday we watched the talk "safety for our soul" by elder holland and it finally clicked for them why the Book of Mormon is so important so they are all reading in that and trying to find out if it is true.
Thursday I went back on exchanges to Olomouc which was good to meet with some of my old people and get them back on track towards baptism. A very unfortunate event was that that night, while we were in a nice area of town for an appointment, our car was broken into. They broke the back window and stole my bag which had all of my stuff for zone leaders council the next day, my scriptures, PMG and my study journal with all of my insights and notes from zone conferences my whole mission, that was the only thing stolen from the car and we had a lot of other valuable stuff there. I was pretty bummed. I figured once the thief opened the bag and saw it was just scriptures and a notebook he would ditch it somewhere so I spent about an hour searching all of the dumpsters within a 500 meter radius but with no luck. I am most bummed about my notes because I had a lot of good stuff in there and my markings in the scriptures, I guess I will just need to get a new set and start over.
So the next day we drove down to Brno with a smashed out window and had zone leaders council which turned out very well considering that Elder Mittanck and I had no notes for what we were doing since they were all stolen. Zone leaders council is one of my favorite things as a missionary, I feel like we are like king arthur and the knights of the round table sitting around discussing how things are going. We have a very young mission now and we are the last of the old missionaries so we are trying to keep everything going up as it has been in the past.
We made it back last night and fortunately got our window fixed this morning because we are heading off to Slovakia tomorrow. I have never done so much driving in my life it feels like a giant road trip all the time and President does even more driving, he headed off from Brno today to Kosice which is on the border between Slovakia and Ukriane, about 12 hours away from Prague by car.
My comp and i had a bet with sister slovakia that we could find 10 new investigators and she bet us that she could find 1 in a week, we found our 10 and she didn't find her one so she had to make us a gourmet lunch, so on Wednesday she made us cashew crusted stuffed pork chops with bacon and cheese potatoes and peppery greens with rasberry dressing, home made rolls and apple pie, it was definitely the best meal i have had in the czech republic. After lunch president was like "wow that was the best meal you have cooked in 10 years, you should bet the assistants more often, even I benefit from it." It was nice talking with President and his wife in a casual setting and getting to know them more, their daughter is living with them right now and she spilled all the funny secrets so we had some good laughter, president was asking me about my texas drivers license and he dropped a funny line that Mason can try using, "My daddy always taught me you don't ask a man where he comes from, if he is from texas he will let you know, and if not you don't want to embarrass him" Sister S gave him a good smack for that one she is from Washington, I also found out that their favorite place to be is Sandpoint Idaho, that's where they are wanting to live when they go home and they were quite surprised when i said i had been there before.
It sounds like you are all having a good time in San Antonio with the roller coasters and enjoy Sea World today. The work is going good here and the Lord is blessing us quite a bit with the work. We have a few other people here that we found this transfer that should be getting baptized some time soon. Pray for us to have a good safe trip to Slovakia with nothing getting stolen and see some good miracles there, we have zone conferences this next week monday in zilina slovakia, wednesday in brno and friday in prague so i will probably get home next thursday. for now have a great week
Love,
Elder Hatch
Saturday, March 13, 2010
Saturday, March 13th, 2010
Well Prague is as bustling as ever and unfortunately still cold, one of my favorite ways of starting conversations with people on the metro is asking them when spring is going to come, for some reason that just instantly softens there heart. We had two big events on the plan this week, the first was a visit from Elders Teaxue sp? and Richerdson. Elder Teaxue is in the first quorum of the seventy and is in our area presidency here in Europe and Richardson is in the Sunday school presidency, their visit was for the members and not the missionaries but Elder Mittanck and i were able to interact with them and they are wonderful people and very humble even though they are very successful in life, I guess Elder Richardson teaches religion at BYU and he invited me to take his class and that he hopes to see me there when i return to BYU. So we had to get everything in good shape for that and tidy up our office.
We were also given notice that the area presidency will be coming here after general conference for a big sit down with President to find what has caused the great increase in success here over the past 2 1/2 years for a report they will be giving to the Quorum of the 12.
