September 7, 2015 - In which we want to spread some vision around

Dear family,

Last week went well, like always we've been working hard and are seeing good from it. We taught more last week than we did the week before and though a lot of things fell through, we were still almost always able to find someone to teach by searching in the area where we were going to teach in the first place. We're trying to get some gears in place and some people preparing for baptism!

Unfortunately last week J wasn't able to meet with us, he came to English, though and it was nice to see him there. He didn't come to church Sunday because he wasn't feeling well, but we hope to be able to see him again this week. We fasted about how to help him and to a certain degree we feel like he needs to come to baptism himself, but we want to encourage him this week to perhaps get a calendar out and start praying about dates so he'll have a goal that's his.

We also met with Sister D last week. She's doing well. We had a good discussion about the Atonement and how justice and mercy work, and she came to church on Sunday. We think that she needs to just be encouraged along. We're thinking that the next step with her is to teach towards receiving a calling of some sort; to be active she needs to accept a responsibility and we're thinking that perhaps talking to her about her potential in that way will motivate her to attend sacrament meeting more regularly.

We're looking and working hard for a young couple that is according to the branch vision, but unfortunately we didn't find any new investigators. We're hoping to have more going on this next week on that end.

We had a couple of interesting conversations yesterday and we feel like there's something that we should do to spark some more excitement for missionary work in our branch. We got the impression from a couple of members that they feel that there's something missing and we feel like we as a branch need to set our eyes back on the ideal of of what's possible in Zlín and to especially help each of the members see that they are capable of doing something that will make a difference. We feel that the members can have a huge impact on what we do to help people come to Christ, but we feel like that idea could maybe use some reemphasizing now. We're hoping to talk with our branch president tomorrow about this vision and ask for him to give us talks or 20 minutes after sacrament meeting or something like that (whatever he wants, really) so that we can talk to the members about it. We will see how it goes, but we feel that this will help the branch.

Elder Dean is doing well. He's finding out that missionary work (and learning Czech) takes a lot of constant persistence, but he's learning a lot. We're learning a lot together while preparing for our teaching appointments and the other things that we have going each day. His Czech is improving, though he seems to want it to go a little faster. On Saturday we were coming back from an appointment and he felt a little down because he couldn't understand an old man that we were talking to and I told him that at day 10 or 11 in the country he shouldn't be worrying about it (at least not until he gets to day 600 or so...). He's a hard worker and he's already really dedicated to our branch. We've been learning a lot together about the Savior during our studies and it's been great to use that as we teach people during the day. He's also really excited to help the branch get more excited for missionary work.

We're both doing well and are trying to just stay yoked with the Savior here. We're out of time, but have a great week!!

Lots of love,
Elder Boyce