Sunday, March 21, 2010

"We help people with change...I pray we can help them."

March 22, 2010

Hello from Murray Bridge!
Michael has givien up smoking, Lee and Mike will start paying their tithing this coming sunday. They are set to get married on the 31st of March. Me and Taufa will be the witnesses. Then on Sunday the 4th of April they will be baptized. I will perform the ordinance for Lee. Taufa will baptize little Kyrstal and a member will baptize Mike. In the baptism services i do not like to participate much, i would prefer if the members did everything but it is their decision. They came to church, they are much more comfortable at church now. Lee went to a releif society activity this week. The little girls love learning about Jesus. Before Mike finnally quit smoking i told the girls whenever they see their father smoking to tell him to repent. It was really cute. We got a less active aboriginal sister to church named Rosetta and one of her 4 unbaptized children named Josh also to come to church. She loved it and said she will be back next week. The lesson in class was off the lesson in the gospel principles book "work and family responsibility" i think that is exactly what she needed to learn about. The work ethic of Aboriginals is not the greatest. We are working closesly with her family. Her 14 year old son named Mali will be sentenced this week for stealing $15,000 worth of jewlery. Kirtly the 16 year old has good potential hopefully he doesn't get sentenced as well. But Kirtly was given 3 months to show he has changed, he is a really nice kid he just needs direction. We help people with change. Kenan the 12 year old is a lost kid. Just the other night i know he went out and jumped a fence and stole some alcohol. We are literally saving them before they all screw up their lives. I pray we can help them.
We got another baptism committment out of a man who was a media referel named Patrick Hill. He ordered the Dvd, Lamb of God. The church is doing a big Easter holiday media push and it is working. We taught him the Restoration and gave him a Book of Mormon. He has Pentecostal background but is searching for the truth, he has found it with us. We are still continueing to work with the Aboriginal network.

Monday, March 15, 2010

"...someone pulled out a mailbox and whacked him across the head with it."

March 15, 2010

Hello from Murray Bridge!

Things are going well here. We had a Sudanese man named Robert come to church on Sunday. He use to come to church heaps in 2003 but since he moved to Murray Bridge he had been looking for the church. He says he joined the church but he wasn’t baptized. I think he just enjoyed the church and considered himself joined with the church. We haven’t taught him anything yet but we will begin this week. Michael and Lee went to Mt Barker for the weekend. We are going to go fishing with them today. Sometimes Michael likes to fish for ducks, just luring them in with pieces of bread and then he hooks them with his rod. The weather is perfect here. Summer is ending and it is going to get quite cool soon. We eat the ducks off the river, and you might see a video of something getting its head cut off. We are teaching Krystal and preparing her for baptism as well. She just turned eight 2 days ago. She will be interviewed for baptism next week.

We began teaching this Aboriginal family. They were hard to catch. This less active sister felt the spirit ten years ago when she was baptized. But once she moved to Murray Bridge and became displaced with the church she felt her spirituality was stagment, and now since we have been over she feels what she felt 10 years ago. We taught some of her kids. Mainly her 16 year old son named kurtly. He has lived a rough life so far. He has been apart of gang related activities but he has been recently humbled a few months ago when someone pulled out a mailbox and whacked him across the head with it. That would settle anyone down I think. As we were teaching him the Plan of Salvation he felt something he hadn’t felt much ever in his life. He felt the spirit, he felt love. We started to dig at him to find his needs and concerns, asking soul searching questions. He began to become emotional, he couldn’t explain what he was feeling and he began to cry. We will continue to work with him. Hopefully he will progress in the gospel and turn his life around for the better. Rosetta and her family should have been at church yesterday but she slept in. So that’s just part of the roller coaster of Missionary work but we will visit them and get them rolling forwards. Rosetta’s husband Joe is going on a two week holiday to Perth to go to his Aunt’s funeral. Which is excellent, there is little spirit in him except for the spirit of contention. He is racist towards everything that is progressive like laws, order and authority. Also he passionately hates the police, white Australians and the Catholic Church. I will admit he is pretty funny though.

Also we are teaching another guy named Chris, he is a 21 year old aussie bloke. He sincerely wants a change in his life. Last week he became a father, he wants to give up his drug addiction. He wanted to come to church this week but the misses just had the baby and wanted to rest, that is understandable.

Also last night me and Elder Taufa were walking along the River just ending the night. We approached these three Aboriginal women. I felt prompted to ask them if they had family that were members of this church. I have never before asked that question to someone we just contacted. They said to my surprise, yes our cousin is a member of the Church, her name was Michelle Barnes. Michelle Barnes to me disappeared out of nowhere, she too is a less active, she moved here in Murray Bridge 9 years ago, didn’t know the church existed here and fell away. We had been working with her to rekindle her fire. We found out her new address and we will make contact with this sister this week. We began to teach a little bit about our church to these 3 women. I remember asking Michelle once, what is the happiest moment in your life, she thought about it for awhile and then she said her baptism was the happiest moment in her life. It was easy to testify to these 3 women that they will find happiness they never had before unless they fully embrace the teachings of the restored gospel just as their cousin did 10 years ago. These 3 women now want to be taught and want their kids to be also taught about Jesus Christ. We are working heaps on the aboriginal network and we will begin on the Sudanese network soon. Lily and June should be back any day now and between the beginnings of April. Looking forward to when they come back. The work is progressing in Murray Bridge. Happy to hear from everyone. I love you all heaps.

-Elder Montgomery

"We will continue to do the work in Murray Bridge. There is good potential here."

March 8, 2010

Hello from Murray Bridge!

The biggest news here is that Michael and Lee have passed their baptism interview. They are set to get baptized on Easter Sunday, the 4th of April. They will be married on March 31st. We are now concentrating on their 8 year old daughter Krystal. We are now teaching to her level and she will be baptized with her Parents.

Lily and June are still in China as expected. But I am not sure when they get back. We are going to focus on the Paton family, they are less active. They live out bush. They have come to church twice in a 30 day period without anyone really inviting them. Their two teenage sons are not baptized. We will have to walk on egg shells if we appear too bold and pushy we will scare them away. We will have to just love them. We will do non “threatening” visits and just leave spiritual thoughts. The spirit will work with them and soon they will be prepared to hear the discussions and come unto Christ. We will be patient and have faith for the spirit to do that.

Also we are going to focus on another less active family. Her name is Rosetta, she is aboriginal. She was baptized 10 years ago in Adelaide but then moved to Murray Bridge, when at that time there wasn’t much of a church here at all. Maybe 7 people were attending every Sunday. She did not know the church existed and so fell away. But the church does exist in Murray Bridge! With about 100 people attending each Sunday. She wants her kids to learn about Jesus Christ. Her 4 oldest kids are baptized, but the youngest 4 kids are not. She has 4 sons we will be teaching, Kirtly 16, Mali 14, Canaan 12, and Josh 10. That is a lot of potential priesthood holders. It will be the greatest blessing in their lives if we can bring standards and morals into their lives just before they start seriously messing up. It is Aboriginal Culture to go to prison, shows you are a man. We will begin teaching them this week. We tried to teach Rosetta when I first came to Murray Bridge with Elder Ashworth but then she kept dodging us. But last month her mom passed away so now she is humbled and prepared to let god into her life again. We will continue to do the work in Murray Bridge. There is good potential here.

Love ya heaps

-Elder Montgomery