August 17, 2015 - In which we find some people

Dear family,

We had a great week! There were some pretty unusual challenges, a lot of praying, and a lot of talking about how to help J. We really baked here in Zlín, but we were still blessed with some miracles.

J has been the biggest topic of conversation and thought this week in our companionship. He's SO CLOSE to getting baptized. We weren't able to meet with him at all during the week, but we talked to him last night and he said that he feels like Saturday is still too early. There are still a few obstacles for him to overcome. Though he's not planning on being baptized this Saturday, he did agree to have an interview on Thursday so he can talk with Elder Shepherd (our district leader) about whether he's actually spiritually prepared, even though he doesn't have a firm date set. We're really hoping that he'll soon resolve concerns and are sort sitting on pins and needles for the moment. We still feel like he's doing well, and know that the decision to be baptized is his alone. He came to sacrament meeting yesterday and when he found out that we were going to Prague today for visa work he offered to drive us there. He picked up one of his daughters from the airport a little after we had to be there, but we had a good time during the three-hour ride to Prague :) One of his tires went flat on the way and we helped him get the spare on, and you can't come out of that experience without a stronger relationship!

We found a couple of really great people during the week. On Tuesday we met P and M. P is about 25 years old and is here from Zlín. We met him in an interesting way. It was boiling hot on Tuesday afternoon and we were out contacting on family history. There was NO ONE out and we weren't quite certain where to go. We felt inspired to hike up the hill that we were to try and follow up with an investigator that we hadn't heard from in a while. On the way up the hill we P. He was really interested in finding out more about family history, and we found out that during some English contacting a couple of weeks ago he met Elder Shepherd and gave him his phone number for the reminder text that we send. He had received the text that we sent out earlier, and was planning on not going, but because he met us he said he that he changed his mind and he came and had a good time at English. We met last Friday and taught him how to start with family history and we told him that we could tell him how his family can be together forever. He set up with us to talk about before English tomorrow!

We also met a woman named M on Tuesday morning. She is originally from Guatemala but met her Czech husband in Chicago and has been living in the Czech Republic for about seven years. She said something to us that I've never heard before: "My family are all Mormons back in Guatemala. It seems like being Mormons makes a really big, positive difference in their life. How do I go about joining your church?" We told her that we could take care of that :) She committed to come to sacrament meeting on the 23rd, but unfortunately we wouldn't set up to meet or able to exchange any contact information. Though we weren't able to set up with M, we felt really blessed by the Lord to meet her and P and the others that we were able to meet during the last week.

We were also really blessed to spend some time with our branch president over the weekend. He was the only one that came to game night with his kids, but we spent some time being able to chat with him about the branch and some needs that we have. After church we also went through the entire branch list and he gave us assignments of people to look for.

That's pretty much everything that's new for now. Sister D wasn't able to come to church, but she should be coming next week. We're trying to push forward through the last week of the transfer (somehow it's week 9 again)! We want some new people to teach! Thanks for the love and prayers, and sorry for no photos again this week :)

Love,
Elder Boyce