Week 38 Happy Easter From Woodland

March 28, 2016 Family, Well Happy Easter everyone! I hope you all had a wonderful Easter Sunday and go to relax a little bit. I love holidays but hate them on the mission, because nobody is home and wants visits. But it is a good time to calm down and focus on the Savior, which is what we all need in our life. This week was a pretty good week. It went by a little slow but it is nearing the end of the transfer so that is to be expected. On a normal transfer cycle we would be done tomorrow but with the 7 weeks we still have another one left. It went pretty well though. Monday was a pretty good day. We saw our investigator and her husband that night, and had a good lesson with them. They have been struggling lately but hopefully they will do better. Tuesday was a pretty slow day. We had a lot of finding and everything we had fell through, so that was pretty disappointing. Wednesday was kind of crazy. We had a lesson with an investigator that morning and he told us some pretty crazy stuff. I can’t say what, but it sufficeth me to say that we ended up calling President and asking for advice on what to do. Luckily it worked itself out though, and our investigator told us a few days later that he had fasted about the situation on his own, without us even asking him to or anything. So that was cool. Later on Wednesday we had service in Davis called "Graffiti Abatement" where we walk around downtown Davis, which is a really weird place. I will send a picture that will just describe Davis worth a thousand words. It’s so strange, full of Asians and people on bikes. For some reason Asians love going to UC Davis. I can’t figure it out, but they are everywhere there. That night pretty much all of our appointments cancelled as well, so that was great too. Thursday we helped a member move some of his stuff out of his apartment, because he is moving later this month, we then found out the 12 year old girl we were teaching moved back to Sacramento. She hasn’t come to church the past few weeks anyways cause her other grandma found out she was coming and liking it so she stopped letting her go. We think that is why she moved as well. So that was great. Pretty disappointing. That night we saw a recent convert and did a new member lesson with her. Friday we saw our investigator that we saw on Wednesday and he told us how he fasted and things have been getting better. Things are really looking good for him. We did our weekly planning that day then had a lesson with the sisters with a family that we are both teaching. We hadn't seen them in forever either so it was great to see how they are progressing. Saturday was a good day. We had a ward Easter picnic that morning and one member had an egg launcher and I helped hold it for people to launch them. They went around 100 yards probably. It was so funny. That afternoon the sisters had a blitz for their area, which happens to be the same area as ours, just Spanish. So me and Elder Angulo, one of my favorite Elders that lives with me, were able to have an amazing street lesson with this guy. We don’t think it will go anywhere but we were able to teach him a lot of stuff and gave him a Book of Mormon and gave him the challenge and told him about general conference, which he seemed pretty interested in. It was really cool. That night we had two awesome lessons. Back to back, with 2 part member families. One in which the wife is super close to baptism. I think if me and Elder Taylor stay she will get baptized, but who knows. The other was one where the husband is super open and he told us that everything makes sense doctrinally so far, and that once he reads the Book of Mormon and knows it’s true he said he would be baptized. And he is pretty sincere so we know that as soon as he reads it he is going to love it and want to be baptized. So that was a really awesome night. Saturday was an awesome day. Sunday was good too. Although none of our investigators came to church except one, it was Easter so it was kind of expected. But it was good services and the likes. We had a good dinner that night. And yes mom, they have funeral potatoes here too, just without the corn flakes or whatever so it’s like cheesy potatoes too. But we were all wondering at the dinner whether funeral potatoes were just a Utah thing or a Mormon thing too. I guess a Mormon thing. That night we had another good lesson with the family we are teaching with the sisters. It was a good week. We went out to Knights landing on Sunday and talked to this black preacher guy about Easter and Jesus. It was so sweet. Pastor James haha. I am really excited for GC!!! It is such a good time of year and especially for missionaries. A little weird that it’s my second one on the mission already and that my 9 months is rapidly approaching... so strange! But, I know that I need to really cherish the time I have left, because I know it’s not much. Thanks for everything and Happy Easter! Love, Elder Hatch

New Little Ones

Well it took me all day but I am finally caught up with the emails. He is doing great and loves serving in California. Thanks to all who follow him and ask about his experiences. Time is really going by so fast. He is going to be an uncle to two new little ones when he gets home. So exciting. He will get to see both of them when he calls in December. So excited for our family to celebrate new life.