We started something new here that we call "training camp" or "progression seminar" basically we brought in all the trainers and new missionaries to brno and worked with them, for a big part of it we split the trainers and greenies up and the trainers had a question and answer session with president and his wife while we practiced a lot of different scenarioes with the new missionaries. After lunch Elder Mittanck and i trained on comp study and comp language study and we heard some great talks from president and sister slovacek on building faith and raising our vision to see ourselves as the Lord sees us. This was kind of a trial run to see how successful it was and everybody loved it so we are going to be continuing it in the future.
In our area our man samuel is going to be getting baptized this next saturday, he is from camaroon, he had been taught in brno but moved to prague the same time that i did and one of my missionary friends in brno passed him over to me, he is working on his phd in international relations here and is a very humble guy. We also found this sweet girl from spain named noele, i busted out the 3 or 4 spanish phrases i know, luckily she speaks english she also just moved to prague about 3 weeks ago and she is coming to church tomorrow we should be getting a pretty good turnout to church tomorrow 6 or 7 people, even though we only get about 4 and 1/2 hours of missionary work a day we are still seeing alot of success.
This weekend is the youth and ysa temple trip and so they all came into prague and had a fireside and slept in the mission home before heading to the temple early this morning, it was great to see all of the youth and ysa i have come to know well and become friends with, its kind of weird thinking about it i dont really have any friends in america anymore that arent my family or former missionaries here it seems like i have a lot more friends here in the czech republic. Vrata was there last night and he was way excited to be going and doing baptisms for the first time, the youth and ysa have a great bond together here. One of the drivers of one of the vans got sick at the last moment so they needed another driver, i volunteered but unfortunatly that was shot down rather quickly.
My personal study lately has been largely made up of the New Testament and Book of Mormon it is amazing how great those work together and its amazing the power you get from reading your scriptures in the morning that continue throught the day, sometimes because of things we have to do we dont get our personal study until the afternoon and there is a noticeble difference.
I want to thank you all for the love and support you gave me in your emails today it was a great boost and i am working hard every day here. Have a great week everybody and keep on making wise decisions
Love
Elder Hatch
We were also given notice that the area presidency will be coming here after general conference for a big sit down with President to find what has caused the great increase in success here over the past 2 1/2 years for a report they will be giving to the Quorum of the 12.
We started something new here that we call "training camp" or "progression seminar" basically we brought in all the trainers and new missionaries to brno and worked with them, for a big part of it we split the trainers and greenies up and the trainers had a question and answer session with president and his wife while we practiced a lot of different scenarioes with the new missionaries. After lunch Elder Mittanck and i trained on comp study and comp language study and we heard some great talks from president and sister slovacek on building faith and raising our vision to see ourselves as the Lord sees us. This was kind of a trial run to see how successful it was and everybody loved it so we are going to be continuing it in the future.
In our area our man samuel is going to be getting baptized this next saturday, he is from camaroon, he had been taught in brno but moved to prague the same time that i did and one of my missionary friends in brno passed him over to me, he is working on his phd in international relations here and is a very humble guy. We also found this sweet girl from spain named noele, i busted out the 3 or 4 spanish phrases i know, luckily she speaks english she also just moved to prague about 3 weeks ago and she is coming to church tomorrow we should be getting a pretty good turnout to church tomorrow 6 or 7 people, even though we only get about 4 and 1/2 hours of missionary work a day we are still seeing alot of success.
This weekend is the youth and ysa temple trip and so they all came into prague and had a fireside and slept in the mission home before heading to the temple early this morning, it was great to see all of the youth and ysa i have come to know well and become friends with, its kind of weird thinking about it i dont really have any friends in america anymore that arent my family or former missionaries here it seems like i have a lot more friends here in the czech republic. Vrata was there last night and he was way excited to be going and doing baptisms for the first time, the youth and ysa have a great bond together here. One of the drivers of one of the vans got sick at the last moment so they needed another driver, i volunteered but unfortunatly that was shot down rather quickly.
My personal study lately has been largely made up of the New Testament and Book of Mormon it is amazing how great those work together and its amazing the power you get from reading your scriptures in the morning that continue throught the day, sometimes because of things we have to do we dont get our personal study until the afternoon and there is a noticeble difference.
