8.24.14 my FIRST baptism

Transfer Week!!

We got the the call and....I'll be staying in Launie with Sister Stewart!! We were really relieved when we got the call on Saturday night. We are so happy that we get to stay and see H and J get married and baptized!! It is such a blessing and will be a great transfer! We got to talk to president on Monday and he asked us about if we wanted to stay (individually) and we both said we did. He is really caring and considerate and knew that me and her got along. But I'm excited to be staying, I love Launceston and the people and I'm excited for the next 6 weeks.

Mom I'm glad you liked Brother Rasmussens notes and things, share it! It was inspiring. It is cool learning about the atonement and understanding it better. Christ can heal us and change our hearts.

And the best news of the week, we had my FIRST baptism!! PH. He is an older man and his wife was less active for the last 10 years, she started coming back and he took the lessons when I got here and was baptized the last day of the transfer. It was the ultimate miracle! It was really good, everything went smooth an I loved it! Now we get to prepare for H and J's big day on the 20th of Sept. Dang its almost September can you believe it?! 

Well Tasmania is beautiful, we have had the best weather ever! It was 14 degrees (57 degrees farenheit) average the last few days, yesterday was stormy but its such a contrast from Melbourne where its gloomy and rainy all the time.

Green house in Launie

They are putting missionaries in Deloraine (after closing it for just one transfer because members in Del wanted them back) so we won't be covering that area anymore :( we won't be going to J's every Wednesday anymore :( but thats okay we have stake conference in a fortnight (2 weeks) and we will go stay with her on a pday or something. 

Okay sorry this email was bad! haha Thank you for everything though, please tell people to send me letters and EMAILS please!!

Love you all.

Sister Hatch

These pictures and captions are courtesy of AC, a great member in Launceton

"A birthday card for a special lady with these two gorgeous Missionary Sisters"

"I love doing this"

"GINGER BEER...this could be her new favorite drink"

"Check out who has been taking selfies on my camera"

Birthday card for Sister Maxwell

8.18.14
memories to last a lifetime

This week was way good! I loved it. We had district pday on Monday and went to the gorge (a place in Launie with water and hiking and what not) and did some fun stuff there. Then we had zone conference, my first one ever! It was really good, we had it in Launceston chapel so it was right around the corner. President and Sister Maxwell (Neal A. Maxwell's son) came down with the assistants. It was full of really good trainings and the spirit. It was fun seeing all of the missionaries from down south too! (Hobart) Then we had to say goodbye to 2 elders, one went back to Utah and is friends with Ethan! Crazy huh, and he brought some stuff back to Utah for me that is for you guys! Anyway it was sad seeing missionaries go home, its so weird.
The zone leaders did the training on "the golden hours" to find and teach people. Then gave us ice cream bars called "golden gaytime" haha.

On Friday we went to Devonport for a stake youth activity, they wanted the missionaries to help out so we did. We went and it was a cultural night celebrating Japanese and Australian culture. There was sumo wrestling and drums and heaps of games. We didn't have to wear pros clothes so it was even better! It has been the funnest thing on my mission so far, I've never laughed so hard! It was way good and I got to see all the members from Deloraine! It was the best! But then we didn't get home until 12! Ya missionaries gettin home at midnight. It was crazy, our GPS took us to this crazy backroad and we didn't even leave until 10 anyway. It was crazy, haha but way fun though. Only bad part was that I've been soooo tired the rest of the week.

So this week I will finally have my first baptism! PH is getting baptized on Saturday! We are so excited, we started teaching him at the beginning of the transfer and he's getting baptized the last week on it! Miracles. He is married to a less active lady who wants to come back and they want to eventually go to the temple. Anyway, I'll send pictures about that next week. Hope it goes well.

Yesterday was so so so fun, we got to fly up to Melbourne with all the Hobart sisters and have a sisters pday with all the sisters in the mission! It was so fun, that never happens too so we were lucky that Tas got to go. We tie dyed and played games and sang and what not. I finally got to meet all the sisters in the mission and see Sister B and Sister B! It was good! It's sad though because SO many sisters are leaving this transfer and next. It's crazy. Sister R is leaving this time (Sunday) and I'm so sad! Ah its the worst saying bye to people.