Week 37 Happy St. Patrick's Day

March 21, 2016 Hello Family, Well it was a pretty good week here. One thing, somebody sent me a potato in the mail in a package. Some website called Anonymous Potato or something and on the potato was written "Here comes the meat wagon, wee-oo wee-oo" so that was pretty weird. It was hilarious though. All of us in the apartment thought it was funny. Also I don't know if I said this or not, but thanks for all the birthday wishes! I appreciate it, and it’s weird to be 19 now. It’s weird that I’ll be 20 when I go home. That’s so strange. Anyways, this week wasn’t too bad. Monday we had our usual lesson with our investigator cancel, and so that sucks. She is struggling with her parents still and her husband (a less active) isn’t doing too hot either. We are pretty worried about them, we haven't seen them in over a week and they didn’t come to church. But hopefully we will go there tonight though. Tuesday we had our district meeting which went well. We had a lesson with Sean and he is doing pretty well. He told us that he is probably getting another place and so is his girlfriend, so that will be good for him to be keeping the Law of Chastity now. We are excited about that. That night we had splits as usual and those went pretty well. There is a member of the ward I go on splits with a lot so we get along good and get good work done. Wednesday we had interviews with President Wright, and that was great. I always love to see him. He and Sister Wright are seriously just the best. I love them so much. I am so grateful to have them as my mission president and wife. I can’t imagine someone better fit for the job. They are great. Their son just got his mission call so that is cool too. We then started exchanges and I went with Elder Tripp, from Draper. He went to the same school as Zach Scott for high school and is dating a girl that goes to Cottonwood so we have some good connections back home. So that is pretty cool. We had a good lesson with DeShayla, although she still can’t be baptized. But we challenged her to have more faith as she asks her mom if she can be baptized again. We aren’t sure if she totally gets it though. We also saw a less active that night and hopefully we will be teaching his nephew soon. We went on splits with the Ward Mission Leader, Brother Chandler and that was great. He is an awesome guy too. Thursday we did some finding in the morning, then went and did service at a hoarder house in Davis again. That place is sooooo nasty. It’s just packed to the brim with stuff, and this guy wants us to like "organize" his garbage. We end up just throwing most of it out. We then exchanged back and had a new member lesson with a RC at Brother Chandler’s house. Friday we had another lesson with Sean, and that went well. We then had our weekly planning session, which is getting better and better as the transfer goes on. That night it sucked, we had like 2 lessons cancel. But, we had a really cool experience with prayer. So, both of those lessons cancelled, so pretty much we had no idea what to do with the last hour and a half or so of the night. So we decided to say a prayer, because we had no idea where we needed to be, but we figured it was somewhere important because both lessons we had planned for that night were really solid and important. So we say a prayer and it comes to our mind that there was a lady that Elder Taylor and Brother Dennis found on splits that is a less active member that said she wants us to teach her husband. So, we remembered that, and we decided to go over at like 8:20, which we never just drop by unannounced at that hour. So we decided to go over, and they were there! And available! They said that that day was perfect, any other Friday and they wouldn’t have been available, because he is in the police academy and is super busy always except weekends. So that’s perfect that they can have lessons and come to church on the weekends. So we knew that we had been led there that night, and that we were supposed to go over there. We taught about the Book of Mormon and he is super willing to learn. It’s awesome. That really strengthened my testimony on the power of prayer. It was amazing to see the hand of the Lord making that happen that night, and while we were disappointed about our other lessons cancelling, we knew that that home was where we were supposed to be. We knew that it was the lord that made the other lessons cancel, because we never would have gotten there if it weren’t for that. Oh, that night we also found this awesome free public parking lot that nobody knows about, so we were pumped about that. We even took a picture because we were so happy. Also that night I think was the High Priests St. Patrick ’s Day party. And Brother Dennis is the HPGL so he went all out since he went on his mission to Ireland. I think Sister Dennis is sending some pictures to you guys from that night. Saturday we did a big service thing in winters as a zone. That lasted most of the morning and was pretty fun. That day, we did some finding and a lot of our stuff cancel as well. We ended up doing more finding that night and that’s pretty much what we did all day. Sunday was a good day. Unfortunately we only had one of our investigators at church, so that sucked, but we had 2 lessons and they were both really good. We had one with a former member, and another with the part member family that we found on Friday. We taught the restoration and it made sense to him and he just soaked everything up. That was a good night. Otherwise, that is pretty much it. I am pretty bummed about the Utes losing, but oh well I guess. I still love them. I’m just worried about next year without Poeltl. Thanks for everything everyone. As far as spiritual thoughts I found a talk this week called "When Thou Art Converted" by President S. Dilworth Young. It is really good and cool to see how he uses the story of Peter in the talk. I love Peter too so that made it even better. Also watch the new Easter video!FollowHim.mormon.org Love, Elder Hatch