I want to thank you all for the love and support you gave me in your emails today it was a great boost and i am working hard every day here. Have a great week everybody and keep on making wise decisions
Love
Elder Hatch
Saturday, March 6, 2010
Saturday, March 6th, 2019
Dear family
I know i say this a lot but this week has been a week full of ups and downs, I probably had my lowest point on my mission and my highest point on my mission separated by a few days. I got dear johned on tuesday which was a pretty big surprise since i thought everything was going great and i will be coming home in 3 months. It was pretty rough for me I must admit but I have a great companion who helped me out and I had a good talk with President Slovacek and he told me about how he was dear johned on his mission and gave me some good advice and support. I have been spending a lot of time in prayer, it's rough but I know I am going to be ok.
Friday evening Elder Kerr a member of the 3rd quorum of the seventy flew into Prague with his wife to speak at a women's conference for the whole mission in Brno, they are from Scotland. President Slovacek and his wife was already in brno for a funeral friday morning so Elder Mittanck and I picked them up from the airport and drove them 3 hours to brno which is quite a great experience. He is full of great stories and told us we could ask him about anything, he told us about the meetings that the seventies have with the first presidency and the quorum of the 12 apostles before conference and shared some good experience from that from hearing from different apostles and prophets. Then he started talking about the process of calling new stake presidents and his experiences with that and how it is such a spiritual process and the different confirmations that come with calling the new stake president and standing up in front of the stake and saying this is who Elder Oaks and I know is called by God to be the stake president and not well we both felt pretty good about this one guy. He bore a strong testimony to us about how God will bless us for giving this time to him on a mission and that we will never regret giving God these two years of our lives and that God will provide for us, which was a great thing for me to hear at that time, even though i already knew that it was a great confirmation.
When we got to brno we were invited to join them for dinner with the Slovaceks, which was great to see them interact with each other and to see a different side of our Mission President and his wife, I know every missionary says this but I am pretty sure I have the best mission president.
I had salmon for the first time on my mission it wasn't as good as yours mom but it was pretty good, then we drove home last night after dinner. The missionary work is going well for us, it is definitely different we are in the office until 4:30 each afternoon and than we get to go out and do missionary work so we have a lot less time but the Lord blesses us and we have seen a lot of great things happen in our area, something that we are doing here is going tracting in the dorms and it has turned out to be really successful. We find a bunch of new people everytime. One night we went on splits each taking a recent convert with us and went tracting, my companion martin loved it and was sad when we already had to leave, he is hooked on it and is always asking us now when we can go tracting again.
I got some different questions about the office. my comp and i live in an apartment building about 100 yards away from the building. In the office there is the Andersens who are a senior couple from Idaho who are great people. Elder Andersen taught at BYU idaho for 20 something years and he is in charge of the fianaces for the mission, his wife is the mission secretary and does a ton of great work for the mission and helps out a lot. There is another office companionship of elders, one is the computer elder for the mission and takes care of all of the electronics and printing for the mission, then there is the office manager who is in charge of all supplies, building care and car stuff. Elder Mittanck and i do whatever the president needs us to do and then we are in charge of visa's for all of the missionaries.
For workouts I have scored here, we have a bench and a lot of weights in our apartment so we can do pretty much any exercise imaginable with free weights.
We had an auditor from france come in, I must say im not a big fan of auditors but I guess they are needed. If there are any other questions I forgot to answer send them again.
I hope every body has a great week and thank you for your support, remember me in your prayers please, I know that with all of the billions of people on earth God knows and loves each one of us and cares for us in so many ways that we can't see, He provides us with many tender mercies and hears our prayers.
Love,
Elder Hatch
I know i say this a lot but this week has been a week full of ups and downs, I probably had my lowest point on my mission and my highest point on my mission separated by a few days. I got dear johned on tuesday which was a pretty big surprise since i thought everything was going great and i will be coming home in 3 months. It was pretty rough for me I must admit but I have a great companion who helped me out and I had a good talk with President Slovacek and he told me about how he was dear johned on his mission and gave me some good advice and support. I have been spending a lot of time in prayer, it's rough but I know I am going to be ok.