 Sister R last day :(

Sister K and Sister B yesterday! Reunited with Tassie girls who aren't in Tas anymore  haha

Sister B!!!

Melbourne Temple! (right by the mission office)

This is on the way to the airport today, President was so kind and sat in the back even though he is the tallest one! He is SO SWEET, haha assistants were driving!

They couldn't get a flight back to Launie yesterday for us so we got to stay with President and Sister Maxwell!!. I love staying at the mission home, I'm lucky I've been able to stay there a couple times, a lot of missionaries don't get that! It was fun talking with President and Sister Maxwell more since we don't see the very often. President is outstanding! He is so sweet and takes time out of his crazy busy schedule to talk with us. I just love him so much! We talked about transfers and he literally asked me if I wanted to stay in Launie or go. Of course I said I wanted to stay! I don't know what will happen, we will see on Saturday!

Well we just flew in to Launie and we have a couple appointments with some people in a few so I gotta go soon!

The weather in Melbourne was a dreary and rainy and cold and then beget down here to Tas and it is beautiful and sunny. We are so lucky to be here!! I love it. Wellll I'm gonna go, I'll be with J tomorrow for lunch.

Love you so much!

PS Please tell everyone to send me LETTERS PLEASE!!

8.10.14 tasmania love

 

DANG JORDAN LOOKS FINE! Good job this year (on school shopping), he's looking mighty fresh, and so do the rest of my cute siblings!!! I love you guys! Sorry this email will not be that good, I didn't write notes like I usually do. It's been quite the week. Good and bad!

Well Tuesday was a day of a miracle and also the worst thing ever. Tuesday was our district meeting day in Deloraine. Me and Sister S have a car but the elders in Launie don't so we have to drive them. So we were all in driving to Deloraine in the morning and we drive up on this car that looks like a missionary car! There were three heads in it (3 because Elder H is leaving in the middle of the transfer and they were training Elder C as zone leader) and I was stoked because they never come to our district meetings unless its something special and we usually know when they will be there. But they came and it was so good. Its something about zone leaders that makes the meetings so much better. 

Faith is all we need and then if we do our best and try our hardest the Lord will be there to lift us up the rest of the way.

Okay later that day we had a horrible experience. We called a member couple the night before and made an appointment and went out to see them after DM. We got there and everything was okay but Sister S felt a little weird I guess so I was just talking to this lady and then she started to go off about America and how Australia is so much better and all this and we were over here like...we don't care and she started getting really mad at Sister S and yelling and saying all these horrible things. This is at a members house!!! We got up to leave and she kept going and started crying. The Sister S said sorry and asked to leave and we couldn't and she just went off her rocker and said horrible things and abused us (verbally) and it was horrible. Wow it was so scary!! I was so scared and it was just horrible, I was shaken up for a couple of days. But it was okay like I'm okay now! So ya crazy day. We went to JL house and I slept because I was so stressed and idk we just took a break and that night got ice cream and pudding (like brownies or cake) and relaxed. It was horrible! President and Sister Maxwell helped a lot though.

The rest of the week was town off by that but we still saw so many miracles and it was amazing to see the Atonement working. We studied the atonement a lot this week because Sister S is doing a 5 minute training at zone conference tomorrow. I helped her as much as I could and we were able to come up with a good training, she'll do good. But the Atonement is amazing, it is there for all of us at every time in our lives no matter what, it's there to lift us.

Sorry nothing too inspirational this email but I sent a couple of my favorite things to study in the mail just now so you should get them soon. well I love you so much and I'll talk to you next week!!!

PS We have sisters pday on Aug 19 in Melbourne! We get to fly up and stay in the mission home! We are so excited. Hopefully we can email Monday but no promises, we will be traveling a lot!

 

Love Sister Hatch

Pictures from Tamar Island

8.13.14 miracle week!

Its been a great week in Launceston!! CRACKING (as Elder H would say) He's from England so. This week was full of miracles!! We fasted last week with the mission and then this week and we've seen the blessings from it. God promises the blessings so if we fast we are guaranteed help! Its the coolest promise.

