Hello Family
I just got back from an exciting day in Prague, we had a zone vs zone turkey bowl today with Prague zone vs my zone Hradec Kralova and then afterwards we headed over to the Mission home for some kfc fried chicken and some pie provided by sister slovacek. It was a good time to catch up with all the different missionaries, have some fun and eat some good food. We lost 14=7 in the snow but it was still good. Liberec has gotten about 6 inches of snow in the last two days and it is still coming down slowly, it is a little difficult walking down steep icy cobblestone streets in dress shoes but i am starting to master that ability.
We had an awesome week here and were able to see some really cool things happen with the work here. The members in this branch are awesome we taught with every single member multiple times this last week they are always so willing to help us with the work.
Something amazing happened on tuesday, we had 4 meetings set up with investigators and we worked the phones and were able to set up to get a member to be at every single one but every single invistigator cancled on us which was very unusual since these were 4 of our most reliable so elder nowland and i were pretty discourage but we decided to keep on keepin on and went tracting instead. And it payed off we found a sweet family, we were in this pannalok and saw this massive double wide stroller sitting outside one of the doors we knocked on it and this guy came and answered and started talking to us, he apologised and said he couldnt invite us in because his wife was gone and his daughter was sick but he would stand and talk with us there so we were talking with him for a couple of minutes and then his wife showed up which we thought would end the contact because that is what usually happended but she went in dropped off her grocerys and than was like honey why dont you invite them in to talk? So we sat and talked with them they have a 4 year old daughter and 4 month old twins a boy and girl. I taught him about the BoM and showed him moroni's promise while she was changing diapers and than he called his wife over and started teaching her about the BoM how it goes along with the bible as another testament of Christ and than he asked me to find that verse again so she could read it. They are about 30 and he used to be a priest but than met his wife and decided he would much rather have a family. We are going to go visit them this week we were supposed to go again on friday but the wife got really sick and had to go to the hospital, it was just a really cool experience to see that the blessings come after the trials.
Lukas hasnt smoked a cigarette in over a week and now has a baptismal date for January 3rd, Zemon also has accepted the invitation to be baptized January 3rd he is the man, there was a huge snowstorm sunday morning and he was still at church 20 minutes early. The other lukas is still on for this saturday being baptized so we are being very blessed up here in liberec with the work.
Thursday i had to teach a lesson by myself which was quite the experience, we had a new investigator show up right after we found somebody on the street so i taught the one we just found for about 10 minutes and than a member came in and helped me but it was nice to see how far along my czech skills had come to where i could speak and teach. People say that the Czech Republic is the 3rd most atheist country in the world and the pope said it is the most abominable country in the world but we are finding plenty of prepared people to hear the good word. I hope everybody has a great week next week i will let you know if i am staying or going i personally think i am staying but we shall see what happens.
Love
Elder Hatch
Sunday, November 30, 2008
Monday before Thanksgiving Day P-day Activity
The missionaries of the Prague and Hradec Kralove zones got together on Thanksgiving and had a big football game. As you can see, they really got into it.
Jordan was on the Blue team. No word on who won the game.
Jordan is on the back row, in blue, closest to the red team
Jordan was on the Blue team. No word on who won the game.
Jordan is on the back row, in blue, closest to the red team
Monday, November 24, 2008
More Pictures from Liberec, Czech Republic
The Liberec District Missionaries
The view out of Jordan's apartment window on a snowy afternoon
The view looking out the window the other direction
Here are some pictures of the inside of Jordans Apartment in Liberec.
Tiny Washing machine that sits right next to the shower/tub.
Main room/family room/bedroom combo
The Kitchen
Another view of the Bathroom and shower
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Pictures from Jordan's companion Elder Nowland
The Liberic missionaries on a P-day activity
A castle that the district visited on their p-day
The 4 missionaries of the Liberic District.
Elder Hatch and Elder Nowland
Jordan cooking up a storm in the kitchen of his apartment
Monday, November 17, 2008
November 17th, 2008
Hello family,
It has been another exciting and busy week here in liberec, we will start off with some good news. We have been working with this guy named lukas he is 23 and from slovakia and last thursday we gave him a baptismal date which was awesome. The date is for the 29th of november which is really quick but he is a very nice guy and wanting to work to it and change his life around. We taught him the law of chastity on saturday night which is always one of the if not toughest commitment to have them except. He knew it was a good thing to do and after some talking he accepted it which was sweet. we went and picked him up and walked him to church yesterday morning. it turns out he lives like 150 yards away from us which is very convenient.
We are working with another man named lukas who showed up to church out of nowhere i guess he used to be an investigator along time ago but couldnt quit smoking and he asked us if we could help him stop smoking and teach him the gospel and of course we were more than willing to agree. We have a program called the stop smoking program it has 15 steps i think missionaries everywhere have it and we started it with him and he is doing awesome. we started it 3 days ago and he hasnt smoked. we call him every 3-4 hours to check in and give him support he is so excited and happy about it which is awesome. He smoked quite a bit after an hour of not smoking his hands were shaking like crazy but he followed all the steps and is good.
