Arrival in Paris

To the Family of Elder Bruno 

Sister Poznanski and I were delighted to welcome your son , Elder Michael Beneamato Bruno , into the France Paris Mission on 29 Oct 2013. He and his MTC companions were enthusiastic and all arrived in good health.  He spent his first day eating some good food, visiting with me, contacting non-members in the heart of Paris, and sharing testimonies.  We enjoyed his spirit.

The next morning, after a mission orientation, Elder Bruno left for his first assignment to work in the Le Harve 2 Area with Elder Hall, who will be his trainer.  Their apartment address is:

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Any packages or letters you would like to send will reach your missionary at this address.

We feel very privileged to work with your him.  We also realize the responsibility we share with you to help him continue to grow spiritually as he faithfully performs his duties.  May the Lord inspire us all to sustain him in this challenging and exciting assignment.  We hope you will join Sister Poznanski and me in praying each day for your son , his companion, investigators, and all of us serving in the France Paris Mission.

A positive, supportive letter from home every week does wonders to sustain a missionary’s morale.  Proverbs 25:25 states:  As cold waters to a thirsty soul, so is good news from a far country. If you have any questions, or if we can assist you in any way, please contact us at our office (001-331-3480-0483) or home (001-331-3976-8402).

Sincerely,

Franck Poznanski

President, France Paris Mission

Dear Families of our Missionaries,

I am pleased to be able to send you this little E-mail to announce to you the creation of the Facebook of the Paris France Mission.

We hope to be able to place photos of the events that take place here in the mission every 15 days so that we might share with you the Spirit that animates our mission.  Your comments our welcome, but we hope you understand we will not be able to respond to each one individually because of time.

We are very grateful for the support that you give through your prayers and the E-mails for your children. It is very precious.

Some amazing things are happening in this mission thanks to the faith, the perseverance and the desire of our missionaries to better fulfill the reason why they are here on mission. They are continually putting amazing efforts into raising the bar and to see the fruits of their labors.

We are very grateful for these chosen youth who have been place in our care and we assure you that we are doing all that we can to make sure they are taken care of. We love and care for them dearly.

We invite you to join our group, so that you might be able to participate in the great moments unfolding in each photo. Here is the name : “France Paris Mission Poznanski”

Sincerely,

Sister Poznanski

Till We Meet Again

Sorry everybody, this week is going to be a short email! I leave for the airport in about two hours and so I just thought I send everybody just an itty bitty email for this week. When you spend every waking hour with five other Elders and two Sisters you start developing really strong bonds of friendship. Today Elder Pedersen, Elder Ghirelli, and Sœur Grünke left. I woke up early to say goodbye to the Elders. Before Elder Ghirelli left I gave him a hug and I told him, "even if we don't see each other again, we're always going to remember you. The Lord needs you now, Do work". It's strange to think that there are people that you can come so close to in your life, who you feel like have helped you so much and been such an impact, and then you never see them again. We talk about visiting each other, but it's unlikely that we ever will. We say goodbye, we serve our two years, and then we go back to our respective countries. And yet, I don't think I'll ever forget those three people. We talk about the missionary purpose of bringing others closer to Christ and we always think in the term of investigators. Last night at the departure devotional they asked a couple converts to stand and shout out their missionaries. I thought a lot about how each person was brought to Christ from these two people. I love these three missionaries from the bottom of my heart and through the progress that they've helped me with towards coming closer to Christ I know that Elder Roberto Ghirelli, Elder Mark Pedersen, and Sœur Vanessa Grünke will always be part of a very exclusive group of missionaries in my heart. They will always be my missionaries (However cheesy that may sound ). Have a great week everybody, treasure the time you have with others because it goes fast!

