May 30 2016

I love my mission, and I have had the best first year, it will be an awesome 2nd no doubt, many hard things to come, but also many blessings that I will not have even considered. I look back now on where my mission started, and who I was, and I see where the Lord has placed me, and I am completely blown away. I have learned to Love CBud, and it hurts when I realize that I may not have much more time here. I have learned so much, and I know that I'll continue to learn more during the 2nd year of my mission. What a Wonderful time to be a Czech/Slovak Missionary! I'm looking forward to our Interview this week, it will be our last interviews with President McConie before he leaves for good. , Elder Marcucci and I are both excited. This area is doing well, the missionaries here in CBud are getting along well and a lot of work is being done. We just went to Hluboka with YSA V, and we're beginning to see strength come back into this Branch. We've seen pictures at member's homes of the CBud branch like 15 years ago, and the sad thing is, it actually looks a little weaker now. We've been puting a HUGE effort on reactivating and supporting the Branch, and as a result, Member Present lessons have gone up, RCLA's have gone up, Refferals have gone up, and Street Contacting has gone dramatically down... litterally we only street contacted for 1 hour last week. Elder Marcucci and I have both officially decided that we're going to change this mission... So many elders and sisters think that Missionary work here in Europe needs to be like 80percent Street Contacting, and 10percent Members and 10Percent RCLA's, but President, We are litterally not Street Contacting at all... We only Contact on our way over to other appointments, and the results are absolutely astonishing. It has Taken about 1.5 Transfers to get CBud to this point, but now, Our Branch is healthier, we are closer with the Members, and our Investigators are getting closer with the members, and our Members are more willing to trust us with their Refferals, and the list just goes on and on! My mindset has changed from, "in this mission, we find through our own efforts, and then do Member work on the side." to, "in this mission, we Strengthen the Branch through AML's, RCLA's, and we find through Refferals and other means associated with strengthening the Branch." This is truly a breakthrough I think, because it's the stereotypical idea that we only do this kind of stuff in the United States missions, but it's working here in CBUD, and we have achieved Standards now 2 weeks in a row, both us and the sisters, and it makes so much sense to do missionary work this way, and Elder Marcucci and I are both on board with this way of missionary work now, and it's going to mean some incredible things for the rest of my mission and I hope that it can change and improve the expectations for new missionaries about How we do missionary work here in the Czech Republic. Love you, Talk to you on Monday, sorry for no pictures this week, but I will get them next week. Love you all!. sincerely, Starší Dean