We are already on the back half of this transfer... incredible.
Chere famille,
We had an interesting week this week. It seemed lots of it was consumed by walking in the cold rain and some sicknesses that Elder Ambursley and I carried. But we made it through, and its always fun to look back at a tougher week and feel content knowing you pushed through despite trials.
The highlight of the week as it often is, was Sunday. This week we worked with a couple less active members, each of whom is inactive for one reason or another. But we had 2 of them come back to church this Sunday and it was an incredible to have them.
Yesterday We had zone conference in Lausanne, with President and his family there. They are always great. We also had interviews. After talking with President about some the things I felt needed to change in our area (or rather what we needed to change), and hearing his response and solutions, two things were impressed upon me. First, the entirety of the Lord's plan is not going to be carried out by missionaries. As much as I want to go out and preach and teach everyone in the world about the Gospel, its not going to happen through 12 hour tracting days and contacting on the streets every waking moment of my 2 year mission. There is a smarter way (to quote President Hinckley) Its going to happen through members of the church who already have this knowledge and know of friends and family who need it, reaching out to others and to invite them to learn more. The efficacity, at least in our mission, of knocking on doors all day is terrible. Yes we see miracles daily of people who are willing to listen, but those are willing to change are those that will be found by members and introduced to us. When I had this realization it was a bit sad. I am totally content with working all day by street contacting, and I feel a little lazy when we make an investment of time in building relationships with members. But I realized that its not a matter of laziness but more of a question of approach to the problem.
Secondly, the practicality of the solutions President Roney suggested to me was quite remarkable. For as many unbelievable miracles that we read of in the Ensign, there are a million more normal people who were invited to hear about the restored Gospel by friends or family or neighbors or workmates and who accepted it, changed their lives, and have partaken of the joy that comes from it. And President suggested that we just do small things, hold small service or fun events to invite people, build up members, not any parting the Red Sea that i was half expecting to hear of.
Anyways the work continues. I love France, I love being here. Everyday I reflect on the beauty and perfection of the Gospel and its just so wonderful. I was so happy to hear that mom and nate are going out with the missionaries this week to help them out.
MIRACLE ALERT: haha wow. Ok so we do our emails at the church office, and so I just had a member who works here, frére Aubin, come up to me and share an incredible miracle. About two weeks ago, we contacted a man in a pretty calm neighborhood and he was out walking his dog. We chatted for a while and halfway through the convo a woman walked by and said hi to him then walked away. (we ended up teaching that man the restoration later on). About 3 hours later that day we had stopped at a grocery store to buy a quick snack. As we left we ran into the woman who said hi in passing earlier. Her name is Sandrine and she knows a couple of the families in the ward, and we were really excited. We went and asked Fr. Aubin about her the following Sunday and he said that they would call her and talk to her about coming over. Well he never did that, but he did just come to me and told me, that yesterday, Sandrine and her husband came and dropped off some soup at the famille Aubin's home just because they had extra soup. Fr. Aubing immedieatley thought of us. He just said that this has never happened before and that they are going to invite them over for an FHE or something along those lines. They are cool family of 4 with two boys. How cool???
Did I literally not just talk about this?
Hahah I love you my dear family, I hope everything is going well! I love hearing from ya!
Beaucoup d'amour,
Elder William Montgomery
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| Us 4 gex elders repping Unitaid(we got these last week at the WHO) also a member gave us two big jars of Jiffy Peanut Butter one crunchy and one smooth and we were celebrating. |
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| And I got to see the Brias!!! |
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| Elder Eady and I at zone conference he is my man from Sheffield England |
