First and foremost I am typing on a french keyboard which is obnoxiously different so feel free to edit any obvious mistakes.
My
week has been fantastic. Immensely better than my first week. Last week
was hard, and it was something I just had to push through, but my week
as been so much better. Elder Uluave's dad is from Tonga! Elder U is a
great guy and obedient and has incredibly unusual people skills, as
president told me in my interview yesterday (which is the reason our
pday is today). Elder U and I usually split lessons 60-40. Elder Uluave
is a
great missionary and has taught me so much already. Our work is truly
focused on members, but he stresses obedience and we always make sure to
hit our standard of excellence goals.
Nice is very hot and humid, so I feel right at home. In fact I would even say Georgia is more humid than Nice.
Let me fill you in on some fun stuff.
1.
French People have a very hard time pronouncing my name. The "gom" in
Montgomery is just a sound they dont make very well its quite funny to
see them attempt to do this.
2. When people do understand my
name they have related me to some famous british people (Im guessing)
including an actor, an actress, a general, a pilot, and a songwriter.
And everytime they bring this up I just nod my head say ouiiiii
3.
Remember the lady in the street that i contacted on my first day who
just wanted a cigarette that I told you about last week? well turns out
she is now taking the lessons and is trying to stop smoking! miracle!
And nobody knew how she was found or anything until another bleu made
the connection of me getting her number on our first day out here.
4.
I taught an entire spiritual thought to a less actif guy this week
named Antonio by myself and he understood it all and everything. My
french is getting better rapidly, although my accent is still very
annoyingly American. (Murica!)
5. We've been porting (our word
for tracting, the french word for door is porte) twice now and here in
Nice the suburbs that kindof resemble subdivisions (but not really) are
all in the mountains and its a 30 minute bus ride. It was so fun and so
pretty. I attached some pics. I love porting maybe because I got so much
experience with it at home.
6. I had a girl recognize me in church
on Sunday from BYU. She lived in Chipman hall, although I had never met her.
7.
I have had one embarrassing language story...its not too bad. We were
in ward council and the bishop asked about a family that Elder U and I
had visited that was almost baptized but then fell off the earth after a
very awkward law of chastity lecon (they arent married, they have three
kids, that happened about 3 weeks before I came). Well Elder U wasnt
there because we were on an exchange that night, so I had to explain our
visit. The dad, Pedro is great. However his reasoning behind not coming
to our church was because a. we dont pray enough b. his prayer group
fasts together for hours in one room with all the children and women and
everything and you know good for him we were sad but there wasnt much
we can do. So I had recounted the entire visit to the ward council and I
was content cause I had felt like I explained it well. But everybody
was looking at me quite confused so then I was confused. I look over at
my companion Elder Smith who is from Utah and he asks in English, they
were doing what for hours together with all the women and children? In
French the word for young is jeune and fast (as in fasting) is juàne.
The pronunciations are nearly identical and I am still unable to tell
them apart much less say them correctly. So the whole time the council
thought I was saying they were younging together for hours. It was
embarrassing. But I thought it was funny and so did everyone else.
So
we've had some success this week. Our ami (Ami de l'eglise...Friend of
the church...investigator in English) , Alcides is doing well. He has a
hard time expressing himself in French and we have a ton of portuguese/
brazilian members so usually our lessons are mostly in portuguese which
is really cool actually. Its quite interesting to see hoz many people
here really just detest us. Like zero respect for us. But it makes it
that much more of a miracle when we find someone who wants to listen to
our message. And exact obedience brings miracles. We got back
Thursday
night at about
8:50 and decided to not go in until 9 per mission rules.
We had contacted all day and had no success whatsoever. At
8:55pm we
found a guy named Roy who was polite and really interested in our
message. We exchanged phone numbers and are planning to set a rendezvous
with him this week. Miracle!
I love missionary work. I love inspiring people. I love and I
pray that somehow I can be an instrument in the Lord's hands to change
peoples lives. I wrote this down this week in my journal and thought id share.
"They
shall know us by our smiles. They shall know us by our cheerfulness.
They shall know us by the light of Christ which emenates from our
countenances so that they will know of the joy and love that comes from
our Savior, Jesus Christ."
Beaucoup d'amour,
Elder Montgomery