Love,

Elder Michael Beneamato Bruno

Week 5 of the MTC! The week of plodding onwards

Bonjour ma famille et mes amies,

Have you ever gotten into a time when you're just tired? kind of tired of going to school or work or whatever else and you just want to take a day off? That's what my email is about! well, a little bit since it really wasn't that bad, I just needed an awesome title for my email! Anyways, Here's how my week went

Tuesday

Tuesday will also include my Monday experience with a substitute teacher we had named sœur Boswell. She was possibly one of the coolest people i've ever met in my entire life. She talked about the Holy Ghost's role in conversion and she was just so loud and outgoing it was amazing. Everyone in class fell in love with her in two seconds and her out there attitude (that I think she picked up from the Tahitian mission she served) made her one of the friendliess people i've ever met in my entire life. I feel like if i could get to know people as fast as she does and if people liked me that much after two hours, I'd be an incredibly successful missionary. At the end of class she paired us up into groups and had us pretend to be an investigator. I pretended to be Jeremiah Bohon (I have absolutely no idea if anybody knows who that is, but I love that kid). I got paired up with Sœur Grunke. She was an investigator that was atheist, she grew up with her and she was one of her best friends. I'll explain the rest of the situation in my spiritual section! Tuesday was good as well. Elder Rodriguez (a hilarious Elder who doesn't speak a lot of English, but who has a spicy Spanish attitude) was sick and he didn't get to go to the devotional or do anything all day. The zone felt a little lonlier without him there. We started playing four square in Gym almost every day and it's A LOT of fun. Other than that there was the devotional, which will be in my spiritual section, and an incident with Halloween decorations. We put up Halloween decorations in our classroom on sunday and on Tuesday the French coordinator talked to us telling us that it wasn't appropriate for missionaries. I was a little sad at first, but I totally understood and so we took all the decorations down.

Wednesday

Wendsday was a pretty good day right up until the end. Elder Baldwin's girlfriends brother came by the class, but we weren't there so he came back later in the week to talk to him (and the funniest thing happened, but that's for later). I lost my green magnet, so I picked a new one up from the front desk, and we taught Sœur Pace and Sœur Judas. I did amazing with the lesson for Marion (sœur Judas), but my lesson with Ester was not good at all. I felt like I should have been better since I had learned how to relate better to investigators, but it seems like I just have to try harder with roleplaying! We taught Frére Mayne in English, which made it a lot easier, but I really have a hard time with teaching :/ At the end of the day the new Elder and Sisters that came into our zone had orientation. We went over to their class and showed them around, but it turned out that one of them was sick and so she went to the clinic. When we got back to the residence we found out that she had gone to the ER and so as zone leaders we had to go to the front desk and call President Merrill. It was pretty scary and when we got back to the dorms Elder Baldwin wanted to have a zone prayer and that's why I had a bad night. Zone prayers aren't allowed, President Merrill specifically told me and Elder Baldwin that they weren't, but I don't think Elder Baldwin remembered. I had to tell him that we couldn't do it since they were against the rules. I went to the rooms he had already told and told them to pray as a district and not as a zone. Then I met Elder Baldwin in the our room. We fought about it for a little while and I simply said No. Elder Jansen and Elder Pederson knew the new sister from before the MTC because they're all scananavian and so they were a little upset about it too. I knew it was against the rules, but it was just hard for me to do because I hate telling people they can't do something, especially when it's something that seems like a good thing. It was just a prayer that they wanted to have and I had to put my foot down and say no. I know I've written a lot about it and that it seems like such a simple and small thing to get upset about and nobody but me really feels this strongly about it, but it was a really hard thing for me to do. I just felt bad for Elder Pederson and Elder Jansen that they couldn't pray for one of their really good friends from back home with the entire zone and I felt bad about having to belittle Elder Baldwin or make him feel bad. I always felt like I was the leadership type in high school since I ran for all these different offices and a lot of people liked me, but something as simple as saying no to a zone prayer really made me think that maybe I'm not cut out for leadership... It's not a big deal, it's just that I'm starting to think that being likable and being a leader are two really different things and as hard as I try, I don't know if I'll ever be the latter.

Thursday

And the plodding begins. We had TRC, which was exciting, we taught really well, but other than that nothing happened all day. It was so slow of a day I thought I was going to die. Other than TRC the only thing that happened was that I found out that i gained 17 pounds so far. That's right, 17. We decided that we would wake up early the next morning and go running. We did get our travel plans, which was incredibly exciting, but it just made me think that we have to go a whole other week before we're out of here.