Then we have this man named zemon who we found, he is like a 35 year old blue collar worker very rugged and reserved. So we taught him and gave him a book of mormon he showed up to our next meeting 3 days later and was at alma 7 he said he came home from a hard day of work at the factory sat down and started reading and he just got some much peace and it cleared his thoughts that he kept on reading. He came to church yesterday and i sat next with him, he is very quiet but really loved singing and he told me church was perfect. one of the talks was on the word of wisdom and when the speaker ended he gave a big amen which was cool to hear.
We went tracting this week and got let in by these two men from uzbekistan who were very nice they told us their story they were working with this company and it was rivaling a state owned company so uzbekistan took it over and through all the leaders in prison but these two men were able to escape and now they are working here sending money home to support the families of the men in prison. They are muslim and pretty much tried to convert us but we gave them a book of mormon and they gave us a koran so we called it even.
Now for some bad news, Jvan has to leave the country in 20 days. When he was in moldova he signed up for this program to come work here and pretty much it is ran by these shady guys who get people to come work here and they provide a flat and have hook ups for jobs but then take like half of their paycheck so they barely have enough money and then charge them 7000 krowns for visa work which costs less then a 1000. Well these guys decided to really rip off jvan and took the 7000 krowns but didnt do the visa work so his visa expired and the police stopped him and detained him last night.
we just talked with him this morning, he is banned from the czech repulic for a year so he has to go home to modolva and he said he might go work in ukraine. We talked with him a little bit about the perpetual education fund and are gonna have a meeting with him and our branch president before he leaves so we can make sure he gets in contact with the church for help wherever he goes, he was pretty upset about what happened hopefully everything works out well with him.
Things are going well here with the work i am loving it, we had some snow flurries this morning, its not that cold when its calm but usually its pretty windy and the wind is what gets you but we are staying warm. It sounds like everything is going well at home which is a good to hear. Transfers are coming up in 2 1/2 weeks so dont send any mail here until i found out if im leaving because there is a pretty good chance i might leave. I hope everybody has a good week with work and school, remember to choose the right.
Love
Jordan
It has been another exciting and busy week here in liberec, we will start off with some good news. We have been working with this guy named lukas he is 23 and from slovakia and last thursday we gave him a baptismal date which was awesome. The date is for the 29th of november which is really quick but he is a very nice guy and wanting to work to it and change his life around. We taught him the law of chastity on saturday night which is always one of the if not toughest commitment to have them except. He knew it was a good thing to do and after some talking he accepted it which was sweet. we went and picked him up and walked him to church yesterday morning. it turns out he lives like 150 yards away from us which is very convenient.
We are working with another man named lukas who showed up to church out of nowhere i guess he used to be an investigator along time ago but couldnt quit smoking and he asked us if we could help him stop smoking and teach him the gospel and of course we were more than willing to agree. We have a program called the stop smoking program it has 15 steps i think missionaries everywhere have it and we started it with him and he is doing awesome. we started it 3 days ago and he hasnt smoked. we call him every 3-4 hours to check in and give him support he is so excited and happy about it which is awesome. He smoked quite a bit after an hour of not smoking his hands were shaking like crazy but he followed all the steps and is good.
Then we have this man named zemon who we found, he is like a 35 year old blue collar worker very rugged and reserved. So we taught him and gave him a book of mormon he showed up to our next meeting 3 days later and was at alma 7 he said he came home from a hard day of work at the factory sat down and started reading and he just got some much peace and it cleared his thoughts that he kept on reading. He came to church yesterday and i sat next with him, he is very quiet but really loved singing and he told me church was perfect. one of the talks was on the word of wisdom and when the speaker ended he gave a big amen which was cool to hear.
We went tracting this week and got let in by these two men from uzbekistan who were very nice they told us their story they were working with this company and it was rivaling a state owned company so uzbekistan took it over and through all the leaders in prison but these two men were able to escape and now they are working here sending money home to support the families of the men in prison. They are muslim and pretty much tried to convert us but we gave them a book of mormon and they gave us a koran so we called it even.
Now for some bad news, Jvan has to leave the country in 20 days. When he was in moldova he signed up for this program to come work here and pretty much it is ran by these shady guys who get people to come work here and they provide a flat and have hook ups for jobs but then take like half of their paycheck so they barely have enough money and then charge them 7000 krowns for visa work which costs less then a 1000. Well these guys decided to really rip off jvan and took the 7000 krowns but didnt do the visa work so his visa expired and the police stopped him and detained him last night.
we just talked with him this morning, he is banned from the czech repulic for a year so he has to go home to modolva and he said he might go work in ukraine. We talked with him a little bit about the perpetual education fund and are gonna have a meeting with him and our branch president before he leaves so we can make sure he gets in contact with the church for help wherever he goes, he was pretty upset about what happened hopefully everything works out well with him.