Friday evening Elder Kerr a member of the 3rd quorum of the seventy flew into Prague with his wife to speak at a women's conference for the whole mission in Brno, they are from Scotland. President Slovacek and his wife was already in brno for a funeral friday morning so Elder Mittanck and I picked them up from the airport and drove them 3 hours to brno which is quite a great experience. He is full of great stories and told us we could ask him about anything, he told us about the meetings that the seventies have with the first presidency and the quorum of the 12 apostles before conference and shared some good experience from that from hearing from different apostles and prophets. Then he started talking about the process of calling new stake presidents and his experiences with that and how it is such a spiritual process and the different confirmations that come with calling the new stake president and standing up in front of the stake and saying this is who Elder Oaks and I know is called by God to be the stake president and not well we both felt pretty good about this one guy. He bore a strong testimony to us about how God will bless us for giving this time to him on a mission and that we will never regret giving God these two years of our lives and that God will provide for us, which was a great thing for me to hear at that time, even though i already knew that it was a great confirmation.
When we got to brno we were invited to join them for dinner with the Slovaceks, which was great to see them interact with each other and to see a different side of our Mission President and his wife, I know every missionary says this but I am pretty sure I have the best mission president.
I had salmon for the first time on my mission it wasn't as good as yours mom but it was pretty good, then we drove home last night after dinner. The missionary work is going well for us, it is definitely different we are in the office until 4:30 each afternoon and than we get to go out and do missionary work so we have a lot less time but the Lord blesses us and we have seen a lot of great things happen in our area, something that we are doing here is going tracting in the dorms and it has turned out to be really successful. We find a bunch of new people everytime. One night we went on splits each taking a recent convert with us and went tracting, my companion martin loved it and was sad when we already had to leave, he is hooked on it and is always asking us now when we can go tracting again.
I got some different questions about the office. my comp and i live in an apartment building about 100 yards away from the building. In the office there is the Andersens who are a senior couple from Idaho who are great people. Elder Andersen taught at BYU idaho for 20 something years and he is in charge of the fianaces for the mission, his wife is the mission secretary and does a ton of great work for the mission and helps out a lot. There is another office companionship of elders, one is the computer elder for the mission and takes care of all of the electronics and printing for the mission, then there is the office manager who is in charge of all supplies, building care and car stuff. Elder Mittanck and i do whatever the president needs us to do and then we are in charge of visa's for all of the missionaries.
For workouts I have scored here, we have a bench and a lot of weights in our apartment so we can do pretty much any exercise imaginable with free weights.
We had an auditor from france come in, I must say im not a big fan of auditors but I guess they are needed. If there are any other questions I forgot to answer send them again.
I hope every body has a great week and thank you for your support, remember me in your prayers please, I know that with all of the billions of people on earth God knows and loves each one of us and cares for us in so many ways that we can't see, He provides us with many tender mercies and hears our prayers.
Love,
Elder Hatch
Saturday, February 27, 2010
Saturday, February 27th, 2010
Hey family
well another week has come and gone full of zone conferences and travels but it has been a great one. i am glad to hear that the nativity set made it home alright. It looks like people are still getting used to the fact that i have p day on saturdays but that is alright. Well this last week we loaded up our microbus with supplies water filters and two matresses for us and headed off to slovakia sunday afternoon, we spent the night there with the zone leaders and we had zone conference in the morning. Elder Mittanck and i did a training on giving people good reasons to meet with us. our example for it was we had this massive loaf of bread and we asked for a volunteer, he came up and we were like we want you to eat this whole loaf of bread right now, we were like come on its really good we have done it before you will like it it will help you, haha he was kind of confused but he passed, than i pulled out a 100 euro bill and asked him if he would eat it if i gave him a 100 euros and he quickly changed his mind (we didnt give him the chance to try) we related this to missionary work and how often we ask people to do things that may seem confusing to them without giving them a good reason to and we challenged them to all come up with personal reasons on how the gospel has blessed them specifically on different topics that they can share with people, and then we also had a presentation on goals and how to accomplish our goals and how to set them.
After zone conference in zilina we took off to bratislava where we went on exchanges with a young companionship in a brand new area that had just opened up and they had nobody to teach we were very blessed there and found them a lot of new people to start teaching, it was interesting working with slovaks i was surprised but i was able to understand everythign they said and communicate with them clearly, it was actually harder for me to understand the slovak missionaries than the natives, they are a much more believing people in slovakia so i had to switch up my contacts and style of teaching a bit.
