Not on a Sunday....

FFFFFFFFAAAAAAAAAAAAMMMMMMMAAAAAAAAALLLLLLLLLYYYYYYYYYYYY,

Hi.

How are you?

I'm doing great.

 

I LOVE your letters. All 78.5 that I have to read. My companions were laughing at me because I was trying to laugh quietly at all of ya'lls letters. Your letters are gems.

 

So this week, we taught one of our investogators, Jennifer, about keeping the Sabbath day holy. My trainer, Sister Wright had done a really good visual expirament before, and so we dicided to use it. We asked Jennifer what her favorite condiments were, like mustard, ranch, salsa, those kinds of things. She told us the normal kinds of things. Then we pulled out some ice cream, scooped her a nice bowl, and then started to make her a sundae with all of those good things. Her face became a little worried as Sister Wright sqeezed out some ketsup, mustard, vinigar dressing, and other condiments onto her ice cream. We then handed her the bowl and smiled. She said "Well, those are good, but not on an ice cream sundae!" Exactly. We talked to her about how playing sports, going boating, going to the store or movies were all good things, but not on a Sunday. doing those things on Sunday are like putting mustard and ketchup on ice cream, they're good, but not on a sundae. We then talked about how and ice cream sundae wouldn't be and ice cream sundae with out the ice cream, it's like that with church. It wouldn't be a sunday without church. We then scooped her another bowl of ice cream, and put the appropriate toppins on it, chocolate and whipped cream and stuff and talked about how there are things that do go on Sundays, like reading out scriptures, writing in  journals, visitng family, and other good things. I thought that it was a good lesson to help Jennifer understand, and I wanted to share it with the family becuase I thought that maybe it was something you could use to help teach the kids. It's interesting how many things I learn to teach that would be so great to use with the kids.

 

I had my first Zone Conference this last week. FABULOUS. Really. It really pumped me up and made me want to do my best as a missionary. Being a missionary is something that I've wanted to do for my whole life, and this week especially, I've looked in the mirror somedays, and smiled. Just becuause a year ago, I would have never in my life guessed what I would be doing right now. I am a missionary. I love it.

 

We also made scrap book pages for President and Sister Jones, since they are being released in July and we will be getting a new mission president. We gathered our paper from the tables, sat down with our photos they had asked us to bring, and then Sister Wright turned to me and ask "will you make mine for me?" my companions think I am crafty or something. Please. I try to tell them about Shar and Danika's crafts, to help them understand how uncrafty I really can be.

 

We've been doing a lot more tracting lately, since a lot of our lessons are falling through since finals for Texas State are next week. We've met a lot of interesting people, and seen a lot of timing miracles.

 

On Friday, we met a girl sitting in a parking lot. She's had a rough life, dropping out of school at 13 and being kicked out of her house later. She's turn to a lot of things that are harmful to her body, and is starving a lot of the time. As we talked to her about God's love for her, she got pretty worked up and upset, asking us "where is my God? In a world like this, where is He? Why isn't He here?" We shared the Book of Mormon with her, and hope to find a way to get her to Church. She did feel peace towards the end before we left. She wasn't able to get to Church yesterday however. Friday night, as we came home, I was really shaken from the experience. Life Isn't a fairy tale. It is hard. It is dark. And it can hurt. But. We have a Savior. God knew of the things that we would fall into in this life, and the pain that we would have to experience, and in His infinite and eternal love, he provided a means for us to escape it. He provided us with a Savior. He provided an Atonement. I am so greatful for Christ in my life. His Atonement and Love are so real. Tangible. Everyday, in everyway.

 

I love you all so much, and think of your smiling faces often. Jed, I got your graduation annoucement. Your picture is awesome :) Congrats with everything, and good luck to Jed and Katie with graduation and the baby, and to Sharlan with not being homeless for long. Good luck with Ammons Project and Jubilees graduation, your both going to be great! Danika I love your face, and your letters, I pray for you everyday. Little kids: I love your pictures and letters. Keep them coming. Mom and dad, I enjoy your letters and hope you keep up with your sci-fi show. Sounds like dad is enjoying it haha :)

 

Take care ya'll!

 

Letters are always welcome :)

 

Hermana Enne Montgomery

A Representative of Jesus Christ

This has been the fastest week of my life. It's also been an awfully slow week as we only had one lesson with an investigator, and three walk in lessons. It's been difficult, but I've seen a lot of miracles as well.