Week 36 Stake Conference and a New Stake Presdency

March 14, 2015 Mi Familia, I thought I would start out in Spanish today, no idea why. Actually probably because I forgot to tell yall that I try to contact people in Spanish sometimes. Haha I suck at it but it’s pretty fun. My Spanish isn't too bad from what it was at the beginning of my mission. Living with a bunch of Spanish elders probably helps out a little. Anyways, this week was pretty good. It was a pretty average week with some cool stuff, and some pretty bad disappointments. So Monday we had a co-lesson with the Hermanas in Woodland. It was really cool, they are teaching this Hispanic family(they all speak fluent English) and the Hermanas cover our same area, just Spanish, so they have been teaching this family every night for like 3 weeks, and they finally asked us to come over and help, cause they can’t go every night. So we are going over like 2-3 times a week to help them teach, and Monday night was the first time. So this family knows like nothing, so the Hermanas have done good work already, but we co-taught them Faith and Repentance, and they loved it! This family is so into the Book of Mormon and they really just want to change, and it was such a spiritual lesson. Super cool. We then had a lesson with our Vietnamese investigator and she is still having problems with her parents letting her be baptized. Even though she is married and old enough, it’s still a huge part of that culture, so she is struggling with that. Tuesday was a pretty good day. District meeting went well, and I’m just glad I don’t have to conduct/teach them. That night we had dinner with a really cool/funny family and we had productive splits. No lessons but we found a bunch of people on a list that bishop gave us. Wednesday was a good day. We had a lesson with Sean, our investigator. He is doing alright. Still struggling with the WOW. We also had a lesson with DeShayla, our investigator that can’t be baptized because her parents won’t let her. That went alright as well. She is young so she was super distracted by her tablet. That night we saw the family we saw on Monday again. We had a good little lesson with them as well. Thursday we went to Davis for zone service, which is always fun. That night we had splits, and we had an awesome unplanned lesson with a former investigator whose husband is a member, and her mother in law is too, and she lives with both, so we went there with a member, and there were already 2 members from the other ward visiting her too! So it was really awesome, it was a neat experience for sure. We are hoping to continue to teach her. She is soooooo close to being there, but she has felt a lot of pressure in the past so we are going to take it easy with her. We then saw the family that the sisters want us to see again and had another cool little lesson there. Friday we saw Sean again. We had a member there with us that Sean loves so that helped out a lot. After that we had weekly planning. And that’s where the day started to suck. We got a text from our investigator that we had that SUPER solid lesson with last Friday and set a baptismal date with her, she texted us and told us that she doesn’t want to meet anymore and isn’t going to be baptized. So we were just in bad moods the rest of the day about that. Like, it is just so sad to see. She was so awesome, prepared, you name it, but she decided not to go through. And it sucks, because we KNOW she felt the spirit and knows it is true, and she is still choosing to go away from it. So sad. But that night we had a lesson with an RC and it went well. The WML was there for it and he is such a loving great guy. So awesome. I am going to miss the people in this ward when I have to leave. Saturday we went up to Knights Landing. We were able to see one of our investigators up there. He is a frustrating guy. He knows what he needs to do, and knows what it feels like to live the gospel, and he wants it back in his life(former member) but he just won’t make the steps for whatever reason. And he doesn’t even know why. It’s so frustrating, but we were able to see him which was good. That night was adult session of Stake Conference. We had 2 seventies at our stake conference due to us getting a new stake president. It was elders Falabella and Auna (the second guy is he is Hawaiian. We were able to sit by our investigator and her member husband that I talked about in the Thursday paragraph, so that was good. It was funny, President and Sister Wright were there, and during the rest hymn when I was standing up I made eye contact with both of them, and I was standing pretty far back, but it was just funny cause they said that they saw me sticking up above the crowd and couldn’t help but laugh. It was pretty funny. Sunday was a pretty cool day too, because of Stake Conference. We had the Stake Presidency rearranged, and the 2nd counselor is now the Stake President!(totally called it) What’s cool about it is, that his sister and her family are the cool family in my ward that we ate with on Tuesday(refer to the Tuesday paragraph) and so after he was set apart, he was able to confer the Melchizedek Priesthood on his nephew, and there were two seventies in the circle for that. We are pretty close with this family and go over a lot because they are cool and the dad isn’t a member so they want blessings sometimes, and also so we can see the dad even though he smokes like a chimney. He is a really funny and great guy though. So since we know them Alex, the nephew, invited us to be there for the ordination. We weren’t in the circle but it was cool to be there for that blessing since his uncle is the new stake president and there were 2 seventies in the circle. So that was really neat. Our old stake president is going to be a mission president in Brazil. He is only like mid 40's so look out for him to be an apostle in like 20-25 years. President Cuvelier. That night was topped off cause we had dinner with the Dennis'. SO that was great. So all in all it was a pretty good week. Not the best, but not the worst. I am pretty pumped to hear about Utah being a 3 seed in March Madness! That’s sweet! I hope they do well. I’m totally picking them to go all the way. Mostly since I am super out of the loop on college sports, and you never know. It’s not that unprecedented for a 3 seed to win the whole thing. Anyways thanks everyone for all that you do! Remember to always be missionaries and ask your local missionaries for some #Hallelujah cards, or go to FollowHim.mormon.org to see the new Easter video. You can share it on facebook too! You never know who might need that message. Love, Elder Hatch

