AHHHHHH!!!

So I just wrote you a big long email and then the computer froze as I tried to send it. And I don't have a ton of time here at the internet point left. Sorry. So let me just say that work is here is going good. We have a potential family that we have found.

I am healthy, my clothes are holding up well and everything. I have been to Relief Society for the last two weeks to translate for English-speaking members from Kenya. That is my first time in there ever, since I can remember.

Man, I am really mad at the computer now. I am sorry this letter will be so short. Mom, I bought a new MP3 cause my iPod speakers don't work anymore, and I have no way to charge them. So that was great. The ward here is good. Sorry again this letter is so short. I am just really angry right now. That last letter was very long, and took a half hour to write. So love you all and I will talk to you next week.

Love,
Anziano Hatch

So I am still very angry with the computer that I lost that letter. But we met a couple of Philipino guys that play basketball. We played for an hour and a half and the picture is of how sweaty I got. Pretty much they have a family here in Ostia that we are hoping to talk to about the gospel.

I don't think I've been this sweaty in a while. Love you all and sorry for such a short letter. I feel bad, but I just don't have the time now to rewrite everything that I wrote.

Love,
Anziano Hatch

Fiesta di Lavoro

Hey family,

I'm sure this email will be a surprise, but the 15th of August is a holiday in Italy, and everyone takes the day off. So the day for us is spent cleaning our apartment and being able to write our letter again.

So not much has happened in a couple of days except me schooling some Italians at basketball yesterday. We were playing a series of best of five and the first game we played we won 21-0, then it was like 21-7 or something. Then the next game they were up 20-14 and we came back and won again. Then we decided to keep playing. We played six games and America won every time. It was fun. There were a couple of ballers there, but they played very predictably. My companion and I were stealing passes left and right and just taking them to town.

So that was great. Our apartment is now claen and that is nice - like deep cleaned. I don't think that apartment has been cleaned like that in a good long while. So it was good that we got that done.

Anyway, not too much to report. Nothing crazy has happened, just some good old missionary work. Love you all!

Love,
Anziano Hatch

Yo yo yo!

Hey one and all. This is a letter from Italy!

So this week has been amazing. We have had a couple of finding miracles that have just been awesome. First of all, the other group of elders in Ostia set a baptismal date with this lady for the 22nd. So she just needs to keep coming to church and she will make it. It is hard for her 'cause our church building is in Rome (for some reasons that I don't want to get into 'cause it makes me mad to think about). But she is a great lady and if she keeps coming to church we'll have a baptism on the 22nd.

Next story. So my companion and I got a referral from another elder that met this woman on the metro. He gave us the number and the name and we gave her a call to set up an appointment for Friday at 11:00. Perfect. She gave us the bus number we needed to take, 764. That was awesome. So we embarked on the one hour travel to Laurantina and searched for the bus at the station. Didn't find it. We asked the woman at the biglietaria (ticket booth/sales) and she said that it existed but that we could also take a bus which was already at the station. So we said, awesome perfect, and took the 765 instead of the 764.

So relying on the word of the lady at the ticket counter, we asked the bus driver to double check if he went to that street. He said that he didn't go anywhere near that street. So he dropped us off at another bus stop. We looked at the map and found a bus that would take us close, and then we could walk the rest of the way. So we took that bus and asked the driver, and he said he didn't go close to that street. But he stopped close to a stop that the 764 stops at, and that bus would take us there.

So we wait at the bus stop. At this point it is 11:30. So we wait, and 20 minutes later the bus comes and takes us to the street. So we are searching for palazo (apartment building) number 53. Cannot find it. We wearch for another 45 minutes up and down this street. It is a way long street. Can't find anything. So we decide to just head home and call the lady and set up another appointment. So we are walking up a street that makes a T intersection with the road that this woman lives on, and we see the bus we need to take to get back to the station. And if we don't grab this bus, we will wait for another 45 minutes to catch it again. So we run. No, we sprinted with all of our might. It was urgent we caught that bus.

So we didn't make it to the bus stop, but luckily there was a lady who was at the bus stop that stopped the bus with us running as fast as we could and flagging it down. And it waited for us to get there. So we get on the bus and move to the middle. We are hot and sweaty and just want to go home and eat lunch and set another appointment with this lady, when a woman walked up to us and says, "Are you Mormons?" "Yes," I said. Then she said, "I had an appointment with one of you this morning, but they didn't show up." I then exclaimed, "You are Laura!!!!!!!" And she said, "Ya." We then commenced to teach her the first lesson on the way to her work, which happened to be the stop before ours on the way home. So we had a good 50 minutes or so with her.

The Lord is preparing his people. Even now there are people for us to find and teach. And if we mess up and get off at the wrong stop, he will provide a way for us to find his elect - if we keep pushing to do his work.

What a great miracle that was.

Ok, some other things that I wanted to share really quick. First, the Italians put their fork on the right when they set the table. I think that that is funny. Oh, and I have lost 5 kilograms (11 pounds). That is a whole belt notch for me. I can hardly keep my pants up. But my muscle is still there, so don't worry anyone that is reading this. I am still the beautiful self that I was when I left. Just a little thinner.

Other news in the mission - this mission is shrinking, and for reasons that make me angry, I will not talk about them right now. But we only have one missionary coming in this next transfer. So ya, and we are losing eight. Sad, but I guess we just have to work harder.

I love you all and hope that you are doing well. It is fun to hear from all of you. Jalayne, can't wait to hear more stories about your teaching job. Julie, you are going to love high school. Kim, your leg will get better, promise. And Justin, keep up the lawyering.

