*insert BonJovi lyrics here* (Week 52)

 Monday, July 29, 2024   7:21pm

Yuhyuhyuh what's up folks, you'll never guess what's going down this week. THATS FREAKIN RIGHT, WE HIT A YEAR TOMORROW BAYBEE!! It's wild, already half the mission done! I've honestly been loving every second of it and it's kind of sad to see it slipping away so quickly! But anyways, I'm very appreciative of everything I've learned in this time and I'm excited to see what this next year has in store! 

buT yeah, this week was aight, we had to go to Bahía Blanca Monday through Wednesdayto do some paperwork for Elder Canizales so he could be legal here, which he luckily now is, it also meant I got to spend a lot of time in a different area in Bahía called Maldonado, which is where one of the elders from my MTC district is stationed right now (sup Elder Malone)! It was a lot of fun to work with him, as well as a great growing experience, he helped me a lot to make my contacting better and begin to think a lot differently about what it means to be a successful and effective missionary. I'm still trying to figure out what exactly being successful/effective means to me, but it is helping me stay a lot better focused on the work in general. Overall, great experience, even though I was outside of the area for so long! 

While we were in Bahía, we also were able to grab a LDS edition of the Bible, one with all the Book of Mormon footnotes and whatnot, for our friend Willy. We had a great lesson with him about some of the themes in the Bible, i.e. the Lord's Prayer, the story of Esther, and he was really excited to be able to have it. We also just randomly started talking about baptism with him and he told us that he was sure he was going to get baptized someday, which is AWESOME, because when I got here he was a lot more iffy about anything with the church. Progress, baby, progress! 

Other than all that, it's honestly been a really chill week. Just been knocking a lot of doors hoping that people open up and talk to us, which they have been, and hopefully that leads to some good lessons soon. We also had our district Pday today, just went to Bahía, ate some good food, taught everyone how to play Truco, an Argentine card game, and chilled out! 

So yeah, pretty sure that's all from me this week, make sure yall are reading your scriptures, whatever they may be, I'm reading in the Bible right now and Acts is pretty cool. Pray always and trust in the Lord!

Goodnight everyone, have a great week!

Elder Matt Montgomery  

(Andrew got to color in the week 52 half-way square tonight!)

Average eight in the morning moon activity

THE BEES ARE HERE!!

Pday de Distrito!!

Elder Arias

Elder Canizales

Elder Paredes

Hermana Bandley

Hermana Mijangos

It’s all Down Hill from Here!

Today Andrew got to color in the 52nd square on Matt’s Mission Tracker! 

Can’t wait for that hug a year from now!!!

 

New Mission Leaders: President and Sister Antuna

 

Eating the Elephant (Week 51)

Monday, July 22, 2024    8:52pm

Heyyy, what's up everyone, it's ya boi, Elder Montgomery, back again with incredible tales from the great Bahía Blanca Mission. 

Welp, this week, sadly enough, my companion once again fell ill. Nothing too serious, just a bit of a cold, but it still stopped us from working for the day. A bit annoying, but what you gonna do, it's better to rest and be at 100% the next day in my humble opinion. 

So yeah, that means our week wasn't too eventful, we had a couple of good lessons and contacts, but nothing too mind blowing. Comp being sick again also gave me some good study time again, and I used a good bit of it learning some French from Spanish and it's actually been helping a lot in both languages, which is pretty cool. Also did some good studying on the Come Follow Me this week about the antichrist Korihor, which is always a fun one. Mostly focused on how I would try to answer the questions he asked Alma, cuz ya never know what they might ask you out here lol. 

Luckily, we did have some awesome experiences this week in our other area, Dorrego! We were able to go Saturday and Sunday last week, and I finally got to meet the majority of the members there and a lot of the progressing friends we have. One of them, name Hugo, has a great testimony and is super ready to be baptized, but didn't think he was ready to accept the date when we offered it, so we're letting him stew and pray about it, and hopefully soon we can get him set on the path. But yeah, I really love th area of Dorrego, and I'm super excited to see how it progresses from here! 