Week 35 Happy Birthday Elder Hatch

March 7, 2016 Family, Well, it was a pretty dang good week here in Woodland. We got a lot done and saw some pretty cool stuff too. So on Monday we had a lesson with our recent convert, but right before that we thought we should go and try to see a church headquarters referral that we have been trying to see for a long time now, and we ended up having a sweet door lesson with him and he is really interested. Unfortunately we couldn't set up a time to see him this week but we will see him this coming week for sure. Tuesday we had our district meeting, and that was good as well. We then had a lesson with our progressing investigator Sean, which went well. He is a great guy. We had a new member lesson with a recent convert that night and had a quick stop by our other progressing investigator. Wednesday we went down to Winters and Angie Hand and the Le Brett's came and took me and Julander (and our companions) to lunch. It was really good to see them again. We then came back and had a lesson with DeShayla, who can't be baptized but we are going to teach her anyways. We then saw a member that night and did some member finding for the rest of the night. Thursday we went to Davis and did mulching, and we saw a potential investigator and he said that he would come go church! He isn't really interested in joining but he wants to learn, so sometimes that's how it starts. He didn't come this week, but he said that he wanted to come next week. We then saw our progressing investigator and she is doing well also. She is still struggling to set a baptismal date by we are working with her. So Friday was the best. First off, it was my birthday, so the other elders that live with us had one of the Hermanas make a cheesecake for my birthday, and they woke me up and sang to me and stuff with the cheesecake on my desk. It was pretty funny. So for lunch went to Panda Express and Flinders(my son, who happens to be serving in the other woodland ward) bought my lunch for me. So that was nice. We then had an awesome lesson with Sean, our progressing investigator and we had a member come with us. So that was sweet. We then did weekly planning and it was really good, really effective, we made some solid plans for the week. After that, we went and had dinner at our recent converts’ house and she made us fried chicken which was delicious, and some sort of southern thing where you take mackerels and cut them up and basically fry them or something, apparently they are called croquettes or something like that. Pretty nasty but it's all good. She got some cake and ice team for us as well. So when we were at her house, her neighbor that came to church last week came over for a second, and she ended up staying in Lianas front room and we had an unplanned lesson with her. And it was the best lesson I have had on my mission to this point. The spirit was incredibly strong and she opened up so much and we taught the whole restoration, and we committed her to baptism for March 26th! So we are really excited about that and are hoping that she will continue to progress. Plus she has 3 kids and she wants them to learn too so we will hopefully teach them too this week. So that was the best birthday present ever, an amazing unplanned lesson with the coolest investigator. It was probably one of if not my best birthday. So Saturday we talked to a self-proclaimed inactive member, and that was good, but he still isn't coming to church. But turns out he is a Utah fan so we talked about that for a little bit. It's rare to find one of those out here. We had a lesson planned for that afternoon but it fell through, so we did finding most of the day, and it rained ALL day. Like nonstop and it was pouring. And it was super, super windy all day too, like I haven't seen that kind of a storm since I have been here. That night we went and saw a non-member whose whole family is members but he is super stubborn but he loves the missionaries so we talked with him for a bit. He has all kinds of guns that he shows us when we go over. We also picked up a new investigator that night too, it's a woman who was almost baptized but wasn't because she has a few minor concerns but she says she wants to get baptized and her husband and in laws are members, and I think they are in our ward. So we will see how that goes as well. It looks pretty promising. Sunday we had church, and the woman we had that awesome lesson with came again! So we were happy. We had a lesson with a guy out in Knights landing so that was fun too, and we thought we were going to have a lesson with another new instigator but he wasn't there either, so that is unfortunate. But we will keep trying with him. Anyways it was an extremely awesome week. We saw a lot of cool miracles and were able to notice the spirit a lot in everything we were doing. So it was a really good week. It's been amazing to see, since Elder Hamula came and I have applied the principles he taught, I have been able to already see amazing blessings from it. Also I have been reading the Book of Mormon a lot lately and it really is just awesome. I like to read for a specific subject and mark that, then also just write down the scriptures unrelated to my topic that just stick out to me. So it has been really cool to see that. Anyways that's for everything! I love you all so much! Love Elder Hatch