October 27, 2014 - In which the part of me accustomed to warm weather dies

Dear family,

Last week went pretty well! Yesterday we had record attendance at Sacrament Meeting; 36 people came! Normally only about 20 come. We were packed into our little chapel and it was a great meeting. The Ř and their grandchildren came to participate in the Primary Program, which was wonderful. The primary our branch is quite small (only one boy comes every week), so the program was only about ten minutes but everyone enjoyed the children and the six missionaries pretending to be children! (We were all briefly Primary children; for example I was Honzik, age 7.)

The Ř are getting back into the habit of coming to church once every other week, and their grandchildren are having a great time with the other little boy in the branch. Sister Ž told us yesterday that the oldest grandchild said the closing prayer during Primary and was really pleased with himself because he didn't need any help. They add quite a bit of life to the branch! Unfortunately all of our investigators backed out of coming at the last second, but if they had come I don't think we could have seated them!

We had quite the finding experience on Saturday. We were coming back to our apartment to finish lunch after visiting a less-active at his home, and to get home we arrived at a bus stop that's closer to our apartment but that we had never noticed before. We were about a block away from our apartment, then Elder Cowley called "Dobrý den!" across the street to a group of people that were standing in front of their apartment building. We were going to continue on, but they called back to us and told us to come into their home for tea! We went in and were able to teach a first lesson, and gave three people baptismal dates. It was quite the miracle, and if we hadn't gotten off at the new bus stop, we wouldn't have walked past those people or met them. They weren't able to come to church because they got sick, but we'll see them again this week.

This past week the weather has become freakishly cold. I had never realized how nice the weather in Camarillo actually was. I suppose I'll get used to it, but I've already had to start wearing gloves and thermals. This will be an exciting winter!

We had quite the whirlwind week. I feel like I'm missing a ton of information, but I'm going to be out of time soon. I suppose I'll have to fill it in next week!

Happy Halloween! (We're having a party tonight at FHE)


Love,
Elder Boyce

PS H is doing well. I don't think I've mentioned her yet. We met her last week by giving her a building tour. She has a lot of questions, and is pretty interested in finding out more. We weren't able to meet with P or H last week. V is doing really well.