What a week! On Wednesday, we got a call around 1pm from President, not
expecting our transfer calls until Friday. He's asked me to be the next
assistant! We packed up all my stuff and were in Lyon by Wednesday night, and I
only got to say goodbye to a few people in Clermont.
So the mission is in an interesting situation at the moment. We've been
doing a huge push on finding with family history, and this theme has been called
Project Elijah. To really push this new project President called 6 assistants
for a short time with one companionship in each of the old mission headquarters
(when there used to be 3 missions here). So in my call with President he told me
it was expected that I'd have this assignment for only one transfer after which
I'd be a district leader. In our meeting at President's house on Thursday I got
assigned with Elder Palmer (easily the best missionary in the mission and one
who came into the mission with me) to go to serve over what was the old
Marseille mission!
So we'll be living in Marseille and will be serving 4 zones of about 22
missionaries each. Including Nice, Aix, and the two Lyon zones.
Because neither Elder Palmer nor myself are legal to drive in France, we
have a third man with us in our equipe, Elder Huntsman, he's in his 5th
transfer. He'll be with us to work with us and drive and do exchanges with other
missionaries. Really fun!
The other assistants are Elder Castillo and Dupre, and Elder Higham and
Davis. I took Elder Taylor's spot.
It was great to see Elder Castillo again. Man its so much fun to be with
him. He sends his love to you guys and is quite excited to meet you. I've got
him going on all our humor.
Aside from that I am sad to have left Clermont so quickly without even
being able to say goodbye to the members on Sunday (I attended one of the Lyon
wards for church on Sunday). Yao's baptism is fixed for this Saturday. I'm
trying to find a way for us to be working in the area at the time to go to see
it. What a bummer to have left so early, especially right before his
baptism!
I really count myself lucky and blessed to have served in Clermont. I think
I really did my best missionary work there and although I didn't accomplish all
the goals I had set, I think I made a difference. I began to reach my potential
there, it was a huge blessing and in retrospect an answer to many prayers. The
work is really accelerating there and we were seeing miracles daily!
I was also sad to leave Elder Tomlinson. I never thought that this week
would turn out like it did. He is a great man, and I'm excited to see what he
does in the future. The elder coming into to replace me was an assistant about 4
transfers ago, and so I know he'll take good care of ElT and Clermont.
We are in Lyon right now and will take off for Marseille today after we
finish our emails. An exciting new life of travelling and exchanges awaits.
We'll seeing and serving lots of different people which will be lots of fun.
What a challenge and a blessing it will be for this next transfer!
New Address:
La mission francaise de Lyon
Lyon Business Centre
59 rue de L'Abondance
Lyon France 69000
Beaucoup d'amour,
Elder Montgomery
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| Goodbye to Yao |
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| David came to see me off at the gare! |
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| Final Goodbye to ElT |
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| At a members home in Lyon for dinner |
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| The new team-E. Palmer, me, E. Huntsman |
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| Gotta get those apples |
