Dear Family,
This week we saw a lot of progress! We have found
so many people to teach! Its incredible how much the Lord is guiding us to find
people to teach. We have a lot of potential right now. This week was a good
start to the New Year.
We taught Jia twice. Its moving really
slowly with her. Who knew teaching faith would be so difficult? We taught from
Alma 32 and it answered a lot of her questions and she seems to be keeping her
interest. Although it is hard for her to believe or to picture God. The
conclusion was that she had to pray, and she accepted the invitation to do so.
Lilian, her friend, has been much simpler to teach. She has an
incredible faith already. We taught about the doctrine of Christ, at the end
when we invited her to baptism she responded, "how could I deny an offer like
that?" Haha we asked ourselves...does that mean yes? She is super down to read
and learn and act.
These two weeks will be difficult for both Jia and
Lilian because exams are starting this week at the universities, so we're hoping
to be able to see them still.
We had a super great experience this
week. Tuesday morning we called Loris, this young journalist here in Clermont
which we had met the week before who is super interested by "the mormons" and he
happily agreed to have us over that night. We showed up at his apt at 630 like
planned and I think he forgot, because as we walked in he said to us in english,
"sorry we're smoking" and we entered to the dimly lighted apt where him and
another guy and girl were smoking some suspicious substances and there was beer
and wine on the table. It was a bit alarming at first, but as we started talking
the three seemed to be all sober so it was fine. They were impressed that we
just came in and were willing to talk even in the environment and be chill. They
asked questions of course and it turned out to be awesome. None of the three
were really believing at all, but we taught the Restoration of the gospel in 5
minutes and had the chance to testify of the love of our Heavenly Father. And
they were just blown away. The conversation turned to how cool it was to be
believing and what a good thing it was. Even in the circumstances the Spirit
seemed to touch their hearts, and Loris wants to introduce us to his gf who is
believing. Afterwards we talked about there was almost a tangible light coming
from us in the dark room. We could feel in their eyes the
difference.
On New Years eve we taught an Ivorian man named
Decahou, who is here studying and comes from a Evangelical background. We had
given him a BOM on the tram when we met him and he came to our rdv having read
to 1 Nephi 5 and corrected Elder Mataalii when he misspoke and said Mormon was
the last prophet in the BOM. It was awesome. He accepted the baptismal
invitation, and came to church on yesterday and really liked it.
We spent New Year's eve in Lyon, because we had a district meeting
the next day.
The bishop pulled us into his office yesterday and
assigned me to give a talk next week on moral agency. We had this great 40 min
convo with him about the direction of the missionary work in CLermont and how
the goal is to have a stake here eventually. The idea right now is to make
church more attractive and just to get our name out there! Advertise the truth!
It was neat and I felt like it was definitely a boost in trust between the
bishop and us.
We have our interviews with President this week.
Excited for it. We're making January the month of miracles. I have all these
goals flying around in my head. Its weird to be setting goals for this year
knowing that I'll be home before the end of this year.
Have you set your New Year goals???
I love you so very much!
Elder Montgomery