Anyways, I'm grateful for the week I had, and it's wild because it went by so fast! It's been so interesting to see how quickly the mission has picked up speed. It's been a lot like eating an elephant (not that I've done that or anything), where it looks like a large or impossible tast at first, but bite by bite, it gradually gets smaller and seems more doable. I'm very glad to finally be able to see the mission that way, as something hard that I'm able to do and truly enjoy at the same time. 

Welp, that's all from me tonight, yall! I love you all very much, always very grateful for all your love, prayers, and support!! 

Ciao for now!

Elder Montgomery

(He was walking around Bahia Blanca while we talked to him today. They’re there for a couple of days while Elder Canizales gets his Visa stuff done)

Chango' technically means monkey, but it's more like 'dude' down here. I say chango a lot

Nuestra amiga Nancy de Dorrego

President and Sister Marsden Say Goodbye

 

Shoulder to the Wheel (Week 50)

Monday, July 15, 2024   9:13pm

Holis pepos, wussgood with yall, happy Monday. Welp, it's late and I had a pretty interesting semana, so let me go ahead and launch into it. 

First off, Elder Canizales and I got back from our fiasco in Bahía Tuesday evening, so we basically missed a day of work there, and then he also had to rest all of Wednesday and the majority of Thursday, so if you're keeping track with me, that's three out of six days this week that we couldn't work, which had me feeling pretty blue because I thought we wouldn't be able to meet any of the goals we had put for the week, but I woke up on Friday and decided to not let that get me down and to, well, put my shoulder to the wheel and push along, because with Christ, all things are possible, right? (Philippians 4:13. I quote that a lot). 

And yall. We found so many people and had some great member lessons in just three days. A lot of the people we found actually seem like they're going to progress, especially this dude named Julio Cesar, who is absolutely loving the pamphlet we gave him. We also just gave him a LdM, so I'm excited for our next lesson, it should be a really good one. Also finally got to meet a progressing friend in Dorrego named Nancy, we had a great video call with her and an hermana where I just got to meet them and know where they may need help. Nancy's honestly already a member basically, she just needs to get married and she's all good to be baptized. So we'll see what we can do.

So, with all the time I had stuck inside, I started to clean a lot of the pension, because I honestly didn't realize at first how dirty it was, but it makes sense after so many different guys have lived here for so long. Kinda sad but whatever. I was listening to a lot of older conference talks while I was cleaning though, and I just gotta say that I love President Hinkley, even from just a voice recording of him you can hear the authority, truth, and love in the words he speaks.

I also was able to do a fair amount of studying, and with the last few weeks being about Ammon and his brethren serving missions, I did a lot of self reflection of my own. I was really thinking about Ammon in particular and his example of always seeing some kind of challenge or difficulty with an optimistic view. Like when the group of Lamanites scattered the sheep Ammon and his fellow servants were keeping, he didn't think, 'Aw freak, now I gotta round up allll these dang sheep and keep the king from freaking out,' but saw it as an opportunity to show the power of God to the people he was teaching, which I absolutely loved. Kind of exactly what I needed when I was in a difficult situation where I couldn't leave the house and needed to change my attitude about it. Cool how God works like that. 

Anyways, it's getting late, so I'll leave it off here. Hope yalls weeks are filled with milagros and bendiciones! Les amo un montonasso!!

Elder Montgomery 

Hop, Skip, and a Bus Away (Week 49)

Monday, July 8, 2024    5:43pm 

Heyyyy, how's it hanging, peoples? Once again, it is a fabulous Monday here in the Bahía Blanca mission, what a blessing it is to be able to send out an email to my favorite people! 

Well, this has been a very interesting week! First off, Happy Fourth of July! Absolutely love and miss my home country, every day out here I become more and more grateful for it. Very blessed to have lived in a country where I'm free to worship my God in the way I choose. 

We went to a neighborhood outside of Monte where a few members live, and while it was quite the walk to get there, we actually ended up finding a few people, so we'll probably end up there again here soon

Also went to Dorrego, the other larger town that we have under our jurisdiction. It's honestly pretty nice, reminds me a bit of Pehuajo, but quite a bit smaller. The members there are really awesome, so hopefully we can get some good work done there soon too. It'll actually be similar to Pehuajó over there, there's not a lot of active members and a lot of the inactive ones don't really know anything about the church and don't care to go. It's another sad situation, but as is the life of a missionary. 

