"...God will provide a way."

January 17, 2011

Hello from Palmerston!

This week has been good. We received a good referral this week. A returned missionary came home last Sunday and he set us up an appointment with a less active man. We are to teach him the quit smoking program. This man is named John, he has a brother name Don, Don is a prospective Elder and is working towards going on a mission. John has 8 kids, none of them are baptised. Five of those eight kids are baptismal age. So by teaching the quit smoking program to John we hope that this will open the door to teaching the gospel to these kids and even reactivating John.

We had a baptismal date with an investigator named Andrew. He is from Papua New Guinea. He was in Cairns for a couple weeks visiting his wife. They have been separated for almost a year now. They have made certain reconciliations and she has agreed to move back with him in Palmerston. One of those conditions was to not be baptised Latter Day Saint. She is Catholic. When Andrew told us this he was on the verge of crying. He knows the church is true, and he desires an eternal family. We taught him a powerful lesson based on 1nephi chpt 3 which talks about a commandment from god to retrieve the brass plates from Laban. We shared with him that god gives no commandment unto the children of men unless he provides a way for them to succeed in keeping the commandment. Basically to melt down our message, God will provide a way. We went into fasting and we had a discussion, committed him to read about fasting in the Gospel Principles book. We are fasting for all our investigators, but for Andrew we are fasting that his wife’s heart will be softened. He has also expressed he will fast as well.

Scott is progressing through the Book of Mormon. He is up to 3rd Nephi. By now he has probably read through the climax of the Book of Mormon, we will see him on Wednesday.

Sara’s daughter was sick this week. So her sleeping patterns have been atrocious. One day she went to bed at noon. So we didn’t have the opportunity to teach her this week. But we did teach her less active mum and her little sister who is not baptised either, this bunch live in a separate house. They went to a cottage evening at a members home this week which was great, they were about to go to church but then Sara’s mum was admitted to the hospital on Saturday. She has a hernia. Surprisingly her husband actually showed up to church, that totally shocked us.

Today for P-day we had Megan’s husband named Kim, Megan was baptised in December, and Kim took us to Litchfield national park. It is a beautiful place. There are multiple waterfalls. There was no danger of crocs because of the fast moving streams (and waterfalls). If anything a fresh water alligator could have unfortunately made himself into some of these streams, but that doesn’t matter because those guys are more afraid of us than we are to them. There was many people swimming. Being in the wet season those waterfalls had heaps of water. Fortunately the roads were not severely flooded. I saw my first frilled neck lizard and goanna.

Well I am going to go now. Love you all heaps.

-Elder Montgomery