11-26-12 email

good morning family! Ive had a pretty exciting week this week. my new companion is Elder Valladolid (baya-doh-LEED). He is from Michoacan Mexico. He is already 24 years old. He speaks pretty good English, but he has a thick accent, and I have to help him with some words sometimes. He has already helped me a lot with my spanish too! He has been out just one transfer longer than me. We get along pretty well so far and we have already had a lot of success together. Anyways, I think I gained at least 30 pounds this Thanksgiving. We ate a ton of food. It was really good food, but it was a lot. The douglases went out of town for a couple of days to go see their son in Mesa, so we got to watch the dogs. Haha I love having dogs so much! It looks like you guys all had a wonderful thanksgiving too! I dont think Ive heard of wreck it ralph though. is it a disney movie? So I did get your package, and it was awesome! So far I have enjoyed most of the music, and I loved all the Christmas stuff too! BTW could you make sure to send something for my companion too? His parents are pretty poor, and they aren't members of the church, so don't even know if he will get anything or not. I am actually getting pretty excited for Christmas. I think it will be good.

     So we have had even more amazing success in the spanish branch! Natalia will be getting baptized this saturday! Yay! We are really excited for her! We also had two new people move into the ward who have already said that they want to be baptized, so we are going to start teaching them as well! and we got like three refferals for spanish this week and got another new investigator from that! This branch is just exploding right now! Everybody in the branch is getting really excited because of all the growth that is coming. The entire branch will be coming to the baptism this saturday to support Natalia! I honestly have never seen people more excited about missionary work! It's making me really excited too! We also had Daniel Rivera come to church for the very first time in the english ward because his cousin was giving a talk. It was a very spiritual sacrament meeting and he was pretty impressed. It was a huge step to finally get him there after more than three months teaching him. He is a really good guy, and I think that he will start progressing faster now that he finally came to church.

     So anyways, things are going pretty well, but I have to go now, so I hope you guys all have a great week! Love you all so much! -Elder Hatch

PS say hi to elder calles for me!

shipping address

FYI- for Jacob to recieve packages/letters this season, you will need to ship them directly to the home he is living in.  The mission office will not be able to forward packages/letters on so he would not recieve them unitl after the new year.   This is the address he will be at until at least January 1st.
Thank you!

Elder Jacob Hatch
4528 Habershaw Rd NW
Albuquerque, NM 87120

11-19-12 email

Hola! Well this week has been pretty good. I will be staying in this area for another transfer, although Elder Flint will be leaving, so I'll get a new companion tomorrow. So I still have not gotten your package, which is sad, but I'm ok for now haha. Anyways, we do have some great plans this thursday. We have dinner with the Moses Family, and then we will go straight to the Thomas Family (our branch president) for round two. I cant decide if Im looking forward to two thanksgiving dinners or not, but it will be lots of fun, and we have some investigators coming too! Speaking of that, we had 8 investigators at the spanish branch this sunday, which was unbelievable! I can't believe how much the work in the spanish branch is picking up! It's Awesome! We also had a great lesson with Natalia this week, and she is definitely getting baptized on December first. I am so excited to see this little branch grow so much, and I am definitely excited to be here another transfer.

     So guess who I saw last monday? I ran into Chris and Kim in a parking lot and we talked for a little bit. They actually do live in my area, but just for spanish, so that stinks. It was pretty weird seeing family out here.

     So I will stay in this area for at least Christmas and new years eve. Next transfers are January 1st, so it will be really fun to be here for the holidays. I hope I get a good companion! My last few have been great, so I hope it continues! Also, We had a zone conference this week with Elder Paul V. Johnson of the seventy. It was fun, and I found out that he is from Sandy too! Yay for Sandy!

     I had a pretty cool experience this week. I was in branch council and we were talking about stuff, and I realized I was speaking spanish without even thinking about it! Yaya! I am feeling pretty comfortable with most of spanish now, which makes me happy.