tuesday evening we drove to brno where we stayed with the zone leaders had zone conference on wednesday and then worked with a companionship wednesday afternoon and thursday. A funny experience with that, i went tracting with the missionary i was working with and we went to these dorms, we got let in on the first door and taught this cool guy and we were going to continue trackting but my companion had to go to the bathroom, we were in the dorms so i was like just use the community bathroom i will wait out here by the elevators. i waited and waited and thought wow this is taking longer than i thought. then i got a call from the elder in the bathroom, he said " im stuck i cant get out of the stall the door is jammed" so i went in there and the door was jammed shut and locked and we tried everything but couldnt open it up. and these werent like normal stalls they were like individual rooms with a little space at the top between them about 8 feet up, he was able to throw his backpack through it and than jumped up and squezzed himself threw right when a confused student came in to see what was going on, haha we went to a different floor after that but got let in again and taught another student. After a long exhausting day we headed back to prague where we got to work in our area for 2 hours and we found 2 new investigators, the Lord blessed us greatly for helping others.
Friday zone conference here went well after that we had to catch up on a lot of errands for President since he is going to Poland for a conference but it has been a great successful week. It is a great privilege to work with so many of the missionaries, the missionaries here come from so many backgrounds and are so strong and dedicated, we don't have a single bad missionary in the whole mission and it is great to learn from all of them since they all have different strengths and experiences.
Today we are going to play soccer with a bunch of afrikans we are in contact with and than we have some good meetings set up this evening with people that we are working with. My time as a missionary is starting to feel short so that means i need to work even harder so i have no regrets. i hope you all have a great week and i love you very much and am grateful for your support in all that i do
love
elder hatch
well another week has come and gone full of zone conferences and travels but it has been a great one. i am glad to hear that the nativity set made it home alright. It looks like people are still getting used to the fact that i have p day on saturdays but that is alright. Well this last week we loaded up our microbus with supplies water filters and two matresses for us and headed off to slovakia sunday afternoon, we spent the night there with the zone leaders and we had zone conference in the morning. Elder Mittanck and i did a training on giving people good reasons to meet with us. our example for it was we had this massive loaf of bread and we asked for a volunteer, he came up and we were like we want you to eat this whole loaf of bread right now, we were like come on its really good we have done it before you will like it it will help you, haha he was kind of confused but he passed, than i pulled out a 100 euro bill and asked him if he would eat it if i gave him a 100 euros and he quickly changed his mind (we didnt give him the chance to try) we related this to missionary work and how often we ask people to do things that may seem confusing to them without giving them a good reason to and we challenged them to all come up with personal reasons on how the gospel has blessed them specifically on different topics that they can share with people, and then we also had a presentation on goals and how to accomplish our goals and how to set them.
After zone conference in zilina we took off to bratislava where we went on exchanges with a young companionship in a brand new area that had just opened up and they had nobody to teach we were very blessed there and found them a lot of new people to start teaching, it was interesting working with slovaks i was surprised but i was able to understand everythign they said and communicate with them clearly, it was actually harder for me to understand the slovak missionaries than the natives, they are a much more believing people in slovakia so i had to switch up my contacts and style of teaching a bit.
tuesday evening we drove to brno where we stayed with the zone leaders had zone conference on wednesday and then worked with a companionship wednesday afternoon and thursday. A funny experience with that, i went tracting with the missionary i was working with and we went to these dorms, we got let in on the first door and taught this cool guy and we were going to continue trackting but my companion had to go to the bathroom, we were in the dorms so i was like just use the community bathroom i will wait out here by the elevators. i waited and waited and thought wow this is taking longer than i thought. then i got a call from the elder in the bathroom, he said " im stuck i cant get out of the stall the door is jammed" so i went in there and the door was jammed shut and locked and we tried everything but couldnt open it up. and these werent like normal stalls they were like individual rooms with a little space at the top between them about 8 feet up, he was able to throw his backpack through it and than jumped up and squezzed himself threw right when a confused student came in to see what was going on, haha we went to a different floor after that but got let in again and taught another student. After a long exhausting day we headed back to prague where we got to work in our area for 2 hours and we found 2 new investigators, the Lord blessed us greatly for helping others.
Friday zone conference here went well after that we had to catch up on a lot of errands for President since he is going to Poland for a conference but it has been a great successful week. It is a great privilege to work with so many of the missionaries, the missionaries here come from so many backgrounds and are so strong and dedicated, we don't have a single bad missionary in the whole mission and it is great to learn from all of them since they all have different strengths and experiences.
