Transfer 14, Week 5 .... March 9, 2015

Dear Family,

Another week on the horse. Nothing super crazy happened this week until yesterday.

The teaching pool continues to cycle around. We taught 3 new potential amis this week, and didn't get to see 3 of our current amis. But we had some cool experiences.

Tuesday we got to teach the lifelong best friend of one of our good member buddies whose name is Franck. He is from Ivory Coast. He invited us to teach a lesson about the family with one of his buddies named Jean marc. He is a really cool guy, and really solid catholic with an awesome family. At the conclusion of our little lesson about the family, he asked us about the foundation of the church, so we had the chance to teach a 15 minute lesson about the Restoration (The Restoration of the truth is still happening and we can play an active part in it!), and gave him a book of Mormon and challenged him to read and pray about it. The Spirit was really strong and I think he felt that there was something different in what we were saying. He accepted it with slight hesitation. We followed up on Franck and apparently Jean Marc was super interested but we have yet to fix a return rdv with him.

We taught another new ami who is also a student here, but he is from Chad! Not everyday you meet someone from Chad. His name is Marcelin and he is super chill and really smart. We taught him the Restoration and part of the Plan of Salvation and he came to church yesterday. He's doing well and seems to like it all. He is super humble. Excited for his progress.

Thursday we went to Lyon and had district meeting there. Had a fun time, it was a really good, Elder Haws our district leader has come a long way, and has become one of my favorite district leaders on my mission. Its odd how close we become with friends in such a short time.

Friday we took a 2 hour drive up to the big city in our sector, named Moulins, with David a young adult here. He's awesome. (Our sector, or ward boundaries, are ginormous, we probably touch 25 percent of the population in our daily work) We went up there to teach a less active recent convert who is living in a depression clinic at the moment. It was an interesting rdv, but I like going on special missions like this. We as missionaries get called to do so many crazy things, its awesome.

The recent converts name is Christopher and he has some problems to work out, and we'll have to work closely with the bishop to get him ready again.

Sunday was a miracle day. We had only Marcelin with us during our first hour of church, and then during Gospel principles class, we had another young student that we had taught this week named Ismael come and he brought a friend with him named Gino. (They came in as we were listening to a lesson on the temple very inappropriate...Grrr I would go on to have a talk with our ward mission leader to make sure that that doesn't get taught again.) But it was a huge miracle because Gino just came to support his buddy but would later figure out that his aunt is member of the church and she used to attend the church here in Clermont and all the members here know her. He is Peruvian and hit it off with the peruvian freres we have in the ward. We set up a lunch on Tuesday with one of them and Gino. Money. Then Sunday afternoon we had lunch with another Peruvian family, the Estradas and their non member sister and brother in law and their 2 sons. The brother in law's name is Jean michel and he is french french. But super fun. It was a huge success. I felt like dad, being the crowd favorite cracking all these Seinfeld-esque jokes. It was awesome. We shared a bomb message about things of eternal worth, and as we were leaving (final 3 minutes, clutch time) even set up a time to come to their house and show them how to make american cookies (I'll have to prepare for that). But that's kind of one of our strategies, just to find an excuse to see them again, and we pulled it off.

Then we spent the evening eating a crepe dinner with the Castelao family who had an American son in law in town. Really fun really family.

ElT has made huge strides this week in all aspects of his work and energy level, and we are beginning to work with more and more unity which is exciting.

The smell of transfers is in the air, never sure what will happen, but it sure is fun to be with ElT for his first one. I think we'll both stay together.

The restored Gospel continues to roll forth, what a blast and a blessing to be a part of the Restoration of the truth!

Much love,

Elder Montgomery