Friday

Soooo, the internationals went to Salt Lake and had a lot of fun and we had another day of monotony. We didn't go running because Elder Baldwin hit his foot against a chair getting up, so we decided we would wait until Monday. We taught a lot of lessons and even though I feel like we're doing better, we're just not getting to the level I wanted to be at when I left the MTC. It's kind of discouraging. The days melt together and it just feels like I've been here forever, but I'm trying to stay strong and not die! I started feeling a little sad that soon me and Elder Baldwin won't be companions anymore since he's awesome. The guy literally wakes up every day exactly on time, he remembers everything, and everything I'm awful at he's amazing at. Like I said though, One more week feels short when I think about it as my whole mission, but if I think about it like the days i've been having it feels like forever and a day. Funny Story, Elder Baldwins girfriends brother teaches at the MTC so he dropped by and talked to Elder Baldwin out in the hall. When Sœur Judas saw him she hid behind the door. After he left she told us that they had gone on a blind date and he had been awful during it. A few weeks after their date she saw him holding hands with one of the Sisters that she had served with in her mission. It's crazy how different people know each other here! Small world I guess

Saturday

And more monotony. The MTC is almost the same thing every day but sunday, for 5 weeks (the last week is a little bit different). Essentially I've done this same thing for 30 something days. It gets a little bit monotonious. I love it here and I try to learn as much as I can, but sometimes I just have to keep plodding :). The only thing that happened different on saturday was that we did service (which was vaccuming) and we worked out in the morning. I'm essentially on a diet now because I don't want to be a whale, but other than an unusal amount of lettuce and a little extra excersize, same old thing.

Sunday

SUNDAYS ARE ALWAYS AMAAZING! This can count as part of my spiritual stuff, becuase it's SUNDAY! We had sacrament meeting on baptism and I thought all day, how does this apply to me at all? but eventually I really thought of the sacrament and the covenants that we make with the Lord and realized that even having been baptized for as long as I have, baptism is a covenant that I promised the Lord to do something, and as imperfect of a person as I am, I always try to keep my promises. Our District wore different color ties to form a rainbow, we learned that sometimes even if we're right it's better to take the high road to help out our companion, and that really applies to everyone. Whenever something bad happens to me I'm starting to try to take the high road now. We do a lot of pranks to each other just because we love having fun and laughing, but I've realized that when something goes wrong, we need to forgive others. In TRC we taught forgiveness and so i've been making it a personal goal to try to try to forgive others rather than seeking for revenge. Revenge leads to unkind feelings and so i'm trying to let everything go. Sunday night I was kind of feeling like i needed to work a little bit so I brought my bible with me to the devotional so I could memorize a scripture. I started to memorize Isiah 1:18 and then the speaker talked. And of course he talked about repentance and enduring to the end. It never ceases to amaze me that every time I think of a new goal there happens to be a sign in my life that says GOOD Idea! The speaker talked about working and being here was the right thing, but the talk really made me think about the bad things I've done in my life. I've had questions of whether this was the right place for me or not and I've prayed a lot about it and every time i've recieved the answer that I am where I'm supposed to be. Despite these answers though, I still have had doubts in myself. Last night I stopped doubting. This is where I am supposed to be, the Lord has forgiven me of my sins just as he can forgive others of theirs and just as we must forgive others when they commit sins against us. After the devotional we watched a video by Elder Bednar titled "becoming a missionary". It's an amazing video, but the biggest thing that I took out of it was that every mission is good for a missionary, but not every missionary is good for a mission. I do not want to be someone who doubts their ability to the point where they are no longer good for their mission, I do not want to be a person who doubts their ability at all. I am a missionary and my work is his work. I do not doubt the Lord and therefore I cannot doubt myself 

Spiritual STUFF!

So, with Sœur Grunke I learned that to teach in a roleplaying situation, don't think about how you would think about that person is, think about them like the person who actually taught them was. It's a little hard to explain, but essentially all the investigators we teach are real people that our teachers all taught on their missions. When I taught Sœur Grunke and I realized what this friend meant to her I tried to teach her like Sœur Grunke would want her friend taught. Everybody that is imaginary is loved by the person we're actually teaching and I realized that in order to be a teacher I need to love them as well. It's a tough principle to master, but I know that these people are important and so I'm trying as hard as I can!