Things are going well here with the work i am loving it, we had some snow flurries this morning, its not that cold when its calm but usually its pretty windy and the wind is what gets you but we are staying warm. It sounds like everything is going well at home which is a good to hear. Transfers are coming up in 2 1/2 weeks so dont send any mail here until i found out if im leaving because there is a pretty good chance i might leave. I hope everybody has a good week with work and school, remember to choose the right.
Love
Jordan
Monday, November 10, 2008
November 10th, 2008
Hey everybody
We had some good success this week with the work here in Liberec. Tuesday our zone leaders came into town for exchanges with us, we have dual zone leaders who both are awesome Elder Larson from California and Elder Mack from Kansas, so while one is with my comp training and working with him i get to go with the other zone leader which is a good experience for me i get to learn a lot from them. I had my first experience with success with tracting which was sweet. People are very private with their homes and apartments here and dont like letting you in but Elder Mack and i went to a building we got invited into two apartments to sit and share our message with them which was awesome since nobody has ever let us into their place from tracting before.
Wednseday we had another street display here with more singing which was really good helping us get more people to teach. This one guy we found invited us over for dinner sunday afternoon so we went over there basically he just wanted to show us all of his pictures from all of the trips he has taken to america he showed me a ton of tuscon it was like his favorite city which surprised me since tuscon isnt anything fancy and there idea of feeding us dinner was feeding us cake pie pastries and ice cream so i guess it was a dessert themed dinner but it was all good.
Today we just got back from visiting a castle called bezdez which was pretty sweet its the ruins of this old castle from the 1200's i think up on top of this little mountain it was a fun time as a district to go visit someplace together its always an adventure getting the transportation worked out and making the transitions between trains. This time we got off the train at this little stop we could see the castle off in the distance but no road so we just started walking towards it and eventually we found a road it was good exercise for us though the sign said 5 kilometers.
The Czech Republic is mostly countryside they have really dense cities and then lots and lots of forest and open area which is sweet to see from the trains and buses and not something i really expected before i got here. We are talking with one of our investigators about baptism he said he wants to do it but is scared he wont be able to live up to the commitments afterwards so we are working with that. he is 23 and from slovakia and the other elders are working towards baptism with a 21 year old guy so we are finding some good young guys here for the branch which is sweet.
You would be proud of my eating habits i cook with orange, yellow and white peppers now and i actually like them one thing i definetly still dont like is tomatoes. People here like to give you toast with a bunch of sliced tomoetos or a plate of tomatoe wedges so i have learned to swallow them down quickly without grimacing but it is pretty tough but maybe by the end of my mission i will be used to it and like tomatoes who knows.
It sounds like state went really well for Ian and Alyssa way to go guys all your hard work paid off. I hope everybody has a good week thanks for all of the love and support.
Love
Elder Hatch
We had some good success this week with the work here in Liberec. Tuesday our zone leaders came into town for exchanges with us, we have dual zone leaders who both are awesome Elder Larson from California and Elder Mack from Kansas, so while one is with my comp training and working with him i get to go with the other zone leader which is a good experience for me i get to learn a lot from them. I had my first experience with success with tracting which was sweet. People are very private with their homes and apartments here and dont like letting you in but Elder Mack and i went to a building we got invited into two apartments to sit and share our message with them which was awesome since nobody has ever let us into their place from tracting before.
Wednseday we had another street display here with more singing which was really good helping us get more people to teach. This one guy we found invited us over for dinner sunday afternoon so we went over there basically he just wanted to show us all of his pictures from all of the trips he has taken to america he showed me a ton of tuscon it was like his favorite city which surprised me since tuscon isnt anything fancy and there idea of feeding us dinner was feeding us cake pie pastries and ice cream so i guess it was a dessert themed dinner but it was all good.
Today we just got back from visiting a castle called bezdez which was pretty sweet its the ruins of this old castle from the 1200's i think up on top of this little mountain it was a fun time as a district to go visit someplace together its always an adventure getting the transportation worked out and making the transitions between trains. This time we got off the train at this little stop we could see the castle off in the distance but no road so we just started walking towards it and eventually we found a road it was good exercise for us though the sign said 5 kilometers.
The Czech Republic is mostly countryside they have really dense cities and then lots and lots of forest and open area which is sweet to see from the trains and buses and not something i really expected before i got here. We are talking with one of our investigators about baptism he said he wants to do it but is scared he wont be able to live up to the commitments afterwards so we are working with that. he is 23 and from slovakia and the other elders are working towards baptism with a 21 year old guy so we are finding some good young guys here for the branch which is sweet.
