September 14, 2015 - In which we're given talks and get looking for people

Dear family,

Last week went well! We put a big focus on trying to work with members and helping our branch get excited about missionary work. Last week I mentioned that we had some interesting conversations and we felt like there was something we needed to do to spark excitement in missionary work. Elder Dean and I had a strong feeling that we needed to talk to the branch to share something about enthusiasm, and so last Tuesday we called our branch president and talked to him about it and told him that we wanted to talk to the branch about it. He was excited for us to speak, and gave each of us talks yesterday. He told us that we could take the whole sacrament meeting if we wanted to, and that he would fill time afterwards. Elder Dean shared a thought for about five minutes and then I took almost the rest of the time. I talked about how love for the people around us gives us the ability to see what can happen in the lives of our friends and families and gives us the enthusiasm to try to keep serving even when things are difficult. I'm not certain what kind of effect the talk itself will have, but President V was grateful that we did that. We're trying hard to try to get things set up where we can teach with our members, but we were blessed with opportunities to serve with a member couple and teach Sister D with them afterward. We feel like we're at least making progress on trying to get working with our branch more often. Elder Dean and I at the beginning of the transfer both felt that we need to put work with the members up at about the same level of priority as helping J get baptized and Sister D reactivated.

Speaking of them, we STILL weren't able to meet with J but he was at church and we had a chance to at least chat with him and M after English. We're itching to talk with him because we haven't been able to have a proper sit-down lesson with him in quite a while, but we're praying that an opportunity will finally go through. We know that he knows that he needs to be baptized and he says that he knows, also, so we're just trying to help.

We had a good lesson with Sister D on Friday. We felt that we needed to talk about service and callings, since we figured that's something else that she needs to be reactivated. It was a good lesson, and we taught with M and V, members who moved recently into the branch from Olomouc. We were going to invite her to ask to be a visiting teacher on Sunday, but during the lesson that ended up not working out to invite her, (because we found out that visiting teaching isn't functioning right now in Zlín ) and so we changed the commitment to something else related to service. We were REALLY surprised, though, because Sunday she was sustained to be a counselor in the Relief Society presidency. We had no idea she had a calling coming already. There's still a road ahead of us to help her be reactivated (she wasn't at church to sustain herself in her new calling), but we're excited for the progress there by her accepting a calling.

Overall we feel that things are going well here in Zlín. Elder Dean is still doing well. His Czech is improving, but I'm trying to find more ways to help him get integrated into the conversations that are going on around him because he feels like he gets lost. I'm kind of struggling how to involve him more in that way, but overall he's doing well and growing and he loves our members a lot. We're looking high and low for people on our branch, and we found a couple of people last week that are according to it. We're just trying to keep adding to that!!

That's pretty much everything that's been going on, but we're doing well and are happy :)

Love,
Elder Boyce

Out favorite missionary!

Just a bit lost...Daniel is the one with the map!