The next spiritual experience I had was the Tuesday Night devotional. We sang Praise to The Man and had Dallin H. Oaks speak. I loved singing praise to the man, it made me really empathize with the prophet Joseph Smith and realize how amazing of a person her was. Unfortunately I didn't feel incredible when I heard Elder Oaks talk. It really worried me that I had heard an apostle of God speak and his message didn't penetrate me to the core. It was at this moment that I realized that I'm not going to have a spiritual experience that brings me to tears every time I teach an investigator or I hear someone talk. I feel like I'm so constantly filled with the spirit that sometimes it's hard to realize that he's always there. Just like the law of opposites, because I feel him so often it's hard to know of a time that I didn't feel the spirit. Learning and plodding onwards are sometimes all we can do and it was this experience that helped me through this week. Sometimes we just have to buckle down and work even though it feels like we're just plodding. Races are finished one step at a time and we can't expect every day to be the most amazing one we've ever had. Keeping a good attitude and hoping for the best, that's how you get through long hard treks. For everyone back home, Try hard, work hard, and anytime you feel like taking a day off because you don't feel motivated enough to do it remember that there's no such thing as a day off for a missionary and every member is a missionary :)!

Sorry about the long letter, Our laundry took a little bit longer than normal and so I just kept going! I report to the travel office at 11:30 on Monday the 28th so I'll probably have enough time to read your emails if you send them and if you're going to send letters make sure to send them to my Paris Address.

Love,

Elder Michael Beneamato Bruno

A Week of Weakness

Bonjour ma famille et mes amis

All is good in the hood. This week has been a little tougher than the last couple, but that's alright. Not every day of life is our best. My week went as follows

Tuesday

Tuesday was alright, the West Indies district left and they all signed my journals. The zone leaders handed down the zone leader ties, one to the tall zone leader and one to the short zone leader. It has like 30 names on it, so it's pretty sweet. We also received the robe of righteousness, which is basically just a bed sheet. They were really awesome and I'm definitely missing them, but it was time for them to get out and go preach in their very sweaty corner of the vineyard. We had a devotional by Elder Matsen (a retired 70), but I sadly didn't pay a ton of attention to it.

Wednesday

Wednesday was possibly the worst day I've had so far. It started out early and I just felt so tired and miserable I thought i was going to die. I tried to keep a good attitude and stay awake, but I just kept dozing off in class. I really want to kick the bad habit of complaining all the time, but Wednesday I definitely failed at that. To top it off I just felt really sick (the sickness of which a lingering runny nose and nasty cough is still persisting). I didn't really get too much out of our first classroom instruction, but the second one we learned about gospel principles. I love gospel principles, but I just couldn't concentrate. Before the class started a teacher named sœur Pace came in and told me I was going to teach an "investigator" named Ester (which really just meant we were going to role play). We had a substitute named frére Myers for that class and sœur pace came in to help us before we went "tracting" (which was basically just knocking on a door and trying to get frére Myers to let us in). I was talking to my companion and we disagreed about the baptismal invitation. Sœur Pace came over and told me I was wrong and I just felt so upset. We went tracting and I didn't do amazing, we used the baptismal invitation and it went over fine, but I just felt a little upset. Before I went to bed I wrote in my journal "I guess I'm going to have a long prayer tonight. I guess I just need to work a little bit harder and maybe it'll go better" and trust me when I say that it was a very LONG prayer.

Thursday

Thursday I had my lesson with Ester, and it went AMAZING! I understood everything she said and at the end I gave her the baptismal invitation. She said no because she was already baptized. I was pretty confused about it, but I asked her to go to church on Sunday (It's funny because we have to ask them after Sunday if they went to church) and I asked if we could meet again. We scheduled for Saturday. As soon as I walked out of that class I learned how to teach. It was the first time aside from French lessons that I really felt like I learned how to preach the gospel.  I found out that to explain to someone that had already been baptized you should teach the restoration. Everything just seemed to click into place. We also had TRC which I also did amazing! It really was a day of confidence boosting and I just felt really happy.

Friday

Friday was pretty routine, We worked on keeping lessons simple, which actually really helped me. The weird thing about Friday was that I actually started paying attention to how to teach. Before I would kind of zone out and mostly concentrate on learning French, but I'm starting to realize that I NEED to learn how to teach! Other than that though, it was a blah day.

