Fwd: Letter #19 - 8/12/13

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Elizabeth Montgomery <elizabeth.montgomery@myldsmail.net>
Date: Mon, Aug 12, 2013 at 7:34 AM
Subject: Letter #19 - 8/12/13
To: Christine Montgomery <chrismont9@gmail.com>

Dear fam,

First off, all you Montgomery's, I hope you have a grand ol' time at the reunion next week! I'm super bummed I won't be there (but Ukraine's a pretty cool place to be too), but I really hope everyone has a blast. Brings back memories of the past reunions -- I'm so grateful to be part of such an incredible family. :)

Fun story for the week: I've gotten better at coming up with smart-alecky responses to people. Probably not the best skill as a missionary, but if it's in good humor, why not? For example:

Me: "Good evening!"

Woman (clearly disinterested): "Girls, no, no, no..."

Me: "What? It's not a good evening? I thought it was a pretty good evening..."

Man: "So what are you doing here anyway?"

Me: "We're missionaries for the Church of Jesus Christ."

Man: "Oh God..."

Me: "Yep! He's the one we're working for!"

And I really liked this one:

*Walk up to a lady on a park bench*

Me: "Hi, we're missionaries for the Church of Jesus Christ..."

Woman: "No, I'm not interested."

Me: "Actually, I just wanted to play guitar for you. Can we sit with you and play you a couple songs?"

*Proceed to play some hymns on guitar, then have a wonderfully friendly conversation with her in which we found out one of her friends is in our ward, and now she knows Mormons are cool people!*

So yeah, what else is new? You remember Elena and her daughter Alona? Well, Elena has a baptismal date! We haven't officially reported it yet though because it's October 5 (still really far away) because she's going on vacation for a month beforehand. But still pretty cool! She's definitely making progress and has the faith to move forward.

In other news, we dropped an investigator and gained a different one. Tamara wasn't progressing toward baptism, and though it nearly broke my heart, we had an ultimatum lesson and said goodbye. God had prepared me for it that morning by teaching me about agency, but it was still hard. I'm just grateful that the blessings of the Atonement of Christ will be there for Tamara whenever she's ready to grab hold of them, even if she has to sacrifice some things to do it. The investigator we gained is named Anna, and we met her at English class. We had a private English lesson with her, talked about families, transitioned into religion, had a great discussion about our beliefs, and then she agreed to meet again. We assigned her the intro to the BOM, and a few days later she called and said, "I read, I've got questions, and I want to meet!" So, I'm excited for that! It's the circle of missionary life I suppose.

Lots of great things have happened this week spiritually -- I've been working on developing spiritual gifts (knowledge, discernment, and boldness), I've seen tender mercies from the Lord left and right, and there's just been great progress personally and with the work. Things are really good right now. I'm so blessed to be a part of this great work of salvation, and I hope each one of us takes part in it by sharing the gospel with all those around you, serving others, and strengthening one another. Love God and love His children, and everything will work out!

That's all I have time for now. I love you all!

-Sister Montgomery

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