At one point, I want to say Wednesday or Thursday night, we were knocking doors and it was my turn to lead the introductions and such. The door opened and we could see that there was a kind of birthday party going on, and immideatly I felt uncomfortable with everyone staring at me. The girl who answered yelled "mom it's for you!" passing off the annoying visiters to someone else,and walked away leaving us standing there. The mom came over and the words "hi, we're missionaries" were barely out of my mouth before she started laughing at us and shuting the door. "Don't want any of that here!" she said as the door closed sharply in my face.  First time I've really felt like crying since coming out to Texas. Sister Wright touched my arm and said kindly, "Christ had people spit in his face too." It was then that I realized, and if I was to represent who Christ was and is, I was going to have to take some of brunt of peoples words and actions. He was mocked and tortured, Spit upon, and scorged, and He was the kindest person to ever live. If I am to represent Him, I have to represent Him at all time and not just when it's easy.

We've started to get a little Spanish tutoring for a few minutes after church on Sundays from some of the native Spanish speakers,since we aren't using our Spanish a lot. We've been practicing and preparing all week to teach them just one principle from Preach My Gospel, and I was nervous. I worked on memorizing the first vision in Spanish, and so far it's been kicking my trash. While practicing Sunday morning with Sister Wright, she told me to simplify it. To use the words that I did know, and to not make it harder for myself by using descriptve or laungage I didn't know. She told me I could do that bare minimum of what I did know, and work up from there. And so I did. Mike, a member in my ward was helping me, and he's been speaking English since 1st grade. He told me that he still has trouble reading English sometimes and sometimes doesn't understand words in english. It gave me hope, since he's been learning English for over 10 years know and still struggles sometimes. It will come. I can at least use past tense forms of words now, so that's a plus.

Transfers are coming up fast already and my trio has decided that we need to start praying to stay together. We just have too much fun and work well together to be split. The laughs keep us going in the day as we knock on many empty apartment doors. The weather has been pretty up and down this week, one day we'll be sweating buckets, and the next we'll be putting on coats and tights. One day, I said "as long as I can wear carves and scardigons I'll be okay." That mishap of words is still going strong in our jokes.

I'm working hard to learn all that I can. I want to be prepared. We were told that we could be training the new wave of sisters as soon as we're done with our own training. I've already had nightmares about training. Sister Wright thinks sister Miller and I are all cute being so worried about training in eight weeks. She said she'd even recomend us for training once we were done. She got a good laugh out of our tarified faces. I hope she was joking.

Well. The work moves forward.

With mucho love,

Hermana Montgomery

Tails of Faith and Tender Mercies All Around Us

Hey Ya'll.

Hmm. That was fun. Let's do it again. Ya'll. Embrace it folks.

Did you all LOVE conference? I know I did. A lot. Did anyone else notice the new camera angles? I think there must be a new director of filmography or something, because it was a bit different from others.

It's been a rough week here. Oh wow. Lot's of Trials of Faith happening around us. But also a lot of tender mercies.

One of our investigators, Jennifer, is moving mountains. We taught her the Word of Wisdom this week, and she struggled with the idea. We ended up being there for a very long time, but before we had left she understood what she had to do and started getting rid of the things. She has some pretty intense addictions to these things, and being in a college town, partying and drinking is what everyone does. But as she threw things away, she became more excited, and then kept looking for more things to get ride of. She is still struggling and working through some heavy withdrawls from those strong drinks, among other things. I admire her willingness to change so much. The things people do to come closer to Christ are not easy. But as Elder Holland told us once "becoming aquanted with the Savior is not a cheap experience. It's suppose to require some of your soul." I love his words. It gives me strength to know that amide all mine and others trials,as we turn to Him, we are coming to know our Savior more

On Sunday, we knocked into a few people and shared an Easter message. One, James invited us to come back again on Tuesday. James is a Photography Major here at TSU and has been through a lot  the past couple of years. He's had five deaths in his family in the past three years, including his father's death from cancer. He has a lot of empty space inside, and I can feel angels all around us trying to help him as we teach him. He told as that his dad passed away around 21 days before his birthday two years ago. We knocked into him March 31 this year, 21 days before his birthday this year. I don't believe in luck. He still has a lot to heal from, a lot of pain, and we're praying so hard for him to find the turth in our message.

