The Elegido (Week 28)

Monday, February 12, 2024   8:09pm

Well howdy there friends! Hope yalls week has gone well! 

I'll be honest, there wasn't a lot that happened this week, but we did have a lot of cool experiences with our amigo Marcelo, who has a baptismal date! I really do love talking about him, he's such an awesome dude, very 'elegido,' or 'elect' in English. He's had something awesome to tell or show us every time we pass by, and he's always so happy and excited to learn more about the gospel. 

Anyways, last time we passed by, we taught him about commandments, which went over really well and he actually brought up some awesome points about Lehi's Dream that I hadn't thought of before (details later), but after we were kind of finishing the lesson, asking if he had any questions and the like. He doesn't have any, but he does tell us that he used to have terrible dreams for the majority of his life, like dreams that felt like evil presences and such, and that he had had a hard time sleeping for as long as he can remember, but ever since the first time he'd met with the missionaries, he's slept fine every single night. He says that at first, he thought it was because he stopped drinking and smoking, but he said that he's noticed a presence of light and holiness in his life protecting him. 

It's always incredible to see how well Marcelo recognizes the Spirit like that. Every time we've taught a lesson, he's known the message to be true. We even taught him about tithing, which is usually where we can lose people, but Marcelo had no doubts and no reservations, he was ready right then and there to become a member. He's an incredible example of faith and trust for all of us, and I really honestly admire him for it. 

Anyways, the cool thought I had about Lehi's Dream. Marcelo has been reading in Come, Follow Me, and in the week about Lehi's Dream, it showed a painting of the vision. Marcelo pointed out that in the picture, the doesn't look very wide, or like it didn't have a lot of water. And I had this thought, that that's how Satan want us to see it, that sin isn't that bad, that there's nothing there, but unknown to us, the depths of it are immense. Luckily, the straight and narrow path is right next to the river, we can get out and get back on the path easily. It was just a really cool thought I had that didn't leave my head, so I wanted to share it I guess lol. 

Well, I suppose that's all this week really! I love yall a lot, hopefully I've got some cool stuff to talk about next week! 

Tchau!

Elder

New Hermanas asked us who we looked like and these were who we agreed on

He's Hades, I'm Zeus. I did these in like two minutes

Love how quick and easy pasta is. Also pear flavor is $$$

(We played with an AI photo generator while watching the Super Bowl last night and these were some of the ones it made of Matt.)

Commandments, Laws, Wisdoms (Week 27)

Monday, February 5, 2024    4:12pm

Holy Shenaiah it's already Pday again?! Sheesh yall, where does the time go? Lol I hope everyone's doing well! I personally am doing a lot better, it's started to cool down the last couple days after being consistently in the 100s the last couple weeks. Makes it a lot easier to do the work when you're not drowning in sweat! 

Anyways, the work goes on, whether it's hot or not, and the work this week was pretty awesome! First off, our amigo Marcelo, I think I've mentioned him a bit, was able to come to church yesterday, finally! We had been trying to get him to come for a while, but he hadn't been able to find the church building haha. He also told us that not only has he stopped drinking, he recently stopped smoking as well! He's making some awesome strides in his faith and preparing himself very well for his baptism, which he's super psyched for. He's such fun dude, it makes me so happy whenever we visit him. 

I was able to go on divisions with one of our Zone Leaders this week, and it was pretty awesome. They have a lot of progressing people in their area, which is more like the center of a bigger city, and it was interesting experience, just bouncing in between a lot of lessons while still contacting people outside and everything. He and I also talked a lot about what we could improve in at the moment, which lead to us talking a lot about optimism. I personally like to try my best to be optimistic in all moments, but it had become a little harder recently because of a culmination of a lot of things, mostly because of the heat lol. It did help me set my focus a lot better on how I can help my area and comp and everything, because I know I've been called here for a reason, I just have work hard and find it.

I was able to talk with an older lady a few days ago about literature and how we can find a lot of types and symbols of Christ throughout a lot of literature. And if any of you know me, you know I led that into a discussion of Shakespeare lol. She brought up an awesome point of how in MacBeth, after he does a lot of bad things, mentions that water can wash away his misdeeds, but it can never clear his soul, like how we can do our best to cover and hide our own sins but we can never fully clean ourselves without the Atonement. Very cool stuff, I was mostly glad I could figure out certain phrases and lines in Spanish without too much effort jaja. 