You would be proud of my eating habits i cook with orange, yellow and white peppers now and i actually like them one thing i definetly still dont like is tomatoes. People here like to give you toast with a bunch of sliced tomoetos or a plate of tomatoe wedges so i have learned to swallow them down quickly without grimacing but it is pretty tough but maybe by the end of my mission i will be used to it and like tomatoes who knows.
It sounds like state went really well for Ian and Alyssa way to go guys all your hard work paid off. I hope everybody has a good week thanks for all of the love and support.
Love
Elder Hatch
Monday, November 3, 2008
November 3rd, 2008
Hello guys. I'm glad everybody had a good week with swim regionals, stake conference, dental school and getting into nursing school. This week we put a lot of time into finding and we have found some cool new people to work with which i am excited about.
We met with Jvan twice this week to review some stuff with him we keep on finding out more and more about him. This last monday we were talking with him and he was telling us how his brother back in moldova just got his mission call and that he was going to serve in his own country he was pretty excited about that and we didnt even know his brother was putting in his mission papers. He doesn't have a camera so we printed off some of the baptism pictures we took and gave them to him and he carries them around in his scripture case but he definitely exaggerates the help we gave him- he basically prepared himself for baptism we were just kind of there for the ride but it was a pretty good ride i must say.
On wednseday we went to Jicin which is a city in our zone where there are two sister missionaries and had a zone flood there kind of like how we had in liberec last transfer we had a group of us singing in the town square. it was fun, it was raining all day but we still had some good success finding new people for the sisters and it was interesting to see another city. it was a pretty small city very quaint and beautiful and it was good to associate with the other missionaries in the zone.
Last week we received a referral to place a book of mormon to a guy who had visited the st george vistors center and wanted the missionaries to come so we looked up on our map where this place was and it is way up in the mountains in this little village called rudolfov so we went and checked the bus times and the bus goes there like 5 times a day so we picked a day where we had nothing going on and hopped on a bus to rudolfov it was raining pretty bad and the houses were spread out all over the mountain so we were trying to find this address we asked a woman how the address system works and she was like i have no idea i think the number the houses from oldest to newest which i dont think is the brightest idea of numbering so we spent two hours up there trying to find this house in the rain which was actually pretty fun and good for comp bonding. come to find out this house was destroyed like 5 months ago and they are rebuilding it so we are guessing the referral got lost in the system for a little while.
The weather has warmed up here and is pretty nice the work is going well and i am a happy camper so it is a pretty good combination for me. Way to go on your 50 free time Ian that is way faster then my best you would of kicked my trashed and that is awesome with your backstroke alyssa i am proud of both of you guys good luck at state this next week. Sounds like nick is doing good tell him i said hi and can you send his address to me? I hope everybody has a good week.
Love,
Elder Hatch
We met with Jvan twice this week to review some stuff with him we keep on finding out more and more about him. This last monday we were talking with him and he was telling us how his brother back in moldova just got his mission call and that he was going to serve in his own country he was pretty excited about that and we didnt even know his brother was putting in his mission papers. He doesn't have a camera so we printed off some of the baptism pictures we took and gave them to him and he carries them around in his scripture case but he definitely exaggerates the help we gave him- he basically prepared himself for baptism we were just kind of there for the ride but it was a pretty good ride i must say.
On wednseday we went to Jicin which is a city in our zone where there are two sister missionaries and had a zone flood there kind of like how we had in liberec last transfer we had a group of us singing in the town square. it was fun, it was raining all day but we still had some good success finding new people for the sisters and it was interesting to see another city. it was a pretty small city very quaint and beautiful and it was good to associate with the other missionaries in the zone.
Last week we received a referral to place a book of mormon to a guy who had visited the st george vistors center and wanted the missionaries to come so we looked up on our map where this place was and it is way up in the mountains in this little village called rudolfov so we went and checked the bus times and the bus goes there like 5 times a day so we picked a day where we had nothing going on and hopped on a bus to rudolfov it was raining pretty bad and the houses were spread out all over the mountain so we were trying to find this address we asked a woman how the address system works and she was like i have no idea i think the number the houses from oldest to newest which i dont think is the brightest idea of numbering so we spent two hours up there trying to find this house in the rain which was actually pretty fun and good for comp bonding. come to find out this house was destroyed like 5 months ago and they are rebuilding it so we are guessing the referral got lost in the system for a little while.
The weather has warmed up here and is pretty nice the work is going well and i am a happy camper so it is a pretty good combination for me. Way to go on your 50 free time Ian that is way faster then my best you would of kicked my trashed and that is awesome with your backstroke alyssa i am proud of both of you guys good luck at state this next week. Sounds like nick is doing good tell him i said hi and can you send his address to me? I hope everybody has a good week.
Love,
Elder Hatch
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