Right before the end of our last lesson with him, he said something about me being a "computer" becuase I just knew all the answers. This troubled me a little. I am not a computer. I am a person, doing my best to connect to people and help them understand. And I started overanalyzing my whole life, wondering if I act like a computer, just spitting out the facts and not caring about the people. I didn't feel like I was. And I started to feel like no matter how hard I tried, I wasn't going to be good enough. After the lesson we were home eating dinner, and my trainer, Sister Wright finnally got it out of me what was bothering me. She had to explain to me that in this sistuation, James was not unsulting me, instead giving me a very high complement. She told me that He could tell that there was something different when I spoke to him, and because he couldn't identify it as the power of God, he had to find a different way to describe it. Computer. I felt a little better. I just wished I could know for sure.

Within seconds we recived a text message from James thanking us for our lesson, and spacifically the short mormon message that we shared with him ("Mountains to Climb"). He said that it was pretty "spot on" to how he felt. I had decided to show the movie to him in our lesson, because nothing else seemed to be coming. At the time, I couldn't tell if President Eyring's powerful words in the movie had touch him at all. But they had. And I had felt prompted to share it with him. I realized that even in my selfish moments of doubting if I could really be a good missionary, God had sent me a tender mercy to show me that I could make a difference. That through following the promptings of the Spirit, I could help others find peace in their life.

I am so grateful for a Father in Heaven who knows not only my needs, but all His children's needs, and he will not withhold from us if we but ask.  Even with so many struggles this week, with our investigators not following through, and losing quite a few, God is still there. And this is His work.

Well. Family. Life is busy and rough here sometimes. But I am a missionary. I am a Missionary. I still can't believe I'm here. This really is His work. And it is marvelous.

Love,

Your Hermana Montgomery

A Whole Bunch of Firsts

FFFAAAMMMMIILLLLLYYYY!

(Must read in the tone Nacho would use)

 

How is everyone?! I've spent so much time enjoying everyone's emails that I now have to speed type. it could be a struggle. Pero, esta bein.

 

Well, It's been a busy week and I can hardly believe that it's only been a week. Sister Wright and Sister Miller both agree with me that it feels like we've been together for MONTHS. So much has happened since coming to San Marcos that I feel that I must have lived here my whole life. Sister MIller said "if it weren't for my lack of knowledge of how to get anywhere, I'd have said I've lived here my whole life." True Statement.

 

A lot of firsts happened to me this week. Let me share a few:

 

I met and taught my first "wickin" this week, I think that's how you'd spell wickin, not really sure. It was interesting, and she accepted a Book of Mormon and said that if she felt it was right, she would keep reading it. Interesting.

 

I spent my first Easter away from home. Weird. Yeah. Last year, school ended right before Easter and so I was able to come home. And so I spent the day knocking on doors. In the rain. Interesting.But it was so good. I met two people who let us in and we had excellant lessons on the Atonement and both scheduled a time for us to come back and teach them again.

 

I went to my first lds non-temple wedding. The sisters before me had been teaching a couple, and they just got married. The girl, Sarah was disowned by her family for deciding to get married and baptized, and so it was really good that our trio was there to support her, since no one in her family was there. I really admire these people who set aside everything in their lives to follow what they know is right. Kevin and Sarah are already planning their Temple wedding ina year, and it's so exciting to see them learn and grow.

 

I also gave my first talk as a missionary. Yes, since there are only about 30-45 people in our small YSA branch, when someone new comes into the ward, they snatch them up fast. They asked me to speak on the Atonement, and for some reason, maybe because I was a missionary speaking and needed to be wise, or becuase I still hardly know anyone in the ward, or maybe it was that the Atonement is so important and I wanted to deliever it in the best way possible, any of those reasons could be it, but I was really nervous and stressing out over this talk. But it took place, and went pretty well. And now I can breath a little.But really, as a missionary, everyone expects you to know the answer. There is a very high standard for Sister Missionaries, and boy, when they call on me in class to answer the question, my hands start sweating. That's never happened to me before. Sweaty hands. It's weird. A whole new level of nerves I guess.

 

Our Branch President taught the combined lesson in our Branch yesterday, and we talked about a Book of Mormon Challange at one point. He told a story about a missionary who had the goal to read the Book of Mormon every month while on his mission. And he did. He read it 24 times on his mission. That really impressed me. Our Branch president and his wife decided to try to read the whole Book of Mormon in March, and they did. He said that he wanted to know if he could do it himself before asking his branch to take on the challange. And so he challenged us to read it. And then do it again. There is great power to be had in studying the Book of Mormon a little, or a lot, everyday.

 

The work is so great here. Everyday I am amazed at the people and their faith and strength. God's hand is in our lives everyday.

 

I love you all, and hope that you are doing TOO FANTASTIC.

Hug Shar for me.

 

Love,

The Hermana Montgomery