Monday June 29th, 2009

hello family.

well i just wrote a super long email and lost it for the first time on my mission because the computer froze up which i am pretty upset about but i will try and rewrite everything quickly.

So we just got back from Prague where we were renewing visa work, it used to be a big hassle for visa work you would have to be in line at 2 in the morning and fight with the Ukrainian mafia for spots in the line and then you were there until 4 in the afternoon, but about 3 months ago they changed it so Americans are away from the Ukrainians so now we just went in at 10 in the morning and then we were done an hour later so we lost the adventure but gained the sleep. We had to do the visa work because next month my group will have been in the country for a year which is pretty crazy, it was cool to see my whole MTC group all at once again though it is great to see how we have all grown.

So this last Monday we had zone conference which is always a strong spiritual boost being around the other missionaries and President Slovacek. So we took that spiritual boost with us out onto the streets of Plzen right afterwords and found a sweet 19 year old electrical engineer. We talked with him about the purpose of life and than sat down with him on a bench to talk about the Book of Mormon, we gave him a BOM and recommended Alma 40-42 because he was interested in what happens after death. So at our next meeting on Wednesday he was like well i know the BOM is true, i was like wow how do you know that and he starts talking about how it says in there that for God time doesn't exist and that Einstein discovered some time thing that says the same thing (it is pretty difficult to follow Einsteins time theory in czech by the way) but that the BOM was translated 100 years before Einstein discovered that so the only way the Nephites could of gotten that knowledge is from God. We then shared the Joseph smith story with him and he agreed with it, he left out of town the next day for a week but he sent us a text on friday that he has been talking to his girlfriend about the BOM and now she is interested and wants her own copy.

Other good news is we have another baptismal date her name is veronika and she was at church for the 2nd time yesterday. And it turns out that she and the branch presidents wife were best friends in elementary school and junior high (the branch president was out of town the first time she was there) so there is an automatic member friend. One of the hardest things about the missionary work here I would say is finding a good member friend for our investigators and than lining their schedules up so we can meet with them.

Vratislav was at church as well so that made for a successful week having both of our baptismal dates there. A good experience that taught me a lesson I had last night. We were walking home for the night from our tramstop and it was getting later and I had to do call ins, and we saw this old guy sitting on a bench and I had a thought that I should contact him but I kind of fought it because I hate talking to old guys, they are so stubborn and just want to tell you how you know nothing because you are young and haven't experienced life. But I have been talking a lot about going the extra mile in district meeting so I was like well guess I better not be a hypocrite and I started talking to him. It turns out he is really religious which is unusual for a czech guy he has 16 different bibles and we introduced the Book of Mormon to him. It started pouring at that point so we set up a lesson for tonight to teach him more. So just another lesson of go the extra mile and follow those little promptings.

Sad news vojta didn't get baptized, a couple days before the baptism his parents withdrew their consent to be baptize and since he is 17 he needs that, so now they need to get their consent again. Well that is about all for this week i love you and i am glad Alyssa enjoyed EFY and that Ian enjoyed the economics camp for leaders i had that same leader and that is great a professor was from liberec. Have a good birthday on Sunday dad you will have something coming in the mail but it may be a little late.

Love
Elder Hatch