We ALSO also had divisions this week, but we did those in Monte. It was a lot of fun, and the Elder I got to do them with, Elder Paredes, is from Iquitos, Peru, where one of my aunts served her mission! He's still in training as a missionary, so it was fun to show him around a different area and present different styles of working; gosh, I love teaching stuff, yall. 

Right now, I'm actually in Bahía Blanca because Elder Canizales is feeling pretty under the weather. Everything's fine, he has just had a bit of a temperature, headaches and nausea for the last few days, so we figured we'd swing by a hospital to see what's up. Basically, we ended up waiting three hours there just for them to say, 'rest for two days, eat good and drink water, take ibuprofen if it hurts.' I'm so glad we went. So yeah, we're just chilling, waiting to get home so my comp can sleep and have an excuse not to work lol. But yeah, I'm all good, he's all good, everyone's just fine. We'll, aside from the fact I had to wake up at six to get ready to leave. Cmon, it's pday, I'm supposed to be able to sleep in a bit! 

Welp, that's all from me this week, everything still feels pretty slow work-wise, but it should pick up soon. Just gotta have faith! 

Aight, love yall, hope this week's a good one for you, enjoy summer break all you Americans out there!

Peace out, 

Elder Montgomery 

Zone Conference moment

Divisiones con Elder Paredes, de Iquitos! 

dw, it's just the backing for a plaque tag (I look good tho right lol)

Wow, mucho campo

Not too large, this Dorrego

Congelados (Week 48)

Monday, July 1, 2024   6:21pm 

Que tal mis cracks, como están? Hope yall had a great week filled with fun, miracles, and especially warmth. Us? We had fun and saw miracles, for sure, but warmth? Good gravy it has been cold here, and with the wind chill from the beach and everything we've been almost below freezing every day. Makes it difficult to want to get out of bed in the morning! But alas, we must work, so out of bed we got. 

A lot of this week has been really interesting with our efforts to find people. We've been able to make a lot of basic contacts and set up lessons with people, but the majority of the lessons we planned fell through, either the people weren't there, they just were all of a sudden busy, or my personal favorite, said it was too cold to let us in. So yeah, a lot of effort but not a lot of fruits, which happens, important thing is that we keep working. 

We've been making some great progress with our friend Willy, as always. Since he's coming to church every week but isn't quite ready to be baptized, we've been focusing on him inviting his friends to come to church and have lessons with us as well. He had already brought a friend of his a few weeks ago, so hopefully we can start having some good 'almost member lessons' with Willy and his friends.

I was also really happy with the group this week, we had been trying to push them to start ministering a bit more to the other less active members, and this last Tuesday, they all met together to put together ministering assignments for the ward. It apparently been working well, because an hermano that hadn't been to church in a few months showed up and told us that he was really glad that some members passed by him that week. Ministering really works, yall! 

Elder Canizales has been wanting to learn English, which is always fun, I love teaching anything, but this last week, he asked me to help him practice praying in English, and I actually struggled so much saying the prayer! I realized that it has literally almost been a year since I said a prayer in English out loud, which just surprised me how used to Spanish I've been! It's so fun talking in Spanish now though, it's also such a blessing to be able to do so, and it's honestly given me a lot of confidence knowing that if I just apply myself to something, I will be able to do it, eventually. 

So a lot of you probably already know that a lot of missionaries left a few weeks ago, but this last week, our Mission President reached his point and left as well! Bye President Marsden, you will be missed! So last Friday, our new president, President Atuña, got here, and I'm super excited to be able to work with him. We had a missionwide call with him and his wife last night, and they seem so nice, definitely presidency material. We actually have Zome Conference tomorrow, so I'll be able to meet him them! Gonna be a blast! 

Well, not too much else going on here, I do have some good expectations for this week, we have some good lessons planned and we'll be going to a few towns outside of Monte to see who we can find. Hopefully we can also make it to Dorrego, the other larger city we're in charge of, but we'll see. 

But yeah, that's been my week, pretty wild, no? Well anyways, I hope this week goes well for yall, remember to stop and pray whenever you may need it! 

Much love!

Elder Montgomery 

We call this...

THE Monte Hermoso

11 months now...who's counting tho

Made some hamburgers, gosh were they good

Gotta get that fresh cut before Zone Conference