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