'Spose I should go over a talk now! One I read this week that I enjoyed a lot was 'Apostacy and Restoration' by President Dallin H. Oaks, April 1995. What I lived about this talk is how well President Oaks addresses some the differences between our church and other Christian denomination. He mainly focuses on the Trinity and our knowledge that they are three separate beings, each with a different role in the Plan of Salvation. We know this through many accounts, foremost among them being the Fist Vision. President Oaks does mention that God, even though we cannot mortally comprehend the full extent of His spirituality and presence, is not a God of confusion, He will not let us flail about in this life. At any time, anyone with a broken heart and a contrite spirit can ask Him and receive a response that applies to their needs. He loves us and will always help us when we turn our hearts, minds, and souls to Him. 

Alrighty, I suppose that's it from me for now! Love you all, have a great week!! 

Elder Montgomery

'I like turtles' -Pehuajó

Very blurry photo with Marcelo

Pineapple pizza to fight the Big Sad

Returning from intercambios on the chetto bus

Pday facturas babyyyy

~Cold enough to wear long-sleeves today~

Six. Seis. ろく. (Week 26)

Tuesday, January 30, 2024   11:57am

Wassup my Pehuajomies!! Espero que todos esten bien!! I know I'm sending this out not on Pday, but I promise I wrote it on Pday, I just don't have WiFi en casa jaja. 

Well, we did it! Well, part of it lol. This week makes six months of the mission, or just about a quarter of the way through, and it went just like that! Pretty wild honestly. The last six months have been incredible though. Looking back, I can see already how much I've learned and grown just by being out here, and I can't wait for what this next year and a half has in store! For now though, I'll just keep focusing on this week, and speaking of which...

This week was an interesting one! Like I've said, people are all out on vacations at the moment, which is making it a bit  difficult to find anyone to have lessons with. This week, Elder Haddock and I were trying to focus on finding new people to teach, so to the streets we went! Overall, we probably contacted an average of 50-60 people in the street every day, and the craziest thing? We probably found only 3 or 4 that are really going to progress at all, otherwise no one was interested! I do kind of understand, a couple of random dudes are asking if your interested in learning about Jesus when you're on the way to work or whatever, it's a bit of a weird situation. But still, so many of them will say, 'Another time, chicos!' and then walk away without giving us any contact information. Lovely. 

That situation made it hard to have a good attitude some days, but every time I started thinking negative, I'd think back to the Zone Conference we just had. We talked a lot about pride and attitudes and how just by being optimistic and trying your hardest every day will lead to success, especially when we keep from judging others, stay humble, and teach anyone and everyone, regardless of their or our situations. It's a pretty powerful message, and it's honestly helped me get into gear with our contacting, especially when it seemed fruitless to do so. 

We did focus on a specific talk for the Conference, which was 'Beware of Pride' by President Benson. It's an amazing talk, and I've already read it multiple times on the mission. I'd just like to invite yall to read it and take a look at where you can maybe leave a bit of pride behind and help someone else. For me personally, I've tried to be in a better mindset about the Argentine culture. A lot of the culture is pretty lazy sometimes, which can make me a little frustrated, but the Gospel can work with that. As long as I can take a step down from my pride and help invite the Spirit into their lives, they will move forward, sí o sí. 

Just to finish, I wanted to tell yall about a milagro Elder Haddock and I saw this week. One of our amigos, Marcelo, who is on date for a baptism, told us something amazing. Since last Sunday, he hasn't drank a drop of alcohol. He told us he'd normally drink maybe two or three beers near the end of most days. We haven't taught him the Word of Wisdom yet, but he still felt that he should stop drinking! Also, he started to get into a routine of praying every day. Coincidence? I THINK NOT!! Anyways, we're really proud of Marcelo, he's progressing amazingly, as long as we can get him in the Church the next fee Sundays, he should be baptized by the end of the month! Exciting!!

Welp, I'll leave it there for today! I hope you all have a great week, January's almost over, just hold out a little longer, and it'll be spring again! Unless you're cool like me, we have fall coming up next 😎

Haha, love you all tons! Mucho exito, capos!!

~Elder Montgomery~

View from the Trenque Lauquen pension

Los Elderes de Holy Rose

Yes I actually drew this

Una gatita 

Another Santa Rosa Zone Conference

 

Heat in the Ghost Town (Week 25)

Monday, January 22, 2024    9:07pm

 Well hello everyone, buenas noches! Hope this week went well for everybody, let me go ahead and launch into mine because it's LATE

So, we have a couple of people on baptismal date right now and they're doing awesome. One of the guys is named Marcelo and he's literally reading every pamphlet and the Book of Mormon so well and has a great handle on the gospel. He actually told us that he needed to be baptized before we put a date with him, it was crazy. The other date we have, Roberto, is a bit older that has a hard time reading, but he still has a great testimony and a knowledge that the church is true. He's been able to come to church the last few weeks, which is incredible, it's so hard to get anyone in the capilla lol. But yeah, I'm excited for them! Can't wait to see how they progress! 

