Elder Montague's Mission

April 22nd, 2018 10th month Thailand, Bangkok, Surin Branch samuel.montague @myldsmail.net   (I would love to hear from you) Quote of the week: "Stressful times are God's Miracle Grow." -Sister Ashlee Roberts, Florida Jacksonville Mission What a looooooooong time it's been. Prepare yourselves for a monster email.  Let's just start with the rest of Songkran, the water festival/ Thai New year. It was amazing. Lots of cancelled appointments. But again, lots of people in the street pondering our faves and wetting us down. It was mostly down on Sunday, and we were home way early so we missed any evening craziness.  Sunday took a hard hit. Members across the entire country were out of town, and no one went to church. Our family of miracles that we've been teaching, that we were so sure we would be baptizing soon, has stopped responding to our attempts at communication. We have faith and hope that it was just because of the holidays!  Ou...

March 26th, 2018 10th month Thailand, Bangkok, Surin Branch samuel.montague @myldsmail.net (I would love to hear from you) So picking up with last pday: we ended up doing a super fun but hard scavenger hunt, where the groups went all over Roi-et to take pictures with a bunch of random things and people. We played a giant werewolf-card-roleplay game while we finished with our interviews. It is then I was interviewed. I was a little more nervous than normal, because this was my first interview as พี่ (senior companion) and I'd had plenty of hard times already. But the interview was great and reassuring! The conference was great and really helps renew my spiritual commitment.  President Johnson and the other instructors focused on improving our efforts with the people that we are working with, helping them progress and be a higher caliber of investigator. This contrasts with the general feel we have as missionaries sometimes to produce numbers for our key indicators. We'...

March 22nd, 2018 9 months, 4th week Thailand, Bangkok, Surin Branch samuel.montague @myldsmail.net (I would love to hear from you) So zone conference tomorrow, which means pday was moved to today (Wednesday). We are spending it traveling to Roi St at a ridiculous time, having our interviews with the mission president, an activity, and practicing for our musical number. It's also been very hot lately, hence the title.  Last week was filled with a lot of long events in the morning. We visited a member who lives really far away from the town(she has kids she wants to be baptized!), did some service, had switch offs (this time I went to Buriram with Elder Bevan). We went to a post-graduation picture session thing at the university to support a member), and passed stomach issues to each other #ท้องเสีย I'm really tired at the writing of this, and I'm on a hard-to-type bus, so this email is going to be short.  There were some low parts of the week, but we are defi...

March 5th, 2018 9 months, 2nd week Thailand, Bangkok, Surin Branch samuel.montague @myldsmail.net (I would love to hear from you) "And so great was the prosperity of the church, and so many the blessings which were poured out upon the people, that even the high priests and the teachers were themselves astonished beyond measure." Helaman  3:25 This was a very interesting week to say the least. Through trial and error we have established a high correlation between my personal afflictions and perseverance and the blessings we receive in finding those searching for the gospel.  So much frustrating and challenging things happened to me this week (my 3rd flat tire in a months time, all my whites are yellow because our washing machine decided to have fun, etc). Even though it was rough, we saw so many blessings! We had a sharp jump in our "numbers": new investigators, investigators with baptismal dates, people that went sacrament meeting, and of course ซ. ตุ๊ก...

March 12th, 2018 9 months, 3rd week Thailand, Bangkok, Surin Branch samuel.montague @myldsmail.net (I would love to hear from you) Happy birthday Elder มองตากู!!! So many prophets said great stuff about these later days, and it's true. It is a great time to be alive, and a great time to be a patriot (of the Lord).  To celebrate we are going to ride elephants today! This time we won't have a seat- we are riding bareback. I am so excited to do this!. On top of it, I am wearing clothes I've purchased here or found at our house, and I look like a Mexican cowboy. So turnt :) We had another baptism! ซ. หญิง is so awesome! She's very knowledgeable and always hungering for more. She has so many friends at church and I know she's going to stay strong. She asked me to play the piano for her baptismal program, which surprised me because this branch is filled with much better pianists than I. This week I saw a direct correlation between my efforts and...

February 26th, 2018 9 months, 1st week Thailand, Bangkok, Surin Branch samuel.montague @myldsmail.net (I would love to hear from you) "And it came to pass that they did repent, and inasmuch as they did repent they did begin to prosper." Helaman  4:15 Well, I guess I repented, because I was just sent to the promised land! I show up here and we have a baptism the very first Sunday. My companion and I have high expectations, standards, and goals for this our blessed Transfer, endearingly named Jeff. I was thinking of maybe calling this a transfer of fire, or of learning, but my companion suggested Jeff and we went with it. My companion, Elder Joshua Dylan Sudekum the First, hails from small town Liberty Hill of the great state of Texas. He was a thespian, a 6'6" basketball hero, and he has dabbled in magic. He'd like to say he can rap, but you're more likely to catch him tickling someone's funny bone. He has endured 3 transfers already, mea...

February 20th, 2018 8 months, 4th week Thailand, Bangkok, Chiang Mai  District samuel.montague @myldsmail.net (I would love to hear from you) I feel like I have lived my whole life in Chiang Mai. I have been here for 6 months. I have celebrated almost every holiday here. I am friends with so many members and have had the opportunity to get close to a lot of them.  I actually know where I'm going when I bike and haven't gotten lost in the past couple of months.   Nevertheless, Christ did say ว่า,  "for I will show unto the children of men that I am able to do mine own work." (2 Nephi 27:21) So I guess the work  doesn't  depend on my being here. I am.being transferred  tomorrow to Isan, tok an area called Surin (สุรินทร์). I am going to be the Senior Companion (555 not sure how  that  judgement call was made). This last week could've been terrible (I had a record number of cancellations ผิดนัดs), but I refused to let that ...