Today we are going to play soccer with a bunch of afrikans we are in contact with and than we have some good meetings set up this evening with people that we are working with. My time as a missionary is starting to feel short so that means i need to work even harder so i have no regrets. i hope you all have a great week and i love you very much and am grateful for your support in all that i do
love
elder hatch
Saturday, February 20, 2010
Saturday, February 20th, 2010
Hello family
Well this week has probably been the most packed week of my life but has been very enjoyable and I had a lot of great experiences, I basically had no time to write in my journal so this will take that place as well. Last monday we were over at the other elders apartment making pancakes waiting for transfer fax when I got a call at about 9:30 from president asking me to be his assistant, I accepted and he told me i needed to arrive in Prague later that afternoon. Well I hurried home and packed all my bags (which was record time for me on packing usually it takes me forever) threw my bags in the car and we drove over to the baliarovi for me to say goodbye and then to the train where we hurried and parked ran with my bags and caught a train at 1:00 heading to prague. Elder Mittank (my companion now) and Elder Williams picked me up and drove me back to the building where we had a little chat and started preparing for the week.
Tuesday morning Elder Mittank and I with President and Sister Slovacek went to the airport to pick up the new missionaries it was a huge group 15 brand new missioanries, we brought them back to the building where we trained them in contacting, ate lunch with them, and took them out on the prague walk. It was a fun time showing these 15 missionaries the beauties of prague. 4 of them are slovak elders and wont ever see prague again so president wanted to make sure they got to see all of the beauties here because Elder Perry really emphasizes that. It definitely blew away the greenies since most of them had never been to Europe before, we had to be on our toes to make sure nobody got lost moving around a group that big. We took them to a place to contact for an hour after we showed them the city and it was great seeing all of these young missionaries nervous about the language step out of their comfort zone and contact people and they were able to see a lot of success. They were all super excited afterward about how great it is to be a missionary which was very refreshing to see the energy and faith of these young missionaries. We took them out for a czech dinner of svickova afterwards and had them home by six o clock to be in bed. we walked them everywhere to wear them out so they could go to sleep early and adjust to the time frame. After we talked all 15 of them into bed we went up to talk to president about the new missionaries and their personalities and characteristics to help him in the process of matching them up with their trainers. I got to meet a few of our investigators tonight real quick and then elder mittank and I had to come up with our training for the trainers who would be coming in the next day. Wednesday morning we got up bright and early to run over to the foreign police with the passports of all the new missionaries to register them in the country. We returned to the building where we had a 2 hour training with all of the trainers. The mission has gotten very young; of the 15 trainers only 2 of them had ever trained before but that went very well.
President called us into his office after that where he asked our opinions on who should be with who. I was surprised by how much he valued our input with the whole process and then we all knelt in prayer and I was asked to pray to see if what we had come up with was right and it was an incredible opportunity to feel the spirit. We matched the missionaries up with their trainers and got them all off to their new areas. At this time the dying missionaries started coming in for their final interview with president. That evening we had dinner with them and were able to take part in their final testimony meeting. 2 of my favorite companions elder roberts and elder nowland were in this group plus a lot of other missionaries who are worked around. It was a great honor to hear their powerful testimonies and see how much they had progressed on their missions and i was able to bear my testimony as well. We had so many missionaries going home we tried to rent a bus to take them all to the airport but it was too late so elder mittank and i woke up at 4 and took all the bags we could to the airport and left the office elders there to watch them while we came back to pick up the departing elders and take them to the airport in three different cars. Sister slovackova baked us cinnamon rolls as thanks for waking up so early which was a nice treat.
After we got them all off we came back and it was back to work, we had to plan leadership conference and then put our skills to use as body guards to go pick up 95,000 krowns in cash from the bank to pay insurance (for some reason people in this country only deal in cash) Yesterday we got up early and hopped in the van down to brno where we had leadership conference. One thing that I have improved on dramatically on my mission is in speaking in front of people, elder mittank and I were responsible for about 3 hours of training yesterday with minimal time to prepare but with a lot of help from the spirit it was a wonderful success.
