Bold As A Lyon - Prov 28:1: March 2014

Silver Linings .... March 24, 2014

Chere famille,

This week we were met with a ton of adversity. We had one ami drop us completely, another who cancelled our rendezvous and wont return calls and our list of potentials seems to be thinning. But so it goes, patience is that purifying process that brings wisdom, happiness, and hope.

We did have one really cool experience this week that I wanted to share. Its the goal of every missionary here to find that family, the one that the Lord has prepared for the gospel and who will readily accept it and make great laborers in the kingdom of God. Especially a just normal french family. Those two conditions seem to be difficult to combine here. However, the Lord can do anything through us as we walk with humility and seek his help. We found a mother of a young family a couple weeks ago and due to the fact that we didnt have a third man with us, we hadnt had the opportunity to teach her until this past monday (a week ago). We went with the bishop, which was an inspired choice due to the fact that this family, la famille Violland, is going to be moving to a home just across the street from the bishop, so they had plenty to talk about.

They are catholic and spent three years in Chicago, so they speak english, they have 3 young girls. And they are so intrigued by our message. They told us how they have seen an increase in their own religious interest in the past couple years and that God has really opened their desires to learn more. Stephanie said that a year ago, she would have never opened the door to us... And we ended up teaching the entire restoration to them and leaving them with a Book of Mormon. They opened with a memorized catholic prayer, then we ended with us praying.

And Arnaud, the dad, looked to us and said, "Vous avez ouvert nos coeurs", ("You have opened our hearts"). It was so cool.

And they accepted the bishops invitation to FHE at his house next week. Now will they accept it all, will they progress in the Gospel, i hope, but I dont know the will of the Lord on it. But it is always so wonderful, above all with a beautiful young family, to introduce them to the fulness of the Gospel and have their eyes light up as they feel the Holy Ghost testify of the truthfulness of what we are teaching. The beauty of being a servant of the Lord.

This week we have a zone conference with a Seventy coming, and then we have general conference right after!!

I'm so excited. I'm just trying not to let this all go by too fast! Bonne Semaine!

Beaucoup d'amour,

Elder Montgomery

At the doorstep of the Pelucchis home

on the road

The Saturday morning cheese market

Downtown Gex

Springtime is coming! .... March 17, 2014

My dear family,

This week was definitely up and down. There were some interesting trials thrown at us this week. But so it goes.The weather has been perfect here, we've busted out the short sleeves already, one of the tender mercies of the Lord.

On a sidenote: I have a million pictures from the Car show in Geneva, it was just so cool, oh man what a once in a lifetime experience. So many people thought we were working there! But it was so so so awesome.

This past week we had some cool potential blossom up. We got to work with lots of people that we have had to wait on for a while, because vacation time is just ending here. Patience is that purifying process the Lord uses to help us progress. I've come to the firm conviction that what really matters is the work we do and the preparations we make while we are having to wait in that time period. That is when we show the Lord that we really want the blessing and we are willing to do our all to receive it.

I found this cool scripture this week that I've been pondering about all week, I thought it'd be good to share with you:

Ether 2: 23-25

23 And the Lord said unto the brother of Jared: What will ye that I should do that ye may have light in your vessels? For behold, ye cannot have ^awindows, for they will be dashed in pieces; neither shall ye take fire with you, for ye shall not go by the light of fire.

24 For behold, ye shall be as a ^awhale in the midst of the sea; for the mountain waves shall dash upon you. Nevertheless, I will bring you up again out of the depths of the sea; for the ^bwinds have gone forth ^cout of my mouth, and also the ^drains and the floods have I sent forth.

25 And behold, I prepare you against these things; for ye cannot cross this great deep save I prepare you against the waves of the sea, and the winds which have gone forth, and the floods which shall come. Therefore what will ye that I should prepare for you that ye may have light when ye are swallowed up in the depths of the sea?

The Lord is often times preparing us for the great challenges and experiences of our lives, and what are we doing to answer the Lord's call to prepare ourselves

I love you all!

Beaucoup d'amour,

Elder William Montgomery

...And a funny frenchie picture for you!

And a funny frenchie picture for you

Salon de l'auto

We went to the Salon de l'auto last week! it was so cool! here are some pics!

the blue one is my favorite- Mclaren

District Meeting - March 2014

Sunshine in my soul .... March 10, 2014

A weeek of adventures!!!

My family this has been such a fun week!

Last week was transfers and Elder Crawley one of the other Gex elders got transfered, and to replace him we got Elder Wilson!! My Elder Wilson from Perigueux. Its been a riot having him back around.

We also taught/met with another Free Mason man...he let us in on a whole bunch of Free mason secrets. It was rather sketchy haha and really interesting. We aren't sure if we bought all that he said...