     Anyways, I heard about hostess too. I cried myself to sleep two nights in a row. Not really, but I was very sad. Well, I hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving, and remember to be thankful for all of the wonderful things that we have! I love you all so much! Sincerely, Elder Hatch

11-12-12 email

Hello family, so I feel like pretty much nothing has happened this week. We are still teaching a lot of lessons, but not much has really changed lately. Although it hasn't snowed here, it has been quite cold. I think it was around 32 this morning when we got in the car. I'm definitely sad that I am missing all that snow. It sounds awesome. To tell you the truth, I am missing home more than I ever have right now. But you know me, I get way too sentimental during the holidays. It hasn't helped that the work has been pretty hard in this area lately. We've been spending a lot of time trying to find new people to teach, so we have been knocking a lot, and hanging out at the park trying to talk to people. We have not had much success. On a brighter note, I finally sent a letter to MIranda! I don't know if you got it yet though. I'm going to try and keep the trend and write some more this week. We had a pretty interesting experience with Natalia this week. She had been living with her boyfriend, and we hadn't taught her the law of chastity yet, so we were kind of wondering how to tell her that she would need to change that before her baptism. Then a couple hours before we went to go see her, she called and canceled because her boyfriend got arrested and she had to move out that night. The branch was amazing, and found her a place to stay in just a couple of hours. So kind of bittersweet, but now she can get baptized much easier. Her little son is awesome. He's only 5 or so and he has been a champ through all of this. He has a really cool name too. Girlberto. We just call him Berto though. Anyways, election day was pretty interesting too. We had to go to bed, but we couldn't really sleep because the Douglases were very loud while watching the election. They were not very excited about the results. To say the least... We haven't been able to see Britney this week either which was dissapointing. Anyways, it sounds like you guys are doing great though, even if you had to sit through PTC for so long. That doesn't sound fun. I'm glad you all had a great halloween though! Don't send me any candy though, we have way too much here. Well, I hope you all have a wonderful week and enjoy your winter wonderland back home! Elder Hatch

11-5-12 email

Hello Family! Well I'm going to be honest, I don't really have a lot to write this week. It was a pretty slow week. We have been working pretty hard, but not much has really happened. We had a great lesson with Cedricks girlfriend Britney though. We watched the Joseph Smith movie and talked about the restoration. It was really nice. We are planning on setting a baptismal date with her this week. We are also progressing a lot with Natalia, and she came to church again this week. Her little son loves the missionaries, so we have fun times playing with him. We actually had a pretty epic sword fight a couple days ago. We were also able to get a lot of people to come to the trunk or treat that our ward had. It was very fun, and we ended up getting lots of candy. Our ward mission leader took a picture of our costumes, so maybe I'll get him so send it to you. Oh, and we actually got a new ward mission leader this week, so we are excited for that. His name is Brother Symes and he is awesome. Halloween was pretty good for us, we had to be in at six, but we had a great dinner with the douglases and then played some games. They are so nice to us. I am also excited for election day. We hear a lot about how close the race is, so it will be interesting to see who wins. We are also very excited for all the work in our mission as well. At the beginning of the year, we are opening up 44 new areas in our mission, because we are expecting almost 100 new missionaries over the next few months. Thats pretty crazy too, because my chances of training soon just went way up. It will be fun to see the mission grow so much while I'm here. Well, that is pretty sad to hear about shadow, she will definitely be missed. I hope jack isnt taking it too hard. And I'm sorry about the letter writing. Especially with Miranda. I don't know why, but just making time to write letters is one of my biggest struggles. I really just need to buckle up and do it, so I really am going to try my very hardest to send some letters off this week. On the brighter side, I have actually gotten very consistent with writing in my journal. There are some days I even write in it twice! Woo! Anyways, It looks like you guys had a great Halloween, and some ridiculous costumes. Even though I highly doubt Nathan got as much candy as me! I have some fun pictures, but I forgot to bring my camera, so you will see next week. Oh, and by the way, I don't know how I'm going to make it through Christmas this year. We have started to listen to Christmas music and it's the saddest thing in the world. I still love it with a passion, but being away for Christmas for the first time is going to be a challenge. Well, this letter was kind of all over the place, but I hope you all enjoy it, and have a wonderful week! Love, Elder Hatch