 Well we were able to go to Deloraine the beautiful land of the coolest people! We love it there. Del city is my home, its where i was born! I love it. And we had lunch with J! We love J so much shes like our mom and her food is awesome! The view from her house is soooo nice and it was beautiful. The storm cleared out justlong enough for us to take a picture to send to you mom! I was so happy that you answered the iMessage! (from J)

   Later that day we went and visited some investigators named C (mom) and J(daughter) and committed them to baptism! We hope that they will follow through on Aug 23 it would be awesome. And we got to do our first "call out" to the Tasmania Zone! Got to record a message and the ZLs sent it to all the missionaries in Tas about our miracle! It was fun.

    That night we drove back to Launie and had dinner and a lesson with our investigators H and J and members R and D P. They are all the best people ever! They are so cool. J writes down all his cool spiritual moments and answers to prayers and he shared the coolest experiecnes this week that he had. It is so awesoem seeing him and H grow so much together. They are so happy

    Thursday the weather was CRAZY. Like there was so so so much rain and the wind was so bad! It was like a hurricane outside. Honeslty i thought about it and it probably wasnt any worse than wind in Snowflake in the spring. Snowflake is crazy! But the funiest thing was that everybody was saying that the wind messes with your mind. The high pitch sounds and gusts and everything like does something to your brain that makes you go crazy! They say that teachers hate windy days because it makes the kids all hyper and crazy. Guess it makes sense why all the teachers in snowflake hate teaching. And the Tamar River was so high it almost overfilled over the bridge in the city. It was crazy! There were like lakes because the river was so overfilled.

    Friday Sister S got her plaster (cast) off! After 6 weeks. But they said its still broken??? ok. And it is we saw the xray. They just gave her a brace and said to exercise it. Haha shes in pain constantly and cant sleep because of it but its fine. Australian doctors are insane, most of them arent even Australian they are from the random. That night we had tea (dinner) with the Says and the elders! It was so good because they made mexican food and it actually tasted pretty good! i loved it.

    The next day was the day of a cool miracle! We stayed in and planned and what not in the morning and went tracting for like 30 minutes. We had M (recent convert) with us and came to this house with Butanes family. They all welcomed us and hugged us and invited us back, got 5 new investigators right there! Then the little 12 year old girl took us to her friends and families house because we asked if they knew anyone else who needed help. What?! That never happens. She was so sweet and we are going back to teach the people she reffered us to. So we got 6 new investigators in 30 minutes! It was a huge miracle.

 Sunday was the best day ever! Another miracle. Sunday mornings we see H and J with R and D. We shared "Pattern of Light" videos by David A. Bednar ( go watch them) and they loved them. J shared even more cool answered prayers he had throughout the week and shared a scripture he liked from d&C 6:14-16. He said that this made it real for him. OH MY GOSH THIS NEVER HAPPENS. Like these people read scriptures every night together and pray together and have personal study and prayer AND write down every spiritual prompting and everything they get. Its so cool to see all the blessings that are coming to them through the gospel.

    BUT wait theres more. It was fast and testimony meeting right? So all the testimonies are like.... But then its quiet for a minute. THEN WE SEE J GETTING UP. Yes J the INVESTIGATOR. And he got up and was like fighting back tears and bore the most beautiful testimony ive heard and was so sincere and i could just see the light in his eyes. This gospel is real people, it changes lives! Let it change yours. But wow it was amazing, and we were thinking that wow J and H are probably better than most members with their reading and praying and everything. But it was just the coolest week! We love hayley and jerome so much! And they have the sweetest little boys. J is Philipino fyi. I have a pic of them with thei little one M at church yesterday. M reminds me a little bit of Dalton! Just not as loud haha. He is so sweet.

 So here are just a few random things.

We have hot milo at almost every house we go to during the day because its so freezing outside and aussies dont believe in heat (because its SO EXY) expensive. and im addicted to it now!

Here is a picture of a "postie" (post/mail man.) Thats what they all look like here in Australia its hilarious!

Here is a picture of mascara. is $20!! what the heck! australia is so expensive ughhhh.

our flat is right in the middle of launceston city. Its beautiful! i will send a picture next week!

Its an Aussie saying haha and its so funny.

I hope your summer is awesome!!! i love you all so much!!!!!

Love from beautiful Tassie

Sister Hatch