Monday was a really special day however. Probably one of the most spiritual experiences I've had on my mission. And let me first bear my testimony that what we do every day however mundane or bizarre it may seem is guided by the Lord. This is the Lord's work and He is at its head. Even when we come home to plan at night at 9 pm and we're exhausted and don't feel like thinking, but we seek the Lord's will anyway, we are guided. Monday we were in a trio, because we Elder Wilson didnt arrive until Tuesday, and we start work on our P-days at 6pm. We had simply planned to go pass some older single sister members, seeing as how in a trio we could visit them. Well at about 615 we arrived at the home of Sr. Blanco. She is from South America but speaks English. A seemingly french man opens the door and before we could even introduce ourselves he invited us in. We told who we were and asked if Mme Blanco was there. He walks into the kitchen. Turns out his name is Hugh he is canadian and he was in the middle of having dinner with his kids. Sr. Blanco was also in the kitchen and was happy to see us, but not surprised which was odd. After chatting a little bit, Sr. Blanco tells Hugh that we were going to give her a blessing now. We had no idea what she was talking about. She walks us into the next room and tells us how she has been just terribly ill lately, barely able to get out of bed the past couple days, and that she has been in horrible pain. She then looks at us at asks us who told us that she was sick and that she needed a blessing (bear in mind we had absolutely no idea about any of this). We 3 elders look at each other and said, "no one told us anything, we just wanted to stop by and see how you were doing." And then we corrected that by saying, "The Lord told us to come." It was incredible. We gave her a blessing of healing and of course there were plenty of tears. She told us that she is nanny in this house and that the family here is so perfect for the Gospel and so ready. She told us that AS we arrived, Hugh and Sr. Blanco were in the middle of discussing an article Hugh read about mormon missionaries and how wonderful it is that the church takes such wonderful care of its members.

IT was just unbelievable the timing of it all.

We then continued on with our night and did some porting (knocked on people's portes), then went and visited another older sister in the ward. Turns out it is the mother of the Guilbaud family, one of my favorite families I've yet to meet on my mission- and the Guilbauds are in the middle of building a house and they are living at Sister Michel's home until then. We stayed and a fun time talking and then were invited to stay for a small Family home evening. So we had incredibly spiritual Family Home Evening with them and finished it by singing the hymn Dans nos foyers (Love at Home). It was absolutely....I cant come up with words to describe how happy i felt. It felt objectively right. Pure rightness. It felt like we were meant to be there, that we were sitting in that small living room with this young family and the Savior was sitting next us smiling with me. Just as we were leaving Sr Guilbaud thanked me for us coming and told me that our visit was an answer to a month's worth of prayers, and then she thanked me again at church yesterday telling me how much it meant to her and her family.

I've never felt such joy in my life or such purity in any one moment like I did that evening, knowing that I was exactly where my Lord and Savior needed me to be, being an imperfect, yet worthy representative of Him, in doing His work. Its impossible to really capture it in words. I feel like Mormon who struggled because of his weakness in writing. The Gospel is true, We have a Heavenly Father who loves all of us. And when we are willing to listen to what He has to tell us, we will ALWAYS find more happiness, no matter how seemingly big the sacrifice. The simple law of sacrifice- as we sacrifice our habits of disobedience we find infinite blessings in our life.

I love you all, the work here is progressing rapidly, we found another family yesterday that we are now working with. I've never been teaching so much on my entire mission.

And we have a member here who works for a French Car Company, Citroen and he gave us 4 elders tickets to the largest car show in France and Switzerland (if not europe?) for today in Geneva, so thats where we are going! :)

Beaucoup d'amour,

Elder William Montgomery

Us four at the gare, Elder Crawley got transfered

A circus passed through town and they were keeping all the animals out on a rugby field. This is my safari pose

Imperial- the best pâtisserie ive ever had.

Transfer 6, month 7, Day 1, Captain's log: .... March 3, 2014

Dear family,

What an awesome week we had. Really just full of wonderful progression that we saw.

Elder Ambursley and I are staying together in Gex for another 6 weeks. Stoked to be alongside him. His unusual fire is incredible and his boldness is something that I'm learning from everyday.

Upon reflecting about this last transfer that went by and looking at the numbers we had, and then thinking of all the people that we had met and taught and helped, I couldn't help but feel a tiny bit of pride in the progression we are beginning to see. That being said, there is a lot that we need to improve and do before we begin reaching our big goals.

This week we saw our teaching pool grow a lot.

I felt like we were reaping in on a lot of the work we had put in.

-We had 1 iffy lesson that didn't go as well as we hoped with our American ami Marva. She's an economist that works at the UN! Cool! and is from New Jersey and has a lot of faith in God. We had a really great first lesson with her, but this one did not go well at all and it really kinda stumped me (it was really a bizarre lesson) but we got a return rdv, so lets hope that improves.

-We had a good conversation and gave away a Book of Mormon to a non practicing catholic dad of a family of 6, who is unemployed right now. And he invited us to come back anytime. We were hoping for a more specific time but ca va.

-And after that we had our ami Gracey come to church with her 3 yr old daughter Silvia. They are from Tanzania and communication is a bit difficult...but its always so cool having amis at church.

We are working with 6 others right now. Very cool and very exciting.

This transfer will be about taking it to the next level. Really being as perfectly efficient as possible and becoming evermore consecrated to this Work. Burning out the laziness and pride and becoming a more effective tool in my Heavenly Father's Hands to help His work progress. Perfection is the goal, sincere progression is the expectation, He is the way.

Also I sent some pictures, but I got to spend Thursday in Martigny, Switzerland on an exchange, it was so cool!

I love you all!!

Beaucoup d'amour,

Elder William Montgomery