Outside of our baptismal dates, this week was pretty slow work-wise. Right now is summer in Argentina, so everyone is on vacation. That means that there is nobody and nothing in this already tiny town of Pehuajó, it's wild. We have been trying a lot harder to contact everyone we meet, but people aren't very willing to listen usually, but whatever! Always have to keep pushing forward, not going to find the elegidos otherwise!

It's been a bit hot this week! Normally, that's not a problem for me, I'm usually pretty cold, but we don't have an air conditioner in our pension. Yeah. There is no break from the heat. We do have a couple fans, but with how humid it is, they pretty much just move hot air around. Again, it's fine, we're drinking plenty of water and walking in the shade and everything, I'm not getting heatstroke out here. Just gotta think cold thoughts lol. 

I just had a pretty awesome miracle a couple hours ago! Right now, I'm in a different city doing divisions, and the Elder I went with is super cool, he's named Elder Holmes. So, he and I, we walk around, make a few contacts, try to have a few lessons, then we go to the church to try to buy bus tickets online, because we have zone conference this Wednesday. Unfortunately, the computer wasn't working, so we just decided to go to the physical bus terminal later to get them. Well, pretty soon after, Elder Holmes gets a call that he's going to be moving areas in relation to an emergency transfer, and he's getting moved to Santa Rosa, where we have our conference. So we decide, 'oh, we should probably get those bus tickets now then' to gelive him time to pack. WELL, on our way to the bus terminal, we felt like we needed to talk to this dude we saw walking on the sidewalk towards us. So we say hello, introduce ourselves and our message, and he's totally into it. He says his name is Esteban, and he asks a bunch of really good questions about the Church and what makes it different. After we talk for a bit, Esteban tells us that he's going through a really hard moment in his life right now and that the Chuch sounds like something that could help him out. So we gave him a pamphlet, got his number, bore our testimonies, and sent him on his way! It was definitely the coolest street contact I've been a part of thus far. 

The experience just really showed Elder Holmes and I how much God is really in the details of our lives, like how if the computer was working, we wouldn't have gone to the terminal, and how if he didn't get that phone call, we wouldn't have gone down that early either. We were meant to meet Esteban that night, and he's going to do great things for himself and his family because of it. So tonight I want to invite you all to look for those moments in your lives too! Look for where God put you in places where you were supposed to be to further his work! It'll amaze you how much He has helped you and helped others THROUGH you. 

Welp, it is very late and I need to sleep, so this is all for now! 

I love you all very much, talk to you next week!!

Elder Montgomery~~

Took some photos for a zone challenge

Pehuajó: The Beginning (Week 24)

Monday, January 15, 2024    8:49pm

Well hello there my friends!! Hope everyone's doing well! 

Well, new developments have occurred here in the mission de Bahía Blanca, i.e. transfers, and I have left General Pico. Now, I'm living in a pueblito called Pehuajó, and thus far, it's going great!

Alright, before everyone asks, yes, I miss Pico. There's a lot of great people I'm leaving behind there, but that's the mission culture, baby. I leave everything in Elder Sykes hands, he'll do great. But still, I'll miss my people. At least i have the great memories, you know? 

Now, Pehuajó. It's honestly kinda similar to Pico, but it's a bit smaller and a bit less...rico. But still, the people are friendly and the work goes forward. My new comp, Elder Haddock, and I were actually able to put someone on date this evening! It's been a bit odd meeting new people like this again, but at least I can speak Spanish this time lol. The people in the branch here are really nice, but it's small, like, small small, soooo we don't get meals with them here. Which is fine, budgeting ftw. 

Well, nothing much going on this week outside of transfers and I'm getting this sent out REALLY late today so imma end it here, but I love yall! Hope you all have a great week! Be sure to ask for opportunities to serve those around you! Love God and be happy! 

Elder Montgomery 

1 Nefi 3:7

Mis queridos, Agustin y Jenifer

Bye Pico!!! Te voy a extrañar 

A toast to Pico 

Amamos a Jesús acá

Presenting......PEHUAJÓ!!!!!

I Think He Got Transferred

I saw this sweet post on Facebook this morning, so I’m assuming that means he got moved from General Pico.