I just wanted to add another little sauce recipe real quick. So you just use plain tomato sauce and you customize the sauce they way you want. Add a little bit of olive oil to thin it out on the pasta and then add basil, garlic, and any other spices you want to add. You just have to play around with the flavors. My favorite is tomato sauce and olive oil with peperoncini (a small spicy pepper), with basil and parsley. That is really good. You just need to play with it till you get the flavors just right.

Love you all, and I am praying for you. Pray for the people in Italy. They need your prayers.

Love,
Anziano Hatch

Here are the some of the pictures

I am sending a picture of the inside of the Basilica of Saint Paul and the inscription says "EXALTATA EST AD CAELESTIA REGNA" which is translated to "Exaltation is the Celestial Kingdom" hmmm...interesting.

Then the last one on the email is of me and Chase in the MTC, and also my companions over the last few weeks.

Love ya,

Anziano Hatch

Don't Worry Bout Me

Alright you all seemed pretty stressed that I didn't email yesterday. Ya, the church email service was down ,but I am sure you will be happy to see that you received this letter as you were at the cabin. That will be fun. You can all read it together!

Ya, so I wasn't going to be able to email until tonight, but we got to Rome early today. (It is zone conference) and so we found an internet point and checked if the email was working. It was, so here we are writing our families and such.

Well a few details about living arrangements. Our apartment is old and dirty. We do our best to clean it but it still looks dirty afterwords, so that is sad. But we are only there like 3 hours during the day and to sleep so that is good.

My companion is great. He is from Long Beach Cali and a surfer dude. He is a basketball player too. He is good. We did some finding work playing basketball, beat a few Italians a couple of times and then got their numbers. So that was real fun.

We have three investigators that will probably be baptized this transfer. One for sure at the end of August, and then the two others we are just waiting to set a baptismal date. What a great blessing it will be to be able to baptize in my first transfer. That will be great. I guess we are in a great area. My companion said last transfer, he and his companion baptized four people, so that is awesome.

The ward here is thriving and there are some good members. There is one that has been inactive for 5 years and then he came back to church like 2 months ago and set his life straight. He has a really strong testimony now and he has been the cause of 6 baptisms through referrals and introducing his friends to the missionaries. We are currently working with one of his referrals right now.

It sounds like you all will be having a great time up at the cabin. Oh ya, sorry again for no pictures. We weren't expecting to be able to email right now, so I forgot my card again. I remembered it yesterday, but the server was down, so that is just life.

One of the great things here, foodwise, are the tomatoes. I love fresh tomatoes and they are in abundance here. Every meal with members we have tomatoes and it is so good.

A secret for cooking pasta. Adding salt to the boiling water makes the pasta taste so much better. And a simple sauce is to just take tomatoes and cook them in a frying pan with a little olive oil, basil, and a little bit of tomato sauce. Then when the tomatoes get a little soft from cooking them, then smash them. Then when you pasta is ready, just dump the tomatoes and sauce right on. This is something I never saw in America. And it is delicious. You should all try it. Then I will help you perfect it in two years.

So give Alex my condolences with his broken leg. That stinks. Sounds like there was a good time to be had at the reunion.

I love Italy, but there is no grass here. Green grass is a rarity. Their parks look like they once had green grass, but then decided they didn't want to take care of it. So it is all dried up and weedy. I hear that is normal for Italy though. Very few things they keep watered. Which brings me to my next point of amazement. They don't have green grass, but every tree and bush is green and thriving. Rarely do you see a dead tree. So things are still pretty green here.

So last Sunday, we got a ride home from church from a less active, and boy was that an amazing ride. First off let me tell you that it takes an hour and a half to get to our church building which is in Rome. We have to take the metro system to get there and then walk about 10-15 minutes. But by car it only takes twenty minutes cause you drive stright there. By metro you have to take three different lines to put us close to where we need to go. And no, we couldn't just walk there. It is pretty far. But the way Italians drive it only takes 20 minutes. But the way Simone (less active member) drives we got back home in 10 minutes. It was the craziest, fastest drive of my life. We were weaving through cars and around cars going 160-185 kmh. My companion said we touched a hundred mph a couple of times. So that was an adventurous ride.

Well, that about sums up the highlights of this last week, and I need to get going. I promise pictures next time. I love you all and you are in my prayers. I hope you all keep doing as well as you are doing. Pray for the people here in Italy. They need it.

Love,
Anziano Hatch

Ostia

President and Sister Acerson with Elder Hatch

Elder Tuttle and Elder Hatch headed to Ostia

July 2009 group with trainers

The Safe Arrival of Your Missionary

Dear Parents,

I know this is a tender time for you. I know because we had our son enter the MTC on the day your missionaries arrived here. He is the third of our children now serving missions simultaneously. So this group will be particularly memorable to us!

We are so grateful for your family's sacrifice so that they could come and serve the Lord and the good people here in Italy. We are impressed with each of them and know they will do good work.
After we picked them up at the airport (right on time with no luggage lost!), they went to see a little of Rome, had a good dinner, went down the street for gelato, had their first interview with President Acerson, and got a good night's sleep. On Thursday, they had training, saw the temple site, then had lunch with the trainers. After a little more training, they were matched up with their new companions and found out which city they were serving in first and are settled in there.

We always like to send pictures. Here is a group picture that will hang on our refrigerator with all the other missionaries for the next two years.

We have also included some mailing instructions that will help you keep in touch with your missionary. Individual pictures will follow a bit later. (We left the house immediately after transfers yesterday and will leave the house again now after only being here for an hour or so.) I know you will enjoy seeing them with their new companion and President Acerson and I. You should receive them sometime Monday morning.

Thank you again for your support and prayers on their behalf.

Love,
Sister Acerson