Saturday

Saturday we did service and i had to clean bathrooms. Don't get me wrong, I've cleaned plenty of bathrooms and I was happy I got to move around and work rather than sitting in a classroom (farmwork messes up your brain I guess), but I really hate bathrooms. I just had to focus on doing work for the lord rather than cleaning nasty bathrooms. I taught Ester on the restoration, and it was amazing. Up until this point I had felt so discouraged about learning French. It's been pretty tough for me especially since everyone else in the intermediate class is so good at it. I really saw how much hard work pays off in this lesson though. Ester understood most of what I said and afterwards sœur pace complimented me on how well I taught (which is saying something because sœur Pace is kind of mean). It's weird, I'm really starting to like sœur Pace because of how rapidly my teaching is improving when just three days before I really did not like the lady at all. I have another lesson today so let's see how it goes!

Sunday

Sunday was another day of parting. The Montreal missionaries left for their mission and the only person that had ties to South Carolina went too. It was just some kid who had gone to the college of Charleston for a year named Elder Flitton. I don't know why, but I just felt like he was one of my last ties home. I'm not homesick or anything, but it's just a little bit sad when Elders part ways on a mission. Elder Fierro, and Elder Bybee were awesome too and it just feels kind of strange to know that some of these people you became best friends with in 3 weeks you might never see again. Other than that my obedience paid off. The whole day I had just been talking about pie. It's crazy how you can miss something soooo simple, but I just talked about pie all day. Finally, at the end of the day, I planned hard for my lesson today and when I walked out of the classroom to go to the residence at 9:30, The lord poured down blessings in the form of delicious apple pie. Sœur Dick (the old sister training leader who was leaving tomorrow) had been sent pie for her last day in the MTC. HAHAH, as childish and as silly as it sounds, I don't think I've ever had a spiritual experience where the Lord testified to me so clearly that I was doing the right thing. It really made me love being here. We had a devotional by the MTC administrative director that was really awesome and afterwards we watched "only a stone cutter" and in those short fifteen minutes I realized what my spiritual stuff for this week was going to be.

SPIRITUAL STUFF!

So, what did I think of my whole 24 hours of trials? Now that I think back I think how silly I was to get so upset about such simple things, but yesterday I also wrote this. My whole life I've been cruising on good luck, and natural intelligence. I do better spontaneously than a lot of people do by planning and working hard. I've always thought, play to your strengths and you'll do fine. It's funny, because when brother Miner (the second councilor in my bishopric) asked me what my favorite scripture so he could put it on my plaque was I did what I do best. I didn't answer him until the last minute. Finally he found me in the church hallway the Sunday before I left and asked again. All I could think was that I had been flipping through Ether with the missionaries a couple days ago when I had driven them to a lesson. I flipped through a couple pages in Ether and found a scripture. Like I said before, I play to my strengths because that's what I'm good at, that how I've done things my whole life. I gave brother Miner a scripture that I literally had never read in my entire life. Ether 12:27. "And if men come unto me I will show unto them their weakness that they may be humble: and my grace is sufficient for all men that humble themselves before me; for if they humble themselves before me, and have faith in me, then will I make weak things become strong unto them." I learned this week that missionary work cannot and will not ever be what we want it to be. Missionary work is not spontaneous or impulsive, Missionary work is careful planning, missionary work is prayer and faithful study, missionary work is everything I've been weak at my entire life. And yet I am a missionary. I will change, I will work, and I will make what was once weak strong. Have a great week everybody

With Love from your missionary,

Elder Michael Beneamato Bruno

Week Three of the MTC! Relying on the lord

This week was pretty good! before I start my letter I'll tell everyone the big news, last Sunday I got appointed Zone Leader (Kind of). The old zone leaders left yesterday, but our branch president wasn't able to come to the MTC during general conference so he told us we would start being zone leaders one saturday since he couldn't be there and we had to check out the old zone leaders district. It was pretty scary and I was terrified at first, but it actually isn't super difficult. I've been Zone leader of Branch 46 for four days, but it feels almost the same as being District leader, just calm down, help everyone as much as you can, try to resolve conflicts as fast as you can, and make sure you know everyone. My favorite part of General Conference (Other than Elder Ballard talk about my dad's mission!) was the quote from Abraham Lincoln. In order to win a man to your cause, you must first make him think you are a sincere friend. I guess leading people isn't always about being someone's friend, but if you know them as a friend it makes it so much easier to help them solve their problems.