Today we are having our p-day and something cool is that the plzen branch is coming up here for a baptism today and they are baptizing a guy I found when I was there so I'm happy I get to see that. Tomorrow I will get to see church and than we will be driving off to slovakia. It has been a great week, humbling at times but I was able to feel the support and help of the Spirit all week long. My companion elder mittank is from my mtc group so it is a blast serving with him. everybody have a great week I love you all and I hope to hear from more of you next week
love
elder hatch
Well this week has probably been the most packed week of my life but has been very enjoyable and I had a lot of great experiences, I basically had no time to write in my journal so this will take that place as well. Last monday we were over at the other elders apartment making pancakes waiting for transfer fax when I got a call at about 9:30 from president asking me to be his assistant, I accepted and he told me i needed to arrive in Prague later that afternoon. Well I hurried home and packed all my bags (which was record time for me on packing usually it takes me forever) threw my bags in the car and we drove over to the baliarovi for me to say goodbye and then to the train where we hurried and parked ran with my bags and caught a train at 1:00 heading to prague. Elder Mittank (my companion now) and Elder Williams picked me up and drove me back to the building where we had a little chat and started preparing for the week.
Tuesday morning Elder Mittank and I with President and Sister Slovacek went to the airport to pick up the new missionaries it was a huge group 15 brand new missioanries, we brought them back to the building where we trained them in contacting, ate lunch with them, and took them out on the prague walk. It was a fun time showing these 15 missionaries the beauties of prague. 4 of them are slovak elders and wont ever see prague again so president wanted to make sure they got to see all of the beauties here because Elder Perry really emphasizes that. It definitely blew away the greenies since most of them had never been to Europe before, we had to be on our toes to make sure nobody got lost moving around a group that big. We took them to a place to contact for an hour after we showed them the city and it was great seeing all of these young missionaries nervous about the language step out of their comfort zone and contact people and they were able to see a lot of success. They were all super excited afterward about how great it is to be a missionary which was very refreshing to see the energy and faith of these young missionaries. We took them out for a czech dinner of svickova afterwards and had them home by six o clock to be in bed. we walked them everywhere to wear them out so they could go to sleep early and adjust to the time frame. After we talked all 15 of them into bed we went up to talk to president about the new missionaries and their personalities and characteristics to help him in the process of matching them up with their trainers. I got to meet a few of our investigators tonight real quick and then elder mittank and I had to come up with our training for the trainers who would be coming in the next day. Wednesday morning we got up bright and early to run over to the foreign police with the passports of all the new missionaries to register them in the country. We returned to the building where we had a 2 hour training with all of the trainers. The mission has gotten very young; of the 15 trainers only 2 of them had ever trained before but that went very well.
President called us into his office after that where he asked our opinions on who should be with who. I was surprised by how much he valued our input with the whole process and then we all knelt in prayer and I was asked to pray to see if what we had come up with was right and it was an incredible opportunity to feel the spirit. We matched the missionaries up with their trainers and got them all off to their new areas. At this time the dying missionaries started coming in for their final interview with president. That evening we had dinner with them and were able to take part in their final testimony meeting. 2 of my favorite companions elder roberts and elder nowland were in this group plus a lot of other missionaries who are worked around. It was a great honor to hear their powerful testimonies and see how much they had progressed on their missions and i was able to bear my testimony as well. We had so many missionaries going home we tried to rent a bus to take them all to the airport but it was too late so elder mittank and i woke up at 4 and took all the bags we could to the airport and left the office elders there to watch them while we came back to pick up the departing elders and take them to the airport in three different cars. Sister slovackova baked us cinnamon rolls as thanks for waking up so early which was a nice treat.
After we got them all off we came back and it was back to work, we had to plan leadership conference and then put our skills to use as body guards to go pick up 95,000 krowns in cash from the bank to pay insurance (for some reason people in this country only deal in cash) Yesterday we got up early and hopped in the van down to brno where we had leadership conference. One thing that I have improved on dramatically on my mission is in speaking in front of people, elder mittank and I were responsible for about 3 hours of training yesterday with minimal time to prepare but with a lot of help from the spirit it was a wonderful success.
Today we are having our p-day and something cool is that the plzen branch is coming up here for a baptism today and they are baptizing a guy I found when I was there so I'm happy I get to see that. Tomorrow I will get to see church and than we will be driving off to slovakia. It has been a great week, humbling at times but I was able to feel the support and help of the Spirit all week long. My companion elder mittank is from my mtc group so it is a blast serving with him. everybody have a great week I love you all and I hope to hear from more of you next week
love
elder hatch
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