Monday June 6th, 2009

Hey family

It sounds like you all had a great week with your different adventures of Havasuipi, Colorado, life guarding and dentistry. It sounds like dad had a great birthday. I got the packages you sent thank you for that, the pink cookies are delicious, there is an awesome article in that church news you sent me about the senior couple who got sent to Turks and Caicos- that is crazy the amount of success they are having. And now I can up my morning workouts another notch with the new cord. Every night after nightly planning my companion and I have a pull up contest which pushes both of us.

We had a big 4th of July branch party on saturday which was a good time, we made hot dogs and pancakes and the Branch President cooked up a big pot of chili and it was a good time to mingle with members and investigators. We were a little worried that nobody might show up but we had 30 people there and everybody had a good time, we played jeopardy with questions about America. Sad to say but this geography bee winner is getting a little rusty on his American geography. For longest river in America I was like oh piece of cake mississippi but its missouri incase you didnt know. Must of had to get rid of that for there to be room for all the czech i am learning.

We taught vratislav about tithing and the 10 commandments and he is still excepting everything like a champ, the branch did a good job of including him in sunday school and making him feel welcome which was good.

So I don't know if i had said this earlier but there are quite a few older women in this branch and we go visit them for home teaching and they love to feed us and tell us all of their stories since they get pretty lonely sometimes. One of the women we visited this week was baptized in 1948 and was the first person baptized in plzen, she basically ran the branch during communism and translated for the first missionaries she is like 85 but speaks English perfectly.

There are university dorms at the same tram stop as us and there is this big music camp going on here for the summer, one day on the tram a group of 3 came up to us and asked us if we know english. It turns out they are from BYU and one of the guys roommates was my first roommate at BYU Blake the super tall viola player, so it is a pretty small world. They came to church on sunday and the branch loved having them there.

It was a little rough of a weekend for us, my companion recieved news saturday that his grandfather died and it was pretty rough on him. But he got up in church yesterday and bore a beautiful testimony about the plan of salvation and that he will see his grandfather again, it was very touching.

Congratulations Jenni and Mason on passing the Dental exam that is great. Safe travels to the beach everyone and i look forward to hearing from you next week. Thank you for all of your prayers and support on my behalf it is very appreciated. I love this work I am doing here and there is no better feeling than serving the Lord.

Love
Elder Hatch