Anyways, just like last P-day I'll start with the big plates

Tuesday

So, everything started slowing down. This is the first day i really felt in the groove, which might have been bad because felt a little like I was taking it easy. David Baxton of the 70 spoke at the devotional, but i'll talk more about that later.We played basketball for gym which was a lot of fun and I got a letter from Travis (which was superrr exciting). I wore a crazy tie and everybody loved it, but while i was singing in the choir the camera focused on me for what seemed like 100 years. Everybody made fun of me, and I was a little bit embarrassed, but I can't say that i hated the attention. I really love the choir director. We sang come follow me more about that later though!

Wednesday

Nothing really crazy happened  sadly. I fell asleep in class and i felt super bad about it. I realized that my French is improving though so that's good! We had a mock lesson with our teacher pretending to be an investigator and i felt okay about it, but not as great as I would have liked. I did realize that I need to start losing myself in the work more though!

Thursday

Thursday was amazing, We had TRC which is basically talking to real members and teaching them a lesson in French. The first person we taught (his name was Michael strangely enough) i didn't really understand. He had gone on his mission to Toulouse, but other than that Elder Baldwin did most of the talking (he's pretty good at french). The second lesson we had though was with a lady named sister Woods. She had served a spanish speaking mission, but the MTC didn't need any Spanish volunteers. She wanted to volunteer so badly that she taught herself French. She was amazing and her French wasn't that much better than me and Elder Balwin's (we all spoke like small children), but i felt the spirit really strongly and so I LOVED it! we also shot each other with hornets, which are basically folded up paper shot with rubber bands. It was a lot of fun, but Im pretty sure i have several welts. It reminds me that as much as the spirit oozes out of every corner of the MTC, we're still 18 year old boys who just need to have fun every now and then. We keep each in check though, so there's fun, but we also keep each other in check.

Friday

Friday was also amazing. The first part of the day was a blur, but at the end we did mock street contacting. For one of the scenarios I got to choose what kind of investigators i wanted to be. I chose to be a Frenchman with a girlfriend and a baby. It was really funny, but it was also a little bit sad. After I pretended the teacher told us that we would actually meet a lot of people that had children with girlfriend. It was kind of a sobering moment. It was also sad because we combined with the West-Indies District who were also the zone leaders. I knew it was probably the last time I would really get to talk to them since they would be busy packing up before they left on Monday. It was an awesome day, but it also made me realize that France is going to be full of people who need the gospel, but have a lot of problems and that many of the people I know here in the MTC who are amazing I might never get to see again.

Saturday and Sunday

General Conference all day, it was spiritual, inspired, and amazing, but i don't have time to talk about it all. If you didn't watch it, watch it. It was one of the best ones ever! At the end on Sunday we had a devotional by VOCAL POINT! They were amazing and I'm sure everyone already knows who they are (BYU's amazing singing group). And that about wraps it up

SPIRITUAL STUFF!

Alrighty, spiritually this week was pretty fulfilling, but i don't think anyone could be in the MTC and not think so.

1- Elder Baxters talk on the Godhead was amazing and it actually really cleared up a lot of questions i had. I know that in Europe it will be a tough topic to talk about and so I'm really glad to get as much information on it as possible.

2- Choir. We sang Come Follow Me. I LOVE THE CHOIR DIRECTOR! he's amazing. He always puts a spiritual message to every song we sing and for this one he talked about missionaries singing this song. As much as it sounds like Christ is the narrator, he's not. The song is about missionaries bringing others unto Christ and it is absolutely 100% sweetness to hear about missionary's when you're a full time missionary. I wish i could share the choir directors message as well as he told me, but all i can say is that i know that Christ calls missionaries to bring others to him.

3- Being a leader means relying on the Lord. As difficult as i thought it would be, the lord makes it easy. I kept hearing during conference to cast your burdens on the lord because his burden is easy and his yolk is light. It really is true. regardless of what we do or how hard it is, we can accomplish anything through the lord. I thought that waking up earlier for Sunday meetings or being in charge of a lot of people would be a trial, but really it's been a blessing and I know that through the lord I can only grow stronger and help more people. Missionaries always come home better people than they left, but I'm starting to realize that it's because they don't seek to change themselves, or at least if they do seek to change themselves then it's only so that they can help others. Maybe that's the secret to life, just try to help others and maybe by doing that we help ourselves. Love you guys, keep writing because I've never thought a small piece of paper or a tiny email with two sentences could ever make me so happy.

Love,

Elder Michael Beneamato Bruno